Today I wore my Threadless “Stop destroying our planet. It’s where I keep all my stuff” T-shirt to work. Somewhat risky, perhaps, to show up at work in a politically motivated (although funneh) piece of clothing when you don’t really know the people you are working with. Still it could have been so much worse¹.

Everything went better than expected, of course. The project manager noticed the text and suddenly we were having an interesting discussion about the environment. It turns out he has both bought allowances in the European Union Emission Trading Scheme and he and his girlfriend have introduced two vegetarian dinners per week at home. Interesting.

Interesting, indeed.

I don’t really know enough about the emission trading scheme to say anything about it. And as many other Norwegians I’m skeptical to things I don’t know much about. What does it mean, in real life, that I buy emission allowances and become carbon neutral? I don’t know. I checked what I had to pay to get carbon neutral on Climate and Pollution Agency pages, and it’s really not that expensive. But I feel I need to read more up on that before I eventually decide to part with my hard earned cash or not.

What I can do, however, is to go the vegetarian route. My two big sins when it comes to the environment now is that I eat a lot of meat and that I use too much hot water. To stop eating meat and use less hot water are things I can do today. The main problem is that I really like the taste of hot, juicy flesh in my mouth and I love a long, hot shower.

Still, it’s possible to take baby steps. I very, very much doubt that I will stop eating meat entirely and a man’s got to shower, doesn’t he? At least that’s what I’m told when I don’t do it. However, when I met Karine this afternoon at a café downtown, I took one small baby step towards cutting down on my meat eating habit: I had myself a vegetarian burger.

And boy do I feel cheated!

If I’m to eat less meat, I need to find some more intriguing vegetarian dishes than that burger. Two large mushrooms squeezed in between two pieces of bread ain’t a meal - everything on my plate was a side dish. The whole thing took only a minute to prepare, though…

Anyway - I hereby start my search for a proper vegetarian meal!