Happy Earth Day everyone! I’ve noticed that this year on Earth Day there has been a lot more buzz about living “green” and saving the planet and all of that. It’s gotten to be a really big trend, and although it sometimes bugs me to see people buying into it just because it’s somewhat a fad now, at least they’re buying into it at all. I think its really great, all day on HGTV they’ve been playing shows that have to do with green living and things like “20 ways to be green.” I’m an interior design student and the program is really focused on green architecture and design. Almost all of our projects have to be eco-concious, ranging from using recycled materials for finishes to utilizing solar lighting designs. It’s really awesome because green living and design is so important to almost every student and faculty member in the program, but one thing that has always frustrated me is that people don’t realize that what they eat has almost more to do with being green then driving a hybrid car or recycling their bottles and cans.
We recently had a project where we had to design a cafe space for the first floor of our building at school. This one girl in my class (who recently decided to go vegetarian) chose to make her cafe a vegetarian restaurant. While doing her presentation she had a slide where she talked about her research into the vegetarian diet and how eco-friendly it is. She mentioned how a vegetarian diet uses less water than a meat centered diet, and how it uses less land, etc. My teacher, who is always talking about how we need to be “green” and how important it is to be “green,” interrupted her and said in a very skeptical and I’ve-been-a-meat-eater-all-of-my-life kind of way, “Wait a minute..how does eating meat use a lot of water?” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe that a man of such a high level of knowledge about the green movement and the impact that we as humans have on the environment could really not know that. Could he really have not ever read about a plant-based diet being one of the most ecologically smart things we as humans could do? The girl who was presenting her project kind of looked at me for help with some facts to back her up, so I told our teacher all about how raising cattle for meat is a leading cause of deforestation,and how we could be using the land for growing crops to feed people instead of growing crops to feed the cattle and cutting down trees to raise the cattle who eat the food and then we eat the cows to get the “nourishment.” It sounds just about as stupid as it really is, right? Didn’t he see that?
But then I realized, what we choose to eat is not one of those “top 20 ways to be green” that’s being broadcasted on my television. You don’t see big signs in the grocery stores with facts about meat consumption and the environment like you see on TV about how driving a hybrid car will save the planet. So many people have no idea that not eating meat actually does MORE for the environment then driving a hybrid car. My dad would call this “the politics of meat.” People don’t want to give up “their meat.” It’s ingrained in us through the media, by making meat a sign of masculinity..you know, the “Amurrican” way. The media tells us that tofu is gross and veggie dogs are tasteless. People most times than not get defensive when they learn that you are vegan or vegetarian, and usually find ways to make you feel less of an equal.
It’s much easier for people to screw in a compact flourescent then it is to feed their child a veggie burger. It’s much less complicated, and it’s so much more socially accepted. For Earth Day my dad got both my sister and I a book called “The Environmental Equation, 100 factors that you can add or subtract from your total carbon footprint.” It’s a really good book with lots of ways to make a positive impact on the environment, and we were even surprised to see two whole pages devoted to eating “less meat.” It had some facts like these:
The average meat diet results in an extra 1.5 metric tons of greenhouse gases a year compared to a vegetarian diet.
Annual global meat production is projected to double from 229 million metric tons at the start of the decade to 465 million metric tons by 2050.
Livestock commands 30% of the planet’s land surface and 70% of the planet’s entire agricultural land.
But of course it closes with saying how if we cut our meat consumption by a third we can have a cleaner, greener Earth. Why not all together?!
But then this is the best part. I was somewhat happy with those 2 fun-filled pages about eating “less meat,” but as I flipped through more I found a page on green weddings. Now being with Josh for almost 6 years now, I’ve looked into the topic of green weddings more than once 
But this guy, Alex Shimo-Barry, who wrote this lovely book couldn’t just type a page about green weddings. Oh no, he had to throw in a nice shot to the heart for all of us vegans out there. Allow me to indluge you:
Stories about green weddings usually focus on a couple who choose a vegan menu and go hiking for the pre-wedding date…. Not everyone who cares about the planet wants to eat bean curd on one of the most important days of his or her life; nor should they have to.
Oh the horror! Eating bean curd on your wedding day?! How god-fucking awful! But this is the mentality of the world that we live in. If running their laundry with cold water is going green, they can manage that. But cutting down on the milk and burgers? No way, Jose (I had to say it..).
I know I’m not alone in my frustration. But I also know how much one person can really do for a cause, and how much one person can effect all of those around them. It’s nice to look back and think of how many lives I have changed just by people learning that I’m vegan. If I open one person’s mind about veganism that to me is worth all of the frustration about the world around me, because I know that person will go on to open other peoples minds, and so on and so forth.
So happy Earth Day everyone..and thank you to all of you who are or who are on their way to becoming vegan.
I really hate how being “green” is the “in” thing now. It’s so stupid. People think “oh well I’ll just substitute this for this” and assume it’s making a difference. We need to essentially cut down on our consumption if we want to make a difference, not simple replace one thing with another, for example say someone buys a low-flow toilet, they just assume they can flush more or more frequently. I personally follow the saying “if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down”, on top of the fact that I have a 3 L toilet.
With regards to your comment about cutting back meat, I completely agree. People assume that just eating one meal a week that’s vegetarian is enough. Yes, it makes a difference on a larger scale if everyone does it, but realistically, no one does. People should be challenged to a week free of meat, dairy and eggs, and then there would be a difference. What frustrates me is that people assume “free range” and “organic” milk are somehow better. This is just a free ticket for peoples’ consciences so they can say “oh well at least the cows are treated well.” But they are still being used for the wrong reasons, and still being used solely for their milk (and later slaughtered).
And regarding the comment that was made about the wedding day, it’s ridiculous to assume that just because it’s your wedding day you can splurge. (Especially with the divorce rates!!) We should ALWAYS be eco-friendly. Not just when it suits us, and not just on Earth Day.
Happy Earth Day!
WELL SAID, CHELSEA!! I’M SO PROUD OF YOU!!
I couldn’t agree more, I love love love this post!
Positively right on-the-money my girl! I’ve watched impatiently for decades as society has been transitioning and evolving, seemingly ever so slowly, towards a more ecological and compassionate, and yes, sustainably “Green”, America. Yeah, it’s been really frustrating to watch the incrementally slow baby-stepping as millions of people (particularly on our annual Earth Day celebrations, even stinkin’ MalWart goes “green”) manage to glean some critical bits of factual information about the litany of environmental impacts associated with the world’s mass meat “production” systems - or as we vegans perceive it the horrendous animal halocaust. As you pointed out, it’s the ongoing “politics of meat”. The real “inconvenient truth” is that our society is still very much a deadly meat-addicted culture. I even wonder if Mr. Gore himself still dines at the Outback? Regardless of the clear significant strides we’ve made over the years in increasing environmental awaremess and consciousness, when it comes to meat eating I have to admit dietary duplicity and outright hypocrisy still rules of the day and it’s rampant in the environmental community.
The present situation is that no matter how outrageous and well publicized the collective environmental impacts are to human health and wellbeing and the deteriorating state of the global biosphere, or the current sharp uptick in world hunger and human suffering (and at last! mainstream coverage of it), and the horrendous cruelty and suffering of billions of farm animals and equal numbers of displaced and hunted wildlife ecology, and the inescapable spiritual and moral damage to the human soul from dining on helpless tortured animals, and of course the ultimate enchilada, global warming and climate change (Bill Mckibben’s “End of Nature”), each Earth Day our national environmental movement continues to roll and extol with green pride and shameless audacity the remarkable importance to the Earth of changing some lightbulbs and reusing those shopping bags! Ah yes, save the planet while reclining, shopping, and having a steak!
Cynicism aside, while it is nonetheless critical in many real consequences to the Earth and animal kingdom, ie., coal burning and CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and compact flourescent bulbs and the unknown and untold numbers of marine mammal deaths from the ingestion of plastic shopping bags (they see them as jellyfish), if we as ecologically conscious plant-eating citizens continue to quietly tolerate this ongoing hypocrisy within the broad meat-eating environmentalist community, which is perpetuated by stupid mainstream media that’s soundly responsible for the tediously slow evolution of environmentalism, then the real truth about the environmental devastation involed in meat
“production” and how vegetarianism and veganism can and will prevent nearly all of it - what I call the “1500 pound steer in the room” - will continue to be comfortably green wrapped and packaged by Big Meat, Big Coal, and Big Green marketing.
My advice then to all is to continue (Chelsea and Josh thank you!) to set the consistently intelligent and compassionate example, as on this blog, and to speak out with confidence everywhere you can, as I do regardless of how the zombie meatheads squirm, that what you’re advocating is the only clean, green, Earth, human, and animal friendly path towards a sustainable, healthy, and happy future.
And I love you guys so much for doing it.
And Chels, thanks for writing the piece that I’ve been thinking about.
Dad
I’m so glad to see this post, it’s a point i’ve been upset about for a long time.
Romina, i wonder why it’s wrong to assume that free range and organic products are better than non-free-range and non-organic? For we who choose to eat eggs, isn’t it better to be concerned about how much the animal is actually suffering while it’s alive? It may not be as helpful as not eating them at all, but i believe it does make some difference.
thank you for all the great comments!
steph- the u.s. department of agriculture uses the words “free range” and “free roaming” only for labeling purposes, and there isn’t actually any inspection system in place too see if the farms actually are “free range.” (I found this info at tryveg.com) the chickens are still subjected to the same physical pain, such as debeaking, and are still sent to slaugheter houses once they are done being able to lay eggs.
i think it’s great that you are trying to take into consideration animal suffering, but at the end of the day, if someone was treating you really nice (or claiming to to the outside world) and then went ahead and brutally killed you anyway, would that not still be murder?
I really enjoyed reading this! I can’t believe that teacher, either…