A long list of good reasons can be given for taking to a healthy, plant based diet, but still I am asked, “Why are you a vegetarian?” Shouldn’t it be the other way around, with the question being asked, “Why do you eat meat?”

And now I will add another question. “Would you give up eating meat in order to combat global warming? Let me assure you, the next time you fire up the barbecue it is more than just the steak getting warm.

I recently visited India, part vacation, part pilgrimage. But the India I enjoy most is rural agrarian India, an India that is fast being swallowed up by globalization. Vegetarian India, the land of the sacred cow. I needed to understand how the cow, an animal integral to the rich spirituality of India, could also become such a villain, belching and passing methane, a gas responsible for much of the worlds global warming.

It was mid-flight from Singapore to Mumbai, global warming on my mind as I gazed out the window at the Air India jet exhaust.

The airline steward assisted me with the vegetarian meal order; no meat, no fish, and no egg.

“And no onion or garlic”, I added, understanding that these are also foodstuffs prohibited (except medicinally) by traditional Indian standards. She happily took my order.

A moment later, I felt a tapping on my shoulder. The Indian gentleman sitting behind wanted to talk.

“I have not witnessed such a high dietary standard from a westerner before”, he said. He proudly told me how his grandmother used to follow the same standard, but then informed me that modern India is a different place. “We even have MacDonald’s now“, he added, shamefaced. He introduced himself as Mr. Agrawal, and invited me to visit him during my stay.

I ate my rice and lentils in silence, while those around me enjoyed lamb. Meat eating is the norm worldwide after all, not only in western countries, but also on the increase in developing nations. Vegetarianism, although a lofty value held in high esteem in some circles, is usually scorned and ridiculed.

A vegetarian will often endure persecution and defamation similar to that suffered in recent decades by feminists, the gay community, and civil rights activists. A constant barrage of advertising assaults us, and flesh products are on display in every shopping district. But tolerance is only human, which is after all, a derivative of the word “humane”.

A few weeks later, I had the privilege of visiting Mr. Agrawal, a wealthy businessman, at his home in New Delhi. He welcomed me graciously and the afternoon was spent in convivial chatter.

He then showed me into his study. He opened an ancient book, explaining that it was a translation of scripture written 5,000 years ago. His edition was written in Sanskrit, so he translated it for me.

‘The sages gathered before the teacher of divine wisdom, who spoke as follows, “In the coming age of Kali (quarrel and hypocrisy) there will be an increase of anger, greed, and envy. The people will be so spiritually destitute that they will eat mother cow.”

The assembled sages were shocked, “No…not possible!, humankind will never degrade to the point of eating the cow.”

At this point Mr. Agrawal closed the book, turned to me and said, “Thank you for reminding me of my heritage and of the important values in life.” He hugged me in sincere gratitude.

It was a sultry night in New Delhi. I sat outside on a rattan chair, pondering the future of our planet, which is warming up at an unacceptable rate. Development and technology are known to be the primary culprits. Yet modern globalization based on manipulation of Earths finite resources is seen as the sacred right of governments worldwide.

Scientists are clutching at inventive methods to solve this new problem, whilst traditional wisdom is entirely overlooked. Surely traditions with respect for Mother Earth, environmental sustainability, and a simple vegetarian diet deserve serious consideration as an alternative approach.

Is it just me, or does it seem that agricultural methane emissions are being overlooked as a global warming threat? In all the literature, news reporting and political diatribe on greenhouse gas emissions, just how much understanding is there on the effect of animal agriculture?

Yet global warming poses one of the most serious threats to the environment ever faced in human history. By focusing entirely on carbon dioxide emissions, major organizations have failed to account for data showing that other gases are the main culprit behind the global warming we see today.

As a result, they are neglecting what might be the most effective strategy for reducing global warming in our lifetime: advocating a vegetarian diet. These may sound like the words of a global warming skeptic, but they are not.

Dr James Hansen, the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies, states that the focus on CO2 is fueled in part by misconceptions. “It’s true that human activity produces vastly more CO2 than other greenhouse gases. However, many other greenhouse gases trap heat far more powerfully than CO2, some of them tens of thousands of times more powerfully.”

Hansen mentions that the major source of CO2 emissions (cars and power plants) also produce aerosols. Aerosols actually have a cooling effect on global temperatures, to a degree that approximately cancels out the warming effect of CO2, at least in the near term.

This result is not widely known in the environmental community, due to a fear that “polluting industries will use it to excuse their greenhouse gas emissions.” Moreover, we cannot assume that aerosol emissions will keep pace with increases in CO2 emissions.

By far the most important non-CO2 greenhouse gas is methane, and the number one source of methane worldwide is animal agriculture. Animal agriculture produces more than 100 million tons of methane a year, and is on the rise. Global meat consumption has increased five-fold in the last 50 years.

Non-CO2 greenhouse gases are responsible for all the greenhouse gases we are seeing, and all the global warming we are going to see for the next 50 years. The strategy with the most potential to curb the rise in global warming is vegetarianism.

According to Henning Steinfeld, senior author of a report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. They are responsible for 9- percent of all CO2 emissions, 37 percent of methane, and 65 percent of nitrous oxide.

“To put it in perspective, that is more damaging emissions than that caused by all transportation worldwide. The latter two gases are particularly troubling, even though they represent far smaller concentrations in the atmosphere than CO2. Methane has 23 times the global warming potential (GWP) of CO2 and nitrous oxide has 296 times the warming potential.”

The billions of chickens, turkeys, pigs, and cows who are crammed into factory farms each year produce enormous amounts of methane. This occurs both during digestion and from the acres of cesspools filled with feces that they excrete.

We are beginning to understand that the Earth is a limited resource, or in simple terms, the future of the world economy is tied up with the future of the environment. Producing one calorie of animal protein requires more than 10 times as much fossil fuel input than does a calorie of plant protein. Feeding massive amounts of grain and water to farmed animals and then killing them, and processing, transporting, and storing their flesh is extremely energy intensive.

In addition, enormous amounts of carbon dioxide stored in trees is released during destruction of vast acres of forest to provide pastureland and grow crops for farmed animals. Every minute of every day, huge areas of rainforest are destroyed in order to produce an ever-increasing demand for meat products.

Every time you destroy rainforest land, you destroy rich animal and plant life. Rainforests supply us with oxygen and moderate our climate. When rainforests are destroyed, it is only a matter of time before land becomes desertified.

There has been much hype recently about the new era of the automobile, with biofuels replacing CO2 producing petroleum. Have you thought about where these plant oils and extracts for biofuel will be grown? Just listen out for the sound of more rainforest falling, and you will be on the right track.

The pristine rainforests of tropical Indonesia have been earmarked as suitable location, with one expert saying that the “controls and regulatory certificates will not be worth the paper they are written on.” After all, immense illegal logging is already rife in South East Asia, so who will notice a few more million acres cleared?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, consisting of some of the best scientists in the world, says, “Global warming, if left unchecked, will cause ecosystem collapses, crop failures, weather disasters, coastal flooding, the spreading of disease, and the death of coral reefs.”

The driving force behind all extinctions of fundamental life forms, is the destruction of wildlife habitat, caused by livestock grazing or livestock feed, accounting for over 70 percent of agricultural land worldwide.

Global warming is not an isolated problem. It is an ecosystem imbalance caused by humans. Nor is it removed from other environmental factors. Let’s take water for example.

Every pound of meat not eaten will save around 5,000 gallons of water. To put it into context; by using a low flow showerhead, 100 gallons of water are used per week. That’s around 5,000 gallons per year. In other words, by giving up one pound of beef you will save as much water as you use showering for an entire year.

The New York Post revealed that one large chicken slaughtering plant in America was found to be using 100 million gallons of water daily. The same volume would supply a city of 25,000 people.

While in India, I traveled with Mr. Agrawal to a village on the outskirts of Delhi. The sun baked rural fields shimmered in a heat haze. I mentioned to him the effect of methane on global warming.

“Cows are not the cause of global warming, men are”, he said. He pointed to a foraging bovine, “She eats the remains of inedible cane stumps and grain husks, and turns it into milk, a wonder food of immediate utility.”

In traditional cultures, no extra land is cultivated in order to feed cattle grains that would otherwise feed hungry people. In her book “Diet for a Small Planet”, Frances Moore Lappe estimates that plant based agriculture could easily feed the world population many times over. With over 800 million people starving in the world today, that in itself is a strong argument for a change to vegetarianism.

Mr. Agrawal, patting the cow, said, “That is why she is called mother cow. She gives us nutritious milk, a foodstuff of many vitamin and health giving properties.”

Further on down the road we passed a villager guiding an ancient cart behind a pair of bullocks. “Father Bull”, Mr. Agrawal said. “He is working for the family, and mother cow gives us milk. Why would we kill and eat such helpful animals. They are of much greater value alive than dead.”

Indeed, the bovine population of India has remained steady over thousands of years, without any increase in global warming. Traditional India was not technologically advanced, but was always rich in regional cuisine and culinary skill, based on a vegetarian diet. That is at least, until subjugation by Muslim and British administrations during recent centuries, causing displacement, artificial city life, localized economic collapse, and food shortages.

The traditional Indian cow, the Zebu, requires much less feed resource than the huge meaty beasts of the west, which are bred for the hamburger munching palate. The Zebu is a much-admired family member, and part of a natural and environmentally sustainable lifestyle.

In addition, as long as vegetarianism remains the prominent diet of India, massive amounts of grazing land and artificial feedlots are not required, and methane emissions remain in keeping with natural cycles. And so the cow remains sacred to many Indians.

As Mr. Agrawal told me, “She is a symbol of hope, peace, and goodness, and that is something that deserves protection.”

It is easy to understand all this, while in an Indian village, where all of life, good and bad, is played out in the public domain for us to see. However, western countries are a different story, with so much of life (and death) hidden, disinfected, and sanitized.

Have you ever wondered, while driving down the country road, what those vast tracts of unfamiliar crops are. The large percentage of them are fodder crops, grown to feed millions of farm animals, as they are fattened up in feedlots and holding pens.

The United Nations report estimates that 500 million cattle alone are slaughtered around the world every year. The untreated animal waste is stored in massive lagoons, which not only pollutes our waterways but also emits another 15 percent of harmful methane emissions into the atmosphere. And the story does not end there.

Methane has always been a part of the Earths atmosphere and structure. At high pressures, such as found on the bottom of the ocean, methane forms a solid clathrate with water, known as methane hydrate. The sudden release of large volumes of methane from such sediments has been suggested as a possible cause for rapid global warming events in the Earths distant past.

One source estimates that the size of methane hydrate deposits of the oceans at ten trillion tons. Theories suggest that should global warming cause them to heat up sufficiently, all of this methane could again be released into the atmosphere.

And remember, the global warming nature of methane is 23 times greater than CO2. This would immensely magnify the greenhouse effect, heating the Earth to unprecedented levels.

Although less dramatic than release from ocean clathrates, but already happening, is an increase in the release of methane from bogs as permafrost melts. Recent years have seen increased thawing of the permafrost in the Arctic Circle. Measurements in Siberia show that the methane released is five times greater than previously estimated.

Now the good news. Methane is not the enemy. Actually, it has tremendous potential as a source of renewable energy. Methane’s relative abundance and clean burning process make it an attractive fuel source.

At room temperature and standard pressure, methane is colorless and odorless. Methane is non-toxic. It is the cleanest, least harmful form of hydrocarbon, most commonly known in domestic environments, as natural gas.

Apart from gas fields, methane can be obtained via biogas generated by the fermentation of organic matter, including manure, wastewater sludge, and other naturally occurring sources under anaerobic conditions.

And more good news. Unlike carbon dioxide, which can remain in the air for more than a century, methane cycles out of the atmosphere in just eight years, so that lower methane emissions quickly translate to a cooling of the Earth.

Simply by going vegetarian, we can eliminate the impact of global warming. Could it be any simpler? And of course, the usual pro vegetarian arguments remain. We will have cleaner waterways, sustainably managed rainforests and pasturelands, plus the potential, with proper management, to easily feed the entire world population.

The things that really matter most to all of us are fresh air, clean drinking water, and healthy food, all of which can be provided by a switch to vegetarianism. It’s really a no brainer.

Any serious environmental advocate should mention vegetarianism as an action that can be taken to address global warming. Governments could encourage farm subsidies for plant agriculture. There could be an increased awareness taught in food programs and schools.

Unfortunately, as Frances Moore Lappe mentions, “Again and again I have to learn this lesson: often those with the most information concerning our societies basic problems are those so schooled in defending the status quo that they are blind to the implications of what they know.”

I attended a social function recently. At lunchtime, I gnawed on a lettuce leaf, as those around me feasted on flesh foods. Something tells me that even if presented with all relevant information regarding global warming and environmental destruction, they would still not be prepared to give up eating meat.

It is an addiction after all, and socialized through many generations. We vegetarians will continue to be viewed, at least for the time being, as greenies, hippies, and misfits.

Sometimes talk is important. Sometimes rhetoric is important. But sometimes also, it is not a matter of what comes out of your mouth that is important, but what goes into it.

I think of my friend Mr. Agrawal occasionally, and of his God, Krishna, a cowherd boy, and of heaven as a rural, self sufficient and sustainable environment. And I wonder, who is really the sacred cow?