Climate Change Autoethnography

Positionality
Alone, I migrated from Jamaica to Canada when I was 17 years old in June of 2011. At that time, significant global efforts to mitigate climate change were already well under way. A subject which eluded me until my introduction to Toronto’s progressive culture. In 2012, I found myself homeless and sheltered with the family of a friend that I had made in my first year. My friend, which I will refer to as Karen, was vegetarian and we lived together for about 6 months in the Jane and Finch area. I’m not sure where Karen learned about Vegetarianism or climate change but she introduced these to me. I became vegetarian after being taught that the meat industry had huge negative impacts on Earth’s climate. I cared deeply about what impact my actions could have on nature and as such I conformed. Could I remain vegetarian long-term when some of my favorite foods include oxtail, jerked chicken and fried fish?

To mine and my family’s surprise, I remained vegetarian for about 7 years. I was vegan for only 4 months before deciding that cheese and other dairy products weren’t so destructive. That it was the mass production of beef and chicken that were mainly to be blamed. Subsequently, that gave way to me rationalizing pescetarianism a month or so later. Being able to indulge in fried seafood made it a lot easier to commit to what felt like a heroic stance for Earth, and like a protest against my premature concept of capitalism. However, I’d live for 6.5 more years with guilt and shame more than pride. I remember stealing opportunities to eat Popeyes Fried Chicken on many occasions. I could probably be seen purchasing my fair share of beef patties on Tinel’s surveillance footage, a Jamaican patty restaurant in the Kipling and Finch area of Toronto. I also remember going to great lengths to hide my meat eating from my roommates, something which required a decent amount of lying. I never had to lie to my family though.

My immediate family migrated to Toronto in 2019 and this only made my pescetarianism harder. Family dinners were extremely difficult and my discipline rarely withstood my mother’s persuasions. Encouragement like, “add only the oxtail gravy to your rice but not the meat,” soon led to, “come on, a small piece won’t kill you or everyone on Earth.” Figure 1 shows a christmas dinner that I shared with my family and it is centered with a large ham even though they were well acquainted with the fact that I was pescetarian. The ideas of climate change and vegetarianism were foreign to my family and I never dared to convince them to convert. I was outnumbered. Aside from that, my relationship with my body changed dramatically.

I lived with Karen for about 6 months before moving from Jane and Finch to Brampton and into my own apartment with roommates. I continued my pescetarianism and started playing soccer about 2-4 times per week during the last 2 years. Even though I cheated on my diet about 2 or 3 times per month with meat, I lost a lot of weight. I experienced things like chronic fatigue and cold hands and feet (even during warm weathers) for so long that it became normal for me. It was only when I met my current partner in 2020 that I started changing my diet again. He recommended supplementing my diet to combat my low energy. While looking for what supplements to include, I remember Google telling me that vegetarians usually lack essential vitamins and minerals, leading to symptoms similar to those of anemia. Soon after that, I read a book by Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf called Sacred Cow. This book made an ethical, environmental and nutritional case for eating meat (Rodger & Wolf, 2021). Rodgers and Wolf wrote that well-raised meat is good for the planet and for people to eat. It was enough for me to eat meat again.

Nutritional deficiency, location, education, and social pressure may have significant impacts on whether a person adopts an environmentally friendly diet, especially during childhood. A pro-environmental stance does not have to be as extreme as eliminating meat entirely from one’s diet. In fact, it may prove to be more beneficial to encourage a low (well-raised) meat diet that is culturally appropriate, since meat is nutritious and many people love eating it.

Methods
The current study employs a reflexive autoethnography approach, as well as an interview with Aiyah Vakir (a student at Toronto Metropolitan University). Autoethnography is a research method which seeks to understand cultural practices and insights by systematically analyzing one’s own experience (Hynes, 2022). The purpose of the qualitative research interview is to inform my body of knowledge and provide me with the meanings that life experiences hold for another person (DiCicco-Bloom & Crabtree, 2006), which in this case is Aiyah.

Data Collection
Aiyah was interviewed on November 7, 2022. The interview took approximately 6 minutes and Aiyah was asked 7 questions. The interview was recorded via a voice recording app (Recorder) with my personal cell phone. The recording was later transcribed by me.

DiscussionBackground
It appears that people first hear about climate change by learning about the terrible impacts that the meat industry has. Through land use, transportation, processing, packaging and retail, food production contributes to approximately 25-30% of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) (Colombo et al., 2021). Meat and dairy products account for more than half of that (Cole et al., 2009). While other industries have a huge impact on climate change, I was first made aware of the impacts of the food industry. Aiyah also mentioned hearing a lot about the meat industry and its harms. She exhibited worry about the ways in which the fast food industry package food with plastic. Aiyah rightfully highlighted that our individual choices surrounding food consumption all contribute to climate change.

Nutritional Deficiency
Diets, like veganism or vegetarianism, that exclude whole food groups may lead to nutritional deficiencies because of the low calcium, iron, vitamin D and vitamin B12 intake (Colombo et al., 2021). These findings are closely aligned with my own experience since a lack of vitamin D, B12 and iron could explain the low energy and constant cold hands and feet I experienced during my pescetarianism

Location
In the case of my family, I knew it would be difficult for them to change their practices. These were practices they’ve exercised their entire lives. Practices my mother learned from her mother, and so on. In a recent study that measured GHGE in Central America and the Caribbean, meat accounted for as much as 73.1% of GHGEs, even though meat constituted 7.5-12.7% of food consumption (Marrero et al., 2022). This implies that the goal for these regions should not be to eliminate meat from their diets entirely, but to adopt better food production practices and for individuals to be educated about which producers do these (and support them).
Environmentally friendly (or low carbon diets) can be adopted to mitigate climate change and encourage health, if they are nutritious, affordable and culturally suitable (Colombo et al., 2021). Other researchers have also shown how low carbon diets that are quite close to a region's custom habits can reduce an individual’s carbon footprint by up to half (Rancilio et al., 2022). Perhaps If I had mentioned these things to my family, they would have been open to change. I suppose I feared getting dismissed by them. Aiyah mentioned similar experiences of being dismissed when recommending better disposal habits to her male friends. After Aiyah told me this, it validated my fears. There are certainly more effective ways to incite climate friendly changes than trying to convince people who already express a blatant lack of concern for climate change problems.

Education
I have already alluded to the possibility that people might be more open to adjusting their diet if they knew that they didn’t have to stray too far from the foods they love and are accustomed to; if they had more information. It becomes clear that education plays a big role in more ways than one. I think the fact that my family lived in an urban community in Jamaica also plays a role. We didn’t get to see how our meat was produced. The production process of meat involves factory farming and a chain of industrial enterprises that create standardized products which are typically sold in supermarkets (de Boer et al., 2013), like the one my family shopped in. In this way my family was able to avoid linking the meat we bought with the actual killing of the animal. Earlier studies have found that reminders of meat’s origin inspired consumers to shop their meat from more ethically mindful and cruelty-free stores (de Boer et al., 2013).

It might be helpful to note that my mother didn’t finish highschool and was plunged into the workforce prematurely. None of my other immediate family members attended tertiary education. Earlier research shows that less educated people tend to stick to traditional diets, potentially because they were not exposed to other cultural foods, people or environments (Oladele et al., 2018). Additionally, less educated people may do this despite their traditional food having a higher cost (Oladele et al., 2018). All of these factors might also cause someone to not recognize their own power in mitigating climate change.

Aiyah pointed out that she did not believe her individual actions could make change by themselves, but could make impact if others made similar efforts. Aiyah reported that she learned about the effects of climate change in a university course and as a result she adjusts her lifestyle. It follows then, that if you were not exposed to formal climate change education then you are not likely to be concerned about climate change, and even if you are concerned you may feel helpless in the grand scheme of things. Research found that the idea that one can make a big difference when it comes to climate change (by eating 1 or 2 less meat based meals per week) was received more negatively by people who are less concerned about climate change, whether or not they cared deeply about nature (de Boer et al., 2013).

Social Influence
Prior studies show that children who participate in a curriculum that includes climate change education show more concern in regards to climate change. They were also more likely to foster climate change concerns among their parents (Lawson et al., 2019). Lawson (2019) also showed that Climate change education among adolescents reflects an age related influence since learning about this issue at this time will more likely lead to behavioral change.

The Meat of the Matter
Recommendations
While promoting dietary adjustments in efforts to mitigate climate change, it may prove productive to encourage a low carbon diet (which may or may not include some meat) that is culturally appropriate. This may look like supporting better food production practices, especially within wealthier countries that are able to contribute the most to shrinking the international carbon footprint since they have already solved food issues like malnutrition and feed vs. food competition (Rancilio et al., 2022). This could also be supplemented by utilizing food packaging that reminds the consumer about the meat’s animal origin. Personalizing the roles and fates that animals play may be useful in complementing efforts to raise consciousness about the environmental impacts of animal farming (Cole et al., 2009).

Government efforts to mitigate climate change may want to consider including climate change education into highschool level curriculum. Climate change education should employ motivational and value-based rhetoric since people are more likely to adjust on the basis of responsibility than on the basis of ‘self -sacrifice’ (de Boer et al., 2013). An emphasis on local, emotional and personal connection to the environment greatly increased sentiments of responsibility and empowerment (Cole et al., 2009). It may also be beneficial to promote low carbon diets (or vegetarian diets fortified with calcium, iron, vitamins D and B12) within these curricula in order to let children (and subsequently their parents) know that they can still indulge in their favorite foods with pride and joy while still making huge impacts.

References

Cole, M., Miele, M., Hines, P., Zokaei, K., Evans, B., & Beale, J. (2009). Animal Foods and climate change: Shadowing eating practices. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 33(2), 162–167. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1470-6431.2009.00751.x

Colombo, P., Elinder, L. S., Lindroos, A. K., & Parlesak, A. (2021). Designing nutritionally adequate and climate-friendly diets for omnivorous, pescatarian, vegetarian and vegan adolescents in Sweden using linear optimization. Nutrients, 13(8), 2507. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13082507

de Boer, J., Schösler, H., & Boersema, J. J. (2013). Climate change and meat eating: An inconvenient couple? Journal of Environmental Psychology, 33, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2012.09.001

DiCicco-Bloom, B., & Crabtree, B. F. (2006). The qualitative research interview. Medical Education, 40(4), 314–321. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2929.2006.02418.x

Hynes, M. (2022). Walk a mile in my shoes! an autoethnographical perspective of urban walkability in Galway. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 51(5), 619–644. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416221075324

Lawson, D. F., Stevenson, K. T., Peterson, M. N., Carrier, S. J., L. Strnad, R., & Seekamp, E. (2019). Children can foster climate change concern among their parents. Nature Climate Change, 9(6), 458–462. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-019-0463-3

Marrero, A., Anderson, E., de la Vega, C., Beltran, V., Haneuse, S., Golden, C., & Mattei, J. (2022). An integrated assessment of environmental sustainability and nutrient availability of food consumption patterns in Latin America and the Caribbean. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 116(5), 1265–1277. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajcn/nqac220

Oladele, C. R., Pathak, E. B., Yang, J., Nembhard, W. N., Sharma, S., Himmelgreen, D., Dagne, G., & Mason, T. (2018). Acculturation and dietary intake pattern among Jamaican immigrants in the US. Preventive Medicine Reports, 9, 80–85. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmedr.2017.12.007

Rancilio, G., Gibin, D., Blaco, A., & Casagrandi, R. (2022). Low-GHG culturally acceptable diets to reduce individual carbon footprint by 20%. Journal of Cleaner Production, 338, 130623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2022.130623

Rodgers, D., & Wolf, R. (2021). Sacred cow: The case for (better) meat: Why well-raised meat is good for you and good for the planet. BenBella Books.