For the past three years as an environmental student, I had been dedicated and ambitious to make a revolution in my community especially among my colleagues and friends towards a more sustainable lifestyle and mindset. These three years were not easy, they were full of contradictions, struggles, confusions and frustrations, which ended up causing the first mental breakdown in my life during the end of my second year that I completely gave up on doing anything for environmentalism. I was once a hot-blooded teenager who went for environmental field regardless of parents' opposition, and then I became an ordinary university student who turned a blind eye to whatever little things people do that harm the environment. Any form of activism can be a lonely journey, and at some point, I left the path.
Cowspiracy is a documentary that shed the light on how our animal consumption greatly affect the well-being of our environment. It might be unbelievable that animal agriculture is the ultimate culprit of environmental issues as most of us have meat on our dining table for almost every single meal without thinking about the consequences of this habit. I do agree that it is difficult to relate the environmental problems to animal agriculture as not many people talk about it and even the international environmental NGOs avoid approaching the sensitive topic. Meat is easily obtainable directly from the markets or supermarkets without exposing us to the devastating industrialised process of rearing animals for slaughter. This documentary displayed solid data on the statistics of massive rainforest destruction, skyrocketing greenhouse gases production, great-scale run-off pollution and huge amount of water consumption in order to produce one pound of beef.
The interesting part is, when Anderson interviewed a few of the famous environmental NGOs regarding the issue of animal agriculture, the reactions they give were so cringe-y that I feel sorry for them. They avoided his questions or even refused to provide any further assistance he needed in the documentary production when he asked them about their view on animal agriculture. Fortunately, there were some people who gave honest answer and admitted the downsides of animal agriculture towards the environment, especially those who have been directly involved in the animal agricultural business. How irony it is when it is the environmental NGOs who refused to look at the real issues we have because it might anger certain people and have an impact on their reputation (which is important to get funding). Besides, accepting the reality that our diet should be changed for a more sustainable lifestyle could be overwhelming. I understand that most of the time NGOs need to retain the support from the public and they have to try not to irritate anyone who is sensitive when it comes to telling them that the way they eat is not good to the environment.
In fact 6 years ago, in 2010 United Nations Environmental Programme released a report about the need for a globalised vegan diet to solve our problems of hunger, fuel poverty and climate change. It is crystal clear now that we have to look at the issue properly no matter how hard it is to embrace the changes we have to make to our diet because there is no time to waste. We have wasted too much time solely pointing fingers at industries that harvest the petroleum and gas for us (although eventually we are still the end consumers) and neglecting the major perpetrator - the animal agricultural industries.
If there is only one activism that I could fight for the rest of my life, it is veganism - the one vital solution to save our planet.
