I am walking through tall green trees. Around me the wildlife is vibrantly alive. From everywhere I hear birds singing. I have been walking all day and there is no end in sight. I take out my camera and try to capture what once seemed impossible. I can\u2019t believe that only fifteen years ago this didn\u2019t exist. Instead, where I\u2019m standing now, the forest was burning and around me soy monocultures and cattle pastures stretched as far as I can see (Vaccarezza et al. 2025).<\/p>\n
Now it is the year 2041 and the Amazon rainforest, the green lung of our planet, has fully recovered.<\/p>\n
For decades, we lived with a quiet contradiction: knowing that the destruction of ecosystems like the Amazon was closely tied to our consumption, while continuing to ignore its consequences. Vast areas of rainforest were cleared for cattle ranching and soy production, much of it used as animal feed for industrial livestock systems. Behind this expansion lay not only deforestation, but also the suffering of billions of animals confined and exploited within global supply chains (Springmann et al. 2018).<\/p>\n
The turning point was not a single policy, but a shift in human perception. Innovation in behavioural science helped confront cognitive dissonance at scale, making it harder for people to ignore the consequences of their consumption (Fechner & Isbanner 2025). This did not \u201ccure\u201d humanity, but it made denial less comfortable. Gradually, diets changed. Markets followed. Animal products became less profitable, then obsolete. And in 15 years the world turned vegan.<\/p>\n
The transition was not smooth. Resistance from industry, cultural attachment to food traditions, and political inertia slowed progress. Policies such as carbon pricing, deforestation bans, and subsidies for plant-based innovation were essential to reinforce behavioural change. Education systems also played a key role in reshaping norms.<\/p>\n
Standing here now, I realize this forest is not just a result of better policies or technologies, but of a society that learned to align knowledge with action.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
References:<\/p>\n
Fechner, David; Isbanner, Sebastian (2025): Understanding the intention-behaviour gap in meat reduction: The role of cognitive dissonance in dietary change. In: Appetite <\/em>214, S. 108204. DOI: 10.1016\/j.appet.2025.108204.<\/p>\n Springmann, Marco; Clark, Michael; Mason-D’Croz, Daniel; Wiebe, Keith; Bodirsky, Benjamin Leon; Lassaletta, Luis et al. (2018): Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits. In: Nature <\/em>562 (7728), S. 519\u2013525. DOI: 10.1038\/s41586-018-0594-<\/p>\n Vaccarezza Sevilla, Mat\u00edas; Pedreira Lucchese, Gino; Krause, Torsten; Garcia Alarcon, Gisele (2025): From pastures to plates: The thorny path to achieving deforestation-free cattle from Brazil to European consumers. In: Ecological Economics <\/em>230, S. 108524. DOI: 10.1016\/j.ecolecon.2025.108524.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am walking through tall green trees. Around me the wildlife is vibrantly alive. From everywhere I hear birds singing. I have been walking all day and there is no end in sight. I take out my camera and try to capture what once seemed impossible. I can\u2019t believe that only fifteen years ago thisContinue reading “Beyond cruelty and destruction: a vision of a vegan future”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[257,260],"tags":[279],"class_list":["post-4690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-post-2026","category-desired-climate-futures-2026","tag-desiredclimatefutures2026"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4690"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4690\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4691,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4690\/revisions\/4691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uncertain2degrees.blogs.uni-hamburg.de\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}