Name: Lucas Supan
Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Global Warming
Date of Fieldwork: February 9, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Joel Remland
Type of Fieldwork: Interview
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :
On February 9, 2022, me and Henry Hutchins met with Joel Remland, a former faculty member of LREI. Joel has been a vegan since he was a freshman in college.
He talked about how being vegan can help slow climate change, due to factory farms being a major source that contributes to climate change, from a lot of methane emissions from animals. Joel talked about about how to spread this idea, and how to suggest veganism to others to help protect the earth.
Joel says to not use angrily protesting, or using purely strong emotion, like many people do, instead of using thought out words, having a civilized conversation about veganism, when trying to spread the idea of having a vegan diet, to be more efficient in spread the main idea.
Joel mentions how a lot of people say they want to protect the environment by doing things like not using plastic items, but when it comes to changing people’s diet, many people don’t because they feel like they can’t change something as important as their diet or because the issue of factory farming isn’t as well talked about and known.
Other problems with factory farms that Joel mentions is that certain meat products, only one, could be made from many different animals which risks people getting illnesses from the food, especially considering the conditions the animals are put in, in factory farms. Also the workers at factory farms are put under pretty harsh conditions, with minimum wage.
So one of the main ideas is that everyone should consider switching or at least trying to switch their diet to veganism, because many meat or dairy products are made from factory farms, and this is not talked about as much as other causes of global warming because some people don’t want to have to realize this. But Joel says he does have some hope in this cause because many people around the world are becoming vegan or vegetarian. Factory farms need money to keep running, if they aren’t funded they will begin to slow down.
