Go Ahead, Mock Vegans: A Rebuttal of Sorts

A funny thing happened last week.

Columnist Farhad Manjoo wrote an editorial for the New York Times and took an interesting, uncommon position in it. “Stop Mocking Vegans” made a powerful case for ending the knee-jerk, collective rolling of the eyes over vegans and even dared to address the elephant in the room, which is that in a world of rainforests on fire, “storms-of-a-lifetime” several times a year, ever-shrinking finite resources and worsening environmental conditions that should terrify anyone paying attention, vegans should be listened to, not derided. Manjoo is, in their own words (the journalist prefers singular they pronouns), “barely, failingly, a vegetarian/pescatarian” so this isn’t defensiveness or being thin-skinned on the writer’s part. Manjoo identifies as an omnivore and fellow omnivores are the ones addressed in the August 28 opinion piece, outlining the deeply compelling case for moving toward a plant-based diet for ethical and environmental reasons.

As we watch the Amazon burn and we are warned of widespread climate refugees in the not-too-distant future, Manjoo posits that now might be a good time to cut the wires to one’s internal defense mechanism with regard to vegans. “There are many theories for why vegans have it so rough, but the one I lean on is guilt and cognitive dissonance. Many omnivores understand the toll…