James E. McWilliams, an associate professor of history at Texas State University at San Marcos and author of Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly, writes in today’s Washington Post on what’s missing from the environmental movement today:

Agribusiness has been vilified of late by muckraking journalists, activist filmmakers and sustainable-food advocates. We know that something has to be done to save our food from corporate interests. But I wonder — are we ready to do what must be done? Sure, we’ve been inundated with ideas: eat local, vote with your fork, buy organic, support fair trade, etc. But these proposals all lack something that every successful environmental movement has always placed at its core: genuine sacrifice. Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change.

Perhaps this a growth industry for Al Gore: agribusiness offsets?