“Have the courage to face the truth” – W Clement Stone.

Share Vega’s message about animal agriculture and climate change.

Share Vega’s message about Food Healers.

Dear Climate Healers Family,

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Living Planet Report of 2024 (LPR2024) landed with a thud in our newsfeed yesterday.

Quoting from the report,

“Over the past 50 years (1970-2020), the average size of monitored wildlife populations has shrunk by 73%, as measured by the Living Planet Index (LPI). This is based on almost 35,000 population trends and 5,495 species of amphibians, birds, fish, mammals and reptiles. Freshwater populations have suffered the heaviest declines, falling by 85%, followed by terrestrial (69%) and marine populations (56%).

At a regional level, the fastest declines have been seen in Latin America and the Caribbean – a concerning 95% decline – followed by Africa (76%) and the Asia and the Pacific (60%). Declines have been less dramatic in Europe and Central Asia (35%) and North America (39%), but this reflects the fact that large-scale impacts on nature were already apparent before 1970 in these regions: some populations have stabilized or increased thanks to conservation efforts and species reintroductions. Habitat degradation and loss, driven primarily by our food system, is the most reported threat in each region.”

It was encouraging that the report identified the food system as the primary cause of the ecological crisis. Therefore, I immediately flipped to the food system section in Chapter 4.2 of the report, especially the subsection on page 65 entitled,

“Food system transformation: what’s needed?”

I was eager to see if it recommended Veganism as a solution to stop all this carnage.

Apart from the usual paeans to food waste, “nature positive” farming practices for “livestock” and crops, and the latest buzz phrase, “climate smart agriculture,” the recommendations in the report included tidbits like,

“If all fisheries were managed sustainably, an extra 16 million tonnes of seafood could be harvested from the ocean annually, increasing the total wild catch by around one-sixth.”

Evidently, WWF has not changed its modus operandi even though it was named a decade ago in Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, along with Greenpeace, Sierra Club, NRDC, Surfrider Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, Oceana, The Climate Reality Project, 350.org and Amazon Watch.

The Oxford Union, the UN Environmental Program and even the New York Times has acknowledged that going Vegan is crucial to address several environmental problems simultaneously. The New York Times served vegan meals to Jane Goodall and other guests during New York Climate Week, 2024 and even published an opinion piece five years ago stating,

“Vegans are right about ethics and the environment. If you won’t join them, at least respect their efforts to create a sustainable future.”

In addition, it was deeply puzzling that the WWF report promoted the current Indian diet as a sustainable diet that can be adopted by the whole world without exceeding the planet’s resource limits.

While the traditional Indian dietary staples of Idli/Sambar, Dal/Chawal and Roti/Sabzi are fundamentally whole-foods, plant-based Vegan and therefore, certainly sustainable, the current Indian diet has become overstuffed with dairy products and has led India to become the diabetes capital of the world.

As a nation, India is the largest consumer of dairy in the world and one of the largest exporters of beef in the world. On a per capita basis, Indians consume 406 gms of dairy products per day, compared to the world average of 305 gms/day. Therefore, if everyone ate like Indians, the world would have to increase its dairy consumption by a third and reduce its beef consumption by over 75%.

How is that possible?

Perhaps the WWF is using an accounting convention that minimizes the environmental impact of dairy and maximizes the impact of beef so that beef consumers are assigned most of the responsibility for the ecological footprint of raising cows.

We know the global political system goes to great lengths to promote dairy consumption even among populations that are majority lactose intolerant – like India – because it is only through the dairy industry that it can source cheap beef and leather.

Dairy consumers pay for the upkeep of the cows on a daily basis so that the mother cow is all paid for when she is slaughtered, tenderized, ground up and shaped into cheap beef patties by prison laborers in Western countries. This is how Western fast food outlets source their cheap hamburgers.

(Likewise, egg consumers pay for the upkeep of chickens on a daily basis so that the female chicken is all paid for when she is slaughtered, stripped and turned into cheap chicken nuggets. Hence the concerted efforts by Western food companies to increase egg consumption in India.)

If everyone in the world ate like Indians, then the planet will be awash in dairy consumers, but will lack beef consumers. Then the dairy consumers on planet Earth will be pretending that some aliens are responsible for the environmental impact of the cows as they would have to export the cheap beef and leather to another planet to satisfy the WWF’s ecological accountants.

Except, Nature will have none of that subterfuge and will be meting out terrible consequences for us right here on planet Earth.

In Western nations, have we not endured enough devastating floods, extreme heat events, raging wildfires and horrific hurricanes already?

Do we still think the upper deck of this Titanic of a civilization is a safe place so long as we barricade it from those in the lower decks?

Our children and grandchildren are counting on us to solve the ecological crisis and no doubt, they will be taking a dim view of all those obstructing us from doing so.

In 2021, in a survey of 10,000 young people (aged 16-25 years old) in 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK and the USA), 75% of the respondents said that they think the future is frightening and 83% said that they think the adults in charge have failed to take care of the planet.

I humbly request that we stop all this accounting sleight of hand and get serious about the ecological crisis, since 200 health journals have already declared it to be a global health emergency.

We plead with the WWF to summon the courage to recommend a whole foods plant based Vegan ethic and lifestyle to solve the ecological crisis at its roots.

UU Annual Celebration and Blessings for the Animals

I’m grateful to be the featured speaker at the Unitarian Universalist Annual Celebration and Blessings for the Animals this Sunday, Oct 13 at 1pm Pacific Time. I’ll also be doing a live reading from the Bhagavad Gita regarding our relationship with animals. Please register here to join the celebration and blessings.

V-COP19

We are excited to host you for the Vegan Convergence Of the Peoples #19 (V-COP19) which will be conducted as a hybrid in-person/Zoom event.

Help us spread compassion, go Vegan and rewild planet Earth.

Join us for the Greatest Transformation in Human History!

Meet and greet with Climate Healers family members. Share thoughts and join the vision – Roadmap to Vegan World 2026: Rise of Planet B.

Nov 9 and 10, 2024 at Natural Grocers Community Event Center, 13802 N Scottsdale Rd, Scottsdale AZ 85254.

To join us, please register here and we’ll see you all soon.

A Call to Action

If this message has touched your heart and you want to act, then here are 3 easy steps YOU can take NOW to ACTUALLY make this happen:

1) Say out loud to yourself, THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN! IF you really mean it, take the next two steps.
2) Write down the names of three people who will listen to you when you speak. Not that they are presupposed in any way, just that they will listen to you when you speak.
3) In the next 30 minutes, forward them this entire message with a simple personal statement that you think this needs to happen and you would like them to take these actions with you.

With much love,
Sailesh on behalf of the Climate Healers Core team.
(Alison, Anne, BJ, Carl, Dakota, Dani, Deborah, Debra, Gabriele, Giva, Jamen, Kelly, Ken, Krish, Lisa, Liz, Maggie, Marco, Paige, Pareen, Paul, Ray, Sailesh, Sarah, Shankar, Stacey, Suzanne, Tami and Vega, the Cow and Climate Healer and her Veguitas)