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Colloquial Summary!
- We don't really think about food.. Most students kind of walk around the dining hall going, hmm this is tasty this is, this is too long of a line, and sit down without thinking about nutrition or the impact of what we eat. It's a problem at BU but also the world at large. So many people just form habits and stick with them: see McDonald's
- And then one day your doctor tells you that your liver enzymes are high and your heart is pumping too hard
- It is no surprise that by 2050, without change, nearly 1 trillion dollars in healthcare costs will go towards preventable dietary-related health issues. The main culprit being meat.
- What is surprising to me: why we don't think about the topic of food when we think about so much else.
- Despite all the doom and gloom of climate change, students here really care about the environment. In the last 5 years, 16% more Americans say they are worried about climate change and 17% more say the issue is important to them personally. That number is even higher among youth.
- Yet with how closely our diet is tied to the environment (through soil, water, emissions, land usage, transportation) we ignore the impact of our diet on the environment.
- FEAST is all about changing the way we think about food. That means both advocating and changing the culture on campus to ensure more and more people think about food. So with a fresh and open mind, let's think about a paradigm shift in how we approach health, ethics, and the environment: protesting by going vegan.
- First let’s talk about numero uno: you!
- Reduce in chronic diseases, lower risk of cancers
- Red meat was declared carcinogenic
- We simply do not know the impact of extreme antibiotic usage
- But bigger than you, effect on the environment as a whole
- Eating a vegan diet is the “single biggest way” to reduce your environmental impact on earth (Oxford study)
- All these resources go into agriculture: water, emissions, transport, time, land
- Starting with emissions, almost 2000g/d higher of CO2, 500L of water, 11 square meters of land. Adds up quickly, 100 students going vegan for a week save over a ton in CO2 emissions
- But what people often forget is by reducing our consumption of resources by eating meat, we have the ability to do more good.
- I know a lot of you have seen those posts on Instagram where 1 like = 1 tree. Where do we plant these trees? In order to capture enough carbon, We need an area the size of India to do it. Cutting meat and dairy could reduce global farmland usage by nearly 75%. This nearly 8 billion acre reduction in land usage creates new opportunities for long-sought climate solutions.
- There’s also the ethics
- At the end of the day, we don’t need meat. Nations like India have had vegetarian and vegan people for millennia. Our meat industry is a cultural and economic phenomenon - not an automatic norm.
- There are serious concerns about cruelty and a lack of comprehensive regulation at factory farms. Many of you are against the death penalty, yet we torture billions of sentient beings a year, assigning them a fate worse than death. Most people consider themselves animal lovers.
- We recognise them not as objects, but as complex beings with whom we share the planet, our lives, our homes. We take pleasure from their pleasure, we anguish over their pain, celebrating their intelligence and individuality as welcome them into our families, or revere them in their natural element.
- The thought of unnecessarily causing them harm or suffering, is to many, unbearable.
- Mahatma Gandhi acutely observed that "the greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated." To seek to reduce the suffering of those who are completely under one's domination, and unable to fight back, is truly a mark of a civilized society.
- There are so many documentaries and so many passionate advocates who are able to explain this much better than I can, so I just want to recommend that you look into it
- First let’s talk about numero uno: you!
- What about structural change. How does me going vegan do anything to the top 1% of the top 1%?
- A climate tracker study found that companies risk over $2 trillion dollars by pursuing fossil fuel over the coming decade as “international action on climate change” could make that investment worthless.
- Similarly in agriculture, going vegan or vegetarian would exert the economic pressure needed to change these industries and their investments: if demand reduces for meat, supply must be reduced and thus the environmental effects will also reduce as the industries adapt to change.
- The vast impact of going vegan matches up well with the vast environmental footprints of each American as the United States has the largest per capita carbon emissions in the world. (Gillis, 2017) This makes the personal choices by Americans some of the most powerful in the world and highlights why protesting by going vegan in the United States could be impactful.
- We need to change how we protest - what we have been doing hasn’t worked
- In fact, 2019 is expected to have one of the highest rates of increase in global carbon emissions of all time. Politicians such as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have stated that “the government is already acting on climate change and students should stay in class.”
- The Green New Deal failed to advance in the Senate with a vote of 0 for and 57 against.
- Greta Thurnberg cracked a joke about the situation, “all the politicians she had met who asked for selfies ‘tell us they really, really admire what we do’ yet have done nothing to address the climate crisis.”
- In fact, 2019 is expected to have one of the highest rates of increase in global carbon emissions of all time. Politicians such as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison have stated that “the government is already acting on climate change and students should stay in class.”
- A climate tracker study found that companies risk over $2 trillion dollars by pursuing fossil fuel over the coming decade as “international action on climate change” could make that investment worthless.
- So now that we’re all feeling sad. I want to introduce you to FEAST’s capstone project this year. Introducing the 1 Week to Save the Earth Challenge:
- This Earth Week, we’re going to ask people to pledge to go vegetarian or vegan even if it's just for a week. It’s essentially a boycott. It gives the power back to us.
- Not only does this have an immediate impact, but it changes how we think about food and veganism. Humans are social creatures. Yes, climate change scares us, but we aren’t going to do anything about it until we see our friends and families making hard changes
- In our 2019 trial run, we saved 3800+ lbs of carbon and 210,000 gallons of water with 300 days of vegan/vegetarian diets pledged
- We’re working on making it even bigger and better this year: collaborations with college governments to make it a cross-college challenge.
- We’re working with universities across Boston to make it into a movement.
- Fundamentally, I believe in the power of one
- I believe in increasing our awareness of what we eat
- We are so lucky to be on a college campus, the birthplace of so many movements
- I envision a culture shift starting right here on our BU campus which will one day change the world