The United Nations’ Global Summit on Climate Change (which we discussed here) has begun, and already the delegates from the 187 nations are taking on some pretty important issues.  The New York Times reports that talks have begun to figure out what exactly to do with emissions that come from eating meat.

This may not seem like such a big deal, but it turns out that eating meat is pretty awful for the environment when not done properly (oh, look, another link to one of our posts discussing just that).  Sayeth the Times (I’m going to just go ahead and run two quotes together from way different parts of the article together in this pull, just go with it):

The trillions of farm animals around the world generate 18 percent of the emissions that are raising global temperatures, according to United Nations estimates, more even than from cars, buses and airplanes…Producing a pound of beef creates 11 times as much greenhouse gas emission as a pound of chicken and 100 times more than a pound of carrots.

And, that 18 percent is guaranteed to rise, by quite a bit, because meat consumption around the world is skyrocketing as countries such as India, China, and Brazil get richer and have more money to spend on food. In fact, the United Nations believes pork consumption, for example, will double between 2000 and 2050.

There are a lot of ideas on the table to try and figure out what to do, and it’s likely no consensus will be reached this summit.  However, some of the ideas being bandied about (great phrase):

High-tech fixes include those like the project here, called “methane capture,” as well as inventing feed that will make cows belch less methane, which traps heat with 25 times the efficiency of carbon dioxide…Other proposals include everything from persuading consumers to eat less meat to slapping a “sin tax” on pork and beef. Next year, Sweden will start labeling food products so that shoppers can look at how much emission can be attributed to serving steak compared with, say, chicken or turkey.

If you want to do your part to keep emissions down, you can go ahead and takepart and learn about going vegetarian.  Or, drive less, or something.  Up to you.