The PB&J Campaign views the consumption of animal products like most people view most environmentally-relevant lifestyle decisions. Even if you give up your car, you won’t swear of internal combustion engines completely; you’ll still take the bus or use a car share service from time to time. You might put in CFLs around the house, but still leave an incandescent bulb in where you still want a warmer light quality. You might shop for organic food, but if you’re like most people you’ll buy some conventional food, depending on price and organic availability.We view decision making about animal product consumption as a meal-by-meal process. You might have pizza (smothered in resource-intensive cheese) one night but then seize the opportunity to order tofu for takeout Chinese the next. That tofu decision is still a powerful one, and each time you eat is another opportunity, even if you haven’t gone whole hog (pun intended).That's exactly the right tone. It's not hectoring, it's not dogmatic, it's not even particularly disruptive. It's no trickier than exchanging your turkey-on-wheat for a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. As it is, both consumers and the political system have been operating on imperfect information. Fairly few folks know that meat has significant environmental costs. But the answer isn't ban meat. Rather it's to take the first steps the environmental movement has taken with driving: Try to educate folks about the costs involved, and try not to make it artificially cheap to burn gasoline. Similarly, the goal here should be to educate folks about the costs involved, and try to convince lawmakers to stop making meat artificially cheap through corn, carbon, and land subsidies. Once that's done, folks can do as they will. It's just good for them to know what they're doing. In the meantime, head over to the PB&J web site and tool around for a bit. They're a great group, and they explain a lot of this better than I do.Photo used under a Creative Commons license from Lirraa.
