Momentarily, we are feeding 735 billion kilo’s of grains to the life stock worldwide in order to keep the animals that we – meat eating rich people in the North – are eating. Moreover, for the production of one kilo of meat, almost 23.000 litres of water is needed. Yesterday, someone else, a vegetarian, tells me that one can better drive a hummer than eat meat, ecology-wise. As it were, we are destroying the planet to eat meat.
Since a few years, smoking is thoroughly discouraged by the governments of the European countries. As of July 1, 2008, every pub in this country will be a non-smoking area. This will happen despite the huge financial revenue the government is going to lose: they make big money by taxing tobacco. Nevertheless, because of other interests weighing heavier, smoking is slowly being pushed out of our culture. I heard on the radio this morning that smoking will have vanished in 20 years from now. This is a statement by an institution that knows about these things.
Eating fat and unhealthy food is under fire as well. The financial pressure of people falling ill with diabetes, heart diseases, cancer and obesity, due to bad feeding habits, is being forwarded as an undesirable side effect of our fast-food culture. We – the thin, healthily eating, sport thriving and vegetarian consumers – are not happy with the prospect of having to pay that bill, whilst those silly fatties are still eating their pork and super-cheap industry chicken, and driving their cars to their work instead of grabbing a bicycle.
I see it coming… With the ecological pressure of the maybe 10 billion people that will roam this planet in a few years, and the emerging prosperity of large amounts of them in some parts and thus making consumption habits “Western Style” possible, some things are going to suffer. And it would not surprise me at all if one of those things is the freedom we have to live like predators with big eco-footprints. Those days might very well be over at some point in the future.
I suggest that in 20 years, after I am inaugurated by the secretary of the United Nations to become the first President of the World for a term of 15 years, I will instate Global Mandatory Vegetarianism. This will take care of the last stubborn meat eaters. Also, I will compel people to work where they live and facilitate this by downscaling all sorts of economic activity into smaller, widely spread units. I will also, if it hasn’t happened yet, abolish private transport and build a global public system. Flying, if not hyper fuel efficient and clean, will be prohibited.
And one more important thing that I will instate: people will have to eat local produce, that is appropriate to the season.
You see, I have the solutions… Well, not entirely. But I do recognise that there are many specialists who can take us into the right direction and that bending the peoples attitudes is the real challenge. Somehow, many people still think that it is their right to screw themselves, or their environment, up. Now THAT has to change.
