I understand, of course, that grain-fed meat is not the cause of the world hunger problem - and eating some of it doesn't directly take food out of the mouths of starving people - but it is, to me, a symbol and a symptom of the basic irrationality of a food system that's divorced from human needs. Therefore, using less meat can be an important way to take responsibility. Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

Fear doesn't have to stop us.

After the journey around the world, writing Hope's Edge, I began to see that it is not possible to know what's possible - and therein lies our freedom.

If we start with "limits" and a premise of scarcity and fear, it makes us fearful of each other, and that makes us vulnerable to anti-democratic systems.

History doesn't proceed in incremental little notches.

Making conscious choices about what we eat, based on what the earth can sustain and what our bodies need, can help remind us that our whole society must begin to balance sustainable production with human need.

The notion that economic life is a distinct realm, governed by immutable laws of narrow self-interest, is giving way to a much older notion: economic life is only one strand in the rich web of human relationships.