Hamburger Heat by Joan Hoffman

Cattle used to produce hamburger release methane (CH4), a greenhouse gas with 80 times the warming effect of carbon dioxide for its first 20 years in the atmosphere. (edf.org) A quarter pounder burger creates 6.5 pounds of greenhouse gas. A pound of grain fed beef use 1800 gallons of water. In the US, 50 billion hamburgers or 150 hamburgers per person are consumed each year.

Approaches to reducing methane emissions from beef include encouraging more plant-based diets and veggie burgers, altering animal diets to reduce methane emissions, breeding animals which release less methane, and using modern technology to monitor methane (global issues.org)