thoughts on a thursday: please ... don't keep calm

i am pretty sure pretty much everyone in the english speaking world (and beyond) has seen this print.

there are numerous variations such as 'keep calm and go shopping', 'keep calm and eat chocolate', 'keep calm and smile smile smile', 'keep calm and love jesus', 'keep calm and don't give a shit' - or my personal favourite 'keep calm and use the force'. 

i think these posters express pretty well the general sentiment of our generation. people generally keep calm.

we keep calm, ignore starvation and keep on wasting our resources.

we keep calm, ignore the climate change and keep on driving big cars.

we keep calm, ignore responsibility and just want to have fun.

however, i believe that by doing that we are denying essential human attributes: compassion, empathy, anger, hunger for change and the respect for our own life as well as the lives of others.

stephane hessel writes the following in his book indignez-vous (time for outrage):

The worst of attitudes is indifference, to say "I can do nothing there, I'l just manage to get by." By including yourself in that, you lose one of the essential elements that makes the human being: the faculty of indignation and the commitment that is a consequence of it. 

They [young people] can already identify two big new challenges: 

1. The huge gap which exists between the very poor and the very rich and that does not cease increasing. It is an innovation of the 20th and 21st centuries. The very poor in the today's world earn barely two dollars a day. The new generation cannot let this gap become even greater. The official reports alone should provoke a commitment. 

2. Human rights and the state of the planet.

he is right - it is time for outrage. -- so, get angry.

get angry about the injustices and absurdities of the world.

get angry about the fact that we can buy clothes that are produced in sweat shops.

get angry about the fact that we waste 4000 litres of water on one steak whilst children in parts of the world die because they don't have clean drinking water.

get angry about the oppression of women and disabled people.

get angry about racism.

get angry about the fact that our society values money over people.

so please, i urge you, do anything, but just don't keep calm. 

why i stopped eating meat

in the beginning of summer, a little bit over three months ago, i decided to quit eating meat for a while. 

i never was a big meat-eater anyway so it didn't really make a great difference in my diet, and so far i have not missed it. 

especially since being back in england people have asked me why i decided to become a vegetarian. (sometimes the why was a genuine interest sometimes more a "why would you do that", but a why nontheless).

so in this post i want to explain the reasons that led me to quit eating meat.
this post is not aimed at criticising anyone's lifestyle or "converting" people to vegetarianism - i just want to share some facts that i personally find important and wanted to act upon.
also, as said earlier my decision was to cut meat out of my diet for a while. this means that i keep the prerogative to maybe change my eating habits again at some point. maybe i will make the decision to eat meat once a week or eat organic meat or i decide to go a step further and abstain from all animal products i.e. go vegan. 

even though i now explain why i eat what i eat, i don't think that i have to do this. i am a grown woman, therefore i don't have to justify my eating choices to anyone.

alright, with that said. here we go.

the two main factors are especially important to me are the environment and world hunger.

overall, cattle breeding contributes 18% carbon dioxid equivalent to the greenhouse-effect. 
this is more than our world-wide transportation (all cars, airplanes, buses, trains taken together) contribute to the greenhouse effect.
a great deal of carbon dioxide is emitted by clearances of the rain forrest. those cleared areas are not used for grazing land (most cattle never see the sun or a meadow in their life) but to plant soy and corn which is used to feed cattle. 
this connects to my second point, world hunger. 
as newly industrialised align their consumption of meat to that in the western world, more and more animal feed is needed, by 2050 we'll  reach a point where more than 70% of our farmland is used to grow animal feed which means less and less grain, rice, potatoes and so forth can be grown. it follows that meat consumption in the west is directly related to increasing hunger in developing countries. to produce 1kg of meat 7-16kg of soy or grain is used, which in the face of our dwindling resources is not a great use of land. we face a situation where there simply isn't enough space to grow food required to feed 7 billion people and 21 billion farm animals. the same goes for water - to produce 1 kg of apples 700 litres of water are used - for 1 kg beef it is 15 500 litres. 

there is a lot more that could be said about this but i think i made my point. people might say, that it won't make a difference whether i eat meat or not. however, the british physicist alan calverd thinks that if everyone would become a vegetarian we could control global warming.

i know that i am only one, and not everyone, but i think someone has to make a start. i personally think globalisation and the environmental situation is one of the greatest challenges humanity has to face in the 21st century. and i as a christian want to react to these challenges because i believe that is what jesus did. he did not just give people hope for a better future in heaven, he improved their situation here on earth as well. 

i know that i put myself on the spot with this and that you could find a lot of areas in my life where my choices are bad for the environment (e.g. going to university in england and hence flying to germany and back twice a year) but i am aiming to make more responsible choices step by step. 

i don't want to be repetitive, but with this post i am not trying to convince anyone to change his or her life. however, if this made you think but you don't want to become a vegetarian you could find a compromise and do it like hank green who says this:

"I eat meat, though I recognize that (for a variety of reasons) I should not. The industrialized agriculture system is bad for the environment and for animals and for people. As for me, I try to eat less than 200 calories of animal or animal product per day. This means one chicken sandwich or a couple yogurts or two slices of cheese. I don't drink milk at all because that's a total waste of my animal calories.  

Going completely vegan is very difficult, not just because I love corndogs, but practically and socially. So I don't think I will ever do it, nor would I ask it of others. But I would ask everyone...maybe check out the vegetarian options first, see if they look good. Maybe, when you're cooking at home, check out some vegan recipes. Maybe skip the turkey in favor of peanut butter. Maybe go beans instead of beef on the nachos.  

Whether or not you care about the suffering of these animals, it is scientifically proven to be both healthier and better for the environment...so consider it."

read more about this topic here: wikipedia. or here: peta.org. or here: scientific american.