From “Sustainable Economics”:

The idea that the Earth is a living system or organic being has been called the Gaia hypothesis. Gaia is the Greek name for the Earth Goddess. Some believe that our mother Earth as a living organism will adapt herself to changes that threaten her life. From the Earth’s viewpoint humans are a parasite on her body; if those parasites threaten her health, she may find ways to make them change their behavior or possibly even eliminate them.

Mad-cow disease, avian flu, and other diseases may cause epidemics so that humans will reduce their eating of other animals. One aspect of this megacrisis is that humans in their spiritual evolution may be learning not to kill other animals, especially those that are more evolved such as fellow mammals. Eating the meat of mammals is less healthy than consuming fish and fowl and much less healthy than living on vegetables, nuts, and fruit. As society takes on the responsibility of making sure that everyone has good health care, those personal actions that tend to cause one’s health to deteriorate may be discouraged by taxing them in such a way as to pay for the health care costs they cause. In this way the freedom of each individual to choose those less healthy behaviors is still preserved, but they are held accountable by having to pay the true costs for their choice. Another example is taxing tobacco and other harmful drugs.

Update:

It looks like we have VHEMT to the rescue!

Update 2:

Here’s a movie that sums it up.