TOTAL COMMITMENT

And so we go back to Greta and her environmental activism. I had to hand it to her, she put her money where her mouth was. She went vegan as she saw the connection of animal rights and the whole problem of agricultural and livestock operations within the bigger picture of environmentalism.

I consider myself a traditionalist, and with my being an omnivore, I am more than willing to find ways to come up with environmentally acceptable ways to have meat on my table. Heck, to be sure, I have no problem with having my steak grown in a lab, never having been part of an animal.

But the argument that Ms. Thunberg makes is about time.

We, as humanity in general, are running out of time – indeed, if you listen to the young lady’s arguments, it may well be that we have run out of time. It is entirely possible that we have condemned our future generations to suffering untold hardships while cleaning up the mess we have recklessly made.

And when it comes to animals and their rights, it is a matter of evolution – not a physical one, but one of philosophy and recognition. We already accept fur babies into our households, and we accept that many of the non-humans around us are aware on some level of who they are. And yet we still eat some of them. We already have the science and production capability to stop what would be seen in other terms as barbaric, yet we do not.

Ms. Greta’s argument is, then, about the lack of time. If these issues had been recognized much, much earlier, then we could have found ways to mitigate the issue in a slow, calculated manner. We wouldn’t need to have the shock treatment of having a teenage girl point the figurative finger at all of us and tell us all in no uncertain terms that we are failing to give their generation a future.

In the end, Greta Thunberg’s fight for animal rights, for the environment, and, ultimately, for the future, is an uncomfortable truth that we have to face.

So is Greta Thunberg a guru of the apocalypse?

No.

Perhaps she is a prophet who is trying her best to save animals, the environment, and ourselves from our own worst practices.