An Easy Way To Protest:
Go vegan.
The current administration – no, make that regime – is hell-bent on reversing every environmental and energy law which had previously been put in place to prevent a climate catastrophe. Starting with his first day in office, when Trump signed an executive order which withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement for the second time. Because it is, as he called it, an “unfair one-sided Paris climate accord rip off”. Just as he called the previous president’s attempts to curb greenhouse gases and to grow a clean energy sector “the green new scam”. (Remember those quiet, comparatively uneventful days under the Biden administration? Doesn’t it seem a lot longer than 100 days ago? More like several lifetimes? Ah well…)
The Guardian calls the 145 actions taken by the Trump regime since the 20 January inauguration “A Ruthless Agenda” meant to attack the environment, escalate the use of planet-heating fossil fuels, remove protections from endangered species, and endanger public health. And let’s not forget the executive order that forbids federal agencies the use of paper straws because, according to Trump, “They don’t work… I’ve had them many times, and on occasion, they break, they explode.” Well, we can’t have that. But plastic straws pollute the oceans and harm marine life? Nah. “I don’t think that plastic is going to affect the shark very much as they’re … munching their way through the ocean,” says the stable genius,
On the other hand, shouldn’t we be glad and grateful that America’s Showers Are Great Again? Please follow the link, it will take you to a White House fact sheet which explains why the Obama-Biden war on water pressure is finally over and shower freedom is restored, not a moment too soon. I’m not making this up.
The main beneficiary of Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” agenda is of course the fossil fuel industry which spent a whopping $450 million to support his run for president. Harvard Law School maintains a tracker which lists the administration’s regulatory steps to rollback clean energy deployment and environmental protection, but I’ll cite a few here:
February 3: Protections against oil and gas development in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve were reversed and the Willow Project (an oil drilling project by ConocoPhillips) was approved.
February 5: Actions to initiate more oil and gas exploration, leasing, and extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeastern Alaska were ordered.
March 12: Regulations for greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants were rolled back.
April 10: Regulations for methane emissions from oil and gas facilities were rolled back.
Furthermore, a 5-year program for offshore oil and gas drilling is being reviewed, vehicle emissions regulations were rolled back, wind energy was curtailed, regulations for the protection of migratory birds were withdrawn, and the scientists working on the latest version of the National Climate Assessment, a comprehensive report about human-caused climate change, were fired. The link takes you to the last available assessment from 2023 and it’s part of the official U.S. government website; who knows how long it will be available.
What does any of this have to do with a vegan diet, you might ask at this point. Well, there are a number of reasons! First of all, there’s the amount of greenhouse gases directly attributed to livestock, mainly from factory farms and CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations). The widely accepted number for global greenhouse gas emissions coming from farmed animals is 14.5%, although there are some scientists who claim that the percentage is much higher. The discrepancy has to do with the way the numbers are obtained, but no matter what number you accept, it’s a significant amount. You don’t hear about it all that much because the Big Ag industry has a powerful lobby, just like the fossil fuel guys. They spend millions of dollars to block regulations that would mitigate climate change. Staying away from all animal products is a useful step if you are serious about helping our dangerously warming planet and all the creatures that depend on it, including us humans!
I became vegetarian because I opposed the killing of sentient beings. The death penalty and armies trained to kill other people in combat – ever since I was a child I intuitively rejected things like that. After all, I grew up in the aftermath of World War II and demonstrated against the Vietnam War. HOW the animals that ended up on people’s dinner plates were treated didn’t bother me very much, maybe because CAFOs and factory farms were less frequent – or so I thought. I forgot Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle… I just saw images of stockyards in the 40s and 50s, and my ignorance pains me.
After I turned vegan, the horrifying practices that cows, calves, chickens, pigs, and other poor animals are exposed to until they’re ready for slaughter had a much stronger impact. I’d say it greatly enhanced my compassion and empathy. At the same time, I became more aware of the climate catastrophe, and the huge contribution from the agriculture industry to global warming.
Do you know about the “God Squad”? Officially it’s called the Endangered Species Committee. It was created by Congress in 1978 as a way to push through projects which the Endangered Species Act wouldn’t allow because it would harm those species. The God Squad committee can decide to allow projects which could potentially drive a species to extinction if the economic benefits are justifying the loss. In the 47 years since its inception the committee has only twice granted exemptions to the Endangered Species Act, but on January 20 the stable genius in the White House signed an executive order called “Declaring a National Energy Emergency” which resurrected the God Squad. (As an aside, I wonder who writes these orders? It can’t possibly be the stable genius). Next, on March 1, we get another EO about Immediate Expansion of American Timber Production, targeting National Forests and BLM land, environmental protection hurdles be damned. Sorry, northern spotted owl, your survival is much less important than the money big logging companies can make now.
"Only 35% of national forests are available for timber harvests, while 65% is designated for non-timber uses, such as wilderness and other areas set aside for protection,"1
whined the Timber Industry, grateful for the new directives.
Okay, here’s my pont. As a vegan, you help with two essential, nay, crucial, problems:
You’ll take a big step towards reducing your carbon footprint. Yes, there is always more; cancel Amazon, eliminate the use of plastic, walk to the store instead of driving, grow your own vegetables, and so on. It’s not either/or, it all helps, but going vegan is a BIG step.
Every executive order is testimony of a cruel, self-absorbed, power-hungry authoritarian dictator. The flunkies around him share these qualities. They are the symptom, not the cause, of our culture’s pathology. We hurt and torture other beings at our own peril because we’re all connected, not in a hierarchical manner but like a three-dimensional network. I think this is a matter of life and death.
Arundhati Roy, author and political activist, said this in honor of David Attenborough’s 99th birthday::
“He showed how every living thing on this planet is connected to another living thing. Alone, we are nothing. We own nothing, we control nothing except perhaps for the lever that could destroy everything.”2