Choice – the fantasy battleground for all things green

Remember that miserable phase of the Brexit battle when 50 per cent of us were sitting across from the other 50 per cent wondering how on earth they could be getting this so fundamentally wrong? The phenomenon that played out in the same way, regardless of which side of the razor-wire-topped fence you were actually on?

I have been having flashbacks to all of that this week, thanks to a really ill-thought-through WhatsApp question that went something along the lines of: “What do you reckon to meat-free Monday? Would you want to see it introduced at school/work/among family?” Because clearly I have nothing better to do than set myself up as cannon-fodder.

Being on the receiving end of personal abuse is not a new sensation given the day job. I’m happy to bat away that rubbish, and roughly 70 per cent were in favour anyway – which at least answered the question. So far, so as expected.

But the chat quickly descended into the kinds of themes and preconceptions that I’d forgotten we haven’t yet burned off in the harsh light of, well, evidence.

Just to be clear, the meat-free Monday movement – set up in either 1997, 2003 or 2009, depending on who’s claiming it – practically boils down to just one meal without meat. Not even dairy free – just meat. And just one meal, which if we all had a go at, would cut the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by a staggering 50 million tonnes, such is the impact of the 20th century diet that did away with the centuries-old ‘meat-as-a-treat’ approach. (Unless your family was way posher than mine, of course.)

One meal. Once a week. One.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was snatched up and misused faster than you could shout “sandal-wearing hippies”, and the accusation of inflicting a personal lifestyle choice on others was thrown around without even a whisper of irony.

Malnutrition was a word that came up more than once. As did protein.

Wait, malnutrition from not eating enough meat rather than from not eating enough veg? Really?

We live in a country where the average adult already takes on 55 per cent more protein than they need according to government figures (the percentage is far higher among children), and where one of the established health and morbidity risk factors – inadequate fruit and veg consumption – correlates directly with measures of deprivation. You think the risk is around not eating enough meat? Blimey.

For asking a question, I was told not to demonise good-quality, organic meat, and that I needed to better understand the food system; and I was accused of failing to support British farmers trying to do the right thing.

Which I guess might have had teeth if it wasn’t for the fact that my husband and I are farmers trying to do the right thing.

Choice, though. Choice was an interesting word.

Curiously, meat and dairy intake was never on the table as a primary point of discussion in Glasgow. I’m starting to see why.

As Cop26 descends into yet another round of “You can’t tell us what to do with our own economy/resources/culture/free will” on an international scale, that same friction is coming up as part of our own transition.

Let’s be very clear: transition is under way, however slow or ineffectual, and however much of an affront to your personal freedom you may believe that evolution to be.

And actually, the concept of choice – especially when it comes to retaining a highly subjective view of a status quo that may or may not exist anyway – is increasingly redundant.

The need to acknowledge, address and adapt to the reality of climate change and pollution is absolute and immediate.

Thanks to developments in everything from business strategy to health policy, let alone whatever climate action comes out of Glasgow, it is rapidly being taken out of our hands – in all walks of life, including our own.

Choice is not a word that comes to mind, for example, when we watch the soil race off our fields after a downpour because it has succumbed to decades of fertilisers, pesticides and fungicides and is now essentially dead, its once robust structure now collapsed.

The system we bought into, funded, even championed year after year based on what we truly believed was the best advice, turns out to be not just less than ideal but actively detrimental to our business, our personal health and that of the planet.

We have no choice but to change. Choice was an opportunity that came and went at some point in the past.

That we are embracing that change positively, and with hope, because we can see it makes fundamental sense, simply facilitates the inevitable survival shift over which we as individuals now have remarkably little control.

Oddly enough though, our conversion to organic, regenerative farming practices wasn’t where the increasingly frenzied chat that I had stupidly unleashed into an otherwise fairly pleasant virtual room was going.

The argument had quickly descended into a rather uncivilised war of words. The participants on each side – and it really does seem that polarised – still haven’t a clue how those across the floor could get this so blatantly wrong.

Yet again, the debate had become a strange intangible creature obsessed with the features of its own arguments, rather than one that proposed a solution, or even acknowledged the question posed or evidence presented. Sound familiar? Maybe this is what response to threat looks like, whatever we perceive that threat to be.

Meanwhile, I don’t know whether I’m going to pluck up the courage to talk to school/work/family about meat-free days or not, to be honest.

All I know is that it has taken me a long time to fully appreciate the perils of a group chat.