Animal Writings

At the AR2008 conference, Aaron Wissner gave an eye-opening talk about the power of money, and how little control you and I have over how that power is exerted. The name of the talk--I think I have this right--was "Being Vegan Is Not Enough." A provocative but refreshingly honest title, considering the talk was presented to an audience of mostly vegans.

When one becomes vegan, and for a while afterward, there may be a tendency to think "OK, I get it now. I'm doing my best to end oppression and make the world peaceful." Wrong. Going vegan is a huge step, and and I think everyone who can do it should do it, and if that happened we would significantly reduce the amount of exploitation and human-caused suffering in the world, but it is not the end-all and be-all.

For instance, where did your purse or backpack come from? Was it made with sweatshop labor? Do you drive fast; do you ever crank up the AC when you don't need to? Are you buying food from mega-corporations that are putting the squeeze on family farmers? How much garbage do you generate?

I'm not trying to get down on anyone, or pretend that I'm any better at this stuff than anyone else. About a year and a half ago I went onto one of those sites that tells you your environmental footprint. I thought I would do great—My wife and I are both vegan, I work from home, I had recently bought a Prius (after my other car died), we have no kids, we live in a pretty small house, I do a lot of cooking...I was ready for a slam-dunk.

Well, my score was not that great. We live in a small house, but there's only two of us. Although I cook a lot, I use way too many packaged goods and convenience products. We don't have any ceiling fans. We could compost a lot more. At the time our furnace was some energy-inefficient relic from about 1970. And so on. It was sobering.

I did the test one more time, figuring in our cat, and we did even worse.

Anyway, that and some other experiences got me to thinking about my total contribution to environmental degradation, global warming, exploitation, and other bad, undesirable things. I've made some changes since then, but I know I still can do much more.

Fast forward to Aaron's talk, in which he illustrated how merely spending money—at least in our current society—may be detrimental to our planet's health and contribute to exploitation, violence, and depletion of resources. In the next post, I'll explain the thrust of the talk, in a nutshell, and share some thoughts that it triggered.

But first, let me point you to Aaron's blog: Value System: Peak Oil, Gas Prices, and The Future. It is filled with interesting ideas, and I like how it unfolds over time to reflect the author's evolution and coalescence of thinking. Of particular relevance to this post are Aaron's entries from May 22 and August 13 of this year, in which he expounds on some points that were in his AR conference talk.

More to follow...

Labels: animal rights conference, AR2008, environment, money