You'd follow that up by being very clear about the debates regarding diet that address individual health, and the ones that are about environmental and social sustainability - I mean clear both in the sense that these two are separate issues that, while they overlap, don't necessarily complement each other every time, and clear in the sense that there is a range of debate going on within what we might (overly simplistically) call the sustainability movement or sector (e.g. there are those who think vegetarianism is a necessity for sustainable living, and those who do not).
I am not a card-carrying, shotgun toting vegan or anything, but raising cattle in factory farms is incredibly wasteful, in terms of energy, and there is a tremendous social inertia to be overcome on the issue of how and what we eat. I work hard in my interactions with people to attach a stigma to meat eating, and I don't feel bad about that. If part of the reason meat eating is stigmatized is that it is bad for you, individually, in excess, I really don't feel bad about that either. Will I throw away all the meat in your refrigerator or something? Hells no, but I will casually display my disdain towards choice you have made to eat meat (over and over again). |
] our local paper ran with with, not so much the fact that yay, al had won a nobel, but that his nobel had 'strengthened calls for him to run in 2008'... my immediate reaction was 'why'? how would this make his prospective candidacy any more pressing - in fact, wouldn't the nobel mean he is obviously able to do a great deal from outside the oval office, prob'ly more than within?