Amazingly enough, I’ve been doing my part to help the environment all along.  According to one environmentalist, walking does more than driving to cause global warming.  This is because:

Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance. The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.

The sums were done by Chris Goodall, campaigning author of How to Live a Low-Carbon Life, based on the greenhouse gases created by intensive beef production. “Driving a typical UK car for 3 miles [4.8km] adds about 0.9 kg [2lb] of CO2 to the atmosphere,” he said, a calculation based on the Government’s official fuel emission figures. “If you walked instead, it would use about 180 calories. You’d need about 100g of beef to replace those calories, resulting in 3.6kg of emissions, or four times as much as driving.

The article goes on to talk about how badly cows pollute.  Especially harmful are organically raised cows.  And I thought that organic was always better too.  

Cattle farming is notorious for its perceived damage to the environment, based on what scientists politely call “methane production” from cows. The gas, released during the digestive process, is 21 times more harmful than CO2 . Organic beef is the most damaging because organic cattle emit more methane.

So, I was thinking I could enjoy a healthy walk to the supermarket and just buy my beef in bulk.  That way I would save trips to the store and the environment, however:

A chilled ready meal is a perfect example of where the energy is wasted. You make the meal, then use an enormous amount of energy to chill it and keep it chilled through warehousing and storage.”

So, from now on I’m going to make a lot of short trips to and from the supermarket with just the amount of food I’m going to eat.  And screw that organic stuff too.  Besides, organic costs more for a smaller amount of food.  It's the least I can do.