A Call for Urgent Action by the UN IPCC to Support What EVERYONE KNOWS

Fig 1: Carbon Cycle block diagram from the UN IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group 1, Chapter 5, Fig 5.12. All arrows in red indicate carbon exchange fluxes caused by human activities.

Dear Dr. Jim Skea (Chair of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change):

We agree with you that climate change is an existential threat to the planet and we commend you for your resolve to make the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) more inclusive and diverse, while ensuring scientific integrity and policy relevance of IPCC reports.

When formed by the UN in 1988, the IPCC was charged with securing, analyzing and disseminating the essential data needed by public agencies and private services to make policy decisions for the welfare of the planet. Today, IPCC data is widely distributed and forms the reference point for the implementation of environmental policies by most public and private entities in the world. The IPCC has earned this global credibility as a reflection of the tremendous work that its scientists have put in.

However we know that the data the IPCC is publishing, and has been publishing for decades, does not reflect what Everyone Knows to be the truth, and that it is now continuing a serious misdirection that may soon cost us billions of lives, essential species and a habitable planet.

Everyone Knows that the sun is the source of all energy on Earth, which heats the oceans and land to make it habitable for humans and millions of other species essential for life as we know it.

Everyone Knows that the energy of the sun is converted to usable form for humans and most other species through the photosynthesis of green plants, principally by plankton in the oceans and trees on land, using the CO2 in the atmosphere.

Everyone Knows that fossil fuels are a relatively new human discovery which result from the non-renewable stored energy of ancient photosynthesis, and which therefore are in limited supply.

Everyone Knows that CO2 and other greenhouse gasses are increasing rapidly in the atmosphere and represent an imminent threat to the continuation of humans and most other species on the planet.

Everyone Knows that there is no future for humans on the planet if we do not urgently transform how we use the oceans and arable land on the planet.

Everyone Knows that it is NOT natural for humans to:

Land 1) set fires to clear and maintain land for pastures, principally for animal agriculture;
Land 2) raise billions of farmed animals who are consuming an order of magnitude more food than all the wild animals that lived on earth 10,000 years ago;
Land 3) use 43% of the ice-free land area of the planet for animal agriculture to produce just 12% of the human food we eat, in terms of dry weight;
Land 4) eliminate half the trees on the planet over the past ten thousand years and continue eliminating them at massive rates, mainly to clear land for animal agriculture; and
Land 5) other land-based human activities.
Ocean 1) bottom trawl the oceans and destroy sea forests over an area the size of South America every year, while diminishing the capacity of the oceans to absorb CO2;
Ocean 2) destroy phytoplanktons through industrial fishing; and
Ocean 3) other ocean-based human activities.

Yet, the IPCC does not reveal detailed information on these anthropogenic CO2 emissions, (Land1-5 + Ocean1-3 = 25.6 + 23 = 48.6 GtC), which far exceed the anthropogenic CO2 emissions revealed in the figure (Fossil fuels + Net Land Use = 9.4 + 1.6 = 11 GtC). The IPCC continues to misdirect the public by claiming that all of the above human activities on land and in the ocean, causing the vast majority of anthropogenic CO2 emissions, are part of the “natural” carbon cycle and can be ignored.

We must all take responsibility for the real situation and support it with the data necessary to call for the action which is urgently required to put out the fire on our planet, regardless of any questions of economic cost or social and cultural disruption.

We believe that you and virtually every member of the IPCC know that all of the above “Everyone Knows” statements are true.

Until the IPCC reveals the truth of what “Everyone Knows,” it inhibits the public from taking accurate, concerted action in response to our environmental challenges before it is too late!

Ever since the UN Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) report Livestock’s Long Shadow was released in 2006, Everyone Knows that the modern diet high in meat, dairy, fish, eggs, and ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is a leading cause of the climate and nature crises. The FAO report concluded: “The livestock sector is a major player, responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) measured in CO2 equivalent. This is a higher share than transport.”

You and the IPCC know that this 18% share for animal agriculture is actually far, far higher when uncounted and miscounted emissions of the sector are properly accounted for, including:

• gross accounting vs. net accounting of the destruction of rain forests for pasture and crops;
• farmed animal respiration;
• pasture maintenance fires;
• the loss of sea forests from bottom trawling of the ocean;
• the loss of phytoplankton from industrial fishing;
• fossil fuel use during the production, refrigeration and transport of animal foods; and
• the opportunity cost of the land used for animal food production.

Even without including these additional factors, a study published in Nature in 2018 reviewed data from 38,000 farms in 119 countries and found that animal food products are responsible for 10 to 50 times more emissions/kg than equivalent plant food products.

Our world is now experiencing a historic seismic shift to a more predominantly plant-based way of eating and living. In 2023, the National Congress of American Indians passed a resolution stating that “Native American nations historically had plant-based diets and their staple foods were corn, beans and squash – the Three Sisters; and… milk, cheese and other dairy products were never part of Native American nations tradition. Dairy is a European custom, and today, the Dietary Guidelines promote the consumption of milk even though most Native Americans cannot digest it.”

It is indeed a scientific fact that most people, not just Native Americans, cannot digest dairy and yet they are being coerced and/or deceived into consuming it in the modern food system.

In 2024, the American Medical Association (AMA) “Resolved, that our AMA recognizes that animal-based agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions and supports efforts to increase and promote plant-based menu options in hospital food services, for both health and environmental reasons.”

In 2023, a leaked draft of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment report (AR6) included the recommendation: “A shift to diets with a higher share of plant-based protein in regions with excess consumption of calories and animal-source food can lead to substantial reductions in GHG emissions.” This recommendation was removed from AR6 due to lobbying from Argentina and Brazil, major meat and dairy producers.

After an unprecedented streak of 12 monthly temperature records where every month was the hottest month ever recorded, in June 2024, Bill Nelson, the Administrator of NASA said, “It is clear we are facing a climate crisis. Communities across America – like Arizona, California, Nevada – and communities across the globe are feeling first-hand extreme heat in unprecedented numbers.”

In December 2023, over 200 health journals called on the UN, political leaders and health professionals to recognize that the climate and nature crises we face today are truly one indivisible crisis and must be tackled together to preserve health and avoid catastrophe and that this overall environmental crisis is now so severe as to be a global health emergency.

In light of this global health emergency, it is crucial for you and the world’s leading climate change organization to reveal the true figures. It is time for the IPCC to reveal the true magnitude of the climate impact of the animal agriculture sector.

In the Sixth Assessment Report, the IPCC admitted that vegetation and soils store much more carbon (450 + 1700 = 2150 GtC) than the entire atmosphere (591 + 279 = 870 GtC). We know that humans have eliminated half the trees on the planet over the past 10,000 years. We also know that forests store 90% of the land carbon. Therefore, we can deduce that the world’s remaining 3 trillion trees and the soils that they live on store more than twice as much carbon (2150 X 90% = 1935 GtC) as in the entire atmosphere (870 GtC) and more than four times as much carbon as in all the fossil fuels we have burned to date (445 GtC).

From these calculations, we, the people, can conclude that if the world adopts a plant-based way of living and rewilds the planet to regrow most of the missing 3 trillion trees on the land freed from animal agriculture, it would take the most effective course of action to reverse climate change, restore the integrity of the biosphere and halt ecosystems collapse.

It is time for the IPCC to take the lead in recommending practical steps that individuals, families, schools, healthcare centers, businesses, farms, communities, and nations can take to implement this course of action. Such a seismic shift will alleviate the global health emergency and help make the planet more livable, healthy, and peaceful.

Everyone Knows that as the principal contributors to environmental degradation, the Big Meat and Dairy Corporations and their political patrons in Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere deserve no veto in the release of data describing the environmental reality of the world today. In the wake of the UN COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan, we call on you and the IPCC to assert your latent scientific integrity and release the detailed data immediately so that we can unleash our creative power and resources for making the necessary social, cultural, economic and political changes to preserve life on this planet. We all must do what is necessary to put out the fire on our planet!

We respectfully call on you as the Chair of the UN IPCC to make effective use of the best available science on climate change. As you do so, please count on us to support you all the way.

Signed by:

Dr. Sailesh Rao, Founder and Executive Director, Climate Healers

J. Morris Hicks, Engineer, Writer, Systems Thinker and Founder, 4 Leaf Global

Ken Hamje, Retired Economist, Climate Healers, Lima, Peru

Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop, Lead Scientist, World Preservation Foundation

Alex Jack, Founder and President, Planetary Health

Dr. Abraham Oort, Retired NOAA Climatologist, Author of “Physics of Climate