It's a lose-lose situation in the stereotype world.
Rémy & I just subscribed to VegeMag, a French vegetarian magazine that costs way more than it should, but welcome to the world of vegetarianism in France, I guess. If you buy into being veggie as "la mode" it will cost you an arm & a leg here (as will buying organic just because it's trendy). But that is a whole other story.
I open it up and one of the main stories is how AMERICA is evil and we are the hugest consumers of animal products and how poorly we treat our animals etc etc. And two pages later there is a huge spread about how New York is a "vegan friendly" city, as opposed to big European cities like Paris.
Make up your mind, stereotypers!!!
Welcome to my world here. I am constantly judged by everyone I come across. Firstly because I was born on U.S. soil, which automatically means I consume 100 kilos (about 220 pounds) of meat a year, drive an SUV, take a bajillion vacations in my personal jet every year, am an avid consumer and if everyone lived like me we would need 5 planet earths.
So then I say, hold the phone, I'm vegan, I buy only local produce (I try to buy exclusively from my region but I refuse to buy outside of France), in season and organically grown/with respect for the environment, I don't own a car and go everywhere on my bicycle or on foot, I have a garden and recycle or compost almost all of my waste, I try to avoid buying anything with packaging and buy exclusively second-hand clothes. And then people think I'm a freak and I get judged for being this weird vegan-creature.
I am sick of telling people I do not eat 100 kilos of McDonald's every year and then one sentence later having to explain to them "what I can eat" as a vegan because apparently in France no animal products means starvation. I am sick of telling people I do not drive a 4x4 and then one sentence later explaining that it IS indeed possible to ride your bike everywhere, even when it rains or it's uphill.
Then again, I would definitely rather be judged for being vegan/eco-friendly (considering these are life choices I have personally made) than for my nationality.
So let's give y'all the breakdown of exactly my carbon footprint for the past six months:
Based on how I was living for this time period, if everyone lived like me, we’d need 1.4 earths.
My ecological footprint breaks down as:
Services: 27%
Mobility: 2%
Food: 26%
Shelter: 18%
Goods: 27%
To support my lifestyle it takes 2.9 global hectares of the earth’s productive area (7.2 tons of CO2).
Annually I consume 1.72 metric tons of CO2. (The average footprint for people in France is 6.20 metric tons ; The average for the industrial nations is about 11 metric tons ; The average worldwide carbon footprint is about 4 metric tons ; The worldwide target to combat climate change is 2 metric tons.)
Boo-ya. Still have 0.4 of an earth to reduce and I'm not really sure how I can get it down much further but I sure as hell will try.
Go ahead, try it yourself!!!
