As the BBC platforms a climate change denier, it's clear our situation is urgent. The answer? Go vegan

When we moved into our new flat last year, my husband and I were a little taken aback to find the lift covered in graffiti. This wasn't your average poorly drawn phallus or predictable expletive – no, this graffiti declared in proud felt-tip: MEAT IS MURDER!

Why not embrace the vegan lifestyle like these guys? You'd even have an excuse because you're saving the planet (Vodka is Vegan)

This week the IPCC released a pretty terrifying report, a report outlining in graphic terms the projected impact of climate change on the future of our race. Some people – consider for instance the climate change denier Myron Ebell on BBC’s Newsnight last night – will I'm sure remain impervious to its message. People like him, whose position when it comes to science is less the result of an evidence-based approach and more akin to the religious fervour of a deranged fundamentalist, will presumably not "believe" in climate change until the icecaps are gone and the water is lapping at the entrance to their cave.

But climate change doesn't require that we believe in it: it is happening and it is all around us. In the face of this global peril, it's very easy to feel completely helpless; powerless, even. Yet the headline statistic highlighted in various reports, and repeated in this one, is the impact that a meat-free or even vegan diet can have on the planet.

When we moved into our new flat last year, my husband and I were a little taken aback to find the lift covered in graffiti. This wasn't your average poorly-drawn phallus or predictable expletive – no, this graffiti declared in proud felt-tip: MEAT IS MURDER!

Having previously lived in a building where the stairwell was regularly decorated with excruciatingly biological graffiti and the like, this message was new to us – and honestly felt like a bit of a step up. This was a fancy neighbourhood! Still, it left me feeling a bit uneasy – who was this person?

At some point during the next week, a dialogue with the vegan was attempted. The management company put up a note asking the mysterious graffiti messenger to cease their activity. A handwritten reply came swiftly: "Killing innocent beings is worse than writing words". Comments from other residents were added: "Dear passionate vegan, which flat are you in?". "Hi, vegan pest. Have a bacon sandwich and get a life." "Dear vegan, what are your demands to make the campaign of information stop?".

There was no response from the vegan, but something tells me that no new vegans were born of this ultimately fruitless exchange.

Now, I know that not all vegans will go as far as crude vandalism to make their point – but you might remember that story a couple of weeks ago where a vegan activist broke into a slaughterhouse to comfort some doomed calves. This kind of activism surely risks undermining the very idea of veganism by making it seem extreme and radical. To my mind, such stunts serve only to alienate a huge majority of people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the message of veganism. Nevertheless, let’s face it: they’re probably in the right.

A study from the University of Oxford earlier this year found that cutting out dairy and meat products could reduce your carbon footprint from food by up to 73 per cent and apparently one fifth of young adults now believe that people won't eat meat by 2030.

In this context, it's interesting that veganism is still so uncommon and stigmatised. Sure, it's on the rise – remember Veganuary? – but it's still very much the rarer choice. Veganism remains equated with a lifetime of self-sacrifice, self-denial, deprivation; a constant struggle against our “natural” omnivorousity, with even the staunchest of practitioners vulnerable to the chance whiff of a bacon sandwich one tired and emotional morning tipping them back into meat-devouring oblivion.

Veganism sometimes does risk being perceived as a sort of nutritional virtue-signalling, the self-righteous lifestyle choice attributable to the types of folk you see milling around the lobbies of fancy gyms in their impossibly tight activewear, sipping their avo smoothies and generally carrying on as though they are somehow better than most people. But at the risk of stating the obvious, it turns out that you don't have to be 100 per cent vegan all the time to explore veganism.

I became what I have come to think of as "softcore" vegan wholly by accident. Partial to a fad as I am, I experimentally adopted a "bodyhacking" vegan food replacement drink. You get a free T-shirt, what's not to like?

Recently mocked on an amusing Spectator cover featuring an incredibly muscular Narcissus brandishing a flask of this very concoction, surrounded by various other trappings of the stereotypical modern man, it was immediately dismissed by my husband too as being a "posh Slimfast for millennials". However, I soon noticed my energy improving, my complexion becoming more radiant (yes, radiant) – and realised it was probably because I had slipped towards something more akin to a vegan diet.

I started to experiment by having a deliberately vegan meal in the evening and the effects became more and more pronounced. I learnt how to make a mean vegan bolognese (yes it is possible) and even discovered the joy of a whole roasted cauliflower. Without much effort at all, I would say I had hit about 90 per cent vegan, and was feeling the benefits. All this before even considering the happy side effect of having less of a negative impact on the future of our planet. Honestly, though, 90 per cent is probably where I will stay – at least for now.

I don't doubt that there are lots of incredible people out there, far more virtuous than I, who are completely vegan, going to such lengths as avoiding leather and avoiding various types of boiled sweets. Frankly I don't have the stamina for that. The occasional box of McNuggets on a drunken night out, or a sandwich filled with crispy bacon and tomato ketchup – these are pleasures I am not ready to forgo quite yet. Still, it turns out that I don't need to have them nearly as much as I thought I did.

The numbers back me up: even "here and there" veganism can be pretty great. The problems highlighted in this latest IPCC report are massive, and global; maybe though, you have a chance to make more of a difference than you realise.