[laughfactory]

Actually, recent research shows that a vegetarian diet has higher impact on the environment than eating meat. It's obvious too when you think about it. Consider how much lettuce you'd have to eat to replace the caloric content of one pound of beef. And there's a lot of resources which go into farming vegetables.

On the whole it's clear to me that of we could get the vast majority of commuting traffic to turn into cycling traffic, or non-traffic (get more people working remotely) then we'd vastly lower our environmental footprint and increase air quality. Plus we'd all get more exercise. But, of course, the automakers are hugely invested in keeping us buying new cars and driving them.

[wapz]

You can't compare caloric content of lettuce to that of beef. Vegetarians don't stock up on lettuce to get calories. That being said, if every single person was vegetarian, I would bet we could get the efficiency of vegetable farming to beat the current efficiency of cattle through indoor farming.