When the Right is Right

I knew it would happen as soon as I saw the report in the paper that a study proved eating meat contributes more to climate change than driving an SUV. Within a couple of days, the conservative talking heads on Fox News started talkng about the hypocritical liberal environmentalists. Glenn Beck yelled that when an environmentalist talks to you about driving an SUV instead of a hybrid to ask if they are a vegan; if not, just tell them to "shut their pie hole."

Whether you like or dislike the way the sentiment was expressed, in many ways the Right is right on this one. I'm not a vegan myself. From a moralistic view, I don't really have a problem with eating other animals--I have too much education in biology for that (if you look around, there are darn few animals that don't eat other living things in order to live.) At the same time, what made sense when there were a few million people makes much less sense now there are over 6 billion, and I am trying to reduce the amount of meat prepared and eaten in this house (for goodness sakes, don't tell my husband that--Mr. Meat will keel over!)

That is part of the reason I volunteered to put together the Meat-Less Cookbook for the Sierra Club to be available at the EcoFair. Even if one isn't ready to go completely vegan, we can all make little changes in our diets that collectively can have huge consequences for the environment. So even if you aren't ready to make an all-out commitment to eat plants only, how about one meal a week for now and perhaps a day a week later, and then work your way forward from there?