Climate change is the greatest emergency all of humankind (and animals, too, along for the deadly ride) has ever faced.

How we eat accounts for a lot of how fast our planet warms:

For any person—or publication—wanting to envision a more sustainable way to cook, cutting out beef is a worthwhile first step. Almost 15 percent of greenhouse gas emissions globally come from livestock (and everything involved in raising it); 61 percent of those emissions can be traced back to beef. Cows are 20 times less efficient to raise than beans and roughly three times less efficient than poultry and pork. It might not feel like much, but cutting out just a single ingredient—beef—can have an outsize impact on making a person’s cooking more environmentally friendly. ~ Epicurious

So it’s welcome news to see big-time, mainstream media waking up:

“We know that some people might assume that this decision signals some sort of vendetta against cows — or the people who eat them,” Maggie Hoffman, a senior editor, and David Tamarkin, a former digital director, wrote in an article published on Monday. “But this decision was not made because we hate hamburgers (we don’t!).”

The shift was “solely about sustainability, about not giving airtime to one of the world’s worst climate offenders,” they said. “We think of this decision as not anti-beef but rather pro-planet.” …Read the rest, here, or better yet, here.

Here’s how the Big Beef Industry responded (even as a vegan, I have to admit it’s pretty witty):

The North American Meat Institute, a trade association, was comparatively restrained. “The real question should be how excluding America’s favorite food impacts Epicurious,” said Sarah Little, a spokeswoman for the group. “Perhaps the reduced web traffic will save some electricity.”

Just remember: in a Devil-worthy catch-22, there’ll be no burgers on a cooked planet, devastated by climate change. Burgers need a meat…market. And our economy needs a functioning planet.