The cheeseburger footprint

TED2006 speaker Jamais Cascio has a very interesting way of considering cheeseburgers. He tries (in this post) to calculate their carbon footprint: how much carbon is produced in the process of cooking the burger, plus growing the feed for the cattle, growing and milling the wheat to make bread, growing the other ingredients, slaughtering and freezing the cattle for meat, pickling cucumbers, storing and transporting, driving to the fast-food restaurant, etc, not to forget, at the beginning of the chain, the methane emissions from the cattle. He details the sources of his data and his calculations in the post, and concludes that

the overall CO2-equivalent emissions from all the cheeseburgers consumed in the US [in a year] roughly equal the greenhouse output of 100'000 SUVs.

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[CHOPS]

You might find comments that Tony Robbins made in his book Awaken the Giant Within about this topic. He also mentioned a book by John Robbins (no relation) called "Diet for a New America."

The amount of resources used to make cheeseburgers is staggering, and appears that it takes a daily toll on the environment.