Crippling Impact of Ignorance, Fear & Greed
Why are leaders mute on #1 driver of climate change?
SOS #134 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (11-30-21)
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Have you ever heard the USA's Special Climate Envoy, John Kerry, talk clearly about the leading driver of climate change? Have you ever heard him call for the need to sharply reduce animal agriculture? If you have, I would love to see the video.
Likewise, have you ever heard President Joe Biden even mention the leading driver of climate change? Show me that video too. Biden, of course, is busy killing wild horses in order to make room for even more animal agriculture in the USA.
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As for the true leading driver of climate change, I am talking about the public's love affair with a steady diet of some combination of meat, dairy, eggs and/or fish at almost every meal. Most Americans under eighty have been eating that way for their entire lives.
So, why don't our elected officials, the ones leading the fight against climate change, ever mention the #1 driver? It's probably due to one or more of the following:
Ignorance, Fear, Greed or Lack of Integrity?
Giving them all the benefit of the doubt, I am going with ignorance. I would bet that less than 5% of the world's elected officials know the truth about the leading driver of climate change?
I also believe that their opinions and conclusions have been driven by what I have labeled the "protein myth."
It paralyzes the brains of billions of people and renders them unable to even consider for a moment, eliminating animal agriculture which is, by far, the leading driver of climate change.
Here's how I describe the problem in a nutshell:
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Even the rare world leaders who actually know all about the leading driver of climate change -- are reluctant to speak out regarding this unpopular truth. Probably because they are selfish cowards. Consider:
- They feel that it would be impossible to change the dietary preferences of billions of people.
- So, why take the career-ending political risk of speaking out against something as wildly popular as animal-based foods?
This leaves us in a conundrum. Our rare elected officials (maybe 5%) -- the ones who actually know the truth about the leading driver of climate change -- are not making much noise about that knowledge in the public arena.
Practically all of them are afraid to say anything negative about the most popular way of eating in the developed world.
With one notable exception. The Mayor-Elect of New York City, Eric Adams, is a man of great integrity who has a well-earned reputation for always "leaning into what's right."
He also has first-hand knowledge of the power of whole, plant-based foods to arrest or reverse many chronic diseases, such as his own experience reversing type 2 diabetes. He shares that story in this 2018 six minute video while he was President of the Borough of Brooklyn.
I featured his heartwarming brand of rare integrity in the two most recent SOS Memos:
Want to really get to know this new influential leader -- soon to be on the world stage? A man who is not afraid to tell the truth about the most controversial of issues.
Just click on the image below to view the mayor-elect in action in this November 2020 interview (about 30 min.)
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You might be wondering how the mayor of New York can play a pivotal role regarding the slowing or reversal of climate change throughout the world:
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Quite simply, as the mayor of the world's most influential city, his powerful disease-reversing story can influence hundreds of millions of people to start moving toward a whole food, plant-based way of eating.
- And, when they do, their healthier, disease reversing dietary choices will simultaneously be dealing a tremendous blow to the world's leading driver of climate change. That's what a call a huge win-win!
Mayor-Elect Eric Adams already has a reputation for leaning into what's right. So what could be more "right" than helping people around the world reverse their chronic diseases -- while, simultaneously slowing down the greatest threat to the future of humanity?
In a nutshell, how can his leadership in New York affect the rest of the world? By just being himself and speaking truthfully about what he knows is right -- people all over the world will take notice.
In 32 days, the Borough President of Brooklyn will be sworn in as Mayor of the world's most influential city. As he "leans into what's right" in New York, his powerful message will begin reverberating around the world.
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Meanwhile back to the science. What does the science have to say about the leading driver of climate change?
There have been three relevant studies since 2006. All of them have implicated animal agriculture as the #1 culprit.
In 2006, the UN FAO published a huge study (Livestock's Long Shadow) that concluded that animal agriculture was responsible for 18% of all human-induced greenhouse gasses -- compared to just 12.5% for all of global transportation combined.
In 2009, two World Bank researchers, Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang, published a paper concluding that at least 51% was due to animal agriculture. Here is the title page of that paper in WorldWatch Institute.
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One decade later, Stanford University PhD, Sailesh Rao took another look at the problem, focusing primarily on the opportunity cost of animal-agriculture deforestation around the world since 1800.
That closer look yielded an astonishing conclusion: that global animal agriculture is responsible for over 87% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Take just six minutes to hear Dr. Rao explain the results of his study to Klaus Mitchell, who does an excellent job of making this complex subject easy to understand for people of all ages.
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If you don't have time to watch this six-minute video now, please come back to it later. Meanwhile, here are a few key points from Dr. Rao as he spoke in the video:
- In the past, we've had different estimates, one from the FAO at 18% and then Goodland and Anhang had 51%.
- Because of those differences that were not easy for most people to understand, we decided to focus on the "opportunity cost" of the land use.
- Basically, bringing back the forests that were on that land before being destroyed for animal agriculture.
- The overall cost of cutting down all of those trees and not letting them come back is on the order of of thirty gigatonnes of CO2.
- So, in our study, we took existing grazing lands and we replaced them with the original forests where there had been forests in 1800.
- In the model, we just replaced each grid with a forest grid and added up the numbers. It's really not that complicated, right?
- And, that itself, was enough to reverse climate change.
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The opportunity cost of lost forests in determining accurate gas emissions turned out to be such a huge factor -- it became apparent that there are even greater forces at play.
When Dr. Rao says that there are "greater forces at play," he is talking about a situation somewhat akin to the old adage of the "fox guarding the henhouse."
You can see it for yourself by visiting this "partnership" page on the UN FAO website. These "partners" are the ones who urged a second look at the numbers that lowered the UN FAO numbers from 18% to 14.5%.
For your convenience, I have provided some relevant excerpts from that page below:
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Under the word "partners" in the above image -- is some text that is difficult to read. I will make it easy for you:
- The LEAP Partnership is founded on a voluntary and collaborative process between FAO and three main stakeholder groups and is based on the principles of equity and balance of constituencies.
- Three stakeholder groups, the private sector, FAO member countries and non-governmental organizations form the basis of this initiative.
- FAO is the convener of the Partnership. Being listed as LEAP partner in this page does not necessarily make the entity an FAO partner.
This list from that webpage comprises the "partners" in the private sector. It's a list of all the organizations who would suffer financially if people ate less beef, pork, chickens or eggs.
Check out the first five, representing five of those "foxes who are guarding the henhouse."
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The Bottom Line. Take a close look at those "partners" (listed above) who are part of the decision process when it comes to the UN's official position on what we should be eating: the International Meat Secretariat, Int'l Dairy Federation, Int'l Poultry Council and the International Egg Commission.
Their decisions are all about promoting the financial performance of the industries that produce, process, package and deliver animal-based foods -- the very same foods that promote chronic diseases in humans.
Their decisions have nothing to do with promoting health for humans or promoting health for the biosphere that gives us life.
The job of the UN LEAP "partnership" is to figure out how to calculate the impact of livestock appropriately so that the livestock industry flourishes.
It's like asking the tobacco institute if cigarette smoking is harmful. And they'll say, "of course not." They may even have papers telling you that Marlboro Lights will heal lung cancer.
It's interesting, isn't it? When people think of climate change, the first thing that springs to mind is not animal agriculture.
Mainstream media focuses on climate change. Why? Because they are telling a story of fossil fuels. They're telling a story of clean energy. So that requires the economy to grow.
That requires capitalism to still flourish. So it's about making money, doing electric cars, solar panels and wind energy -- as opposed to changing our entire lifestyle, changing our relationship with nature, changing our relationship with the Earth...which is what will happen when you discover that animal agriculture is actually the leading cause of climate change, the leading cause of species extinction, the leading cause of ocean dead zones and every other environmental problem we know.
For all of the above to be happening right under the noses of virtually all elected officials in the world is quite simply unconscionable to me.
And it is simply not right!
For the love of money and the retention of power, our elected officials all over the world have failed us.
And that's why it's so refreshing to hear the newly elected mayor of the world's most influential city stress the essential importance of...leaning into what's right.
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It's all very confusing, right? To provide a little clarity here before closing out this SOS Memo, I call on Dr. Gerard Bisshop, Dir. of World Preservation Foundation -- who sorts out the various studies in this April 2021 nine-minute video.
In it, Dr. Bisshop makes it crystal clear about the leading role that animal agriculture plays in climate change.
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Finally, I close out this SOS Memo with a personal anecdote on the topic of the day -- leaning into what's right.
In 1985, when I was in the process of hitting my stride in my business career -- my father, while visiting my home in Atlanta, told me something that I will never forget.
He began by noting that while I had been very successful in my career up to that point, he confessed that he had always doubted that I would ever make it to the top of any large corporation.
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It was not due to lack of brains, talent or hard work, he told me. It was because I was just "too honest" and, as such, would probably never be willing to "play the game" necessary to reach the CEO suite of any large corporation.
His assessment was spot on -- and I think about it often, especially on his birthday, which was yesterday.
His words of encouragement in 2005 may have had something to do with the warm feeling that I have today as I remember his legacy.
Although a career dairy/chicken/pig farmer and animal feed industry exec, my father told me over the phone about a year before his passing that he believed that I was on the right track about everything I was studying --particularly the power of whole, plant-based foods to prevent and/or reverse chronic disease.
Morris Adron Hicks was born on a farm in Mississippi in 1914. The picture above was taken in 2004 at his 90th birthday celebration, in Florida, not far from where he was laid to rest -- four months before his 92nd birthday.
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Want to send a link of this memo to a friend? It is #134 on this list of SOS Memos. Finally, contact me directly at the email address below with any questions you may have.
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: Big Picture Reminder. People everywhere are constantly talking about mostly trivial things. Only my professional friends, like Dr. Sailesh Rao, are mostly engaged in the never-ending process of figuring out how we can possibly survive as a species on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive.
In order to do that, we must first grasp the all-important "big picture" regarding how we got to where we are in the first place. The various links below will help you do that.
This first one, I just discovered last week, a YouTube video by Michael Dowd, a non-scientific researcher like me who does a very fine job of explaining the many facets of the obstacles standing between us and survival as a species.
Given our dire situation, we must urgently undertake the single most powerful step possible -- that could take place quickly -- an urgent, worldwide effort to completely eliminate animal agriculture.
Dowd has a pretty good handle on most things, but he seems to totally unaware of the simple fix for the leading driver of climate change.
That said, he does a terrific job of describing our ever-worsening dilemma. Click the link below to view this very informative 33-minute video, entitled:
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This next item is a free 83-minute documentary film that is all about the findings that were documented in Dr. Stephen Emmott's 2013 book. TEN BILLION. |
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This powerful film will certainly help more people grasp that all-important "big picture." I will continue sharing this link in my weekly SOS Memos >>>>>>
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More Data re Leading Driver of Climate Change.
Beginning in September of 2021, I have been including links to world-changing scientific information that thought leaders everywhere should read and and share with others.
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What can you do? For starters, you can buy the new documentary -- Eating our way to Extinction for $6 on Netflix -- and watch it often with your friends and family.
Also, you can:
- Share this SOS Memo with everyone you know.
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Get an e-copy of OUTCRY. Visit Outcry page on Amazon and get a much bigger understanding of the situation in which all humans find ourselves.
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Inform all the young people in your world that you are deadly serious about this topic. Urge them to read these SOS Memos and our latest book, OUTCRY.
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- Completely stop eating meat, dairy, eggs and fish today and tell everyone why you are taking such a "radical" step. You're doing it for the innocent children of the world.
- As noted above, do yourself a favor and make sure that your plant-based meals of the future consist of whole plants -- the kinds of foods that prevent or reverse most chronic diseases AND enable your body to effortlessly seek its optimal weight.
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A final word. Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious situations expressed in these SOS Memos will soon replace the trivial topics that dominate a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.
We must all start talking much more about what's really important. That is , we must start doing everything possible to maximize the chances of a meaningful and pleasant life ahead for the young people of the world.
I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your group via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic at length. Here's an advance link to my standard presentation: 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.
Want to share some of my SOS Memos with others? Visit my SOS Memos page where the most recent ones are listed first.
Finally, 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.
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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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