My Final "Lengthy" SOS Memo
Hail to the King and a new kind of message!
SOS #175 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (9-13-22)
This is my final "way too long" SOS Memo. As you might expect, it is all about the leading driver of climate change -- our food choices.

Due to popular demand, I have decided to shorten my weekly SOS considerably. It's not that the message is any less important, it's just that a shorter version might be read and acted upon by more people.

You see, I have concluded that most people would rather die than give up their favorite foods. That said, I figure that there will be no massive shift to 100% plant-based eating until two or three billion people have died from any number of climate-driven disasters.

Next Tuesday's SOS Memo will feature the top breakfast in England where the great environmentalist has finally made it to the throne, from which he will speak often about windmills and EV's.

But you won't hear him talk about the leading driver of climate change -- represented by this visual.
This is the famous Full English Breakfast which is of one the top seven British meal favorites -- all of which contain one or more animal products. To ask a Brit to stop eating all animal products is tantamount to requesting that she/he go ahead and perish.

Now, for that final "lengthy" SOS Memo
that I wrote before Prince Charles ascended to the throne

It's all about bribery. Realizing that a tiny fraction of the people in the developed will ever voluntarily give up their favorite foods, I have concluded that our only chance is to employ bribery -- a tool that will be explored below as I write about the "irritant" that climate change is for elected officials and corporate executives.

Consider this headline from the New York Times last week. It speaks volumes about the fact that world leaders are not really thinking of climate change as the existential threat to humanity that it is. To them, it is just an irritant that is bad for business.


  • A drought that has crippled economic activity in southwestern China hints at the kind of disruption that climate change could wreak on global supply chains.

World leaders see climate change as a pesky irritant that they must deal with in order to conduct business. Tragically, they all continue to ignore the leading driver of climate change, animal agriculture, for one of two reasons:

  • Either they are ignorant of its enormous impact or...
  • They know that they would quickly lose their positions of power should they try to tamper with something as wildly popular as the consumption of meat, dairy, eggs and/or fish among over 85% of the citizens in the developed world.

Whatever their reasoning, no one in authority is speaking out regarding the greatest threat to our existence in the history of humanity. And they're not likely to speak out anytime soon.
Also last week, this headline from Bloomberg News is similar to many articles citing the same bad news for the past few years.

Here's the deal. Most of the leaders and influencers in the world today are more concerned about the economy than they are about climate change and our future as a species.

And with articles like the two above, leaders in the business world, and in politics, can just throw up their hands as they have likely concluded that there is nothing they can do about climate change anyway.

On the other hand, I believe that we still have a chance to slow climate change but not without doing our best to obliterate its #1 driver. This world-renowned professor of ocean physics from the University of Cambridge below agrees with me as we discussed last week via email.
It seems that just a tiny few of the world's scientists are aware that the leading driver of climate change is animal agriculture. Meet one of the exceptions, a giant in the field, Dr. Peter Wadhams.

Since meeting Peter in New York a few years ago, I have been referring to him as the world's leading authority on the melting ice situation in the Arctic Ocean. A veteran of over fifty polar explorations, he is also the rare environmental scientist who totally "gets it" about food choices being the primary driver of climate change.

Here's what he had to say regarding what we can all do to fight climate change. Early in the powerful 2021 documentary film (now free on YouTube), Eating Our Way to Extinction (at the 6:43 mark), Dr. Wadhams summed up our situation thusly:

If you look at the impact that food choice has on global warming, it's very significant. Eating meat is huge for global climate -- and that's something where personal choice is the determining factor.

This is the only case that I can think of where individual human choice would have a big effect. It is our food choices.
Click on Image to Watch Movie on YouTube
Like me, Dr. Wadhams tries to maintain a positive attitude when it comes to our future as a species -- but he, too, is not totally confident that we will get our act together in time. In an email from him last week, he summed up his latest thinking thusly:

The disappearance of summer sea ice is likely to happen within the next three years and that will lead to a further acceleration of warming, but I don't think that that in itself will lead to the end of the human race. We may be given time to mend our ways and change our diets.

There you have it, from the scientist who many consider the world's leading authority on the rapidly melting ice in the Arctic and what that means for our future.
Sadly, few other scientists and world leaders are even mentioning the leading driver of climate change -- and NOW we're running out of time.
On that topic, there is an environmental scientist who Dr. Wadhams and I both know fairly well. With a PhD in range management, he is quite possibly the most knowledgeable scientist in the world when it comes to what the peer-reviewed journal literature has had to say about climate change for the past twenty years.

That rare knowledge ended up costing him his job at a prominent university where he retains the title of professor emeritus of environmental studies.

But that professor is not knowledgeable about the leading driver of climate change. I can say that because there are no reputable scientists writing peer-reviewed journal articles about the outsized influence of animal agriculture on climate change.

That kind of peer-reviewed literature is scarce. And our environmental scientist friend has chosen to ignore what there is: the 2009 Goodland/Anhang 51% paper or the Sailesh Rao 87% paper, published a decade later.

Regarding that professor emeritus, I have a personal anecdote to share about him. At his farewell luncheon in NYC that I attended three years ago -- when he was in the process of moving to Florida, I shared the title of the book that I was writing at the time.
Upon seeing the subtitle above, he literally shouted at me that there was absolutely NOTHING that we could "do about those urgent alarms" -- and that we were all doomed to extinction in the near future. Not wanting to argue with him in front of the friends who organized the luncheon, I just chose to quietly make this statement:

Well, you may be right about that, but your conclusions have not yet been proven to my satisfaction -- and I have quite a bit of skin in the game in terms of my own grandchildren.

As for that luncheon, the food was almost 100% animal-based and everyone there was happily eating it except me. Naturally, I chose to remain silent that day regarding the leading driver of climate change.

He and his partner now live fairly close to me in Vermont and I recently shared coffee with the two of them. He remains defiant about the role of animal agriculture in climate change and I simply choose not to argue with him.

His latest conclusion was stated at the 3-minute mark in a new YouTube video last week:

"I have complete confidence that there won't be a human being left on the planet in 2030."

Ouch, that's not far away. If you really want to see his latest video, just shoot me an email at jmorrishicks@me.com and I will share it with you.

The most troubling part for me is that this environmental scientist very well may be right about his prediction, particularly if nothing changes. As for what "could" happen, I sincerely believe that if several billion humans were to begin walking quickly away from eating ALL animal-based foods in the next three or four years, that we will be able to quickly reduce the effects of the leading driver of climate change.

Can we stop or reverse climate change? Not likely, in my opinion, but if we quickly get serious about eliminating animal agriculture all over the world, I believe that it could be possible.

FYI, those Vermont friends are now hosting "hospice" seminars to help people deal with the emotional burden of realizing that the end of humanity is rapidly approaching and will happen in less than ten years.
Climate Change Reality
According to my research, we only have one chance to stop, reverse or slow climate change enough to prevent the collapse of our civilization and the demise of Homo sapiens -- and the clock is ticking.
That single chance hinges on our ability to quickly convince billions of people in the developed world to shift to a health-promoting, cost-saving, climate change-reversing way of eating.

Many esteemed scientists and medical doctors have been preaching the "gospel" on this subject for well over thirty years, yet we've only managed to convince a tiny fraction of the population to shift to a whole food, plant-based way of eating.

I am one of that tiny fraction and it's the best decision I have ever made. My BMI is at the optimal level, I take no meds and during the past twenty years, I have saved over one hundred thousand dollars by choosing to eat only plant-based foods.

And no, I don't miss the greasy foods I used to eat. In fact, it makes me sick just to think about eating them now.

As for the evidence behind the natural diet for our species, we're not talking about a bunch of kooky quacks; we're talking about Cornell, the Cleveland Clinic and the White House. The image blow is what I call my "credibility" slide that I use in my public talks. These guys are the real deal.
Dr. Campbell first noticed the connection between animal protein and cancer growth in the early seventies and has been studying, expanding and writing about that connection for forty years. I served on his board of directors for six years and have considered him a dear friend for over fifteen years.

Dr. Esselstyn and Dr. Ornish have also been promoting the plant-based method of chronic disease reversal for over thirty years -- yet there are still less five percent of the population in the developed world who have been persuaded to shift completely to the powerful whole food, plant-based way of eating.

What will it take? I am talking a 100% shift to plant-based eating by ALL humans who have access to those kinds of foods. And it must begin happening soon, but I don't think that it will. Here's why:

We definitely cannot depend on these two massive industries listed below who are responsible for the worldwide mess in which we find ourselves. There is just too much money riding on maintaining the status quo: Keep feeding the people foods that make them sick so that the healthcare industry can make more money trying to keep them alive.

If everyone ate like me and the three brilliant experts pictured above, these two categories of corporations would rapidly go out of business.

  • The HUGE corporations that produce all of that animal-based foods. They would all simply disappear completely before 2030.
  • The healthcare industry that treats & manages the many diseases that are driven by animal based foods -- would be automatically downsized by over 70 percent.
So, how can we sharply downsize the above two industries? How can we influence people everywhere to shift to that magical way of eating that will prevent or reverse most of their chronic diseases?

Since we cannot depend the media, the heads of state, the U.S. Congress or the worldwide collegiate academia to jolt us into action on climate change, I think it's time for a totally radical approach to the single most important situation that humanity has ever faced: the rapid downsizing and the eventual elimination of the single most powerful driver of climate change.

Stated another way, how do we destroy the annihilators of the human species?
How in the world can we influence enough people to stop eating animal-based foods?
Maybe with Bribery!
Give 'em the food! That's right, it may be time to start paying people to stop eating animal-based foods by offering them completely FREE -- all of the whole, plant-based foods that they can eat, provided that they stop eating ALL animal-based foods within 90 days.

So, who will be writing those checks? It won't be the federal government and it won't be the giant food companies or the almighty "disease management" industry.

It will likely be a few ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations who are either already enlightened to the leading driver of climate change or soon will be.

Sometime soon, a few of those wealthy individuals might want to get together and talk about their options. Many of them may be worth north of ten billion dollars and some of them may have net worths approaching a half-trillion or more.

But what good is MONEY of any kind
when our civilization collapses?

We'll tell those high rollers: You can't eat all that money and you can't spend it after civilization collapses. But by spending it now, you could very well be the small, courageous group that stepped up and prevented the near-term extinction of humanity.
The Bottom Line
We humans are in big trouble and none of our leaders are even talking about the only possible chance we have of slowing climate enough to prevent our near-term demise.
As for the group of thoughtful, ultra-wealthy individuals above, perhaps a dozen of them could join together and form some kind of giant foundation aimed at promoting whole, plant-based eating all over the world. I see their mission as twofold:

  • A giant, never ending, media campaign to promote the truth about what is at stake regarding our food choices.
  • Management of the urgently executed global process of providing FREE, health promoting/planet healing food all over the world.

I have been writing and speaking about this topic for almost two decades and am deeply saddened by the fact that absolutely NO ONE in authority, ANYWHERE, is even talking about the most important situation in the history of humanity: Our rapid demise as a species and what we can do about it.

Sadly, many big-picture thinkers are predicting a total collapse of our civilization well before the end of this century and a growing number are predicting a collapse prior to 2030. What will it take to wake us up to the obvious?

You may be wondering: how realistic is it to think that a dozen or so multi-billionaires will step forward and bankroll a plan to put whole, plant-based foods in the hands of the masses?

It all depends on leadership. If we could enlighten Apple CEO Tim Cook on this subject, I believe that he could attract another eleven billionaires to the table. I wrote about that possibility in March of 2022.

Can you think of a better way for a dozen billionaires to spend their money? I know it sounds like a long shot, but do you know of any other ideas that you think might work better?

Let's say we (with Tim Cook's help) are successful in getting a dozen billionaires to step forward and talk about what we can do. Perhaps they would decide to partner with Amazon to deliver FREE whole, plant-based foods to anyone who signs a pledge that they will stop eating all animal-based foods within 90 days.
Perhaps they could require that Amazon verify that all of those food recipients have first read the two FREE books below.

The first book will help them understand the "big picture" dilemma in which we find ourselves and the second one will show them exactly how to eat at the 4Leaf level, which will enable them to get off most, if not all of their prescription medications.

We're talking FREE, FREE and FREE. Free food, free books and free access to the 4Leaf Survey that will help all food recipients understand how close they are now eating to the optimal diet for humans. They just visit 4leafsurvey.com and answer twelve multiple choice questions. In so doing, they will be able to determine their 4Leaf score in less than two minutes.

The free 4Leaf Guide below, co-authored with a medical doctor, will tell them exactly how to reverse almost any chronic disease and how to promote optimal health for themselves and their families. Learn more about the 4Leaf approach to healthy eating at 4leafprogram.com

Hopefully, there is someone, somewhere reading this SOS Memo -- who has the connections to get us a four-hour session with Tim Cook in his HQ office at Apple Park sometime soon.

Our group will consist of Dr. T. Colin Campbell, James Cameron, Dr. Peter Wadhams, Dr. Sailesh Rao, Jeff Anhang and yours truly (a fellow IE graduate of Auburn University).

Let's Make This Happen!
As stated earlier, this SOS Memo is the 175th one that I have written since April of 2019. And it is the last one that will require more than five or ten minutes to read.

Although the SOS Memos of the future will be fairly short and more entertaining, I will continue to provide lots of FREE data and "big picture" at the end of each one, beginning with these books. After the books...scroll on down to the:

"Big Picture" Data and Video Section

In closing, do you want to do your part to help people get healthy...while slowing, stopping or even reversing climate change at the same time? Then, share this SOS Memo and these two FREE books with everyone you know.
FREE: Two "Big Picture" Books
Our health, our planet and climate change
To our knowledge, OUTCRY is the only book ever published that features a summary of "outcries" from the natural world, along with consensus conclusions of nine big picture scientists regarding our dilemma — AND an envisioned sustainable civilization of the future -- using today’s technology.
A few weeks ago, we began giving this book away free of charge. Just click on this OUTCRY image and start reading.

We decided to start giving it away because, as Jeremy Rifkin said early in this recent 15-minute video that was moderated by Kate Winslet, "the most important info in all of humanity is going undiscussed."

We're talking about the crucial information regarding how we can possibly slow or stop climate change within a few years.

Want to help relieve the desperate situation in which we find ourselves, read OUTCRY as soon as you can and send it to everyone you know. Just click on the book cover above.
Here is another book that we recently began offering FREE to the world public: the 4Leaf Guide that I published with Dr. Kerry Graff in 2015.


This two-hour read is still highly relevant, focusing on helping people take charge of their health and reverse chronic disease by urgently shifting to a whole-food, plant-based way of eating. 

A fringe benefit of their efforts is the steady downsizing of the leading driver of climate change: animal agriculture. Merely suggesting that the masses cut back on their meat/diary/egg/fish consumption will accomplish very little. 

We want them to completely eliminate all animal-based foods from their diet. Yes, that included cheese, eggs and all forms of seafood. 

For your children and grandchildren, just do it!
Please share today's timely SOS with everyone.

Click the image below to hear my recent (May 2022) 
45-minute talk regarding much of what has been covered in my recent SOS Memos.
Don't have time to watch the entire Honolulu video? Click here to view all 60 slides in that talk

Finally, please contact me about arranging a FREE "live" Zoom talk for your group. They will get a lot more out of my talk if they have read our two FREE books in advance of my talk.

Sincerely, J. Morris (Jim) Hicks

PS: Scroll on down for more "big picture" information that is mainly in the form of powerful videos, most of which are free.

For a concise summary of "big picture" information about our situation, take a look at the landing page of my primary website that I recently updated. Just click hpjmh.com
What about the "preservation" of civilization?
To clarify, we're not trying to preserve civilization as we know it. Because what we have now is extremely wasteful, harmful and grossly unsustainable. It's an incredibly reckless way of living that is now threatening our very existence as a species.

We're talking about replacing it with an entirely new, ultra-green civilization of the future -- and we do our best to paint a picture of that envisioned way of sustainable living in OUTCRY. For what one Ohio State professor emeritus of history had to say about that book on Amazon, click here.
As for making our stand on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive, this "Big Picture" section below will provide you with handy reference materials on this most crucial of all topics.
"Big Picture" Data and Video Section
Beginning with the timeline of research
Five World-Changing Films
That People Everywhere Must See
Film #1 in 2014
In 2014, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn produced their first documentary film Cowspiracy. Executive producer is Leonardo DiCaprio, it runs 90 minutes and has been on Netflix since 2015. In 2020, I met Kip and Keegan in Sedona where I was honored to be able to speak at the same conference with them and other great leaders in this movement like Dr. Sailesh Rao and Dr. Michael Greger.
Film #2 in 2017
Also on Netflix, Kip and Keegan teamed up again in 2017 to produce What the Health, which is also on Netflix. It runs 92 minutes and may be the best documentary ever that focuses on the health reasons for choosing to eat plant-based. Click here to watch the short trailer. You can also watch the full movie for free on Vimeo.
Film #3 in 2021
In 2021, Kip Anderson teamed up with British filmmaker Ali Tabrizi, to produce Seaspiracy, an 89-minute film that vividly and alarmingly reveals what is at stake when it comes to the crucial importance of our oceans to our future as a species. Most people have no idea regarding the environmental horrors of commercial fishing -- a disgusting industry that kills dolphins by the thousands and tosses them back into the ocean. It runs 90 minutes on Netflix. Click here to view the trailer.
Film #4 in 2021
As our situation becomes more desperate, the documentary films become more terrifying. As alluded to earlier, we are literally Eating Our Way to Extinction, a process that is vividly covered in this 2021 film (81 minutes). Narrated and produced by Kate Winslet, you can watch this great film on Amazon Prime or on YouTube for $3.99. The great ocean scientist and former head of NOAA, Dr. Sylvia Earle lends powerful credibility to such a crucial topic.
Film #5 in 2022
This new film (89 minutes) features a young activist who travels around his country, New Zealand in an effort to find out the truth about the horrors of the dairy industry in his native land.

The film uncovers alarming information about the environmental and health impacts of the industry -- leading up to the discovery that we are on the edge of the biggest global disruption of food and agriculture in history. This new film is now available for free at waterbear.com
Grasping the "Big Picture"
These 2 films will help in understanding
our unprecedented dilemma.
This 83-minute documentary is all about the findings that were documented in Dr. Stephen Emmott's 2013 book. TEN BILLION.

He brilliantly describes the grossly unsustainable way of living that has brought us to the emergency situation in which we find ourselves. Since I met him in London in 2013, he has become much more serious about the need to abolish the practice of eating meat, dairy, eggs and/or fish at almost every meal.

Just click on the hourglass image. Dr. Emmott delivers a very compelling message from the stage of a theater in London. This 2013 film is still relevant and will certainly help more people grasp that all-important "big picture."
Finally, this half-hour video was published in November of 2021. It was produced 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 our survival as a species.

As do practically all researchers, Dowd focuses entirely on the problem; not the solution. I prefer to focus on both.
What else can you do?
Probably a lot more than you think
  • Start with the new documentary (Film #4) mentioned earlier -- Eating our way to Extinction for $6 on Netflix. Watch it often with your friends and family.
  • Share this SOS Memo widely: Certainties, Uncertainties & Priorities by J. Morris Hicks.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested this book that there would be a more robust conversation around the world regarding our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world.

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.


The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018.
  1. Creative "Idea" for Saving our Civilization (9-21-18)
  2. A Prayer for All Faiths. Taking Responsibility (11-9-18)
  3. If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy! Deming (12-7-18)
  4. How "Green is Green Enough? (12 20-18)
  5. In the age of Earthism, what about governance? (12-26-18)
  6. "Successor" Civilization? Dr. Rupert Read. (1-24-19)
  7. "I don't want to talk about it." Taboo. (2-7-19)
  8. A Change of Heart on Biosphere 2 (4-11-19)
  9. SOS #1 Doing our "best" won't get it done. (4-18-19)
  10. SOS #7 Willy-Nilly Planet Stewardship (5-30-19)
  11. SOS 13 Donkeys, Spaceships and Survival (7-10-19)
  12. SOS 21 Why Don't We Dream BIG? The GBN? (9-4-19)
  13. SOS 53 Outcry debuts on Earth Day 50th (4-22-20)
  14. SOS 129 Urgent Pre-COP26 message to the world (10-26-21
  15. SOS 131 Anger, Nausea & Disappointment -- COP 26 (11-9-21)
  16. SOS 132 Emerging Ray of Hope for Humanity. Mayor (11-16-21)
  17. SOS 133 Powerful, world-changing integrity (11-23-21)
  18. SOS 134 Crippling impact of ignorance, fear & greed (11-30-21)
  19. SOS 135 The sex, science and supper solution (12-7-21)
  20. SOS 136 Failure of the 4th Estate re climate issues (12-14-21)
  21. SOS 137 Slowing climate change should've been easy 12-21-21
You can join my mailing list and/or find all of my previous postings by visiting the SOS Memos page on my website. 
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