Eating veggie burgers won't save the planet

But the call yesterday by Lord Stern of Brentford, summarised by The Times as "give up meat to save the planet", opened a new front in the rhetorical war on global warming, bringing to mind Omega Man-like images of survivors huddled in bunkers, fighting over the last tin of mung beans.

Mockery aside, the figures are clear enough. Two-thirds of the world's agricultural land is given over to livestock.

Every cow produces 500 litres of methane every day, not to mention 14.6 tonnes of manure annually.

Environmentally, methane has 25 times the impact of CO2, and CO2, we understand from the doomsaying of the blessed Al Gore, is a Very Bad Thing. So why did Lord Stern's warning feel like a rasp of hot air?

More importantly, has he ever dined in a London restaurant? If he had, he would perhaps have refined his arguments to include an acknowledgment that man cannot live by mushroom risotto alone.

The ethical arguments for vegetarianism are not new. In the 1970s, the inefficiencies of meat production were shackled to world hunger, in what anti-poverty campaigner Susan George called the "one less hamburger" argument - the belief that if we all ate one less burger a week, the grain used to feed the livestock might be diverted to feed the Third World.

George knew this was a fallacy but the argument has now evolved into the Meat-free Monday campaign, supported by Paul McCartney. Would one less Big Mac save the planet?

Doubtless Macca understands that it wouldn't but he may also argue that doing a little bit of good is better than doing no good at all.

There is one notable difference between the 1970s and now. Back then, vegetarianism was perceived as a growing trend. It had the look of a movement on the march.

It didn't happen. True, the Waitrosistas may now turn up their noses at battery eggs but according to the last Food Standards Agency survey, the number of vegetarians is roughly the same as it always was.

Three per cent are completely meat-averse, another five per cent are partly vegetarian, eating some fish, and some meat, most usually chicken.

I am in this indecisive club myself, eating no meat but occasionally sampling a haddock, as long as it has been deep-fried and battered to the point where it no longer resembles a fish.

So, is the planet doomed? If vegetarianism is the answer, I fear it is. It feels as if the veggies won the argument while the carnivores won the war.

Many restaurants no longer cater for meat-refuseniks, offering only goats' cheese and a red-blooded sneer from the waiter.

The most-celebrated establishments serve the "nose-to-tail" cuisine pioneered at St John.

As a matter of efficiency, it is surely good that meat-eaters are being encouraged to feast on lungs and spleen.

But it won't save the world, and it doesn't stop me wondering why a city with London's culinary talent can't work out what to do with a parsnip. And no, I don't fancy the goats' cheese.