Vegetables+Democracy=Climate Solutions
Never in my wildest dreams when I sold my first salad to a hungry millennial in South Africa did I imagine I would end up as a trained foot soldier in what is growing into the biggest revolution in the history of the world. I just thought people were busy and hungry and wanted to share my passion for nutrients.
The rapid acceleration of global vegetarian/veganism is being driven by North America’s largest demographic ever seen, over 150 million millenials and boomers increasingly and bravely committed to save planet earth with their food choices. These are not easy conversations to be in the middle of due to the nature of my business model. I have been financed, hugged and thanked by almost ten thousand customers and friends because of my love for vegetables; but I have also been insulted, laughed at and shamed including while standing in the kitchen of a children’s birthday party eating cake. I thought my journey as an entrepreneur was going to be one of selling carrots but it is quickly becoming one dedicated to science, democracy and our collective compassion to fight climate change.
I don’t know where the story of my plant based business is going to lead me but without question, it’s in the direction of climate solutions. Most customers I sell vegetables to have food issues be them allergies, intolerances or value-based restrictions. Every mom and dad is worried about their kids. Money is tight. The news is difficult to watch. But I keep selling vegetables because I know somehow someway my actions are planting seeds that will create change and social justice.
In Canada we are about to have our own DAPL and the leader of our national Green Party Elizabeth May said she is willing to go to jail to reverse the recent decision by Justin Trudeau to build an oil pipeline across my province. Not because we have a better alternative figured out but because so many of us know there is one. The army will come out. Young people will fight. Women will fight. And eventually our flag like the American flag, will fly upside down expressing a state of national emergency and/or civil war. This is going to happen here in Canada. Why wouldn’t it? We have everything to lose while nothing to lose at the same time.
I know this because I also know that vegetables can start wars.
My husband was kidnapped during the Arab Spring that began when a young vegetable seller was shamed by a corrupt government official on the streets of Tunisia. He went missing for two weeks while I was pregnant. Every day I watched the story of Mohammed Bouazizi who bravely set himself on fire in order to express his right to sell vegetables. Could I ever do that? I wondered. Don’t I just feel frustrated instead when my rights seem abused? But set myself on fire in downtown Victoria in front of the legistlature, I mean seriously — who does that?
Someone who is at the of the end of their rope. Out of hope. Out of time. And it worked. Mohammed’s actions went viral and the entire Arab world exploded taking my husband with it and into a secret Libyan prison. Because a young man wanted to sell vegetables to support his family as he had been doing from the age of 10. Gadhaffi took my husband and two other men and fathers with him because he was so cowardly to imagine allowing freedom and democracy to flourish in his culture. And then it happened again in Syria. Drought. Farmers. Oppression. War. That story is far far from over.
Vandana Shiva. David Suzuki. Robert F Kennedy. Jane Goodall. Lewis Pugh.
These are the people who need to be running our governments because the current leaders we have doing the job are weak and make us believe that compromise is necessary and idealism isn’t possible. But that’s not what I teach my children. I teach them to dream and run and jump into the future of what they believe they can become. So they can create change. So they can clean the oceans. So they can do what we used to do, and trust that humanity has enough compassion to survive.
Vegetables. Democracy. Climate Solutions. A life worth living? No life without these things.
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