A repair plan

1668: 

We look at the big issues of the day, trying to find simple solutions to complex problems. "It's hopeless". We don't believe that any remedy will have a lasting effect or be a catch-all solution - if we fix one thing there will always be many other problems to fix. And that might mean we're overwhelmed by the scale of things and find insufficient reason to make piecemeal improvements to our life, based upon a single principle. For example, we might see the sense in going vegan but because it seems to be so self-denying, the giving-up of so many familiar things will seem to outweigh any advantages veganism might bring. "It's not worth the effort".

It's only when you realise how a simple change to a plant-based diet affects so many other world problems that you might feel the need to reappraise it. Once adopted, the vegan diet transforms to a principle of harmlessness, which in turn has the capacity to alter attitudes to the environment, ethics and economics. The simplicity of this one single change has the power to feed the world, reduce the carbon emissions associated with animal farming and free the animals from their lives of misery and slavery. But as transformative as vegan principle might be, convincing the omnivorous majority to make such a dietary change becomes the main problem itself.

Human intransigence is founded on freewill and the sensual satisfaction of eating what gives us pleasure - voluntarily giving up one's beefsteak presupposes that one has empathy for the animal from whose body the beef comes. It also presupposes that the consumer is ethically driven and can see the connections between certain types of food and the reasons behind the need to end animal husbandry. In fact there are so many other factors persuading the individual not to change that, however thorough our arguments, there will always be enough reasons to ignore them. When such a vast majority are inclined to meat-eating, then that is more persuasive than any argument against it. This is peer pressure on a global scale.  Added to this is the normalisation of using animals for food and clothing - the Animal Industry is wealthy enough to use every means at its disposal to persuade the consumer to buy its products. As it is, human nature is still too violent, pessimistic and materialistic to be changed by the central tenet of vegan principle - harmlessness.