stupid human tricks and grumpy hummous

This is a great article. It's George Monbiot covering a Channel 4 "documentary" about how climate change might not reeeeeeeeeeeally be our fault. Uh... I think his statement about watching a preview of a film called The Age of Stupid is particularly astute, even if it's the kind of accusation that people will rile against (as they slurp their $5 mocha in a disposable cup on the way to their air-conditioned car to drive 6 blocks):

The most powerful story of all, endlessly narrated by the hired hands of the fossil fuel industry, just as it was once told by the sugar slavers, is that we are both all-important and utterly insignificant. We are too important to be denied any of the delights we crave, but too insignificant to exert any impact on planetary processes. We fill the whole frame of the story when it suits us and shrink to a dot when that scale is more convenient. We are capable of occupying both niches simultaneously.

This is pretty much how I see people's carnism. I often hear from omnivores "oh, I like cheese too much to ever be vegan", or "I like leather too much to not use it". Yup. In other words "I am so important that I kill needlessly for my palate and kinks". This is often coupled with a denial of the atrocities committed by the animal-industrial complex... "oh, I only buy free-range/organic meat" or "I don't eat that much meat/dairy/eggs/insert random animal product here". If you ask, it's pretty rare that omnis who consume these "ethical" animal products have actually gone through any trouble to find out how the animals are treated, choosing instead to believe whatever the propaganda mill of the company that stands to make a profit from said products tells them. Because a company would never lie to you in order to make money, would they?

People are good at denial and ego. Yay us.

And those of us who "like meat too much to go vegan"... apparently people can't actually tell the difference between meat and vegetarian (vegan?) sausage anyway. So give up the lame excuses, okay?

The urge to bang my head on the wall is so strong, I can't even post a bad food picture. Here, have a pictureless hummous recipe:

For pomegranate hummous: Blend a whack (2 cups) of cooked chickpeas with about 2 tbs of pomegranate molasses, 1.5-2 heads of roasted garlic, salt, a few tbs of nutritional yeast, a tbs or so of tahini, a whole lemon worth of juice, and 1-2 tsps of dry-roasted ground cumin. If it's too stiff, use water or olive oil to make it the consistency you want. I use water. This goes really really well with red peppers. In fact, I may have eaten an entire red pepper, using this hummous as dip, while I wrote today's rant.