ECONOMISTS reckon that we aren’t going to give up buying stuff, or flying because progress depends on consumption. They’re also sure that until all cars are powered by renewable electricity we won’t reduce the high levels of CO2 and methane that are distorting the climate.

There’s less methane (CH4) produced than carbon dioxide (CO2) and it only lasts about ten years compared with over one hundred for CO2, but while it’s there it’s over twenty times as effective in stopping heat energy leaving the planet, and reflecting it back to the surface.

There’s one source of methane that we could do something about, and it’s our attitude to meat eating. I’ll own up here that I am not a strict vegetarian but I don’t eat meat that comes from animals with a leg at each corner, for one simple reason – they produce methane.

Most of them, cattle, goats and sheep have up to four stomachs, or four stomach compartments, where the grass and grains ferment. Pigs, with just one stomach, produce an alarming amount of poo which also generates methane. The number of animals needed to produce 110 kg of methane annually is one dairy cow, or two beef cows, 14 sheep, 22 goats and 74 pigs.

It doesn’t sound too bad until you realise that there are one and a half billion cattle in the world, one billion sheep, half a billion goats and over two billion pigs. It’s even worse as 110 kg represents many more litres, so that’s billions of litres of a powerful climate change gas we could do without.

Less meat eating would also mean less carbon trapping forest cut down for pasture, and water retaining trees having a chance to grow on hillsides over-cropped almost bare by sheep.

Less meat means less flooding, but I do miss proper cheese.