In a New Yorker review of Jonathan Foer's book "Eating Animals", Elizabeth Kolbert provides another poignant and moving look at personal responsibility.   I find the second to last paragraph particularly resonant:

But is even veganism really enough? The cost that consumer society imposes on the planet’s fifteen or so million non-human species goes way beyond either meat or eggs. Bananas, bluejeans, soy lattes, the paper used to print this magazine, the computer screen you may be reading it on—death and destruction are embedded in them all. It is hard to think at all rigorously about our impact on other organisms without being sickened.

I think about this very thing a lot. No just the cost on the non-humans but the cost to other humans. And the fact that most people avoid thinking about it, at least "rigorously," is precisely because most of them get sickened, and precisely why nothing ever really changes much or at least fast enough.  And it's probably why I'm often a bummer to talk to at parties.

Sigh.