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In 2006, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations released a report called Livestock’s Long Shadow: Environmental Issues and Options. I might have heard of the report in passing news articles over the years, but it really wasn’t till the summer of 2009 when I read an article discussing the significance of the report that I paid any real attention to it.

I had already sold my car at the beginning of the summer as an environmental and social experiment where I was determined to live in Los Angeles for 6 to 12 months with a bus pass and my bicycle as my primary transportation. So when I read the article referencing the report, there was one key idea that grabbed me and wouldn’t let go: you can do more for the environment by reducing your consumption of meat than you can by getting rid of your car.

My sister had been vegetarian for five years, but it wasn’t until later that I became curious about vegetarianism and veganism. I already had a handful of friends who fell into one of those camps and I even had recently began to gain a better understanding, if only cursory, of the complex issues behind food in general.

But that idea that I could do more to impact the world with what I did or didn’t eat than anything else was eye-opening.

From there I began to carefully consider what I ate, while also searching out as much information as possible on the subject of food. Policy, economics, globalization, poverty, health, the industry… it was my own food revolution that went beyond anything Jamie Oliver might tackle on television.

I had already begun to have a fundamental shift in thinking prior to Livestock’s Long Shadow, both about what I wanted to do with my life and how to go about it, but the UN report cemented in my mind what needed to happen, and opened up new areas that I’d been willing to ignore before. Ignorance, as they say, is bliss — and I realized that had to be fought just as desperately as corruption, poverty, and violence. To start, I had to fight it in myself.

Real change, I realized, can only come about from asking the hard and uncomfortable questions, and giving honest answers. Our world and our lives are so incredibly interconnected that even inaction constitutes an action — and that is something we all need to be aware of.

Something Gandhi said comes to mind when considering this interconnectedness and dependency, and why things matter, even when you don’t see an immediate result:

“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

In this new way of thinking, I’ve realized it is in fact much harder to not attempt to make a difference, than to challenge myself personally. It’s harder for me to willfully ignore what my actions and inactions amount to. After all, the legacy we leave the world’s children is determined by our choices today and we are obligated to ensure it is a worthwhile one.

This was originally written in March 2010.