Let April 2023 be a new beginning of Earth Day Forever, because we should be thinking of the well-being of our planet on every day of the year and not just on one day, Earth day. And while we’re at it, let’s move on from the celebration of deceptions that is April 1, April Fools day. Fortunately, April 2023 is shaping up to be a banner month for integrity and Human Earth Animal Liberation with multiple convergences to accelerate our movement.

Periodic convergences strengthen and accelerate our movement as participants absorb the wisdom of others who give freely and compassionately of their knowledge. Personally, the twelve Vegan Convergence Of the Peoples (V-COPs) so far have been second to only Kimaya in educating me about how to heal the climate. The thirteenth edition, V-COP13 on April 29-30, is shaping up to the best yet, with so many incredible events scheduled during those two days, including the Book Launch! of The Humane Hoax: Exposing the Myth of Happy Meat, Humane Dairy and Ethical Eggs, edited by Hope Bohanec and published by Lantern Books.

I can safely predict that V-COP13 will be one for the history books. If you have something to say and are not on the schedule, you are welcome to speak out during the Open Mic sessions on both days. Please register for it here soon or forever regret missing it.

Secondly, the Charter for Compassion is celebrating Golden Rule day on April 5 as a fitting end to their celebration of 23 days of Compassion in 2023. During the Golden Rule Day event, many of us in the Interfaith Vegan Coalition will be speaking on a panel about compassion for animals and we will also be screening Thomas Wade Jackson’s inspiring documentary, A Prayer For Compassion, to close out the day. Thus we intend to make it clear to the world that the Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is applicable to all sentient beings, not just humans. We are grateful to Karen Armstrong and the Charter for Compassion for giving us this opportunity.

Thirdly, the Vegan Earth Day March, organized by Sarina Farb of Born Vegan and Chelsea Davis of Veggies Do it Better, will be injecting a much-needed dose of scientific integrity to Earth day, April 22nd. Climate Healers and Million Vegan Grandmothers are proud to be partners and thanks to the estate of our dear Giva Solana Schumacher, now Fruit Sponsors, of Vegan Earth Day March. Vegan Earth Day March now has over 40 cities participating and I humbly request you all to support it here.

Finally, India is becoming the key venue for accelerating the spiritual and cultural transformation needed to heal the climate. Not only did an Indian professional journal, The Journal of Ecological Society, muster the courage to publish the Climate Healers Animal Agriculture position paper, but in addition, the Indian public has been adopting Veganism in droves. In major cities, every restaurant of repute now has a Vegan menu and any Indian who watches Maa Ka Doodh (Mother’s Milk) seems to instantly drop dairy consumption. Here’s what Mirra wrote to me after watching Maa Ka Doodh:

“I watched Maa Ka Doodh. A very hard hitting movie. Gave me chills and I have immediately turned vegan. If I am consuming milk I am not a true animal lover. If I am consuming milk I am not a true nature lover and a person who follows sustainability.

I assumed things in India were different because the animals are not kept in large production houses like in the western countries to extract milk. But here it’s a different horror story. And the whole connection between the milk and beef industry was a new revelation. Also the point of everyone in the world turning vegetarian is again counter productive. Vegan is the only solution to so many world problems.

I am appalled by my own ignorance!”

Like Mirra, the openness of the Indian public to the truth bombs in Maa Ka Doodh has been revelatory. Therefore, I’ve now agreed to plunge in and participate fully in a Bengaluru convergence in India later this month on Aligning Development Policies for Land and Ecosystem Restoration organized by Azim Premji University, the Indian Institute for Forest Management, the G20 Land Initiative under the leadership of India and the UN Environmental Program (UNEP).

As Nelson Mandela said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.”

The Million Vegan Grandmothers Admonish The Guardian Newspaper

The Guardian Newspaper is now agonizing over its origins and past entanglements with the human exploitation industry of slavery in the 19th century. Therefore, it is timely that the Million Vegan Grandmothers admonished them not to wallow in the same ethical quagmire with the animal exploitation industry of the 21st century.

Date: March 31, 2023

TO:
Katharine Viner
Editor in Chief
The Guardian Newspapers
Kings Place, 90 York Way
London N1 9GU
United Kingdom
Email: katharine.viner@theguardian.com
Ph: +44-20-3353-2000

Dear Editors of The Guardian,

We, The Million Vegan Grandmothers, are writing to you in response to an article by Peter Godfrey-Smith that recently appeared in your paper. Entitled “My Body Resists Veganism: What’s the Most Ethical Alternative?”, the article seems to us guilty of a kind of ethical sleight of hand, whereby its author earns ethical bona fides by attempting to become vegan, while simultaneously using that borrowed ethical authority to persuade readers—with scant evidence—of Veganism’s alleged health perils. Who better to warn against Veganism, after all, than a would-be almost vegan? Godfrey-Smith’s argument would likely be embraced enthusiastically by the subtler animal agriculture lobbyists of the world and it creates a future ethical quagmire akin to that you are now facing with respect to slavery.

We do not, of course, presume to know Godfrey-Smith’s intentions, but he admits that he didn’t go vegan and yet writes about it. We admit the possibility that he may well have written what he wrote in good faith. Nonetheless, the effect of his article, we feel, is injurious to the public health, and calls for a robust and equally visible rebuttal that we ask The Guardian to print.

As Vegan Grandmothers, we acknowledge that all bodies need individualized diets to thrive, but this individualization is achievable at the bio-chemical level; and entirely within the plant kingdom. Many human (and humane) studies have been done on the health benefits of a whole-foods plant-based vegan diet. In addition, Dr. Gabriel Cousens, world-renowned author, teacher and researcher, has shown that every person can thrive on this diet if the ratio of vegetable proteins to carbohydrates to vegetable fats that they consume roughly reflects three factors: the biochemical individuality encoded on their chromosome 19, their level of activity/lifestyle, and their stage of life.

Once one accepts that no human, no matter what their bio-chemical idiosyncrasies, needs to eat animals or animal products to thrive, there is no longer any moral ground available to support the choice of a non-vegan diet. As grandmothers, we feel strongly that children and grandchildren deserve to live in a world where adults hold strongly to the ethics of love, cooperation, nonviolence, and peace for all beings.

With Compassion,
The Million Vegan Grandmothers
Climate Healers
3145 E Chandler Blvd #110-233
Phoenix, AZ 85048
t: +1-732-809-3526
e: grandmothers@climatehealers.org
w: https://climatehealers.org/million-vegan-grandmothers

6. The Opportunity Benefit Deception

To illustrate the Opportunity Benefit deception, imagine someone screaming at the top of his lungs that he is drowning in the ocean and needs a helicopter to come and rescue him. Right behind him, there’s a huge gun on a boat that he is planning to shoot with a remote button when the helicopter comes so that it kills everyone on board and likely kills him as well.

That gun on the boat is the Opportunity Benefit of the cooling aerosols that we emit when we burn fossil fuels. These cooling gases would disappear if we stop burning fossil fuels and yet the only debate that is going on in the mainstream discourse on climate change is about reducing the use of fossil fuels without addressing the Cow in the Room.

The inconsistency that led me to this deception is the fact that the UN IPCC reports on these cooling aerosol emissions and yet contends that “given the nearly linear relationship between cumulative CO2 emissions and increases in global surface temperature, cumulative CO2 emissions are relevant for understanding how past and future CO2 emissions affect global surface temperature.” No scientist with any reputation would jump from such a hand waving assertion to the conclusion that CO2 is the only relevant emission and yet that is the mainstream discourse.

Now that all these deceptions have been exposed, can we please get on with the urgent task of healing ourselves and the climate with engineering integrity?

Thank you for your support.

HELP us every day to

Heal the planet.
Eat plants.
Love animals.
Plant trees.

It’s that simple.

Thanks again for being a superhero and joining our herd. Please forward this post to all your friends and let’s grow our MOOOvement together.

With much love,
Sailesh on behalf of Vega, Cow and Climate Healer and the Climate Healers core team
(Akhil, Alison, Anne, BJ, Carl, Chip, Debra, Gabriele, Giva, Ilse, Jamen, Kelly, Ken, Kimaya, Krish, Maggie, Marco, Paige, Pareen, Ray, Sailesh, Sarah, Shankar, Stacey, Suzanne, Tami and Vega, the Cow and Climate Healer).

PS: If you are looking for Vega the Cow’s weekly update on “50 Ways to Leave My Udder“, please click here.