Beautiful peeps! I hope you are all doing well. I have been having a very busy time these past weeks, as I was hinting in my last post and it is getting a bit busier with the approaching of Christmas (I will really need a break soon and hopefully I’ll manage to get some more writing!). This month saw COP26 happening in Glasgow and this brought a lot of extra attention to the environmental cause with much more discussion around the pros of a plant-based diet.

COP26 and The Environment

For those who don’t know, COP stands for “Conference Of the Parties” and it is the United Nations Climate Change Conference where heads of state meet to discuss the best ways to tackle climate change.

The good thing is that at least Climate Change is being acknowledged. The changes happening to our Earth are visible, from fast-melting glaciers to floods in many places (i.e. Belgium, Canada, etc.) and frequent monsoons and other calamities. While in the Middle East the temperatures are reaching record-highs.

However, despite the scientific knowledge that adopting a more plant-based diet would help with tackling climate change and the numerous peaceful protests calling for more attention to these issues, the whole conference didn’t end with concrete efforts to make serious changes to the countries’ environmental policies.

I won’t repeat myself because you can find much info here and here, but it is known that intensive farming is heavily contributing to dangerous gas emissions. Linked to this, multinational companies are also a relevant pollution factor especially in the “less developed countries”. We see that the “Big Brands” are doing greenwashing marketing to appear as if they are concerned with what is happening, but they are not changing their ways, exploiting people, animals and resources. Look what they are doing here. In addition to this, such big brands are spoiling the tax system to their advantage.

I would also like to point out that there seems to be a lot of confusion on the political front* with critiques that many multinationals are led by left-wing and “woke” people: they are not. If they are leading a multinational, they have very little genuine left-wing thought as the main interest is making money, not recognising human and animal rights, nor lobbying to implement environmentally friendly policies.

What You Can Do

All this seems pretty grimy, doesn’t it? And you might find yourself quite hopeless.

But don’t despair! There are solutions to this.

For example, following the thought of “Think Global, Act Local”. Think about what happens around the world, look outside your comfort place. And see how the other experiences can help you improve your community. Also, think about how your choices can have a global impact: look at where your pans are made or if your latest piece of clothing is coming from places known to exploit women.

If possible, get your groceries from co-ops or community-run enterprises and buy from shops that stock local businesses.

Avoid getting exotic animals, either from shops or from private: exotic animals are supposed to live in places where they are not considered “exotic”. And obviously don’t buy any pets! The shelters are overflowing with unwanted cats, dogs, rabbits, horses etc and the majority will have a policy of euthanising those animals who haven’t been adopted after a number of weeks.

To Conclude

Even if you don’t believe in climate change, you should acknowledge that some changes are happening to our Earth and there might be a chance that they are worsened by mankind, then why not do something, bring a little bit of change to your everyday life, that could help alleviate such alterations?

*Please note that I am not here to discuss politics as it is becoming increasingly messed up, nor do I prefer left or right wing as neither is accomplishing much (consider reading this article). I am a vegan, a feminist, an environmentalist and an activist for animal and human rights, and I am talking as such: I do the research on these issues and I am telling you the outcome but the process too, so that you are not happy with my findings you can do your own research and come to your conclusions.