I believe that individuals can make a great difference by making changes in how we consume and participate in society. We’ve given up meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, silk, wool, etc… (
gone vegan 
) to do what we can to reduce our contribution, as we learned about the impact of factory farming on the environment.
What action do you see appropriate for individuals and groups?
Why do you think that the Government should not support change?
In my opinion, whatever it’s worth (and it may be nothing) those things you are doing are fine for you. They hurt no one (I assume you have figured out how to get adequate nutrition from your diet) and, to the extent you do not consume animal products, that leaves some quantity of them, however small, for others. At least theoretically it does.
But there is another side to the equation. I raise cattle in an area in which crop agriculture is virtually impossible due to rugged terrain, low soil fertility and occasional droughtiness. The only things this area will grow well are trees and grass, and it does both admirably. People can’t eat grass, nor can we eat trees. The nutrients are locked up in cellulose, and we can’t digest them. Grass can feed no one. Cattle, however, can digest cellulose and produce highly nutritious food from it. Trees can be nurtured to maturity, then turned into furniture and building materials.
I like to think, and do think, that I am adding to the food supply. Not everyone is a vegan. Not everybody has to be a vegan. And vast tracts of food-supplying area would produce nothing useful to mankind if everyone was a vegan. I like to think of the children, particularly, as growing strong bodies from eating what I produce. I like to think of the people who can relax at the end of the day on a chair of strong oak. I like to think of family meals being served on a table of black walnut.
But I do have a fairly hefty carbon footprint. I’ll admit it. You could nurture only a tiny grove of trees by hand. With my machinery, I can improve acres and acres of forest, so the trees will grow fast and straight and healthy, and produce acorns, walnuts, hickory nuts, wild cherries, persimmons and elderberries. I even leave a honey locust here and there because their pods are highly nutritious for wildlife, notwithstanding that they’re useless for timber and that too many of them make a thorny thicket. With the culled trees, I build piles that wildlife can shelter in. Some goes to neighboring families who burn wood to keep their families warm for free.
But I do operate my machinery, becuase if I did not, very little of anything I produce would be produced. My cattle are 100% grass fed, by the way.
And my conscience is clear as regards all of that.
I think sometimes we don’t take proper account of the “production” end of things, and the obligation I think we should have to be productive if our circumstances permit us to do it. Yes, productive to the point of surplus, because it is that surplus which maintains those of us who are not fortunate enough to be producers of surplus, or even of necessities.
When you think about it, almost everything you consume is someone else’s surplus production, even if one is a vegan that’s true. And those who produce what you do eat, and what you wear and the shelter under which you live, use energy in doing it.
If I, or others like me, were reduced to doing what we do with muscle power alone, a lot of people on this earth would not make it. In my mind, God put petroleum in the ground so my muscles, and those of others like me, could be magnified so we could produce surpluses that sustain others. In my mind, when God created millions upon millions of acres that would produce grass alone, he also created cattle and sheep and goats that could turn it into human food.
I do not criticize anyone for being a vegan. That’s fine. But it must also be remembered that millions of people depend on those “mediator” species between us and utterly indigestible grass. And millions depend on the “magnified muscles” (machines) of those who culture and cull and harvest the timber that keeps people out of the weather.
Different people, I think, have different “vocations” when it comes to proper husbandry of the earth. And just as a married man with children should not criticize a Carmelite who prays all day, neither should the Carmelite criticize the man who tills the earth or makes the machines.
- and yes I agree it is always a complicated issue. I had a priest once tell me that the Catholic Church is a big umbrella Church and that there is room for all of us - and people of good intention can make big mistakes with well meaning actions - and I certainly won’t argue that!