Dear PETA;

I realize you're a single topic activist, and you've got a lot of appeal with a some very hot women. So it makes my bit of reasoning here all the more difficult.

Do you realize that pleather is plastic? That's right plastic, which is made from oil. Not only does it require gobs of the vile stuff for its creation, it isn't biodegradable. You heard me, plastic isn't biodegradable. So all the plastic that we make (even the stuff used in PETA endorsed pleather) will never go away. It will be in our eco-systems forever and ever.

Now let's talk about cows. A renewable resource. We've bred these animals into severe retardation, pretty much to the point where they don't know which way is up. Why not take advantage of this? They're little more than meat, milk and hyde factories on four legs.

Don't get me wrong, I like porn, and hot chicks in pleather, but don't you think you should be thinking a bit more globally. Holistically, one might even suggest. Thanks. And keep up the great work with the semi-nude ads. They certainly keep me entertained while I'm waiting for my size in leather loafers.

Hi, uh, Marcel?  I agree that PETA's endorsement of pleather is poorly thought out in ecological terms.  But I think you might want to be careful getting warmed up in defense of the leather industry.

Cows - or more specifically, mass industrial dairy and beef farming - have a highly detrimental ecological impact, as you'd realize if you thought about it a little more.  It's an industry that puts massive amounts of pesticides, hormones, shit and piss in our water systems and land, that puts methane gas into our atmosphere, and wastes loads of petrochemicals so that feed and shit and meat and leather goods can all be ferried back and forth, preferably in shiny plastic and styrofoam packaging.  

I agree that the self-righteous vegans who eat soy produced on Brazilian clear-cuts and wear crappily-made plastic goods that will just end up accumulating in a land-fill somewhere are annoying and self-defeating.  But the "global" solution is going to be a lot more drastic and complicated than leather vs. pleather in our bustiers.

Oh - and, do you really thing "retardation" is a good reason to dismiss a living creature's suffering?  On what basis, on what authority, can anyone say that a creature suffers less because of its relative intelligence?