Michael Pollan and the Hummer-Driving Vegan

Pollan himself later asked PopTech to remove his mention of the (very) hypothetical vegan Hummer driver. And he wrote to Pasick, saying, "I don’t feel comfortable defending it" because it is "much more important to keep the focus on the central thrust of the environmental case against eating industrial meat, which is not in dispute and certainly does not stand or fall on the case of the vegan Hummer driver."

Pollan will no doubt be much more careful in the future to vet his examples. In the meantime, though, the anti-Pollan forces in the industrial-food industry have some fresh ammo.

Eshel took to the comments section of Pasik's post to say that "You cannot be an environmentalist, you can’t even remotely claim to be anything but a selfish lunatic, if you drive a Hummer." But, he added, "You CAN be a meat eating environmentalist. You will have to work extra hard in other fronts, but it’s not impossible."

Or you can follow the advice of commenter Organik, who wrote: "Of course there’s nothing wrong with being vegan AND driving a Prius, which is my personal environmental choice."