For years now, vegans have touted the benefits of eating no meat. While there are benefits to only eating vegetables and fruits, my wife and I are not totally committed to going vegan quite yet. However, for Our Green Year, we have taken the initiative to only eat bison, elk or anything else that is not pumped full of hormones on the rare occasion when we do eat meat. We are not doing this for our health, we are doing it to help the environment. Apparently, not eating meat can be one of the best things you can do for the environment, at least according to a recent study.

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change is urging people around the world to cut back on the amount of meat they eat to help combat climate change. The panel has stated that cutting down on meat consumption is one of the quickest and most effective things that can be done for the world at this very moment. Here are just a few stats of why they feel this way:

• Livestock farming generates 18 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, which is more than the emissions emitted by cars, planes, trains and boats COMBINED.


• Livestock farming takes up one-third of the landmasses on Earth, and 70 percent of the forest cover in Latin America has been lost to grazing. That lost forest means the planet does not soak up as much CO2, which then means the Earth gets hotter.


• Livestock manure generates nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the warming effect of CO2.


• Cow flatulence releases methane, which has 23 times the warming impact of CO2. Each day, one cow expels 200 liters of methane. Multiply that by the 100 million cows in the United States alone and you get a lot of methane.

In the developed world, people eat about 176 pounds of meat, while in the developing world that figure is only at 66 pounds. While it may seem like the developing world is keeping things from really getting out of control, that is not the case. In fact, the developing world is fast catching up to the developed world in meat consumption. Meat exports in China during the first four months of 2008 rose more than 900 percent. In 2008, meat production for the world was at 280 million tonnes. By 2050, it will be over 500 million tonnes.

It seems like it is an American tradition to have steak on a regular basis, but this practice is killing ourselves and the planet. It is estimated that if every American reduced their meat consumption by 20 percent (if you eat meat every day, that is reducing it by one or two days), it would account for the same reduction greenhouse gas reduction as everyone in the country switching to a hybrid.