Meat Lover, Marius Boatca/Flickr. Some rights reserved.Like anyone who purports to care in the least about the future of our planet, I am saddened and angered by Trump’s decision to pull out of the (voluntary, non-binding, and hence not much more than symbolic) Paris Climate Agreement. As a parent of two young children, I am also frightened about what kind of physical, social and political impacts climate change will have on their lives. My children are lucky enough to have been born relatively rich in a rich part of the world. Nonetheless, they will undoubtedly live in a less hospitable and more volatile environment than the one in which I grew up.
The long-term effects of global inaction on climate change will be strikingly worse for the nearly two billion children living in the developing world. Climate change resulting from human activity is already having a negative impact on the availability of arable land, the sustainability of aquatic life, biodiversity, and the overall capacity of the planet to support human life – the UN’s 2016 report on Climate change, agriculture and food security make for alarming reading.
In the face of global catastrophe, it is easy to feel powerless. It is also difficult to enact major lifestyle changes. Too often my own laziness and comfort corrupt my will to take actions that I know to be right; especially when those actions relate to impacts and events that are for the moment far removed from my day-to-day life. I still drive and take airplanes. I recycle but could take obvious further steps to reduce my levels of consumption. One thing that I am trying not to do anymore is eating meat.
