Producing meat is destroying the planet, and eating it is destorying our bodies. This isn’t crazy vegan hippie rhetoric – it’s the truth. This article in the Washington Post has lots of charts and information explaining how it is.

Do I expect anyone who reads this or looks at that article to make any different choices though? Not really. But why? So many people – for whom eating meat is entirely optional – are willing to label others climate change deniers, shame them for what kind of car they drive, or refer to others as ignorant and uniformed. But these same people don’t even consider changing their habits, even though just the greenhouse gas effects of meat production are so much worse for the planet than all transportation combined.

I’m not even going to talk about the way we treat animals, but that’s just as upsetting.

Lots of things people do are bad for the planet, and I’m sure than I am no exception. But the fact is this one thing is so much more worse than anything else we do, and people barely even acknowledge it. It’s simple to me: you can’t be an environmentalist and eat meat. Those two things are contradictory. If people really cared about the planet or global warming as much as they say they do, they would be willing to take the one biggest step to actually have an impact. If you eat meat while failing to accept the impact your choices have, you not only are contributing to the problem, you are a climate change denier.

Obviously, this topic gets me pretty worked up. But just being upset and calling others hypocrites isn’t an effective way to help anyone think about their choices, or encourage them to make better ones. So, besides the Washington Post article I linked to above, I want to recommend some things. Even if you have no intention to change, I think that if you’re going to make choices, you should be willing to learn about what those choices mean and reconcile that for yourself. At least then you’re making informed choices.

This book is great because it doesn’t skip any details of what meat production is doing to the planet, or how we mistreat animals, but somehow keeps the writing approachable and even a little humorous. It also gives voice to both sides of arguments by talking to farmers, factory farmers, people at slaughter houses, humane meat people, etc, and lets them all say their piece without discrediting it outright.

This is a documentary – available on Netflix – which contains a lot of the same information in Eating Animals, and is also pretty light hearted, with less time commitment. The film goes over a lot of the data, interviews environmentalists and animal rights folks, and asks the same question I have: why isn’t this information more commonly known, and why aren’t environmental groups willing to talk about the single worst thing we’re doing to the environment.