Granted, I am six feet tall, but I think I’d probably be on death’s door before I managed to starve myself down to a size 10.

Lesson: even sustainable style is all about exclusion.

The proliferation of goats in the devveloping world is a complex enough problem, politically and economically. The animals are cheap to obtain, small, hardy, prolific and provide much-needed protein in the form of milk and meat so they are favored livestock in poor and environmentally marginal areas. However, the long-term damage they cause means that they constitute only short term nutritional “wealth.” Places like Madagascar and Haiti have suffered mightily from overgrazing by goats. But how can we, in the prosperous West, prevail upon struggling people to cut back on use of an environmentally damaging pastoral practice when we encourage that practice by overconsumption of a luxury good?

I admit that I own cashmere sweaters, purchased years ago, and they are warm and lovely. But, since I learned about the damage caused by their source, I can no longer purchase cashmere in good conscience. Unless this vendors’ products use recycled cashmere fibers, they should not attempt to market them as “sustainable.”