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大約在一年前,我問自己一個問題,「既然我知道這麼多環保概念,為什麼不吃素?」畢竟,我是支持綠能生活的人。我父母是嬉皮,我從小在木造小屋裡長大,我架設了一個叫Treehugger的網站,我關心這類議題。我知道,就算一天只吃一個漢堡,也會讓我增加三分之一的死亡機率。殘忍的事實是,我知道人類每年飼養100億隻動物做為食物,牠們被飼養在工廠式的農場裡,我們甚至不會考慮把我們的貓、狗、或其他寵物飼養在那種環境裡。令人驚訝的,對環境來說,肉品所排放的廢氣比所有交通工具加起來還多,包括車子、火車、飛機、公車和船等。生產牛肉所需消耗的水量比大部份植物消耗的水量高100倍。
我也知道我不是唯一吃肉的人,現今整個社會的人們吃肉的份量是50年代的二倍,以前視為很珍貴、只能提供一小盤的食物,現在變成了主食,幾乎成了日常主食。說真的,以任何角度來說,都有足夠理由讓我成為素食者。然而,我還在嗑、嗑、嗑,往嘴裡塞進一份大牛排。
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以下為系統擷取之英文原文
About a year ago, I asked myself a question: "Knowing what I know, why am I not a vegetarian?" After all, I'm one of the green guys. I grew up with hippie parents in a log cabin. I started a site called Treehugger. I care about this stuff. I knew that eating a mere hamburger a day can increase my risk of dying by a third. Cruelty, I knew that the 10 billion animals we raise each year for meat, are raised in factory farm conditions that we, hypocritically, wouldn't even consider for our own cats, dogs and other pets. Environmentally, meat, amazingly, causes more emissions than all of transportation combined, cars, trains, planes, buses, boats, all of it. And beef production uses 100 times the water that most vegetables do.
I also knew that I'm not alone. We as a society are eating twice as much meat as we did in the 50s. So what was once the special, little side treat, now is the main, much more regular. So really, any of these angles should have been enough to go vegetarian. Yet, there I was, chk, chk,, chk, tucking into a big, old steak.
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為什麼我還在遲疑?我意識到,我將它定位為一個二分法的選擇:不是做個肉食主義者,就是做個素食主義者。我想我只是還沒準備好,想想你吃的最後一份漢堡。(笑聲)所以我的常識、我的良心,都和我的味蕾起了衝突,所以我決定以後再吃素。不意外的,以後就表示永遠不會。聽起來很熟悉吧?
所以我想,是否可能有第三種選擇?深入思考之後,我想到一個方法,我去年就開始這麼做了,感覺很棒,我把它叫做周末以外的日子吃素,從名字就可以知道它的意思。星期一到星期五不吃肉,週末時間自己決定,非常簡單。如果你想再更進一步,請記得,對環境及健康破壞最深的就是紅肉和加工肉品,你可以用一些品質良好、以永續方法飼養的魚類來替代。建立起這樣的原則,之後就很容易記得了。偶爾破戒一下沒什麼關係,畢竟每週有五天不吃肉,就可以減少百分之七十的肉類攝取。
周末以外的日子吃素這個計劃很棒,我的腳步變輕盈了,我減少了污染,我覺得比較對得起動物,甚至還省了一些錢。最棒的是,我變得更健康了。我知道我會活得更長壽,甚至還減輕了一些體重。
所以,請問問自己,為了你的健康、錢包、環境、動物著想,你還有什麼理由不試一下周末以外的日子吃素呢?畢竟,如果我們所有人都能減少一半的肉類攝取量,就好像有一半的人都在吃素一樣。
謝謝。
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So why was I stalling? I realized that what I was being pitched was a binary solution. It was either you're a meat eater, or you're a vegetarian. And I guess I just wasn't quite ready. Imagine your last hamburger. (Laughter) So my common sense, my good intentions, were in conflict with my taste buds. And I'd commit to doing it later. And not surprisingly, later never came. Sound familiar?
So I wondered, might there be a third solution? And I thought about it. And I came up with one. And I've been doing it for the last year, and it's great. It's called weekday veg. The name says it all. Nothing with a face Monday through Friday. On the weekend, your choice. Simple. If you want to take it to the next level, remember, the major culprits, in terms of environmental damage and health, are red and processed meats. So you want to swap those out with some good, sustainably harvested fish. It's structured, so it ends up being simple to remember. And it's okay to break it here and there. After all, cutting five days a week is cutting 70 percent of your meat intake.
The program has been great, weekday veg. My footprint's smaller I'm lessening pollution. I feel better about the animals. I'm even saving money. Best of all, I'm healthier, I know that I'm going to live longer, and I've even lost a little weight.
So please, ask yourselves, for your health, for your pocketbook, for the environment, for the animals, what's stopping you from giving weekday veg a shot? After all, if all of us ate half as much meat, it would be like half of us were vegetarians.
Thank you.