3/9/16
As I was looking over TED Talks videos I might find interesting, I came across one with the title “Why I’m a weekday vegetarian”. Becoming a weekday vegetarian is self explanatory, and also serves as a compromise between becoming a vegetarian but not giving up meat as well. Once I read that, I was immediately reminded of the action group focused on the idea of becoming reducetarians and the idea of slowly using less and less and eventually drastically decrease your waste contribution. I feel like this video and the action project share striking similarities in that they’re trying to find a compromise for people regarding their consumption. However, while the action group promoted slowly decreasing your consumption, Graham Hill gives a set dietary plan to follow that really doesn’t constantly reduce your consumption ( unless you decide to become a vegetarian full on). Now, he does make the comment about taking products such as red meat out of ones diet, but I consider that part of the plan as well.
Many of us have come to the realization that our overconsumption of meat products causes more emissions than all of transportation. Not only that, beef production uses one hundred times more water than vegetables do. Coupled with shocking images that depict farm animals in cruel conditions, one wonders why all humans don’t change their ways immediately to stop from the before-mentioned and several other climate based events from happening. Well, it’s never that easy when it comes to things involving human comfort. I believe that if something isn’t directly affecting our livelihoods, then we feel as if there is no need to change our way of life. Even if there is impending doom upon us, the fact that its impending means “we don’t have to worry about it yet”. And this rings true for many minds of people living in developed countries. But what of countries like Ethiopia and Malawi who have little global influence and have experienced severe droughts. Using this example, I should now say that not caring for impending doom is primarily a constant among people in developing countries. If they haven’t experienced any really consequences of their wasteful actions, then why stop?
While I believe that a countries sovereignty should be respected, I think we should also take into consideration how our own actions affect that country and whether the results are negative or positive. We should respect a countries sovereignty, but we should also understand that while they control themselves, what we do can have an impact on what they are able to do.