I talk a lot about climate change. I think a lot about climate change. I ponder solutions. Sometimes I blog about those solutions.
And it's all well and good to say, as I've done a couple of times here, that eating no more than 10% of your daily calories from animal sources would be an excellent idea in that context. It's of note that if you want to make a relatively big impact on emissions in a relatively short period of time, eating less meat is a great way to go.
Eating less meat really would make a significant impact on America’s total carbon emissions, and although selling the idea of eating (way) less meat is a heavy lift, I am beetling away at it in my own small way.
But the devil, as they say, is in the details.
More below the saffron swish.
On my now defunct personal blog, my original suggestion was to reduce meat/dairy consumption to 10% of your daily caloric intake, and make sure those animal foods were from free-range, organic, local, sustainable sources. My utterly ungrammatical tag line was:
...for your Waistline – your Wallet – and the World!
Yesterday, I
posted a diary about eating 90% vegan, featuring a picture of spinach and mushrooms topped with two fried eggs. And I copped to the fact that the eggs were NOT, in fact, local, organic, sustainable, etc. In fact, they were “factory” eggs from the Safeway downstairs. I bought them because my husband mows through egg whites like normal people mow through popcorn or chips, and it’s expensive to buy the “good” eggs and throw out the yolks. (Even I can only hork down so much aioli.)
Then a wonderful commenter gently reminded me that “factory” raised chickens live in appalling environments. “Factory” eggs are produced in horrific conditions.
Here’s the lede from the piece linked above:
Battery cages are small wire cages where about 95 percent of laying hens spend their entire lives; each hen is given about 67-76 square inches of space (a standard sheet of paper measures 94 square inches). To get a sense of a hen's life in a battery cage, imagine spending your entire life in a wire cage the size of your bathtub with four other people. You wouldn't be able to move, so your muscles and bones would deteriorate. Your feet would become lacerated. You would go insane. That's precisely what happens to laying hens.
Well, you can’t argue with the truth.
I knew that. And it’s not acceptable to cut myself slack about it if I have the resources and the financial wherewithal to get “real” eggs from a flock that’s raised humanely and sustainably.
So this weekend I will be paying a visit to Sea Breeze Farm's booth at the U District Farmer's Market. They are located on lovely Vashon Island, pictured above. And I cannot wait to try their eggs!
I live above a Safeway. In the same building, one floor above a huge, giant, massive, big-a$$ SAFEWAY. Which means it's oh so easy for me to simply pop on flip flops, throw a coat over my sweats, take the elevator downstairs, and shop for factory-farmed eggs that cost almost nothing.
But that's not what I want to do, so I am no longer going to do it. I already do a pretty good job (I hope) eating local, sustainable products of all kinds. But I can do so much more.
And I will continue to blog every now and again about my progress eating 90 percent vegan.
Because there's more to talk about. And additional details that really are devilish.
Briefly: in yesterday’s post I mentioned sunflower seeds and olives and cukes and lettuces.
- So where did they come from? Were they trucked overland (emissions galore)?
- Who harvested them (terrible working conditions for migrant farm workers)?
- Did any of the lettuce come from California (drought - aquifers being drained - etc.).
- How much more does a fresh, local, just-picked cucumber cost than one that’s raised on a factory farm – and who can afford that, if they can find it (food deserts – wage inequality – differential access to healthy food)?
Seriously. I can blather on endlessly about “waistline – wallet – world,” but food like a pint of local blackberries for $5.99 ain’t cheap. And no one wants to subsist on nothing but cabbage and canned beans.
In the spirit of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, and because I see most things through the lens of “holy cats! climate change!” I think any way Americans can reduce their meat consumption is good. How to do that humanely is also part of the conversation. And how to do it if you aren’t privileged enough to track down and afford the free-range/humane/sustainable stuff is another part of the issue!
I ought to have brought up all of that before.