As individuals we can save water, ride bikes and use energy-saving lightbulbs but even if everyone diligently did all these things the problem would not go away.
Today the cities were full of people marching to demand action to prevent global warming. A good thing of course. It prompted TV news stations to dust off their stock footage of ‘natural’ disasters and smog-filled cities.
Animal agriculture is the number one cause of climate change, a fact that governments and businesses have kept quiet for obvious reasons. To make matters worse, Al Gore, Greenpeace, Naomi Klein and other campaigners have also all but ignored this issue.
Going vegan is the ideal solution but even reducing the consumption of meat would help the planet far more than turning off unnecessary lights or not using water sprinklers on your lawn.
Wollen’s impassioned speech as part of a 2012 debate in Melbourne, Australia in favor of the motion: Animals Should Be Off The Menu is so brilliant that I am sharing and recommending it anywhere and to anyone I can.
The result of the debate was: 73.6% for the motion, 19.3% against, 6.9% undecided.
I haven’t eaten meat or fish for the past forty years and in all that time I have never been remotely tempted to regress. On the contrary, I am now trying to stop consuming ALL animal related products and switch to a completely plant-based diet.
The wisdom of following a vegetarian lifestyle is, to my mind, beyond dispute and arguments for taking this one step further towards veganism are equally compelling.
Not succulent, tasty or nice.
It is relatively easy to explain why I don’t eat raw steak, ground veal or chicken legs but the processes that lie behind the mass production of eggs, milk and cheese are just as closely tied to barbaric factory farming methods. You don’t have to be overly squeamish or sentimental to see that the routine practices of animal agriculture are increasingly indefensible and unsustainable.
One time carnivores and omnivores might have been able to claim that vegetarian alternatives were hard to find. Now that kind of counter-argument simply doesn’t cut the mustard. Labeling is now much clearer than it was and you no longer have to feed your habit in a back street hippy store or search for food items in a shop resembling a pharmacy. Any supermarket worth its salt will now have sections devoted to those with more enlightened tastes.
If you say you don’t eat meat or fish in a restaurant there’s a greater chance that you will be presented with a more imaginative alternative than an omelette or the kind of salad that looks like a rabbit’s lunch. Also, soya-based products no longer look like ingredients for a dog’s dinner and seem more adapted for human consumption.
I have lived in Emilia-Romagna in Italy for the more than 20 years and the slow but sure sea change has been thrilling to behold. Daily products like soya or oat milk cappuccino, vegan pastries or non-dairy ice cream, all of which would have been practically unimaginable two decades ago, are now both easy to find and more socially acceptable. As a consequence, while there are still many who probably think I’m a crank, there are fewer who will come right out and say it.
Nowadays, if you enthuse about ‘gourmet vegetarian food’ you are less likely to be accused of being oxymoronic. Above all, if you declare yourself to be a vegetarian or vegan, you will not usually be met with expressions of puzzlement or pity.
Like the links being smoking and cancer, it is now broadly accepted by even the most conservative medics that a diet dominated by dead animals is bad for your health. It is also become more evident to the public at large that fast-food nations are also hugely damaging to the environment.
Now,if I am ever asked (either with or without a patronising tone) ‘Why are you a vegan/vegetarian?’, I usually reply with the question: ‘Why are you NOT?’
“Our food. So good” is the subtitle of the Northern Ireland Tourist Board‘s free booklet listing a selection of “handpicked” cafes, bars, restaurants and hotels.
“It’s an exciting time for food in Northern Ireland” the authors gush in the introduction but the options are far from exciting if you are vegetarian and positively desperate if you are vegan.
Having just spend a week in Belfast and County Down, I can confirm that there are plenty of reasons why it’s a great country to visit but would also give warning that healthy and ethically correct food is not one of them.
The page of symbols used in the guide’s entries is the first thing that alerts you to this problem. There’s an icon to indicate which places have parking, conference facilities, disabled access or are child friendly and there’s also one for those looking for gluten-free meals. However, there is no symbol for patrons seeking meat free alternatives.
In the Belfast section there are 42 listings, a page for each, and only one of these seems to genuinely acknowledge that not everyone wants to stuff their face with sausages, steak and meat burgers. Take a bow The Salt Bistro which offers up a “superfood salad” as well as a “lentil and bean burger with tabasco mayonnaise”.
Elsewhere “veggies”, as we are chummily called, find very slim pickings indeed. The Beatrice Kennedy restaurant has “meat, fish and game on every menu” so the final sentence – “veggies will be pleased too”– seems to be something of a puzzling afterthought. How? and Why? I ask myself. Continue reading →
SIMPLE LIVING – 30 DAYS TO LESS STUFF & MORE LIFE by Lorilee Lippincott (Free Kindle ebook)
The clean slate of a new year is as good a time as any to strive towards a goal of achieving a simpler life and an uncluttered existence.
This slim volume will take little more than a couple of hours to read but significantly longer to put its recommendations into practice.
What the splendidly named Lorilee Lippincott advocates is “right-sizing your life” on the principle that if we get our heads and homes more organised, we have more time to focus on things we really need and love. Continue reading →
“The consumption of animals is immoral, unethical, and environmentally destructive. Most of all, it is unnecessary”.
