The Belgian city of Ghent is encouraging their citizens to go veggie once a week to lower the city’s carbon emissions.   Civil servants are going to be served vegetarian fare one day a week, and it looks as though school children will also be getting the carbon footprint reducing treatment in their school meals. [source: edie]  Isn’t this amazing?  Do you think that the population of London, or Manchester, or Glasgow could be persuaded to try it?

Here are some interesting facts about why going vegetarian is better for the planet:

1.  It takes 78 calories of fossil fuel to produce 1 calorie of beef protein; 35 calories for 1 calorie of pork; 22 calories for 1 of poultry; but just 1 calorie of fossil fuel for 1 calorie of soybeans.

2. It takes 3 to 15 times as much water to produce animal protein as it does plant protein.

3. Tropical forests in Brazil and other tropic regions are destroyed daily, in part, to create more acreage to raise livestock. [source: British Meat]