"You cannot separate the issue of sustainability from the issue of justice from the issue of access to resources and from the issues of peace." -Vandana Shiva

Being vegan-
When I started eating vegan I hadn't fully thought through all of the reasons
I just thought it felt right.

My cousin is vegan.  My boyfriend is vegan.
I suddenly developed a guilt complex that made dairy and eggs less enjoyable.

Now its been  about 8 months and the reasons keep piling up.

How can you tell if a cow is happy anyways?  Is that something that you can taste or smell?
Do they whisper to you "thank you for killing me, I grew up on a happy farm and I was looking

forward to the day I died" or "thank you for killing me, I grew up on a factory farm sleeping
in my own shit just waiting for my day to die"

People may argue that its unhealthy.
I used to think about this a lot and think about a scenario where I find that it turns out that may actually be an "unhealthy" diet.  Would I grow old and regret not drinking my milk if my bones started turning to dust?
But now I think that this question is irrelevant.  This isn't about me.  This is about a system of injustice towards animals, people, and the environment.  It's all connected.

I think the way we enslave and abuse animals is also reflected in the way people and the environment are used and treated. Like slaves or commodities.  I think there is a correlation between feminists criticisms on women as being used as sexual objects to sell products and the use and exploitation of animals for human and monetary benefit.  I think this also plays into how we use our land, for fast and cheap things that are mostly irrelevant to the existence and survival of humans.  

We are BLOWING UP MOUNTAIN TOPS FOR MONEY and Energy.

I mean its nearly impossible to completely rid oneself to contributing to some amount of exploitative activity to animals, the environment, or people.  I mean I'm using a computer that is made of of parts from very countries that I don't know what the conditions were for the people who made this computer.  I know it probably took a lot of energy and resources to make contributing to strip mining somewhere and lots of waste.  Not to mention that I routinely plug this thing into a wall which takes energy from who knows where and what mode of extraction.  But veganism is one way a person can actively resist a culture of exploitation and abuse.

"Be the change you want to see in the world"  

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.” Aldo Leopold

brave new world

"We are not going back to the old days. We are in a brand new world and we need to deal with it."

-my friend & neighbor Eric Baxter

Butters

A child crying at the death of a pet is pure emotion. Our pet rabbit died. I was sad, yes, but it really wasn't so much of a big deal for me, Butters was old. I've been jaded and numbed to the ideas of death. But today I felt a strong emotion. I almost cried. It wasn't for Butter's though, it was for this little boy and his tears. And this gives new meaning for me to the phrase, "if not for ourselves, then for the children." This same boy recently decided to be vegetarian. When he realized that he was eating dead animals he sat on the couch and cried for 20 minutes.

We have a responsibility to preserve and protect whatever we can. I think that the awareness of the knowledge of pain that death of an animal inflicts on humans and the initial guilt when it is done at our hands (directly or indirectly) means something. I can't count how many time I've heard someone say that "it makes me feel guilty that these animals were treated poorly" before they chomped into a cheese burger. It's easier when they don't have names or faces. My parents made me eat one of my pet chickens growing up. I cried so hard, I took one bite and felt ill. "Where did you think chicken came from?"

We have to numb ourselves to the idea that "it's just the way it is" and "death is fact of life" in order to swallow any of this.
It's not just the Food industry either, its all across the board.
The gas companies want to Frack in the area I grew up. This could potentially poison our watershed. But the fact of the matter is, I still use gas and oil. I'm guilty of the cause. It was easier for me to ignore the problem when the gas companies were exploiting some 3rd world country for it. Not that I didn't think it was bad. But now that the land they want to kill has a name and a face, the guilt becomes more real.

But I don't know how to stop all of this nonsense.

The government and the businesses say that the people steer the ship
that we vote with our dollars as well as with a ballot.
I think this is a lie. We live in a plutocracy where big business steers the
ship and we choose from the false display of options that they give us
and call it democracy.

Children are so refreshing.

the Triple Bottom Line

The new fad in business! If you pretend that recycling makes you an environmental steward and that your workers are real people, then you can make more money as a corporate business owner! Invest in your community and they will invest in you!

I was reading over some of the plans towards making Grand Rapids more sustainable. One thing that kept coming up was the Triple Bottom Line. A new buzz phrase in the business community that says that success should also be measured by social/ethical and environmental performance, its basis is the 3 P's: People, Planet, and Profit
"Companies as significant as AT&T, Dow Chemicals, Shell, and British Telecom, have used 3BL terminology in their press releases, annual reports and other documents."*
Some Critics say "the rhetoric is badly misleading, and may in fact provide a smokescreen behind which firms can avoid truly effective social and environmental reporting and performance."*

The fact of the matter is that my visions for social and environmental responsibility are starkly different from that which a CEO of AT&T or Dow Chemicals will propose.

Sounds like just another way to cover up the irreversible social and environmental impacts of large businesses and industries.

My roommate reminds me how our culture tends to name things after what we destroy.   Much like these corporations using Social and environmental sustainability as a facade to that which they exploit.

So I guess my bottom lines is that if Shell or Down Chemicals are token examples of Social and Environmental responsibility in the Triple Bottom Line movement then I call Bullshit.

*http://www.businessethics.ca/3bl/triple_bottom_line_abstract.html