Have you ever lacked air?

Last week while we were walking home I noticed that there is smoke in the air. We kept on walking and the air got heavier and heavier. Then I was standing in a spot were two streets meet and in all four directions the air was equally smokey. "There is nowhere to run!", this tiny voice started to whisper in my head. "And if it gets worse?", it continued. I had no answers. All I could do was look around and be sharply conscious of each breath I was taking. Whole neighborhoods were filled with smoke that night and it made me think once more about a thing called "ecosystem services".

Why recycling is not enough

In the parks of Buenos Aires it is very common for people just to walk around and sell sandwiches and sweets. There's this one really sweet looking girl who walks around selling vegan muffins. So far, so good, isn't it? Low environmental impact and stuff. The muffins are wrapped in plastic cling wrap, and every time I see it it just rubs me the wrong way. Last time I just had to ask her about it, saying something along the lines: "Hey, you like animals, right? Are you aware the plastic is damaging the wildlife and environment as well?" Her answer, as I imagined, was "But I try to recycle it". The typical answer of people who want to do good, who know that plastic contamination is an issue, but to do not have enough time to analyse and think about out. The favorite strategy of governments who want to look good, but do not want to deal with behavioral change. The three green arrows promising the magical solution. So, what's the problem? I'll give you just three of the many reasons why recycling is not enough.

When can you call your lifestyle “green”?

Almost all of my clothing is second hand and I hardly ever by anything new. I’m vegetarian. I have earthworms living in my balcony and I shamelessly bring my own bag with me when I run out to the bakery just around the corner to get some bread. My PC is refurbished. Almost everything I have is things that I actually use, I could pack everything I own in one huge suitcase and I do not see the need to buy much more. My social networks are full of images, videos and articles on climate change, sustainability and waste, but sometimes I still feel like a faker.

I fly way too much. My trip from Europe to Argentina added so much to my carbon footprint, and I am planing to visit Europe this summer, because I want to see my family and I have not one but two weddings coming up. I could buy much more things in bulk, but sometimes it is just so much easier to get in the supermarket. Majority of my food does not come from ecological production, as I find it too expensive. Sometimes I forget to control my fridge and I have to throw out food. I have space for urban gardening, but I still have not made one. My cleaning supplies and cosmetics are not ecological and I’m not sure if there aren’t microbeads hiding in some of them. I tried to go no-poo and let’s just say I am using shampoo again. My to-read list is getting longer instead of getting shorter. I do not speak up in a meaningful way as much as I would like and sometimes I wonder does anything I do actually matters. You get the picture.

I have a way of dealing with this overly critical voice in my head. 'Don't Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good' is what I say to myself. As with everything truly meaningful, there are no shortcuts and no “easy ways out”. I highly doubt it that one day I will reach a moment of feeling perfectly at ease with myself, as after dealing with all the things mentioned above, I probably will come up with even longer list of things I should change. However, I prefer these doubts to a false clarity or ignorant bliss. There is too much of both, simplification and ignorance, in this world, especially when dealing with sustainability.

I ask myself, do the sustainability idols, people stopping the pipelines and keeping all the waste they produce in a year in a jar feel like me sometimes? Do they feel they are doing enough? And do you think your lifestyle is “green”? What change made you feel that way? Are you still on a fence like me, or are you sure that you are not “green”?

Cowspiracy or how speaking about meat makes environmentalists cross the fine line between “harmless hipsters” and “extremists”

I watched the documentary “Cowspiracy” a couple of days ago. Yes, shame on me for not doing it earlier. I had heard a lot about it and I had seen some fragments, but it was just there sitting in my “to watch” folder. For those of you have not seen it, I'll sum it up: the premise of the movie is that the environmental organizations are not speaking about the impact our meat consumption is having on the planet, because they are either afraid of or being paid by big farming companies. I loved it, but it did not cover an important part of the picture. I’m not a great fan of conspiracies in general, as I usually see them as unsuccessful attempts to make this world a simpler and more organized place, with easy solutions just around the corner. In this case, even if I can not and do not want to deny the impact of the farming industry, there is something more going on, mainly the people and their relationship with food.

I’ve been vegetarian for over nine years now. I still remember the day I was sitting at my PC in my summer job and surfing the internet. To my excuse, I actually had nothing else to do, as my contract was ending. I read some articles on the environmental impact of meat and decided: I have to go vegetarian. I announced it to my colleague, who was quite unimpressed by it, and went out to have my first vegetarian lunch. I announced it to my family and friends as well, and then, before I knew it, it was too late to go back.

During my first years as a vegetarian, when people asked me about my choice, they kind of expected a certain kind of answer. They expected me to speak about the “poor animals” and maybe, just maybe, “the health” or “karma”. The usual suspects. Then, in their head they could place me in the nice, little box of “bleeding hearts” or “weirdoes”. The moment I spoke about the methane emissions, water use and land use change, they did not know what to answer. I was not speaking about emotions, spirituality or healthy food trends, I was speaking about pure and hard data. Of course, data is not the magical bullet that changes habits, but these types of conversations usually concluded on a common ground “we must reduce our meat consumption”.

I’ll not publish the data on the impact of meat industry here, as it is not the topic of the article, but they are really, really impressive. No amount of short showers and LED light bulbs can substitute giving up meat. It is one of the best things you can do for the environment. No buts and no whatifs. That’s just the way it is.

A couple of years later, when I started to volunteer and later work as an environmental educator, I had to learn the unwritten rule at the time: “You shall not speak about the environmental impact of meat”. Nobody said it to me. It was not big farming companies that tried to silence us. It was the people. In any workshop the same thing happened: speaking about organic food was OK. Speaking about local and seasonal produce was more than OK. People clapped their hands and nodded their heads. They saw the point I was making. The moment the topic of meat and dairy came up, I could feel the air in the room change. Silence, closed body positions, slight frowns on the faces. With one click of the mouse the slide changed and I was in safe waters again: “Let’s switch to LED lightbulbs”. The heads were nodding once again. I felt like I was not telling the whole truth, but in the same time I knew that by giving the meat consumption the attention it deserved, I would lose my audience.

Then, at least in Europe, things started to change. I would meet more and more vegetarians and vegans who had made the choice of changing their diet not due to ethical or health reasons, but due to the environmental impact of the farming industry. I would see “Reduce your meat consumption” appearing in the websites and publications of more and more organizations. Soon you had to mention meat consumption to be taken seriously. Now I’m living in Argentina and I feel like being back in the square one: meat consumption is quite a no-no. So why? Why it is so hard to open the discussion on meat and dairy consumption?

I still do not have a beautifully defined answer to this question, but I think it has to do a lot with the social meaning of the food. We do not eat food just because we are hungry. We eat to to celebrate and share and by giving up meat people think they are giving up their traditions. As a vegetarian I can say that I still enjoy birthdays, christmas feasts and barbecues, but I still feel a bit stressed when I find myself in somebody's grandma's home and have to refuse almost all of the food she has prepared. One of the rare meat based foods I still miss is my mom’s meat patties. Nothing can substitute them.

Is it simply the change of habit? It is much easier to switch from supermarket tomatoes to organic ones than to exclude meat from your diet. Eating meat has deep roots in the way we deal with food in our everyday life. Giving up meat means rethinking restaurants you go to, the shopping list and the quick meals you cook without thinking after a long work day. Once more, as a vegetarian I can say that it is not hard, but the decision has to be made.

Is it peer pressure? As all of us, I’m living in my little bubble, where being vegetarian or vegan is more than OK. I’m just “one more”. For a lot of people it is different. They are afraid of being the only ones in their family and group with these “special needs”. I’m happy that I met my husband, who eats meat, when I already was a vegetarian. I do not know if I would be able to make the switch while sharing my life with him. It took time for my family and friends to accept that up to the last month I ate meat and now I do not.

Or is it the air of the words “vegetarian” and “vegan”? Close your eyes. What do you see hearing the word “vegan”? Is it a pure food choice, or do you see a certain personality traits, like being sanctimonious and screaming “meat is murder” during a cousin's birthday party? Do you see hippy-ish clothing and yoga mats? Does going vegan means you have to do that stuff? I’m so happy I’m meeting less and less people who believe that vegans are the cheap jokes in TV and movies try to show us, but the stereotype is still out there.

What I’ve learned is that it is not enough to present the data. We have to understand why people find it so hard to give up meat and accept that their reasons are valid in a sense that they are obstacles and must be addressed. Many times people themselves do not know what is it that it is keeping them from changing their diet or they hide their reasons by trying to prove that eating meat is necessary or that giving up meat does no good.

A profound discussion on meat consumption is still one of the most sensitive discussions I can have with somebody. I try to be as understanding as I can and uncover as many underlying assumptions as I can. I end up exhausted, but happy, as every discussion of this type allows me to understand better the person I am talking to and humans in general.