transport and the UN's   top climate scientist Rajendra Pachauri, who chairs the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), suggests people should consider eating less meat as a way of combating

global warming .

Dr Pachauri has just been re-appointed for a second six-year term as chairman of the Nobel Prize-

winning IPCC, the body that collates and evaluates climate data for the world's governments.

"The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has estimated that direct emissions from meat

production account for about 18% of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions," he told BBC News.

"So I want to highlight the fact that among options for mitigating climate change, changing diets is

something one should consider."

Transport accounts for 13% of emissions according to the IPCC.

The FAO figure of 18% includes greenhouse gases released in every part of the meat production cycle -

clearing forested land, making and transporting fertiliser, burning fossil fuels in farm vehicles, and

the front and rear end emissions of cattle and sheep. 

Dr Pachauri will be speaking at a meeting organised by Compassion in World Farming (CIWF), whose main

reason for suggesting people lower their consumption of meat is to reduce the number of animals in

factory farms.

CIWF's ambassador Joyce D'Silva said that thinking about climate change could spur people to change

their habits.

"The climate change angle could be quite persuasive," she said.

"Surveys show people are anxious about their personal carbon footprints and cutting back on car

journeys and so on; but they may not realise that changing what's on their plate could have an even

bigger effect."

Ms D'Silva believes that governments negotiating a successor to the Kyoto Protocol ought to take these

factors into account.

"I would like governments to set targets for reduction in meat production and consumption," she said.

"That's something that should probably happen at a global level as part of a negotiated climate change

treaty, and it would be done fairly, so that people with little meat at the moment such as in sub-

Saharan Africa would be able to eat more, and we in the west would eat less."

Dr Pachauri, however, sees it more as an issue of personal choice.

"I'm not in favour of mandating things like this, but if there were a (global) price on carbon perhaps

the price of meat would go up and people would eat less," he said.

"But if we're honest, less meat is also good for the health, and would also at the same time reduce

emissions of greenhouse gases."

at the opening of the account
we owed you the earth
but decided instead to live on hawked time and money
and trade and squander all your resources
all of them
as if they were limitless and always ours to keep
ever going to the highest bidder
running up an unnatural overdraft at such a pace
we poisoned the air with lead writing bad cheques
and now the  hot wind of insolvency and need howls in across the sterile prairie

and the rising rank waters of desperation  fill our footsteps  
as we fearfully  huddle cradling our things
lest they perish - as if they could!
and seek out protection
limited liability
but at the close of day
at the tolling of the bell
there are no futures and options

no credit swaps
beyond the mass grave we have mortgaged ourselves into

a barren balance that will never sprout a single flower in interest

nor ever profit by as much as one truly remorseful human tear

wetted in sorrow,  pity or rememberance 

we owed you the earth

and yet prepare to leave it

shorn of value and worth

debased 

exhausted , worked out

massively over subscribed and irreverisibly  spent

this is how we close the account

having shunned the economy

of nature's double entry  bookeeping and karmic thrift

we leave nothing bar an eternity to recollect