The factual evidence is overwhelming. It appears that sometime in the 1990s, during the early deliberations over the ecological crises roiling us today, the UN and the governments of the world decided to put Mother Earth in hospice care instead of addressing the crises with scientific integrity. That is, instead of coming clean on the four deadly dietary deceptions that were already in all school science text books at that time, these institutions doubled down on these deceptions with six additional, equally deadly, climate deceptions.

The question for us now is whether Mother Earth should really be in hospice care? Is she truly on a death spiral and therefore, there is no point in trying to transition to a socially just, plant-based, ecosystems restoration economy that can heal the climate from the current socially unjust, animal-based, resource extraction economy that is heating the climate and destroying the planet?

On the contrary, the factual evidence is equally overwhelming that with honest emissions accounting, Mother Earth is still sequestering about 90% of human CO2 emissions, despite all our depredations. Therefore, she continues to have a zest for life and it would be premature for humanity to put her in hospice care and condemn her to an early grave.

Here’s a compilation of the Ten Food Climate Deceptions and I welcome your feedback:

The Ten Food Climate Deceptions

Deceptions are partial truths that are intended to mislead, usually to protect and promote vested interests. Deceptions can be detected by identifying inconsistencies in the data sources and/or in the way the data is presented. The United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change reports (ipcc.ch) and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Guidelines (myplate.gov) are the sources of our scientific understanding of food and climate, where we have identified the following ten food climate deceptions, making visible the enormous Cow in the Room.

1. The Narrowed Timeline Deception

In this deception, the UN IPCC subtly implies that humans started changing the climate only from 1750 onward with the discovery of fossil fuels.

CO2, one of the primary greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is absorbed by trees and plants during photosynthesis and it is stored away in vegetation and soil in regenerating forests. However, in the absence of active reforestation efforts, CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas that lingers in the atmosphere for thousands of years. At present, according to UN IPCC accounting conventions (which are subject to these deceptions), about 85% of human-made CO2 emissions are from burning fossil fuels, i.e., coal, oil and natural gas. The remaining 15% is mainly from burning down forests to clear land, i.e., land-use changes. These ratios are, of course, subject to revision when we take into account the deceptions in the UN IPCC accounting conventions.

Nevertheless, since CO2 is a long-lived greenhouse gas, it is the cumulative emissions of CO2 over the past 8000 years that impacts climate change, not just current emissions alone. Until the 1900s, land use changes, principally involving deforestation for animal agriculture, were the main source of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, while at present, it is fossil fuel burning, according to UN IPCC conventions. Integrating the annual CO2 emissions components over time, we know that from 8000 years ago to the present, CO2 emissions from land-use changes far exceeds the CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources combined. This shines the spotlight on land clearing for animal agriculture as the leading cause of anthropogenic CO2 emissions over the years and not fossil fuel burning, thereby making visible the Cow in the Room.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is that the UN IPCC counts greenhouse gas emissions from 1750 onward, while simultaneously claiming that a significant fraction of CO2 (about 22%), once emitted, lingers in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years. Please see Table 8.SM.10 on page 8SM-16 of the IPCC AR5 Supplemental material on Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing. If CO2 emitted today can impact the climate thousands of years from now, shouldn’t we also be considering the CO2 emitted thousands of years ago?

Of course, we should.

2. The Methane Averaging Deception

Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that causes over four times as much anthropogenic global warming than CO2 on an annual basis. The leading cause of methane emissions into the atmosphere is animal agriculture, responsible for an estimated 37% of all anthropogenic methane emissions. In the Sixth Assessment Report of the UN IPCC (AR6), methane is estimated to cause 1.2 W/m2 of radiative forcing cumulatively, while anthropogenic CO2 is estimated to cause 2 W/m2 of radiative forcing cumulatively. From this, we can calculate that the 17.6 Billion tons of CO2 we add annually into the atmosphere causes an additional 0.029 W/m2 of radiative forcing each year, while the 362 Million tons of methane we add into the atmosphere annually causes an additional 0.12 W/m2 of radiative forcing, a little more than four times that of CO2.

However, since methane has a half-life of 8.4 years and reacts with free radicals in the atmosphere to oxidize into CO2, the IPCC is able to diminish its importance by averaging its impact over 100 years. In its 2019 interim report, the IPCC used a 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 28 for methane so that the 362 Million tons of methane is calculated to be equivalent to 10.1 Billion tons of CO2, about one-fourth of the 39.1 Billion tons of CO2 emitted each year, a more than fifteen fold reduction in the impact of methane than reality warrants. This is the Methane Averaging Deception.

In addition, in AR6, in 2022, the IPCC appears to have gone a step further and virtually eliminated all consideration of methane and other greenhouse gases altogether, by making the sweeping claim 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.” By making this hand waving causative claim (see Box TS.1 on Page 39 of IPCC AR6 WG1), the IPCC now orients itself to look directly away from the methane burps emitted by the Cow in the Room and can therefore pretend that there is no Cow in the Room.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is that the UN IPCC claims that catastrophic climate change is imminent within the next ten years or so, while simultaneously averaging the impact of methane over the next 100 years.

3. The Airborne Fraction Deception

Until about 1800, Nature was able to sequester ALL of the CO2 emitted from human activities so that the CO2 level in the atmosphere stayed constant at around 280 parts per million (ppm) for thousands of years. Since 1800, the CO2 level in the atmosphere has been increasing and it reached 410 ppm in 2020.

In 2020, the CO2 level in the atmosphere increased by 2.25 parts per million compared to what it was at the same time in 2019. Since each part per million is equivalent to 7.81 Billion tons of CO2, that means about 17.6 Billion tons of CO2 got added to the atmosphere in that year. As far as climate models are concerned, it is only this 17.6 Billion ton addition of CO2 to the atmosphere that matters.

However, the UN IPCC contends that humans emitted 39.1 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere in 2019-20, of which 33.9 billion tons were from fossil fuel combustion and 5.2 billion tons from land use changes. Then it claims that the “airborne fraction” of the CO2 emissions is 45% as only 17.6 billion tons of the 39.1 billion tons stayed in the atmosphere.

Now, let’s look at how the UN IPCC arrives at these numbers. The 33.9 billion tons of CO2 is ALL of the emissions from burning fossil fuels. The 5.2 billion tons is the NET of the emissions from deforestation (30 million acres) and afforestation (10 million acres) so that only 20 million acres of deforestation are accounted for. Besides, the UN only counts a land grid to have been deforested if its tree cover drops below 10%.

The animal agriculture industry takes advantage of this accounting convention loophole to cut down most of the trees and leave a little over 10% of the tree cover in a 1Km X 1Km grid so that it remains classified as a “forest,” as revealed in satellite photos (see above). Through these accounting mechanisms and the airborne fraction deception, the UN IPCC is able to diminish the impact of animal agriculture while inflating the impact of fossil fuels, in a futile attempt to hide the Cow in the Room. After all, the only CO2 that matters in climate models is the 17.6 billion tons of CO2 that got added to the atmosphere annually.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is the fact that the UN IPCC counts CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion one way and CO2 emissions from land use changes another way.

4. The Natural Cycle Deception

In the Natural Cycle deception, the UN IPCC arbitrarily classifies the following CO2 emissions from the animal agricultural industry as part of the natural CO2 cycle and therefore, do not have to be counted as part of anthropogenic (human caused) greenhouse gas emissions:

1) The CO2 emissions from the deliberate burning of all uneaten regenerating vegetation on grazing lands in the form of pasture maintenance fires (please see the cover of Glen Merzer’s book, Food is Climate);

2) The CO2 emissions from the respiration of farmed animals, who currently constitute an equivalent weight that is TWELVE times the weight of all the wild animals that lived 10,000 years ago; and

3) The CO2 emissions from the bottom trawling of 4 BILLION acres of the ocean floor each year by the fishing industry.

Nature is still trying to heal and sequesters most of these anthropogenic emissions, only allowing an extra 17.6 Billion tons of CO2 to be added to the atmosphere each year. Therefore, if we count all of these emissions, the Airborne Fraction would be much less than 45%, but the contribution of animal agriculture to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions would be more prominent, making visible the Cow in the Room.

Of course, other Killing Machine industries such as the timber industry and the paper industry also cause a whole lot of trees to be chopped down each year and therefore, significant greenhouse gas emissions, but the UN IPCC also slides these emissions under the carpet in this “natural cycle” deception. In reality, if we truly account for ALL of human greenhouse gas emissions with integrity (please see the red arrows in Fig. 6.1 of the IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 6 for example), humans were actually emitting 140 Gt CO2 into the atmosphere every year from all sources, while nature was sequestering 125 Gt CO2, circa 2013, when the IPCC Fifth assessment report was written. Therefore, the true Airborne Fraction, circa 2013, was 10% and remains in that range even today, implying that nature is still perfectly capable of restoring life and healing the climate on this planet if humans would shutdown the Killing machine and align with life.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is the fact that the UN IPCC counts methane emissions from ruminant farmed animals as part of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, but counts the breathing contribution of ruminant farmed animals as part of the natural cycle. Farmed animals cannot be part of the natural cycle for CO2 emissions and part of the anthropogenic cycle for methane emissions in any honest accounting of emissions.

5. The Opportunity Cost Deception

To illustrate the Opportunity Cost 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 boat that he can climb onto for safety, but he chooses to ignore it because he couldn’t be bothered to make the effort to climb up the ladder hanging off the boat.

That life-saving boat is the Opportunity Cost of the 40% of the ice free land area of the planet that we could free up if we abandoned animal agriculture in favor of a plant-based Vegan world. Every day we choose to continue consuming animal products is a day we choose not to re-wild that 40% of the ice-free land area of the planet and thereby start healing the climate. Instead, by continuing to consume animal products, we choose to continue heating the climate, while destroying an additional 100,000 acres of tropical forest and extinguishing another 100 species, every single day.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is the fact that the UN IPCC makes dire pronouncements about the harmful impacts of climate change, admits that animal foods have an order of magnitude greater climate impact than equivalent plant foods and yet openly serves animal foods at all UN Climate Change meetings.

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 huge boat that he is planning to shoot with a remote button when the helicopter comes so that it kills everyone on board the helicopter 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 aerosol impacts or the Cow in the Room.

The Inconsistency

The inconsistency that led us to this deception is the fact that the UN IPCC reports on the source of cooling aerosol emissions and yet blithely 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.”

The Deadly Dietary Deceptions

The next four deceptions are based on the courageous work of Dr. John McDougall and his team. Please refer to the McDougall Foundation website for more details. To quote Dr. McDougall, “effective marketing focuses on the unique positioning of products, promoting the most exceptional characteristic of a selected merchandise to enhance sales, regardless of the consumer benefits.”

7. The Protein Deception

The meat industry has chosen the macronutrient, protein, as the unique positioning for the sale of meat (and other animal products, such as eggs and whey) and takes pains to promote protein as the most important macronutrient that we need to consume in abundance, regardless of our health consequences.

The Inconsistency

The capture of our government by corporate forces is evident in the fact that the USDA My Plate formulation for a healthy diet contains three food groups, Fruits, Vegetables and Grains, plus a fourth category as a macronutrient, Protein. It seems to imply that Fruits, Vegetables and Grains do not contain Protein, which begs the question as to how gorillas and elephants are able to grow so big by eating just fruits and leaves.

8. The Calcium Deception

The industry’s unique positioning of dairy products is their high calcium content, but cows are merely channeling the minerals that they consumed in the plant foods they ate. There is adequate calcium in all the plant foods, with some foods like sesame seeds providing an order of magnitude more calcium per gram than dairy products.

The Inconsistency

The capture of our government by corporate forces is evident in the fact that the USDA My Plate formulation for a healthy diet contains three food groups, Fruits, Vegetables and Grains, plus a fourth category as a macronutrient, protein, plus a fifth separate category for dairy. It seems to imply that the consumption of dairy products is essential for human health, which begs the question as to why Canadians seem to be getting along fine with drinking just water.

Besides, how can it be rational to consider the lactation secretion of a bovine mammal that is 10X the size of humans to be healthy food for humans? Cow’s milk is designed to grow a 60 pound calf into a 400 pound cow in six months flat and such a growth rate would be detrimental for humans at any stage of our life cycle.

9. The Omega-3 Deception

The industry’s unique positioning of fish products is their high Omega-3 fatty acid content, but fish are merely channeling the nutrients that they consumed in the plant foods they ate. There is adequate Omega-3 fatty acids in plant foods, with some foods like algae, seaweed and flaxseed being an abundant source of these nutrients.

The Inconsistency

It is a scientific fact that animals do not make nutrients. Only plants do. Whenever science text books promote an animal product as a source of specific nutrients, we can be sure that industry capture is being exhibited.

10. The Carb Deception

The industry takes pains to malign starchy foods such as potatoes and rice as “fattening foods” in order to promote the consumption of animal foods. The increased consumption of animal foods leads to chronic diseases requiring frequent visits to doctors and hospitals, while the increased consumption of starchy plant foods leads to fitter, trimmer populations who rarely need to visit doctors and pharmacists and therefore, cease to be a source of revenue for the industry.

As the American College of Lifestyle Medicine indicates, poor diet is the first among 8 risk factors responsible for 90% of health care costs in the world. Therefore, the Health Care industry, or rather, the Disease Management industry, would shrink by 90%, if people are actually taught how to take care of their health in our education system with scientific integrity.

The Inconsistency

A survey of starch eating populations vs. animal food eating populations reveals that carbs do not make us fat and in fact, quite the contrary.

The Million Vegan Grandmothers Appeal to The Dairy Industry

Ms. Lori Captain
Executive Vice President of Global Sustainability,
Dairy Management, Inc.
10255 W. Higgins Rd. Suite 900
Rosemont, Illinois 60018-5616

email: Lori.captain@gmail.com

Dear Ms Captain,

We, the Million Vegan Grandmothers, in recognition of the approaching tipping point for the heating of the atmosphere and the annihilation of whole ecosystems, are reaching out to people in key positions in the animal agriculture industry. It is our hope that you will re-examine your priorities and embrace new ideas about increasing dietary demands for plant-based foods.

Thank you for recognizing the dairy industry as a major factor in the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. We have read your interview in the USA Today sponsored story written by Melissa Karns, published April 21st of this year, entitled, Can Dairy Cows Help Fight Climate Change? The answer Might Surprise Some: From upcycling to turning manure into biogas, dairy is helping build a sustainable future. But we would like to offer what may be a new perspective on the role of dairy products in our present society. It is with our common desire for the survival of our species, that we entreat you to consider what we have learned in our quest to heal the climate crisis.

We join you in your concern for farmers in the dairy industry. Many are suffering, working harder for less demand, where gains are fewer and fewer. We find most farmers are aware of the adverse impact of the dairy industry on the environment. Suicides continue to rise with dairy farmers worldwide, while those who have transitioned to plant-based products are thriving, such as in the documentaries, Transfarming Switzerland, Rowdy Girl, Milked and 73 Cows.

At Climate Healers, we work to educate people at all levels of industry and society about the factors that are threatening our very survival. The planet needs to rebalance after hundreds of years of changes to the landscape caused by human deforestation and the over abundance of domesticated animals on what was once wild lands. Our research shows (please see sources at the end of this letter), that 72% of the agricultural land on the planet is directly used for raising animals, while 28% is used for raising crops. Since half the crops are fed to animals, animal agriculture accounts for 86% of the agricultural land area of the planet.

7% of the ice-free land area of the planet provides 85% of the food we eat in the form of plant foods, in terms of dry weight. Animal agriculture takes up 43% of the ice-free land area of the planet, while providing just 12% of the food we eat in the form of meat, dairy and eggs. The seafood we eat constitute the remaining 3%, for which we we have been destroying the entire ocean. Each and every year, the methane that is emitted from animal agriculture causes more incremental planetary heating than the CO2 emitted from all fossil fuel sources combined.

Animal agriculture is still not widely recognized as the leading cause of climate change. This is why we are inviting you to explore the scientific basis of our convictions by visiting our website.

It concerns us that the innovations referenced in your response to Ms. Karn’s questions do not directly address the existential problems of climate change and ecosystem destruction. The dairy industry has been perpetuating the false myth that humans need cow’s milk and other animal-based products to be healthy. Also, the allocation of antibiotics for use in mitigating the unsanitary conditions in animal food production threatens their efficacy.

The Million Vegan Grandmothers have collected many success stories of farmers who have transitioned their farming operations to plant-based production of everything from mushrooms to micro-greens. Please watch the documentaries linked above for a taste of the inspiring innovations being developed and practiced already.

The farmers who have successfully transitioned away from animal agriculture have revived a new sense of purpose. Many have found it to be a relief to be a part of the solution that offers liberation from inflicting harm on animals in order to produce food for people. In fact, if we restore the native ecosystems on grazing lands, we can actually reverse climate change!

Please consider including some of our MVG members on your board so that we can help ensure that your mission of caring for the farmers, their families and for our communities, is aligned with the needs of life on this planet. At this final hour, may we wake up and create a world that honors the fundamental laws of nature.

Thanking you,
Sincerely,

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-grandmother

Sources:
[1] Calculated from the land use breakdown on Page 4 of the UN IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land Use, 2019 and the biomass distribution on Page 836 of the UN IPCC AR5 WG3 Chapter 11.

[2] Calculated from the biomass distribution on Page 836 of the UN IPCC AR5 WG3 Chapter 11.

[3] Rao, S. K., “Animal Agriculture is the Leading Cause of Climate Change,” Journal of Ecological Society, , 2021.

[4] The ratio of the CO2 sequestration on land to the CO2 in the atmosphere is calculated from data found in the UN IPCC AR5 WG1 Chapter 6, Fig 6.1, Page 471. The percentage distribution of CO2 is taken from the Integrated Science Assessment Model (ISAM) of the University of Illinois and it was reported in Rao, Jain and Shu, “The Lifestyle Carbon Dividend,” AGU 2015.

[5] Crowther, T.W., et. al., Mapping Tree Density at a Global Scale, Nature 525, Sep 2015, pp. 201-205.

[6] Rao, Jain and Shu, “The Lifestyle Carbon Dividend,” AGU 2015.

Please feel free to modify this letter and send it along to Ms. Captain on your behalf. Thank you so much for your passion and advocacy!

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, Paul, Ray, Sailesh, Sarah, Shankar, Stacey, Suzanne, Tami and Vega, the Cow and Climate Healer).