I spent the larger part of the last decade not consuming meat. I like to think I chose this decision out of the goodness of my heart, but I was also 14 at the time and wanted to impress the environmentally conscious cool girls at school. I had heard all the things we all had, about the impacts of the meat industry on the environment, how by cutting out meat we can reduce our carbon footprint by 100 kgs of CO2 a year. 

Being vegetarian taught me a lot, primarily about discipline but then after a while it wasn’t discipline at all and it was just how I lived. 

For the most part I believed in my cause, that I was doing one simple task to better our environment in the long term. I was making a conscious effort to make change, but as I have aged perhaps, I have become more cynical.

The idea of altering my life, although on a small scale, to better the environment that big businesses and those before me destroyed had started to lose its sense of importance. 

It felt a tad selfish returning to consuming meat. I wasn't necessarily missing out on much, but it was as if I was feeling some kind of exclusion, having never tried certain foods or having to be the one person at dinner picking bacon out of the Caesar salad. 

The Idea to get back in the meat game came to me prior to my most recent travels, I was sitting at a potluck. I am aware of how early 20’s that sounds but the cost-of-living crisis has truly affected the dinner party scene. Nonetheless I was sitting at the dinner, eating some potato bake or something of that vein and was halfway through when someone stopped me and said. 

“Omg, lily there's bacon in that.”

I realised in that moment that I had lost my spark for caring; I was surrounded by those I had hopped on the bandwagon and become vegetarian with, and I was somehow the last one standing. But not only that, I realised I truly didn't care too much that I had just eaten bacon. 

I flew to Europe with the only other vegetarian I knew, and for the following two weeks I tried all the meat and seafood I had spent the past decade avoiding. 

The point I’m trying to make isn’t that I don’t think being vegetarian has a point, and I do hope that I had made some difference in the past 10 years making these alternative choices, however the more I would read about the impacts larger companies and governments were having on the environment the less I felt the responsibility for change to fall on individuals. 

When the students for climate change rallies were happening in 2019 I was present at every one, but since then I’ve seen little actual policy change take place that has made a larger impact, I shouted for the Adani mines not to go ahead; they did and are now in court over their failure to meet environmental conditions. 

The number of Australians who feel they can personally make a difference has fallen by nearly 10% in the last 2 years. It is some kind of paradoxical situation, I'm not alone with my ‘giving up' on making change, but others who once felt a drive to make a change too have begun to wither away. 

Having Australia be a country where climate change is devastatingly obvious has been overwhelming; however, it has made the issue of climate change, historically a politically contentious issue, a little more front of mind. 

Continuous noise of how we're not meeting the Paris Agreement measures, and we're not far off leading the world of Co2 emissions per capita, feels like I’m in an echo-chamber of how the future generations are doomed.

With all this evidence before us and still no great efforts or change taking place it’s no surprise myself and others have lost our spark, why should I make sacrifices, albeit small, when the government can’t even make one sacrifice.