Can the world's young survive our mess?
Recent data suggests they doubt its possible
SOS #124 J. Morris Hicks (9-21-21)
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As a father and grandfather, I think about the plight of the world's young people all the time and write about them frequently. But so far, my message has not resonated with enough people to make a difference. |
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Maybe a little data on that topic will help jumpstart our "RAGE" machine when it comes to how our reckless and wasteful living since the mid 20th century have put young people everywhere on the brink of disaster.
What are the young folks thinking about the gigantic mess that they have inherited from us? This alarming article in the BBC last week sheds a bright light on that question. The piece is entitled:
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Climate Change!
Young People Very Worried!
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Here are a few bullet points from that article, one that was based on a global survey of ten countries, including the UK and the United States. The ages of the young people ranged from 16 to 25.
- Nearly 60% of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried.
- Three-quarters of them said they thought the future was frightening.
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Over half (56%) say they think humanity is doomed.
- Two-thirds reported feeling sad, afraid and anxious.
- Many felt fear, anger, despair, grief and shame - as well as hope.
- One 16-year-old said: "It's different for young people -- for us, the destruction of the planet is personal.
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Here is the text that appeared below this young man's picture in the article.
Over half of those surveyed said they thought humanity was doomed and that governments were failing to respond adequately.
I most definitely agree with the last part of that statement. But, it's not just the governments that are failing us. It has been a group effort for a long time. In addition to the many governing bodies in the world...
- It is the UN and the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that are failing us.
- It is also thousands of universities and millions of scientists who are failing us.
- It is also the environmental NGOs, like the Sierra Club and Nature Conservancy who are failing us.
- It is also the religious leaders of most faiths who are failing us.
- Finally, the global news media has failed to doggedly search, and broadcast loudly, the truth about the most important topic in the history of humanity.
So how are they all failing us exactly?
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For starters, NONE of them are telling us loudly and clearly about the single largest driver of
CLIMATE CHANGE!
NOT A SINGLE ONE!
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Why are they not telling us everything about the most important topics in the history of humanity? The reasons are very likely a combination of:
Ignorance, Greed, Power, Politics,
Fear, Control and Money
Thankfully, there ARE a few "big picture" scientists and engineers who are telling us everything we need to know. But there are not very many of them and they're not getting any help from the media in terms of educating the international public regarding this critical information.
One of those "big picture" scientists and engineers is Dr. Sailesh Rao, PhD, Stanford University.
In this recent peer-reviewed paper, he concludes that animal agriculture is responsible for a much larger share of human-induced greenhouse gases than previously reported.
Click on this image to access the report
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What about his conclusions? In the above paper, that was just peer-reviewed earlier this year, Dr. Rao concludes that the animal agriculture sector around the world is responsible for a whopping 87% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs).
The comparable numbers from the 2006 UN Paper and the 2009 numbers from the World Bank researchers were 18% and 51% respectively. All three papers concluded that animal agriculture is the single largest driver of climate change.
The primary reason for the huge discrepancy between the UN's 18% and the 51 & 87% numbers is that the UN's 2006 report did not account for the cumulative effect of deforestation associated with animal agriculture for the last 10,000 years.
Click this image to view the 2009 report conducted by the two World Bank researchers who concluded that at least 51% of all human-induced GHG were being driven the animal agriculture industry.
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On a related topic, here's an interesting factoid of which most people are not aware. Did you know that prior to humans and their animal agriculture -- the Sahara was once green? (2017 report from Smithsonian)
The Bottom Line. All three of the scientific papers described herein and conducted over the past fifteen years -- have implicated animal agriculture as the leading cause of climate change.
AND, it is the only major driver of climate change that can be lowered quickly -- simply by hundreds of millions of people taking action independently.
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So why is hardly
ANYONE
even talking about it? It's not just those six groups listed earlier who are mute.
I am talking about the fact that hardly anyone, anywhere, is making much noise about this crucial topic.
And, maybe that's why our young people are so pessimistic about their future.
Let's show them that we care!
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Maybe this new, eye-popping information from the world's young people will grab the public's attention in a way that no reporting has ever done.
Let's "just do it" for all of the world's young people. We adults are responsible for the mess in which we find ourselves. Now, it's time for us to take some serious action.
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There's another crucially important situation that hardly anyone is talking about. |
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Steadily increasing population and consumption in a world of finite resources |
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We're now approaching eight billion -- while still adding more than six million people every month -- expecting to hit nine billion by 2050 and ten billion by 2100.
I simply do not believe that Mother Nature will let that happen. To me, what we are doing is total madness and it does not bode well for our children to say the least.
Click on this fantastic video and watch the global population grow from 1 CE (current era) to 2050. Each new yellow dot represents one million people. You won't believe what happens around 1800, when we passed the one billion mark.
Watch this five-minute video now! Click this image.
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And don't forget what those young folks have to say. Here are the six bullet points again for your convenience. This is what they are thinking but they may not be telling their parents for any number of reasons.
- Nearly 60% of young people approached said they felt very worried or extremely worried.
- Three-quarters of them said they thought the future was frightening.
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Over half (56%) say they think humanity is doomed.
- Two-thirds reported feeling sad, afraid and anxious.
- Many felt fear, anger, despair, grief and shame - as well as hope.
- One 16-year-old said: "It's different for young people -- for us, the destruction of the planet is personal.
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For all the young people in the world,
let's turn off that Killing Machine quickly!
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The latest news on climate change is not good -- according to one of the world's leading climate scientists, Dr. James Hansen. From the linked article above at Inside Climate News, once again, animal agriculture was not even mentioned.
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What can you do? Show the young people around you that you are deadly serious about this topic. Stop eating meat, dairy, eggs and fish today and tell everyone why.
Stop being a customer of the "killing machine." Clean out your refrigerator and donate the animal-based foods to charity.
In everything you do, take a stand for the youth and take a stand for their future on this planet.
Tell all of your friends, neighbors and family members what you are doing and why. And send them a link to this SOS Memo (all memos are listed on this page)
Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious "conversations" expressed in this SOS Memo will soon replace the trivial topics that dominate a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.
I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your friends via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation with your group, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic. Here's an advance link to my 62 slides.
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The image above is a clue regarding the essence of my "family game plan" that is revealed only in my talks. I do not put that in writing.
Finally, please do everything you can to help spark the global "conversation" about our need to urgently transform our way of living into one that has a much better chance of keeping us alive indefinitely.
The billions of innocent children
of the world deserve no less!
I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested OUTCRY, that there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances of survival as a species.
To be sure, we must do a lot more than change what we eat -- and OUTCRY helps explain the "why" and the "how" of that proposition.
To my knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: Regarding the free Zoom conferences with your group, Send me an email and let's get started.
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Our book, for a host of environmental reasons, is only available as an e-book on Amazon. As such, it contains hyperlinks to hundreds of references and videos, is less expensive, does not kill any trees and does not have to be manufactured and delivered.
The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018.
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As always, I am just trying to help spark the all-important "conversation" about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, faster, better and bolder.
You will find that there aren't many books that cover both the health of your body and the health of your planet. This is one of them -- a book that my son Jason assisted me in writing. It was published ten years ago this month.
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What else can you do to help? Two things:
1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of "big picture" solutions that are crucially necessary for saving our civilization.
2. Share this BSB and my "Mama Ain't Happy" BSB with prominent journalists, thought leaders and/or elected officials whom you respect. They need to learn a lot more about the many reasons why Mama ain't happy.
Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth
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