...For our long-term survival as a species?
A little background. In 2002, I became curious about the optimal diet for humans and started reading everything I could find on the topic. Within a few months, that curiosity had changed my life forever -- placing me on a path that has defined my major definite purpose on this planet: Doing all that I can to help promote health, hope and harmony on Planet Earth
The first change for me happened in January of 2003, when I immediately shifted to a way of eating that was focused on maximizing the consumption of whole, plant-based foods. Without declaring myself vegan, I simply started eating in the scientifically proven manner that promotes health, reverses chronic disease, cleans out the colon, strengthens the immune system and effortlessly removes any excess weight.
It also cut my food budget in half.
So, why didn't I declare myself a vegan? Not wanting to digress from today's primary topic, I will revisit that question toward the end of this Memo.
The second change happened in May of 2003, when I read these two great books over Memorial Day weekend.
In the five months prior to May of 2003, I read about thirty other books on the topic of food and health.
Then I read the above two books that largely focused on the environmental impacts of our food choices. And that is when I had what I refer to as my blinding flash of the obvious when I suddenly realized...
OMG, We're eating the wrong food!
And unless we get back on the right track of eating the natural diet for our species, we're going to place something in jeopardy that's a lot more important than our physical health.
Our future as a species.
That was eighteen years ago, and a lot has happened since then, which brings up the third and final change.
The Third Change. From May of 2003 until late 2013 -- I spent more than a decade believing that if we could just eat the right food, that we humans could buy ourselves enough time to address all of the many unsustainable aspects of our 21st century lifestyles.
Relative to that effort of "getting the food right," in November of 2013, I helped organize and conduct a plant-based food summit that included several top officers from a handful of environmentally focused NGOs that the general public is trusting to help ensure that we are living as sustainably as we possibly can.
In short, we learned that the world's environmental NGOs were seriously shortchanging all of humanity because they were refusing to deal with the elephant in the room when it comes to sustainable living -- our universal craving for eating animal-based foods.
Why do they ignore the single biggest driver of climate change? Why is the topic not front and center on all of their websites? One senior NGO officer in attendance at the plant-based summit, answered that question candidly:
"If we got a reputation for being anti-meat, it would devastate our fundraising."
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| I could not believe what I was hearing! |
To summarize, the environmental NGO organizations that we are trusting to keep us on the straight and narrow when it comes to sustainable living, shamelessly admit that they are not telling us about the world's largest driver of climate change because of money.
That's when I suddenly realized that the NGO's were not serious about addressing the single most unsustainable lifestyle habit of their donors: their food choices. What an abomination! If they're not going to be upfront about the largest single driver of climate change, then why are they even in existence?
Eight years later, and I am still asking the same question. Meanwhile, the global consumption of meat, dairy, eggs and fish continues to soar -- pretty much in sync with the soaring GHG in our atmosphere.
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People seem to want their animal protein, even if it spells the end of humanity.
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That 2013 revelation about their reluctance to tell the truth about animal protein signaled to me that we were running out of time when it comes to successfully winning the war against climate change. At that moment, I realized that we were no closer to solving that monster problem in 2013 -- than we were a decade earlier when I first learned the truth about our food choices.
Looking on the bright side for me, that experience inspired me to start learning more about the "big picture" of our grossly unsustainable lifestyle and promoting ways to sharply reduce the damage that we were inflicting.
Now, eight years later, and after writing two more books, along with a few hundred blogs and
SOS Memos on the subject, I am sad to say that we're still trending sharply in the wrong direction. And I am beginning to fear that we Homo sapiens will not survive this century.
Fast-Forward to 2021. That animal-food elephant in the room is still wreaking havoc with the biosphere that keeps us alive -- and the world's NGO's are still not addressing it because of their fund-raising fears.
Their inaction persists, in spite of the fact that the damage from eating animal-based foods is even more severe than we once thought.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the recent peer-reviewed scientific paper by Dr. Sailesh Rao that makes a very strong argument that animal agriculture accounts for a whopping 87% of all human-induced GHG.
This very timely
six-minute video, published yesterday (5-17-21) by
Plant-Based News, features Dr. Rao talking about that paper -- along with related comments on CNN. Even Trevor Noah, host of
The Daily Show,
weighs in on the news.
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| 87%: Animal Agriculture Really Is A Killer... |
Dr. Gerard Bisshop, Executive Director of the World Preservation Foundation, further brings that 87% conclusion to light in this 9-minute video. He does a superb job of making complex things simple and I strongly encourage you to watch it.
He starts with the discrepancy between the FAO numbers from the UN numbers, the Goodland/Anhang paper in 2009 and the most recent position paper by Sailesh Rao mentioned above.
Click on this image to see 9-minute video from 4-27-21
In the interest of clarity. Whether the actual number is less than 51%, more than 51% or a whopping 87%, our love affair with eating animals is, without a doubt, the single largest driver of human-induced climate change. And it's all about what we're putting on our forks in the developed world.
There's more. In this short 5-minute video, Bisshop talks about the near-term impacts of reducing our carbon emissions too quickly. It has to with the aerosol masking effect of sulphur dioxide.
It turns out that a sharp reduction in the burning of fossil-fuel can make matters worse in the near term -- due to the loss of the cooling effect of the SO2 as explained in this short video.
Click on image below to watch the 5-minute video
The Bottom Line. It turns out that urgently cutting back on our consumption of animal-based foods is STILL, by far, the quickest -- and the safest -- way to slow down climate change -- and hopefully, it will be enough to prevent the extinction of Homo sapiens.
What about pandemics and their origins in the massive global industry that produces animal-based foods for humans? There's a new website that you should check out and share with others. (EACP) Eating Animals Causes Pandemics.
So how do we get people to start walking away from eating foods that are derived from animals? By quickly helping them learn a few 3rd grade arithmetic facts:
- On a per calorie basis, animal-based foods (on average) require over ten times as much land, over ten times as much water, and over ten times as much energy as do plant-based foods.
- By replacing all animal-based foods with lots of whole plants, a number of great things happen. In addition to helping to slow climate change, this way of eating will save you money, help you get off meds, enable your body to effortlessly seek its ideal weight, and will invariably lead to a longer, healthier and happier life.
- Full disclosure. You are likely to miss your favorite animal-based foods in the early stages. Prepare for that in advance and do your best to shift 100% to eating WFPB (whole food, plant-based) just as soon as you can. If you give it twelve weeks, I predict that you will never want to even think about going back to the way you used to eat.
Today, I will close by going back to the question that I promised I would revisit later in this SOS Memo. Here it is.
So, why didn't I declare myself a vegan in 2003?
I didn't then and I still don't. Why? Primarily because the word "vegan" conveys more about what you "don't" eat than what you "do" eat. For the record, I totally embrace the ethical argument for not eating animal-based foods.
Secondly, I like clarity and know that a "vegan" diet is not necessarily good for your health. That's because you could eat nothing but Diet Coke and potato chips and call yourself a vegan, but you'd likely be a dead vegan within a few weeks.
That said, just being a vegan doesn't ensure that you're consuming enough whole, plant-based foods to promote vibrant health, lose weight, get off your meds and enjoy the many other benefits that accompany your shift to the natural diet for our species.
