If everybody would eat a 100% vegan diet, the world would be a much better place, period. No animals would suffer in the bio industry, no forests cut down to make place for agricultural land to feed the animals in the bio industry, no carbon emissions from bio industry, healthier humans, less cancer. You could even imagine less hunger in certain countries if we would fairly distribute the food that we so efficiently distribute to farm animals now. The many sport champions on a fully vegan diet proof that we are very capable of living a healthy life without letting animals and the world suffer.
However. It is not easy to switch to a full vegan diet. It is about changing and replacing habits, finding new products, developing new taste, discovering new family favorite recipes. And thus it takes time to make the vegan switch. And I feel we need to have more respect for this time when you are ‘in between’. The time after you’ve lost your ignorance, but before you have adjusted your life to your new standards. And this might take up to years, where you are improving every day, week or month, might even have a setback, you’re just not there yet. This time is the twilight zone.
The twilight zone isn’t only valuable when switching diet, it comes with many changes we will need to go through in the next couple of decades. Think about the switch from a growth economy towards the post growth or green growth economy. The switch from traveling by air as if getting on the train towards greener modes of transport, or slow traveling.
It will take time in the twilight zone, where we fail and adjust, where we have fallbacks and giant leaps forward. And what doesn’t help is polarisation in the debates around these subjects. We need to acknowledge the value of the twilight zone and how millions of people eating vegan a few days has a bigger impact than thousands of people eating vegan 100%.
So support your fellow humans who are taking big or small steps towards a more sustainable, nature friendlier, human friendlier and animal friendlier world everyday. In the end it will make a difference.