Monday, August 27, 2007

I just saw the 11th Hour yesterday and it was incredible. The only disappointing thing, for me, is that neither The 11th Hour nor An Inconvenient Truth really got into the tremendous impact that factory farming has on the environment, deforestation, etc.

There are allusions made to it visually, but no one in these films ever TALKS about the connection between the massive meat consumption in the US, the degraded conditions of the animals, chemicals that go into the food and the land/air, and the tremendous waste, both in the land being used to grow grain for animals that feed the few, whereas the farming land could be used to feed the many, and in the "means of production" of the meat industry itself.

I wish that this connection would be made more apparent in these environment call-to-action films because, as expressed in John Robbin's Diet for a New America, if folks would just reduce their meat intake (thereby reducing meat production) by a mere 10% the impact on world hunger would be enormous... not to mention what the global effects would be if Veganism became as present and acceptable in the popular consciousness as Recycling.

All that aside... I highly recommend seeing the film. It was moving, intense, beautiful, disturbing, yet optimistic. Let me know what you think of it.

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