This is NZ’s Al Gore

Dr Aryan Tavakkoli

I went to a presentation at the library yesterday about diet and its link to climate change.

Oh.  My. God.

Sure, I knew this stuff already but the way it was presented really drove home the facts.

A regular, meat eating diet is NOT sustainable, and you can make more of a difference by going vege (or even just by cutting back your meat consumption) than you can by driving less.

In the mainstream media we hear all this talk about conserving power, using renewable resources and relying less on fossil fuels but how often do we hear about how our diets are affecting the planet?

The truth is that as far as environmental impacts go, eating meat is one of the WORST things we can do.

And the reason why it isn’t as widely reported as transport issues or eco-bulbs, is because if we eat less meat, people will lose money. And apparently in this world, that is the bottom line. Not the continuation of our species, not the good of the earth and its inhabitants, but money.

Silly little pieces of green paper (or plastic) aren’t going to do shit when civilisation’s about to end, but whatever. If the prevailing attitude is that money’s what matters then why should I care if the human species dies out or not? Maybe we collectively deserve to, for having got ourselves into this situation in the first place, and also for not being quick/willing enough to act.

Argh!!

As you can see, this topic has got me pretty fired up. For this reason, I will be expanding on it in a later post for Good.

The presentation, titled Our Diet – Leading to a Sustainable Future or Killing Our Planet?, was given by Dr Aryan Tavakkoli and I consider it to be on a par with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. I can’t believe that an environmental gem like her is so relatively unknown (I didn’t know who she was and I guess maybe you didn’t either). Dr Tavakkoli should be giving this presentation to politicians (something she said was a very hard thing to organise) and being interviewed on Sunday. Our Diet needs all the media coverage it can get, and Dr Tavakkoli deserves much praise for her work on it. She doesn’t charge for the time she spends giving the presentation, and at the end she gives away free copies of it on dvd which you are allowed to reproduce and distribute as you please.

Contributing to the compelling nature of the presentation is Dr Tavakkoli herself. She is non-aggressive in her approach, and seems like such a nice lady that how could you possibly not want to do something on her recommendation? I was thoroughly impressed with her and just wish so much that there were more people like Dr Tavakkoli willing to give up their knowledge and time for the environmental cause.

If any of you would like a copy of Our Diet – Leading to a Sustainable Future or Killing Our Planet? , leave a comment with your email address and we’ll work something out.  

Thanks to Dr Tavakkoli and the Wellington Vegetarian Society (for hosting her), this presentation has been one of the major highlights of my eco-involvement so far.