Become vegan and help planet: scientist

A British scientist says the best way to cut greenhouse gas emissions is for everyone to become a vegetarian.

Alan Calverd says livestock animals bred for their meat produce 21 per cent of the carbon dioxide that's due to human activity.

So cutting out meat can do more to stop global warming than cutting down on oil and coal.

Calverd writes in this month's issue of Physics World magazine that he's not a vegetarian himself.

But he says it's clear that getting rid of meat animals would be an easy way to reduce greenhouse gases.

And it would also free up huge tracts of farmland for production of biofuels, which would further reduce carbon dioxide emissions.