“The part that protects the innocent and defends the vulnerable is the best part of humanity” – Moby.

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

Share Vega’s message about Food Healers.

Dear Climate Healers,

Today is Climate Emergency Day. Today is also the sixth consecutive day with high temperatures exceeding 115º F (46.1º C) and the twenty-third consecutive day with high temperatures exceeding 110º F (43.3º C) in Phoenix, AZ, where some of us live.

Both are record streaks.

It is safe to say that we are experiencing such extreme weather in Phoenix and numerous other places around the world, due to a failure of leadership and a lack of accountability among our political leaders. However, that leadership and accountability begins with each and every one of us.

Our political leaders already knew that animal agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, land use, water use, nitrogen and phosphorous pollution, ocean dead zones, biodiversity loss and species extinction, not to mention chronic diseases and world hunger. If they were dealing with our environmental problems with integrity, today might have been “Ecological Emergency Day,” not just Climate Emergency Day, and the world might have been largely Vegan by now. Yet, the mainstream discourse on the environment focused our attention almost exclusively on climate change and on fossil fuel burning as the leading cause of climate change.

The Climate Healers animal agriculture position paper upended that mainstream discourse. It showed that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change as well. Naturally, it met with initial skepticism in mainstream circles, especially since the paper did not use the official UN IPCC greenhouse gas accounting conventions, but analyzed the underlying data directly as any competent systems engineer would do.

I’m extremely grateful to Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop and retired Prof. Abraham Oort for publishing open reviews of the position paper to help counteract the active purging of the position paper’s findings in news web sites by so-called “news watchdog” organizations. You can read their reviews here and here.

Please note that the position paper only showed that even if you bought the mainstream framing that climate change is the only environmental catastrophe we are facing today, you should be going Vegan as quickly as possible. If you also wish to address biodiversity loss, species extinctions, ocean dead zones, nitrogen and phosphorus pollution, deforestation, fresh water use, land use, chronic diseases or world hunger, then you would be going Vegan as quickly as possible for that reason as well.

Animals, the ghosts in our machine, are looking to each of us for leadership and accountability on this accord. Collective human actions created this ecological emergency and it is only collective human actions that can lead the world out of it. Solving the ecological emergency requires us to bring out the best part of who we are, the part that “protects the innocent and defends the vulnerable,” as Moby put it so beautifully.

When we assume this mantle of leadership, eventually the corporations, the billionaires and the political leadership of the planet will have no choice but to follow our lead. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, “You can always count on billionaires to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else.”

They have surely tried everything else:

1. King Charles has tried outfitting masks on cows.

2. Bill Gates has tried feeding cows seaweed.

3. Tom Steyer has tried moving cows around in barbed wire grazing enclosures, hoping that this can solve climate change, to no avail.

4. Elon Musk has tried claiming that cows have nothing to do with climate change,

5. Jeff Bezos has tried designing spacecraft to make a quick exit into outer space when it gets too hot on planet Earth, and

6. Prince William and former Mayor Bloomberg have tried seeding 5 grassroots solutions every year with $1.2M in funding to solve climate change by 2030. They will host the EarthShot Prize summit in New York city on September 19 to evaluate the finalists for 2023 and present the awards. Mayor Bloomberg also leads the Global Covenant of Mayors, whose Common Reporting Framework has no mention of food systems or diet change to solve climate change.

Meanwhile, the animal agriculture industry has tried cooking the books on methane emissions while climate scientists, including Dr. Jim Hansen, have tried seeking research funds to put sunshades on Mother Earth, instead of simply promoting the obvious solution: Go Vegan and plant trees!

The leadership for this obvious solution that will get nature working for us has to come from us, especially Vegans. Vegans would not deliberately hurt an innocent animal unnecessarily and would know that humans no longer need to use animals for any purpose whatsoever.

If there are still any lingering doubts about the Climate Healers animal agriculture position paper, perhaps Prince William and Mayor Bloomberg can debate us at the Apollo theater in New York City on Sep 18, now that Bill McKibben and former Vice President Al Gore have balked. I’m sure that our generous supporter would be willing to add a bonus $1M to the Earthshot Prize the very next day on Sep 19, if they can successfully argue that there is no Cow in the Room.

The Million Vegan Grandmothers Hold the Rotary Club Accountable

The Million Vegan Grandmothers wrote to the Rotary Club about their practice of hosting RibFests as fundraisers:

July 17, 2023

To:

Jennifer E. Jones, President
Rotary International
One Rotary Center
1560 Sherman Ave
Evanston, IL 60201-3698
USA
e: jennifer.jones@rotary.org
t: +1-866-976-8279

Dear Rotary President Jones and Rotary Club Members,

We would like to add our collective voice to the powerful message already delivered to your organization by the people at Plant Based Treaty. We, too, are grateful that the Rotary Foundation has recently decided to devote some of its resources to the environmental cause.

Your environmental commitment seems misaligned with your perennial RibFest events, which puts meat at the center of club fundraising efforts. Perhaps, many of your members are not aware of the catastrophic impact of animal agriculture on the climate — deforestation, pollution, and the sheer inefficiency of converting plant foods into animal foods take a huge toll on the environment.

In the spirit of your organization’s environmental commitment and to realize the possibilities in the change you can make to transform the world, we implore you to replace your RibFest fundraisers with plant-based events. We can assure you that there are plenty of delicious and nutritious plant-based alternatives available. There is, however, only one planet earth.

Please capture the world’s attention and lead the way far beyond current expectations.

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

With Much 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: millionvegangrandmothers.org