Barbie and I don’t have a lot in common. For one thing, I’m biodegradable and she’s not. But we do agree on one thing; math is hard. For example, how is it that Lisa Simpson’s been a vegetarian for thirteen years when she’s only 8 years old? Is it possible that an anti-oxidant-rich plant-based diet has the power not only to delay the aging process but actually reverse it?

But while eternal tweener Lisa’s the token treehugger in the Simpson household, it’s Bart who’s got the perfect prescription for how to cool Mother Nature’s fevered brow: don’t have a cow. Literally. The less meat you grill, the more you help the planet chill.

Now, before you dismiss me as some kinda free-range Chicken Little, clucking about the catastrophic consequences of our fossil-fueled food chain, you should know that I’m not the only one warning that burgers do more harm than Hummers.

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Wait, don’t eat that sausage! Don’t you know that today, March 20th, is the Great American Meatout, “the world’s largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign?”:

Every spring, thousands of Meatout supporters educate their communities and ask their friends, families, and neighbors to pledge to “kick the meat habit (at least for a day) and explore a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains.”

The Great American Meatout is sponsored by The Farm Animal Reform Movement (FARM), whose website gives you seven good reasons not to eat meat:

1. Kicking the meat habit reduces our risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and other chronic diseases that cripple and kill nearly 1.4 million Americans annually.

2. Kicking the meat habit decreases our exposure to infectious pathogens like Salmonella, E. coli, and Campylobacter, which kill several thousand Americans annually and sicken millions more.

3. Kicking the meat habit raises our energy level, lowers our food budget, and simplifies food preparation and cleanup.

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Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Safeway has adopted new policies to improve its animal welfare standards. This gigantic California-based grocery chain, with 1,743 stores in the U.S. and Canada, is bowing to some firm but gentle arm twisting from those friends to farm animals everywhere, The Humane Society of the United States:

“Safeway’s new policies represent important progress on basic animal welfare issues and will positively affect many thousands of animals,” said Paul Shapiro, senior director of The HSUS’s factory farming campaign. “Safeway’s move also sends a strong message to the agribusiness industry that it must rapidly move away from the worst factory farming abuses, such as intensive confinement systems and the conventional poultry slaughter method.”

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Q. What do tree huggers, animal lovers, nutrition experts, and Michael Pollan have in common?

A. They all want YOU to eat more plants and fewer animals.

This may be a tall order in our “where’s the beef” culture, but with meat consumption fingered as a major factor in climate change, more and more carnivores have been cowed into cutting back on factory farmed flesh.

OK, so you’re not ready to become a Seitan worshipper, but you’d like to try to steer clear of steer-based cuisine. Looking for some inspiration on how to minimize the meat in your meals? You can’t do better than Veganomicon, a witty compendium which brashly””and accurately””declares itself to be “the Ultimate Vegan Cookbook.”

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Anne Frank famously wrote “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.” Of course, she went on to die of typhus in a concentration camp, which may seem to undermine her benign view of mankind.

I bring all this up because, like Anne Frank, I want to believe that people are essentially good. That’s why I’d like to think that encouraging everyone to watch a new video from the Humane Society, “Overlooked: The Lives of Animals Raised For Food“ will make a dent in the rampant animal abuse that’s standard operating procedure in American meat, poultry, dairy and egg production.

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