Via Racialicious, the Black. Brown. Green. website, which links environmental & racial justice issues. Sounds good, right?
The Living Green page categorizes some things folks can do to go green as follows:
Just Do It. Things so obvious you’d be crazy not to start doing them today.
Step It Up. Things that take a bit more effort but make your life happier, healthier, easier and greener.
Go All The Way. Things that most people consider “die-hard” but are quite sensible, simple, and relatively inexpensive to implement.
There are lots of the usual suggestions, like composting & using compact fluorescent light bulbs. Also mentioned is the idea of having less kids.
What’s left out? Oh yeah. Eating less meat & dairy, or even — shock — cutting them out altogether. I’m glad that at least the page doesn’t play the “happy meat” game, by suggesting people eat “free-range” animals that have been named & cuddled before slaughter. But ignoring the environmental consequences of animal agriculture? Especially when another potential hot-button issue among environmentalists (having less kids) is mentioned, I don’t see the reasoning behind leaving this omission.
The website is still under development, so maybe this issue will be addressed somewhere, but it’s regardless very disappointing to not see the environmental toll of meat-eating mentioned in what is, right now, the most useful part of the site.
Vegans of Color 
Whoa, great site!
Re: The meat issue – I am sure it’s nothing new to your ears, but a lot of people are really ignorant about the impact of meat (at all phases) on the environment. I just learned about it, but kind of by accident – the friends I have who went vegan did it more for ethical and not environmental reasons.
Did you email Ayo about it? If she’s a meat eater, like I am, she probably overlooked it.
Latoya — thanks for your comment! I know a lot of meat-eaters don’t know about the impact that meat has on the environment, but… I dunno, I feel like for environmentalists who pay attention to news & developments re: green living, it’s not hard to stumble upon information about it, & I wonder how, while researching/thinking about stuff to put on that website, that issue was overlooked? (especially because some of the other tips talk about local food & other food issues)
I probably should send an e-mail, & maybe I eventually will… it’s just harder to gear myself up to write an official e-mail about it, instead of just putting the blog post up as soon as I saw the Racialicious link.
(& yeah, most of the vegans I know do it primarily for ethical reasons, too, but if they’re like me they’ll at least mention the environmental impacts here & there, too…)
Oh my god, the kids issue drives me nuts. How dare anyone tell me how I can or cannot use my body to reproduce or not reproduce!?
And meat-eating environmentalists… argh! It just makes me sick that something so huge as meat is so often ignored.
And hello? Why is eating meat considered more normal and natural than reproducing?
I think that stance on regulating kids because of the environment is really, really problematic. One step away from calling parents breeders, cows and all that other shit. When I started writing zines, I was afraid to say I was a parent!@ ! cuz I believed most of the zine community was anti-children.
it is also way too tied in with racist ideas about who’s having the most kids, eugenics, as well as the “browning of america” that has white ppl so scared.