Conscious Choice: Vote with Your Fork

October 2007 | Choice Feedback

Vote with Your Fork

First let me say that your magazine is absolutely one of the finest of its type on the market … so, thank you.

In the Alice Waters interview (Sept. 2007), I read the expression “vote with your fork.” As a lifetime environmentalist and producer/host of The Meria Show for 10 years, I tell my listeners we have two votes — vote with your fork and vote with your dollar.

My gripe is this: How can we talk about saving the fish or planet without encouraging people to stop eating animals and flesh? Nowhere have I see anyone from Al Gore to Leonardo speaking about the necessity and health benefits (let alone the benefits to the animals and planet) of going vegetarian.

Isaac Singer said “there is no such thing as a meat eating environmentalist”. I have proudly been a vegetarian for over seven years now. I am voting with my fork. I vote against animal farms, fish farms, methane gas, using the planets resources to feed an overfed, overweight and sickly population.

The two things that are destroying the planet faster than anything else is shipping and air travel. Most people’s food travels more than they ever will. I’m sure factory farming is third in line. The cost in feed, water and pollution is astronomical.

I would like to see more coverage about the benefits to all by becoming vegetarian in your magazine.

— Meria, via email

Burners Without Borders

Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for your article “The Revolution Will Not Be Invoiced” (Aug. 2007).

I was tremendously inspired by your words, particularly, two of the last three paragraphs in which you talk about what Hurricane Katrina washed away from us. I wrote those two paragraphs down on some art paper, framed them, and hung them on my wall to continue to inspire me.

I’ve never been to Burning Man for a variety of banal reasons (that I intend to change!), but I know the feeling that it inspires in many who attend. I was grabbed by your article because I had had a daydream recently that it was the job of those of us who go to events like Burning Man, or Earthdance, or whatever to take the joy and ecstasy and love and compassion and connection that we feel when we are there out into the world to try and share it with those who have not had those experiences. Your article came at just the right moment for me to recognize that my daydream could be more than just a dream.

Thank you for sharing some of the stories of people like me who want to help create a conscious, compassionate and creative community out there in the larger world. And thank you for so eloquently articulating why we need to continue on that path.

— Erica Cooperrider, via email

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