The best way you can contribute to the betterment of planet upon which we live is to eat a lot less meat. Vegetarianism could be your key to saving the world.

Humans create great havoc by virtue of our aggression. You are what you eat and when you eat animals subsequent to their execution you absorb their fear. Fear makes us fight. Vegetarians are more inclined to be peaceful.

Vegetables are also healthier for humans. The industrialised way we make our meat creates direct health consequences by forming loads of disease creating pathogens such as salmonella and E coli. It also makes said pathogens more resistant to antibiotics so diminishing these medicines healing effects.

Eating animals also contributes to global warming. Humans eat about 230 million tonnes of animals each year which is twice as much as we did 30 years ago. The UN has calculated the combined climate change emissions of animals bred for their meat at about 18% of the global total. That’s more than all the cars, planes and other forms of transport combined!

Eating flesh is expensive in many ways. Meaty meals cost more money. It’s part and parcel of a consumptive community that ensures you continue on that endlessly alienating treadmill you so abhor.

At a larger level eating animals consumes much more than merely your money and the time it takes to earn it.

Eating animals adds extremely to deforestation. It’s estimated an area the size of Tasmania is cleared to make farmland every year. The majority of this clearing is done to create space and feed crops for meat production.

The animals we mostly eat require a lot of land to live and die on. Meat manufacture is murderously inefficient requiring 20 times more land to feed a person than it would were we only to eat plants.

Carnivorous conduct also uses precious and essential water resources poorly. A pound of potatoes uses about 60 liters of water to grow. A pound of pork uses over 100 times more. Already numerous wealthy but water poor countries use poorer countries to make their meat in order to conserve their own water resources.

Of all the things that you could do to save your world the most powerful action is to eschew the meat you erstwhile chew.

Martin Hunter Jones is an honorary member of the Australian Counselling Association.