Green Reasons to be Vegan: Climate Change and other Environmental Reasons to Choose Vegan, with Robert Baylis and Mary Begle

There are several reasons why increasing numbers of people are choosing a vegan lifestyle or, at least, adopting a diet based on plants. The ethical and health justifications for these changes have been well known for many years. The environmental rationale is not new either but, over the last few years, the supporting evidence has been mounting, especially with regard to animal-based agriculture’s sizeable contribution to climate change and ecological breakdown.

The speakers in this talk will:

1. discuss the climate change and other environmental aspects of diet;
2. reflect on some of the misleading arguments commonly pitched against the need to change diet for environmental reasons; and
3. demonstrate the connection between dietary change and elements of the Humanists International 2002 Amsterdam Declaration.

Mary Begley is a member of 3 Valley Vegans, and has been vegan since 1987. She worked with Sunflower Vegan Café, a campaigning café in Manchester, in the early 1990s. Since then, big pots of curry to feed the masses have featured heavily in her life. Mary sings with a community choir and is a member of a local Extinction Rebellion group.

Mary trained as a general and mental health nurse before switching career mid-life, studying English historical semantics and becoming an oral historian. She is currently a key worker with Afghan refugees, has 3 daughters and lives in Todmorden.

Rob Baylis became a vegan in 1984, four years after choosing to be a vegetarian.  He is one of the co-founders of a local vegan group, 3 Valley Vegans, based in West Yorkshire. He has a master’s degree in environmental policy and is professionally qualified as a Chartered Environmentalist through the Society for the Environment and the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment.

Before retiring from paid employment in 2020 for family reasons, he had worked in both the public and private sectors as well as in academic research and lecturing. He is now the host of a podcast about change called ‘Time is Sliding’.

7.30pm in the Denham Room of the Priory Street Centre, 15 Priory Street, York.