With each new headline of environmental crisis out from the woodwork comes various dogmatic camps proselytizing about why their solution or way of life is The Way Forward and everyone else is Selfish Idiots Who Don't Read the Stats. Since I have basically dedicated my adult life to figuring out solutions to environmental problems, trying to decipher what works and what doesn't, I feel compelled to throw my own solution into the ring.
The first thing that is absolutely clear to me is that all current environmental problems are a result of industrial capitalism, and this is fundamental. This is an important assumption to start with because so many of the solutions people put forward only address part of the problem, and without getting to the root of it these solutions could be actively turning us away from solutions that do anything at all (more on this below).
Industrial capitalism is now global in nature. This means that private corporations, in conjunction with corrupt local governments around the world, are beyond regulation and social movement activity. (Note: the only thing that has empirically been shown to make major long-term changes is eco-terrorism such as exploding important hubs of production or sustained protest that disrupts the production of society, both of these being extremely dangerous).
Further, land use is complicated. As anyone who has ever been in a rural area knows: land use constantly changes. We know that when the Amazon Rainforest is burned, what first gets put on the land is livestock (mostly cattle) for industrial production. After a few years or so, it's been pretty well documented that a lot of that land gets turned into industrial soy plantations that then get processed into soybean oil and soybean meal which gets turned into both animal (mostly chicken and some pig) feed, but also other industrial products. Soybean oil is used for biofuel, human consumption, but also in various beauty products, pet food, and so much more. We know that Brazil exports over 79% of its soybeans to China, where it then gets processed and turned into myriad industrial products that then get shipped all over the world.
You see, when you start looking into the details, the supply chain is messy and complicated and spans the entire globe. But the story I see is not meat = bad. The story I see is the one that has happened since peasants were pushed from their land starting with industrialization (do you see that I keep highlighting this word?). Small scale producers that raise food non-industrially get pushed off their land by giant corporations that destroy the land for profit by making myriad industrial foods (animal and vegetable products alike, alongside a million other industrial products).
Now, what I've been dancing around here is the solutions part of the conversation. I am sorry to say that the answer is not simple and unfortunately never as easy as eco-friendly consumption like becoming vegetarian or vegan. We know that children's hands and mountain tops get blown off in Africa to make renewable energy technology with rare earth minerals, how does becoming vegan stop this? In fact, many people who are vegan probably also buy 'renewable' technologies, unaware of the environmental and human destruction they cause. We know that in India and Vietnam women's hands are being destroyed to make cashew milk for vegans who won't eat local dairy, even if it's raised on entirely grass-fed, biodiverse pastureland, because in their mind animal foods are the problem. We know that habitat for orangutans and indigenous communities are being destroyed for palm oil plantations that are in myriad food, makeup and soap products. Everything industrially produced is built on the destruction of land and people, including the energy it takes for processing. And it is labelled in such a way that you cannot know where it came from.
Unfortunately, it makes people feel control to have a simple solution like don't buy meat from Brazil, but there are actually some very dangerous consequences to this kind of thinking, and here's where my background in sociology comes in. A seminal work in Environmental Sociology is Andrew Szasz's book Shopping our Way to Safety. In it, he describes a kind of eco-conscious consumer who buys organic vegetables as a kind of political activism and protection from the harms of industrialism. What has been revealed in study after study (and this is pretty much right in my area of expertise) is that people spend the extra 50 cents on organic eggs, and then stop caring about anything else. They don't care what GMOs are in the cereal or the veggie burgers made with soy or the bread made from poisoning the soil with glyphosate or how much rainforest is cut down to supply the various vegetable oils in their margarine or vegan oreos.
It's worse than that, though. Because they also get channeled (a term borrowed from social movements literature). Channeling is where someone is given a false sense of control or power. For example, when an indigenous leader is given the opportunity to voice concerns at the table with a powerful corporation who is planning to build a dam and flood their village. The indigenous leader feels heard, included, and loses the political will to fight against these people that listened. The corporation goes ahead as planned.
This happens a lot in social movements. People feel like they are doing something, like becoming vegetarian or vegan or buying organic, and it literally makes them worse than they were before, because their concern falls away. They see a solution that on the surface makes sense. Let's boycott meat from Brazil (or stop buying animal products altogether)! It's doable, it's (relatively) easy. The problem is, it is industrialism that is the problem, not one tiny part of it. So, these people keep talking about animal products as if that's the entire problem, and the solution solely vegetarianism or veganism, they start to believe animal products (and the people who eat them) are very, very bad.
This focus then leads to an even bigger problem, which is the failure to see the industrial system as at fault. These people become disciples of "no animal products = save the environment," they can't even see other solutions for what they offer (especially not solutions related to sustainable animal production). They lose big picture thinking about the system because they live in an echo chamber of "I can't believe other people are so stupid and selfish as to continue eating meat when it clearly is destroying the planet. Thank goodness for us veggies who are saving the world. *pats own back*" This us/them mentality really hurts in the environmentalist community. Then, when solutions are put forward that require more than slightly altered consumption, they are suddenly confused and shocked, because they feel like they've already sacrificed enough by changing their diet and buying organic foods (or buying a Prius and installing solar panels or whatever).
So the solution to this problem of industrial capitalism is not just related to food, but literally everything we use, how we get around, where our poop goes, and how we relate to the natural world. It is a total cultural shift, which includes real fights with terrible actors, plenty of which are currently happening. It is a future in which we re-envision a non-industrial world, one in which the logic of this world is completely upended. It is one where we ask hard questions like: can I do without this? If not, how can I source this product from someone who makes it non-industrially? What are all the systems I rely on for water, sewage and transport and how could those be altered to do less damage? What kind of social systems can I invent (sharing, co-ops, etc.) that upend the logic of exploiting people in the marketplace? What kind of activism can I take part in that can either stop corporations or governments from exploiting the world, or envisioning a sustainable future? (Plenty of city councils are currently working on city-level Green New Deals, get involved!)
All of these questions take decades to answer for us raised in the Global North on soy-meal-fed-McNuggets, fries covered in fungicide and fried in pristine-landscape-destroying canola oil, and high fructose corn syrup Coca-Cola, while washing our hair with palm-oil-orangutan-habitat destroying shampoo. The point is, so much of our lives are shaped by industrialism that it is like the air we breathe. We can forgive ourselves if takes a while to figure these things out, but the important thing is not to commit to a solution that gives us a false sense of efficacy (along with an identity).
On the one hand, these bad industrial actors are so powerful, there is little we can do to really stop them dead in their tracks. On the other hand, thanks to limits of physics and biology, we can't go on this way destroying the environment in an industrial society for much longer, so we should be using every spare moment we have figuring out what's next, and how to take care of ourselves when oil costs $400/barrel. We have more agency than we realize, and there are so many things we can do right now to imagine a post-industrial future. But the first step in the journey can't only be buying our way out. The first step is likely inward questioning, education, and big picture thinking. Then, getting out of your comfort zone, getting involved in projects with other concerned people, which will lead to more ideas and activities and on it goes.
I will end with this. Often when people read about crisis after crisis, they feel defeated. The point of this essay is not to bombard with how bad things are and how little you can do. Instead, when I hear bad news like what's happening in the Amazon, it lights a fire in me to do more, explore more, figure more out. What does this actually look like? I make friends with people who are doing sustainable agriculture and learn from them (join some facebook groups for earth building or regenerative agriculture or permaculture and just start reading everything!). I spend my money on fruit trees and non-industrial infrastructure (you can't eat money). I offer to watch my friends' kids and have them watch mine in an informal co-op (there is a lot of evidence that communities with these kinds of connections are MUCH more resilient in disaster/crisis situations). I get free range chickens (just did this a week ago!) and learn how to take care of them. I write about people practicing innovative solutions (just interviewed a bunch of people building Earthships) because one thing I can offer this world is research and writing. What can you do?
(P.S. check out the work we do at rizomafieldschool.com entirely centered on environmental solutions and alternatives!)
Edited to add:
