After years of hard work trying to get people to see the enormous Cow in the Room while mainstream pundits ignore her entirely, it is gratifying to see signs that we are finally breaking through to the mainstream.

Firstly, the students at the University of Cambridge overwhelmingly voted to acknowledge the Cow in the Room and demanded that all cafes and canteens on campus only serve Vegan food.

Secondly, after watching every climate scientist I know getting intimidated into ignoring the Cow in the Room in their public pronouncements, it is gratifying to see Dr. Abraham Oort, a climate scientist and former senior research meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophyical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) at Princeton and who co-authored the 1992 book, “Physics of Climate,” openly acknowledge the Cow in the Room in an opinion piece that got published in the Valley News of West Lebanon, New Hampshire. He writes,

“When the danger of global warming and man’s role in the cause of this phenomenon was presented to the U.S. Senate in 1988 by NASA scientist Jim Hansen, many in the scientific community questioned his conclusion and the public had only a limited understanding of the issue. Over time, though, thanks in large measure to the work of climate activists like Bill McKibben and politicians like former Vice President Al Gore, the periodic reports of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) based on the findings of scientific experts from almost 200 countries, the public has a better understanding of how humans contribute to this crisis.

Over the past several years, many agencies and advocacy groups have offered plans for addressing this issue. Most have focused on reducing the amount of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane in the atmosphere by keeping fossil fluids in the ground, efforts that have so far proven fruitless. More progress has taken place at the personal level through the recycling of waste, adding solar panels, creating energy through wind turbines, and insulating homes. All of this has been beneficial for the climate, but it is not nearly enough. It is obvious that we need to find another solution. To date, our solutions have focused on the symptoms instead of the root cause of the problem. Gus Speth, a U.S. Advisor on Climate Change, views the cause of climate change as the selfishness, greed, and apathy of humans. Changing these qualities will not happen quickly or easily. But I feel full of hope since there is a realistic way to guide us into the right direction.

One of the often-overlooked factors to climate change is the impact of animal agriculture. This becomes clear when we look at what is involved in raising an animal: the grains grown and consumed by animals; the water used to grow the plants and animals; and the deforestation of land cleared to grow the crops. Because of the resources needed, a transition from a meat/dairy-based to a plant-based diet could solve the climate problem (my emphasis). The huge areas of the globe used to grow food for domesticated animals which are much larger than the areas used to grow food for people can be restored and the new generation of trees will absorb the excess CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere and to help resolve the greenhouse problem. A change to a plant-based diet will result in other benefits. There is clear evidence that diseases associated with an animal-based diet, like cancer, diabetes, and many other immune diseases, would vanish if we changed to a plant-based diet. Plant-based foods produced locally would not require us to transport foods from faraway places. A plant-based diet would also help improve mental health since we would no longer abuse animals in our factory-farms where the animals are kept in small containers, fattened, and slaughtered. For the first time in human history we might see a huge increase of compassion in humans—it could lead to the beginning of the golden age.

Transforming just one factor in our daily lives, eating plant-based foods may save the planet for our children and their children. Is that too much to ask?”

You can read the entire piece by clicking here.

Finally, I’m attending a family wedding in the Los Angeles area and to my pleasant surprise, it is an entirely vegan wedding. Even though the bride and groom are not yet practicing a vegan lifestyle, they decided to make the wedding entirely vegan as it is the easiest way to accommodate the growing number of vegans in the family. If that doesn’t tell you the future is vegan, I don’t know what will.

The sooner we all embrace that beautiful vegan future of love, cooperation, nonviolence and peace for all beings, the better we all are.

The Million Vegan Grandmothers Write to the Canadian Government

This week, the Million Vegan Grandmothers are asking the Canadian Government to align its policies with its own food guide so that there is no cognitive dissonance within its ranks. Let’s see if reason will prevail.

“Date: April 4, 2023

To:
Marie-Claude Bibeau
Minister of Agriculture
1341 Baseline Road
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0C5
Canada
e: marie-claude.bibeau@parl.gc.ca
t: +1-(613) 773-1059

Dear Marie-Claude Bibeau,

We, the Million Vegan Grandmothers, applaud the removal of dairy as a separate food group from the 2019 Canada Food Guide, and view it as a step in the right direction; however, we are disappointed that, despite this downgrading of dairy and corresponding promotion of plant-based proteins, Canadian school milk programs and the lobbyists who advertise them still tout dairy as a nutritional cornerstone for school-aged children.

We would like to draw your attention to the recent introduction in the U.S. House of Representatives of the bipartisan ADD Soy Act, a bill that seeks to reform American school milk programs, which do not currently offer dairy alternatives to the substantial numbers of children who suffer high levels of lactose intolerance. Why hasn’t similar legislation been proposed in Canada?

As a group whose members include integrative vegan nutritionists and physicians, we are compelled to add that lactose is not the only health risk posed to children by dairy; the casein protein molecule and the Insulin Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1) in dairy, which are perfectly designed for the task they evolved to perform—adding a thousand pounds of flesh to a calf in its first year—are eminently (and unsurprisingly) unsuited to the development of the brains and bodies of human children. To cite just one of many studies reported by the NIH on the negative health impacts of dairy on childhood development, early consumption of milk has been linked to type 1 diabetes. (BMJ. 2000 Oct 28; 321(7268): 1040)

In view of these facts, and in line with the recent changes to the Canada Food Guide, we ask that your government table public-health legislation to either halt Canadian school milk programs or transform them into providers of dairy alternatives such as soy, oat, and nut milks. We feel that oat milk would be especially suitable as an alternative given that Canada is already the second-largest producer of oats globally and has a considerable share of the market for organic oats.

Our fierce love for the children of all species compels us to speak out.

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”

Meanwhile, please feel free to share the book, “Vegan Revolution: Saving Our World, Revitalizing Judaism” (Text and Cover) by Dr. Richard Schwartz out to everyone you know who might benefit from it. Dr. Schwartz has kindly made it available for free to all.

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.