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.
Pred približno letom dni sem se vprašal: "Glede na vse, kar vem o tem, zakaj še nisem postal vegetarijanec?" Pravzaprav sem okoljsko zelo osveščen. Vzgojili so me starši, hipiji, v hiši narejeni iz lesa. Ustvaril sem spletno mesto "Treehugger". Ni mi vseeno za te stvari. Vem da, če poješ en sam hamburger na dan, lahko povečaš možnosti prezgodnje smrti za tretjino. Kruta resnica je, da 10 milijard živali, ki jih vsako leto vzgojijo za zakol, vzgojijo v industrijskem okolju, ki ga mi licemersko, ne bi smatrali primernega za svoje mačke, pse ali druge hišne ljubljenčke. Meso, presenetljivo, odda več škodljivih emisij v zrak, kot vsa prometna sredstva skupaj. Avtomobili, vlaki, letala, avtobusi, čolni, vse skupaj! Proizvodnja govejega mesa porabi 100 krat več vode, kot večina rastlin skupaj.
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 convince me to go vegetarian. Yet, there I was -- chk, chk, chk -- tucking into a big old steak.
Prav tako sem vedel, da nisem edini. Vsi skupaj danes pojemo dvakrat več mesa, kot smo ga v petdesetih. Kar je bil nekoč redek priboljšek, je danes glavna in predvsem pogostejša jed. Torej, katerokoli izmed teh spoznanj bi moralo zadostovati, da se odločimo postati vegetarijanci. Pa vseeno sem, mljask, mljask, mljask, žvečil velik, okusen zrezek.
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?
Le zakaj sem zavlačeval? Dojel sem, da sem ujet med dvema skrajnima možnostima. Ali biti mesojedec, ali pa vegetarijanec. Prav tako mislim, da še nisem bil dovolj pripravljen. Zamislite si svoj zadnji hamburger. (Smeh) Moj razum, moji dobri nameni, so bili v nasprotju z mojimi brbončicami. Sklenil sem, da se tega lotim kasneje. Nič presenetljivega ni, do tega nikoli ni prišlo. Vam zveni znano?
So I wondered, might there be a third solution? And I thought about it, and I came up with one. 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.
Vprašal sem se, ali mogoče obstaja še tretja možnost? Razmišljal sem in jo našel. Izvajam jo že leto dni in je odlično. Imenuje se "tedenski vegetarijanec". Ime pove vse. Med ponedeljkom in petkom nič "kar ima obraz". Med vikendom pa po svoji izbiri. Zelo enostavno. Če želite narediti še več, pomislite na glavne hudodelce, v smislu okoljevarstvenih škod in zdravja, rdečega mesa in predelanih mesnih proizvodov. Slednje lahko zamenjate z okusno in sveže ujeto ribo. Enostavno izvedljivo in lahko za zapomniti. Nič hudega ni, če se kdaj pregrešimo. Na koncu koncev, pet dni v tednu predstavlja za 70% manjšo porabo mesa.
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.
Metoda je odlična. Tedenski vegetarijanec. Moj delež izpustov je manjši. Manj onesnažujem. Počutim se bolje glede živali. Celo prihranim nekaj denarja. Najbolje od vsega pa je, da sem bolj zdrav. Vem, da bom živel dlje časa in celo shujšal sem malo.
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.
Zato se prosim vprašajte, zaradi vašega zdravja, zaradi vaše denarnice, zaradi okoljevarstva in zaradi živali: "Kaj vam preprečuje, da poskusite s tedenskim vegetarijanstvom?" Na koncu koncev, če bi vsi pojedli polovico manj mesa, bi to pomenilo, da nas je polovica vegetarijancev.
Thank you.
Hvala za pozornost.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)