№58 — Vegetarian for a week

Recently, the IPCC released it’s latest report on climate change and things do not look too well for us if we continue living like we do. No single action can change the climate towards the better but a lot of single actions combined can do so.

Due to my job as a management consultant, I belong to a group of people that has an above-average impact on climate change due to our frequent travels. That leaves me with two levers: mobility and diet. Regarding mobility, I am obligated by my job to travel a lot and since I like that job, I do my best to offset my emissions through emission offset schemes such as offered by Atmosfair or MyClimate. Is it the holy grail for carbon emissions reduction? No, but it is one thing I can easily do and at least a start.

The other lever available to me is diet. According to several articles on the topic, switching to a vegetarian diet has one of the biggest impacts on climate one can directly influence. I have occasionally tried living as a vegetarian but I never made the full switch until I decided to try that for my one thing of the week — it’s really not that difficult.

Fortunately for me, vegetarianism has reached broad acceptance in today’s society and therefore, most restaurants and supermarkets have a well-stocked section of vegetarian dishes and options that make it easy for one to switch. Also, there is a huge array of great vegetarian recipes online that make you forget you had meat once. Give it a try, there are worse things than eating veggies a few times a week.

I must admit that I have eaten meat on a few occasions since this experience. Still, I am now trying to reduce my meat intake to less than 2 dishes a week, which allows me the flexibility to have meat for special events and not be a pain for potential hosts that invite me for dinner. My next goal is to at least try and live vegan for a week but that’s not going to happen too soon.