The UN recently posted a warning that humanity has just two years to make dramatic changes needed to prevent irreparable damage to the planet. Yet, even while issuing that warning, the UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell, was painfully silent on the simplest explanation for our predicament, our folly of exploiting and killing trillions of innocent animals unnecessarily every year.

This is the Cow in the Room prevalent in all aspects of our lives today. The obvious solution to world hunger is staring us in the face three times a day on our meal plates. For us Climate Healers, it is self-evident that if we can raise and feed 90 billion land animals and slaughter them each year for our meals, then surely we can feed 8 billion humans without starving a billion people. Therefore, world hunger is a choice we make three times a day and it is time to take responsibility for our choices and for the 10 million human lives lost each year from hunger related causes.

The obvious solution to chronic diseases is staring us in the face three times a day on our meal plates. For us Climate Healers, it is self-evident that the optimum amount of animal foods in a healthy human diet is precisely ZERO. Yet our schools are plying animal foods to our children, aided and abetted by our governments, in a bid to turn them into adults with unhealthy dietary habits. Chronic diseases are a choice we make three times a day and it’s time to take responsibility for our choices and for the tens of millions of human lives lost each year from such avoidable causes.

The obvious solution to the biodiversity crisis is staring us in the face three times a day on our meal plates. For us Climate Healers, it is self-evident that killing 90 billion land animals and 1 to 3 trillion sea animals every year mainly for food, is the leading cause of the planet dying around us in the ongoing sixth great mass extinction event. Yet, the UN and its enablers have been pretending that the horrific Killing machine that humanity has unleashed has little to do with the planet dying around us. This allows the UN to continue serving animal foods at UN environmental conferences worldwide without even any semblance of shame.

The obvious solution to the climate crisis is staring us in the face three times a day on our meal plates. For us Climate Healers, it is self-evident that an industry that has cut down half the trees on the planet over the past 10,000 years is the leading cause of the climate crisis. After all, the remaining 3 trillion trees on the planet and the soil that they live on store twice as much carbon as in the entire atmosphere and four times as much carbon as in all the fossil fuels we have burned to date. Therefore, if we all go Vegan and reforest the missing 3 trillion trees on the planet, then we can completely reverse climate change. However, for the past three decades, the UN and its enablers have been pretending that cutting down half the trees on the planet had little to do with the climate crisis.

The UN justified this pretense with some bizarre accounting conventions. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) only counts human greenhouse gas emissions starting in 1800 using the rationale that atmospheric CO2 levels only started rising after 1800. It absolved the tree cutting that the animal agriculture industry did for 10,000 years prior to the large-scale use of fossil fuels starting in 1800. This is like claiming that the hamburgers we had been eating for fifty years had nothing to do with the heart disease we have contracted because we only started feeling chest pain after we also began drinking milkshakes over the past year. Would you consider a doctor who diagnosed like that to be even minimally competent?

The dramatic loss of trees on earth can be illustrated in a map of the world depicting how we use the earth. If we take all the land that humans use for timber and paper, etc, i.e., managed forests, and put them all in one spot, then that would cover all of North America, all of Central America and a little bit of South America, about 22% of the ice-free land area of the planet.

If we take all the land that are still original forests and put them in one spot, then that would cover the remaining portion of South America, about 9% of the ice-free land area of the planet.

If we did this rearrangement of land on the planet, then we would notice that almost all the trees on the planet are in the Americas, while the rest of the world would be quite devoid of trees. In fact, 90% of the carbon stored in vegetation and soil on land would be in the Americas, with only 10% in the rest of the world.

Next, if we take all our cities, railroads, highways, airports and other built land from around the world and put them in one spot, then that would cover a little more than Madagascar, about 1% of the ice-free land area of the planet.

If we take all the land we use for growing plant-foods that are eaten directly by human beings, all the fruit and nut orchards, vegetable patches, croplands for growing grains, etc. and put them in one spot, then that would cover Australia, about 7% of the ice-free land area of the planet. This land is providing the vast majority, about 85% of the food we eat in terms of dry weight.

In order to grow 12% of the food we eat in the form of meat, dairy and eggs, we are using land that would cover all of Europe, most of Asia and a little bit of Africa, about 43% of the ice-free land area of the planet. Producing animal foods is so inefficient that on average we need to feed our animals 39 Kgs of food in order to get 1 Kg of food on our meal plates, in terms of dry weight.

In order to extract the remaining 3% of the food we eat, we are bottom trawling an area the size of South America every year in the ocean, destroying the entire ocean. Currently, we use ten times as many ships in our fishing fleet as we did in the 1950s, while our fish catch has declined by half. We are now using big data software and GPS hardware to find the last remaining fish in the ocean, even scooping them up from 2000 feet below sea level. Is this not sheer folly?

It is high time that we courageously face the truth on all these issues, lest our children quote Rudyard Kipling in the future, “If any question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.” In a Vegan world, we would need to allocate about 10% of the ice-free land area of the planet for our food production, thus enabling us to return 40% of the ice-free land area of the planet and the entire ocean, about 80% of the earth’s surface back to Nature. Then we can harness Nature to heal the climate, restore biodiversity and facilitate creating a political and economic system with structural equity in human societies, an outcome that the UN has even committed to meet by 2030 in its Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN’s climate chief, Simon Stiell warns that dramatic changes are needed within the next two years to prevent irreparable damage to the planet. The man in his mirror might do well to repeat back to him what he said,

“Every voice matters. Yours have never been more important. If you want bolder climate action, now is the time to make yours count.”

Mr. Stiell, please tell the truth about the Cow in the Room with that voice. It’s that simple.

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, Kimaya, 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)