great post, this is a really important and often overlooked issue. cutting down you meat consumption (preferably giving up ruminants like lamb, beef and goat entirely, because they produce methane) is one of the simplest and most effective things you can do to reduce your impact on climate change.

looking at the more detailed figures from the Australian Greenhouse Office it becomes clear that livestock contributes a larger proportion to our emissions than passenger cars. yet presumably because of the lack of good information available, people get hysterical about cars, but keep eating beef.

and really, it is often very hard to reduce your car use and it takes money to switch to a smaller car, but it is pretty easy to substitute meat from ruminant animals with meat from other animals in your diet. though i'm not saying you shouldn't cut down on petrol consumption!

one thing that is worth noting is that methane (produced by ruminant animals) is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 by a factor of 25, when averaged over 100 years but is 72 times more potent when averaged over 20 years. this is important because we MUST reduce our greenhouse gas emissions very quickly and very soon.

as suggested by James Hansen of NASA, reducing our emissions of minor (as in less volume) greenhouse gases is probably the easiest and quickest way of reducing our emissions in the short term.

it will take a long time to build new solar thermal power stations, possibly too long, but it takes a few seconds to move change your meal choice from beef to pork (for example).

by the way, the Australian Greenhouse Office uses the 100 year figure for calculating the emissions from livestock in Australia each year. if you dig out the exact amount of methane emitted by livestock each year and multiply it by 72 (the 20 year figure) to get the equivalent amount of CO2, livestock is in fact the BIGGEST contributor Australia's greenhouse gas emissions.

livestock is responsible for the equivalent of 207.8Mt of CO2, electricity is responsible for 194.3Mt and passenger vehicles are responsible for 43.7Mt.

Good on you! Hey, there are places to go if you want more help and support to go and stay vego, e.g. contact the Vegetarian/Vegan Society of Queensland, which can offer you loads of support and info on healthy, satisfying and delicious eating without animal products. Let us know how you went after your month.

It seems the stumbling block for many people is knowing what they can eat if they don't have meat etc, but there are alternatives for everything. Yes, even 'fake' meat made of soy, wheat protein, etc - check out your local asian supermarket - much of which is surprisingly realistic (and some not so realistic). Sanitarium has a big selection now in the health food fridge section of supermarkets - sausages, 'bacon', etc. The simplest way to transition towards a veg diet is probably to find out vego alternatives for each thing you currently like to eat (and realising that much of what you like to eat may be nearly vego already), and just swap. As well as animal free 'meat', there are options for...
* milk - e.g. soy, oat, rice, almond milks - not everyone likes all these, and they vary between brands, so experiment - oat milk may be closest to cow's milk. Most of these are available from supermarkets (near capital cities at least), or otherwise health food shops.
* eggs - tofu can be scrambled like eggs, and is good scrambled with chopped tomato, turmeric, herbs, salt and pepper in oil, and eaten on toast. Get the hard variety of tofu (as opposed to 'silken' which is softer and can be used to blend in desserts etc) and crumble it with a fork. Tofu is available from supermarkets in their healthy food fridge section. Also there are things you can use in place of eggs in cakes and biscuits etc - vegan cupcakes seems to be becoming an artform.
* icecream - e.g. Sanitarium 'So Good' icecream and others, take a look at your health food shop freezer
* chocolate (loads of varieties). Sanitarium have a new 'Vanilla Chai' flavour - ahh, so very good.
* yoghurt - my fave is 'Kingland' brand, from supermarkets. I'm not into the SoyLife one - they make it low in fat too I think that's its problem.
* cheese - that's a harder one, I don't personally know any great commerical vegan cheeses, although one from Redwood (from some health food shops) if pretty good. However there is a cookbook called the "Uncheese cookbook", all about ways of creating 'cheese' and cheesy meals and snacks etc, out of vegan ingredients. I haven't looked at it, but it sounds interesting and have heard others love it.

There are also other ingredients meat-eaters don't often think of trying, if you're feeling adventurous - experiment with beans and pulses (the trick is soaking the larger varieties overnight, and discarding the soaking water, before cooking, and not trying to have too many at one sitting), tempeh (from fridge section of supermarkets, or health food shops). Get into nuts and seeds, add them to salads and have as snacks. Look around Indian and Asian grocers and health food shops for more ideas.

I could go on - the bottom line is, if you have the knowledge, vegetarianism and veganism don't have to be a sacrifice in terms of culinary satisfaction. In my experience, vegans and vegetarians LOVE their food, and eat it with great relish. I've often heard people comment that they really started to appreciate food once they went vego and started to think more about what they were putting into their mouths.

Your suggestion for cutting down gradually over a month sounds like a good idea. Take your time, try a new veg recipe a week or something. The web is a great place to look for recipes. Don't get discouraged if you don't like a recipe or don't like, say, tofu or another ingredient, or have an intolerance to soy, or gluten or whatever. You don't absolutely have to eat tofu or soy or wheat or anything else in particular to be a healthy vego, same as you don't absolutely have to eat pork chops to be be a well-rounded meat eater. Keep experimenting and find what you do like. Although, tofu is something that really does grow on you, I promise!