Naser Al Wasmi, a reporter for The National, chronicles his month-long mission to reduce his carbon footprint and make better environmental choices, despite facing much opposition to his endeavours.
In the past month I ate animals only six times, spent less than five minutes in the shower every day and drove for only a quarter of my usual road time.
My actions have offset about 950 kilograms of carbon dioxide, enough to drive to Cairo, and saved about 10,000 litres of water.
Although my challenge is done, I am writing this article having walked to our newsroom on Muroor Street, and with no plans of eating meat until the weekend, all while maintaining my socially acceptable hygiene with five-minute showers.
My colleagues, almost everyone I met who followed me as a reporter, my friends and my family were, to put it mildly, a little upset.
That is not to say I didn’t get the occasional whiff of what I imagine praise to be. But I was more often than not encountering people reacting as if to say, “How could you?”
I tried as much as I could to keep my choices to myself unless people asked, which is strange now considering I am writing about it.
Nothing annoys me more than vegans and crossfitters who lecture you on why milk will grow you “man boobs” and how their goal of clean-and-jerking the weight equivalent of a small family is well within reach.
Over the span of the month, it became abundantly clear that it was exclusively the vegetarianism that elicited the chastising reaction from people.
It was as if I was committing some sort of fundamental infraction of the human evolutionary code.
People hastened, at every opportunity, to remind me of how fundamental it is for us as human beings to eat meat because it was part of the development of our big brains and our tool-using intelligence and the pyramids. What?
Yes, I do not deny that. But if we are to talk strictly through evolutionary terms, they are also forgetting the infrequency with which we once ate meat.
To eat meat our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended huge amounts of energy chasing down animals. And if we want to talk about a closer frame of reference, our farming roots offered plentiful sources of milk, cheese and eggs.
Yes, we ate meat, but never has there been as much consumption of animals than there is today.
Nonetheless, I went through with it and, at the risk of sounding like a complete hippie, it has been one of the easiest choices of my life.
Water
The only challenging part was what most thought would be easy. I can manage the vegetarian diet during weekdays, in fact I am quite indifferent about it. When it came to driving, I went through the month using only a tank and a half of petrol.
But what really got me, what had me constantly questioning my responsibility to the environment, were the showers. Make no mistake, one can easily maintain proper hygiene with even less than five minutes under running water, but that is not what got me here.
For me, a shower is my reset button. The sensation I get from hot water is akin to what I imagine those red-faced baboons feel soaking in Japanese hot springs. So the five minutes for me was almost never enough. But doing it allowed my to save about 60 litres a day.
Japanese Macaque monkeys soak in the warmth of a mountain hotsprings at Jigokudani (Hell’s Valley) in Nagano Province of central Japan. Everett Kennedy Brown / EPA
Eat local and food waste
When it came to food and grocery shopping I had some realisations that raised serious doubts about the sustainability of eating local and, to be honest, towards the end I abandoned the idea entirely.
Through some research I found that growing food in the UAE, regardless of the agricultural method, will almost always be more resource-intensive than shipping or flying it in, because so much energy is used to keep greenhouses cool.
Yes, of course we should continue the process of researching and developing our horticultural expertise if only to uncover a more efficient way of growing food.
But local agriculture in its current state is inefficient and wasteful, and I would recommend our readers do so only during winter.
When it came to food waste, I didn’t. That’s probably due to the fact that I am an emotional eater who does not feel full until I want to pass out after a meal.
That also could have attributed to the slight weight gain. Nonetheless, the moral is: order and cook only what you’re ready to eat.
Driving
This was a little bit of a cop-out, to be honest, because I live 10 minutes’ walk from work. This challenge was done during beautiful weather and I am thankfully in good health.
Not driving when I could walk, or coordinating with my friends for carpooling was key. In fact, there are a lot more opportunities to share rides than we think, and people generally found it an inconvenience until they understood why I was asking for rides.
This makes me wonder, though. If the inconvenience of adding time to an otherwise straightforward trip was quickly dispelled when they understood my plight, then maybe carpooling is an attitude issue.
I was able to drive less than half of what I am used to, covering only 750 kilometres in the month and saving about a quarter of a tonne of carbon dioxide.
When I did drive, it was efficiently, rolling down the windows, not driving aggressively and generally just managing my drive time effectively.
Meat
By and large, the easiest thing to give up was eating meat in such abundance.
Make no mistake, anyone who has met me will know that I love to eat animals, but I had to change the way I thought about the delicious beasts.
To achieve that, it was important to begin to think about meat not as a means of sustenance but as a treat, as a special occasion that entails a certain amount of respect for the animal.
With every burger now, there is a sense of revelry and indulgence that actually makes them more delicious.
In terms of weight, yes I gained some, but like anything it took me some time to figure out how many calories are in certain vegetable dishes – such as paneer – and adjust accordingly. In terms of price, I have saved significantly.
Like any challenge it is a matter of choosing your battles.
I will continue with my conservative animal eating, for health and environment reasons, and I will continue my efficient use of the car, as I find both of these options quite easy and the most effective.
But I will not eat local and I will keep going with my strict rule of five-minute showers because, just like those Japanese baboons, we can all do only so much before comfort takes precedence.
That is essentially what it came down to, trading comfort with environmentalism.
I am not aggressively going to suggest everyone switch to vegetarianism, but knowing that if tomorrow we all ate a seventh of the meat we eat today, we could solve global warming without doing anything else.
Somehow knowing that we can actually stop this climate change catastrophe, and save this majestic planet, brings me comfort.
nalwasmi@thenational.ae
