Also, I think your point about how difficult it can be for people to eat healthy/sustainably is an important one. That’s why I think collective action and systemic change are just as important as personal lifestyle changes.

What I continue to take away is that the way these matters are generally posed will not change the minds or habits of most people.

First, many of these arguments rest on a sense that no matter what we do it’s never enough and it’s often coupled with someone taking the moral high hill in relation to everyone else. That sort of approach freezes up rather than sets free. I haven’t read this book, but already, it’s call for doing even more may be more than most can do all at once or even afford to do. This quote reads as yet another eco-guilt trip. Most folks will just shut down or tune out or tell him to go f— himself. I’m reminded that eating junk in this country costs less than eating well and wholesome and healthy and earth-friendly.

Second, ethics alone does not move, especially when coupled with generalized calls to do more that are never enough.

My partner asked me how I would respond ethically to my friends who declare to any and all and to us in rather damning self-sense, “I don’t eat animals.” I said, “I wouldn’t.” Respond ethically that is. I would respond practicably and practically from a Benedictine stance with “moderation” as the watch word. “Moderation” is a process rather than an all-or-nothing. Moving to sustainability requires unlearning and relearning, that is conversion understood in more catholic shifts rather than Evangelical fervours. This takes time, steps, increments.

For example, over the course of this year, we’ve: moved to purchasing our produce from the local farmers’ markets buying sustainable and organic as we can afford; reduced our eating of animals to two main meals a week,; moved to buying meats that are free-range. That is a huge shift that happened in increments over the course of a year. Step by step. Learning and unlearning. To turn and tell all who have made that much of a shift, you might as well be doing nothing (which is how this reads) will not serve sustainability or care for animals.

Third, I don’t think that putting things in the terms of these movements will convince the unconvinced, who are the vast majority. It speaks to a very small crowd that tends to want all to go vegan “now!” Not all can afford to. And eating animals is a part of most human cultures. Rather, emphasizing moderation as reduction for a series of reasons of sustainability is a likelier bet.

Providing ways to move toward moderation and doing so in terms of Christian (religious) practice is more likely to move more people, rather than within these frameworks that full of evidence and ethics have too little to say about what practicably and practically we can do, or when they do, then turn around and say, “not good enough.” It’s attuned to an activist mentality when most of us are not activists.

We need catholic (long-term conversion) rather than Evangelical (presto-chango conversion) approaches to these matters if we hope to convince large peoples along to something approaching care for fellow creatures and sustainability.