An article in the The Economist posits that meat consumption is hurting the planet. Based on a study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, it backed up its stance with numbers: a kilo of protein from cow meat, or cattle, resulted in 1,000 kilos of greenhouse gases, if the water and production demands were factored in. The greenest option was chicken, with 3.7 kilos of greenhouse gases for every kilo of protein. There are no sacred cows (no pun intended) in this analysis: the efficiencies of chicken are due to factory farming, the kind that horrifies a lot of people. Yet beyond numbers, this writer hears growing numbers of people who are considering becoming vegetarians for reasons of conscience: they find it conflicting that a life should be taken for nutrition that can be substituted with vegetables. What do you think?