[Music] to tell us that the highest safe level of emissions would be around 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere were already at 400 they tell us that the sort of safest we could hope to do without having perilous implications as far as drought famine human conflict major species extinct feud would it be about a 2 degrees Celsius increase in Temperature we're rapidly approaching that and with all the built-in carbon dioxide that's already in the atmosphere we're easily going to exceed that so on our watch we are facing the
next major extinction of species on the earth that we haven't seen since the time of the dinosaurs disappearing you know when whole countries go underwater because of sea level rise when whole countries find that there's so much drought that they can't feed Their population and as a result they need to desperately migrate to another country or invade another country I mean we're gonna have climate Wars in the future and what about what about livestock and animal agriculture well what about it I mean [Music] my name's Kip this is me at a cliche us American childhood
my mom was a teacher my dad was in the military and have one sister I played all the sports growing Up but I always loved the outdoors and camping life was simple not a care in the world and then this guy showed up like so many of us I saw his film An Inconvenient Truth about the impacts of global warming and it scared the emojis out of me in Al Gore's film he describes how our earth is in peril climate change stands to affect all life in this planet from monster storms raging wildfires record droughts
ice caps melting acidification Of the oceans to entire countries going underwater that could all be caused by humans demands on the earth with scientists warning less we take drastic measures to correct our environmental footprint our time on this planet may be limited to only 50 more years I wanted to do everything I could to help I made up my mind right then and there to change how I lived and to do whatever I possibly could to find a way for all of us to live together in balance with the Planet sustainably forever I started to
do all the things I'll told us to do I became an OCE obsessive compulsive environmentalist I separated the trash and recycling I composted changed all the light bulbs took short showers turn the water off when I brushed my teeth turned off lights when leaving a room and rode my bike instead of driving everywhere but as the years went by it seemed as if things were getting worse I had to wonder with all the continuing Ecological crisis facing the planet even if every single one of us adopted these conservation habits was this really gonna be enough
to save the world just seemed that there was something more to the story I thought I was doing everything I could to help the planet but then with one friends post everything changed the post sent me to report online published by the United Nations stating that cows produce more greenhouse gases than the entire Transportation sector this means that raising cattle produces more greenhouse gases than all cars trucks trains boats planes combined 13% compared to 18% for livestock this is because cows produce a substantial amount of methane from their digestive process methane gas from livestock is
25 to a hundred times more destructive than carbon dioxide from vehicles here I'd been riding my bike everywhere to help reduce emissions but it turns out There's more to climate change than just fossil fuels I started doing more research the UN along with other agencies reported that not only did livestock play a major role in global warming it is also the leading cause of resource consumption and environmental degradation destroying the planet today how is it possible I wasn't aware of this I thought this information would be plastered everywhere in the environmental community I went to
the Nation's largest environmental organizations websites three fifty.org Greenpeace Sierra Club climate reality Rainforest Action Network Amazon watch and was shocked to see they had virtually nothing on animal agriculture what was going on why would they not have this information on there it seemed the main focus for many of these groups was natural gas and oil production with fracking being the latest hot issue due to water usage and contamination Hydraulic fracturing for natural gas uses an incredible amount of water a staggering a hundred billion gallons of water is used every year in the United States but
when I compare this with animal agriculture raising livestock just in the u.s. consumes 34 trillion gallons of water and it turns out the methane emissions from both industries are nearly equal living in California a state plagued by drought and water shortages water use is a major concern For many of us the average Californian uses about 1,500 gallons per person per day about half of that is related to the consumption of meat and dairy products so meat and dairy products are incredibly water intensive in part because the animals are using very water intensive grains that's what
they they eat and so all of the water embedded in in the grain and that the animal leaves essentially is is considered part of the Virtual water footprint of that product I found out that 1/4 pound hamburger requires over 660 gallons of water to produce here I've been taking these short showers trying to save water and to find out just eating one hamburger is the equivalent of showering two entire months so much attention is given to lowering our home water use yet domestic water use is only 5% of what is consumed in the US vs.
55% for animal agriculture that's because it takes upwards of 2,500 Gallons of water to produce one pound of beef I went on the government's Department of Water Resources save our water campaign where it outlines behavior changes to help conserve our water like using low-flow showerheads efficient toilets water saving appliances and fix leaky faucets and sprinkler heads but nothing about animal agriculture when I added up all the government's recommendations I was saving 47 gallons a day but still that's Not even close to the 660 gallons of water for just one Burger I wanted to see if
I could somehow talk with the government about this just calling to see if we could schedule an interview [Music] tomorrow afternoon could be good [Music] for the airborne environment are a lot of things that can be done indoor you know using low-flow showerheads low-flow faucets efficient toilets efficient Applauded water using appliances all those are really good areas that can help quite a lot but the biggest water savings is from outdoors we have to be mindful the way we use water we have to use it as efficiently as possible we have to protect its quality and
we have to be good stewards of the environment that depend on water and checking their sprinklers a lot of time we get a lot of leaks and broken sprinklers and things like that that wastes water and those Are the areas that there's a lot of room for conservation kept they kept on coming up a lot was of animal agriculture can you comment on that at all about how much that plays a role in water consumption and pollution I mean that's not my area there's one study that I found that one pound of beef 2500 gallons
of water yeah yeah eggs is 477 gallons water and she's almost 900 gallons okay I guess it's one simple why isn't it on save our water Just it's kind of like if he went to someone's house and my neighbor has a faucet you know dripping dripping and then you see it this giant hose turned full blast until 660 gallons of water are shooting out into the street flooding the entire street I think I would say hey you know turn that off please this seems like it's a huge thing that we could be doing by far
more than anything else that's like if that if That is really the case I think that the water footprint of animal husbandry is greater than other activities there's no ifs and or buts about it that would be really powerful too so rather than waiting until we're in a drought you know what do you think about just starting now and still whoever's in charge of the save our water hey let's start having encouraging people eating less meat now these these studies are coming out I don't think That'll happen why I don't think that'll happen why because
of the way government is set up here the dishes do you know what why though [Music] one is water management and the other one is behavior change behavior of taking showers and not not watering your lawn and doing all that that's behavior [Music] Wow clearly the government did not want to Talk about this issue their inability to answer along with the environmental organizations silence on the topic of animal agriculture made it seem something more was going on I started doing more investigating on the impacts of livestock and found out this situation was actually worse than
I had thought in 2009 two advisors from the World Bank released an analysis on human induced greenhouse gases finding that animal agriculture was responsible not For 18 percent as UN stated but was actually 51 percent of all greenhouse gases 51 percent yet all we hear about is burning fossil fuels this devastating figure is due to clear cutting rainforests for grazing respiration and all the ways to animals produce this makes animal agriculture the number one contributor to human caused climate change but not only that I found out raising animals for food consumes a third of all
the planet's freshwater Occupies up to 45 percent of the Earth's land is responsible for up to 91% of Amazon destruction is a leading cause of species extinction ocean dead zones and habitat destruction yet the world's largest environmental groups that are supposed to be saving our world didn't mention this anywhere I had to speak with environmental organizations to find out why they weren't addressing this issue I sent off dozens of emails made call after call Spent hours on hold days became weeks and weeks became months and for some reason no one wanted to talk to me
about this so bizarre I supported these organizations for so long and now was met with silence I was however able to connect with a handful of environmental authors and advocates that were willing to address this issue I took my old trusty van super blue out of retirement and hit the road so my calculations are that without using any Gas or oil or fuel ever again from this day forward that we would still exceed our maximum carbon equivalent greenhouse gas emissions now the 565 gigatons by the year 2030 without the electricity sector even or energy sector
even factoring in the equation all simply by eating raising and eating livestock if you reduce the amount of methane emissions the level when the atmosphere go down goes down fairly quickly and within decades as Opposed to co2 if you reduce the emissions to the atmosphere you don't really see a signal in the atmosphere for 100 years or so the single largest contributor to every known environmental ill known to humankind deforestation land-use water scarcity the destabilization of communities world hunger the list doesn't stop it's an environmental disaster that's being an ignored by the very people who
should be championing free living animals made up 10,000 years ago made up 99% of the biomass and human beings we only made up 1% of the biomass today only 10,000 years later which is really just a fraction of time we human beings and the animals that we own as property make up 98% of the biomass and wild free living animals make up only 2% we basically completely stole in the world the earth from free living animals to use for ourselves in our cows and pigs and chickens in factory farms Yes and the oceans have been
even more devastated concerned researchers of the loss of species agree that the primary cause of loss of species on our earth that we're witnessing is due to over grazing and habitat loss from livestock production on land and by overfishing which I call fishing in our oceans and we're in the middle of the largest mass extinction of species in 65 million years the Amane forest is being cut down at the rate of An acre per second and the driving force behind all of this this animal agriculture cutting down the forests to graze animals and to grow
soybeans genetically engineered soy beans to feed to the cows and pigs and chickens in factory farmed fish 91% of the loss of rainforest in the Amazon area thus far to date 91% has been destroyed is due to raising livestock the leading cause of environmental destruction is animal agriculture I just couldn't understand Why the world's largest environmental organizations were not addressing this when their entire mission is to help protect the environment but that's a cold yeah I think they think it's I think they focus-grouped it and it's a political loser in terms of me yeah because
their their membership organizations you know a lot of them they're looking to maximize the number of people making contributions and if They get identified as being anti meat or challenging people on their everyday habits that's something that's so dear to people that it will hurt with their fundraising they do not want to address the primary driving cause of environmental devastation which is animal agriculture because their businesses and they want to make sure that they have a reliable source of funding I had meant to invited to a meeting with Al Gore and some years ago now
and made these methane arguments he was really pushed back and that's just his argument it's hard enough to get people to think about co2 don't confuse them I think that the problem with a lot of organizations that are focused and have a laser focus don't go off message because they don't want to piss off another whole group of people that will make their lives difficult if you listen to the majority Of the of the major environmental organizations they're not telling you to do much besides live your life the way you've been living it but change
a lightbulb from time to time drive less use less plastic recycle more it's better for their fundraising and better for their profile to create a victim and perpetrator sort of plotline you know it's like when we talk about the fact that when we have a dysfunctional family and the father is an alcoholic that's The one thing no one talks about everybody goes around that and yet it's the one thing that's causing the devastation unless in the relationships in the family because no one wants to talk about it how could these organizations not know I mean
the the issue is right in front of him it's unmistakable at this point and just like these organizations they're there they're falling over themselves to show the general public that climate change Is human caused and in doing so they completely fail to to see what's right in front of that that that animal agriculture raising and killing animals for food is really what's killing the planet [Music] that was it no more emails no more phone calls I had enough I realized if I wanted answers I would have to go to these organizations headquarters in person we're
doing a doctor fully Feature documentary and that's on sustainability agriculture plays a role and we're simply to talk to David Barr farmer yeah we've been trying for like it's almost two months we haven't even had one one receptive email or anything so simply they sent out their PR person instead she refused to be filmed and told us to turn off the camera but promised someone from their rainforest ocean and climate change departments Would all speak with us finally next stop is to give Sierra Club a visit [Music] turns out they were a bit more receptive
to me showing up at their doorstep hey how's it going with the climate change what's the leading cause of that well it's basically burning - atif fossil fuels you know so coal natural gas oil tar saves oil shale all these new exotic fuels that are kind of hybrids between Them but that's basically what is loading up the atmosphere so we have this greenhouse effect where the heat is getting trapped and the temperatures are soaring at a rate that has never existed in the history of the earth and what about what about livestock and animal agriculture
well what about it I mean we want to do it just research we a couple of the UN report says it's more livestock accounts for more than all transportation put together a recent 2009 World Watch report livestock causes 51 percent of all greenhouse emission gas emissions yeah well it is a big issue and we need to address that as well but you know there's just so many different potential sources of methane and carbon emissions if the number one leading cause is animal agriculture and meat consumption then it does not need to be the number one
focus if not the number two well that's your assessment our Assessment is different that was bizarre so Greenpeace got back from you today and said it was great to me with you yesterday I've spoken with various people here at Greenpeace about your request but I'm afraid we're not going to be able to help this time thanks again and we wish you the best of luck Greenpeace is response reminding me the statistic that a hundred and sixteen thousand pounds of farm animal excrement is produced every Second in the United States alone that is enough waste per
year to cover every square foot of San Francisco New York City Tokyo Paris New Delhi Berlin Hong Kong London Rio de Janeiro Delaware Bali Costa Rica and Denmark combined livestock operations on land has caused more than father created more than 500 nitrogen flooded dead zones around the world in our oceans comprise more than 95,000 square miles of areas completely devoid of life so any meaningful Discussion about the state of our oceans has to always begin by frank discussions about land-based animal agriculture which is not what our conservation groups Oceania being the largest one in the
world right now the most influential as well as others that's not what is at the apex of their discussions I went on my favorite ocean protection organization's website surfrider foundation to see what they were doing about this mostly what I found were Campaigns about plastic bags and trash but nothing about animal agriculture what is the number one coastal water quality issue polluter like yeah I mean a lot of it there's a it's actually I caught we caught they're like the toxic cocktail because it really is this sort of diffuse source so it's you know heavy
metal from tires and brakes and cars heavy metals it is these herbicides and pesticides so it's really just it's kind of picking up the that everything we On the ground and collecting it together and pushing it out into the ocean so it's hard to actually target like one thing we're doing our research on this particular one and run off and just kind of increasingly as we're like interviewing one more people it keeps coming up for animal agriculture as being and we read animal agriculture as being the number one water polluter considerably by more than any
other yeah that's interesting I think you know I Guess it depends on the regions that you focus on like the urban areas which is sort of like where we are here in Southern California we don't see that because there's not a lot of sort of agricultural farms but if you look in the mid-atlantic sort of Maryland Virginia North Carolina that region I know there's a lot of poultry farms and a lot of hog farms and it's a huge waste issue I was surprised that not only did they not focus on farm runoff but they Also
didn't mention any campaigns about how our oceans are in near-collapse the UN reported that three-quarters of the world's fisheries are overexploited fully exploited or significantly depleted due to overfishing the oceans are under siege like never before and marine environments are in trouble and if we don't wake up and do something about it we're gonna see fishless oceans by the Year 2048 that's the prediction from scientists the fact that when People look at fishing sometimes they're only looking at the fact of the animals who are actually consumed by humans and we're not necessarily looking at all
the animals who are caught in the drift nets all the other animals who were killed in the industry and when you look at even the shrimping industry has done a lot to devastate the planet as well in terms of breaking down natural barriers that we have to protect them we're at over 28 billion animals were pulled out of the Ocean last year they're not ever given a chance to recover they can't recover they don't multiply that quickly they don't you know they don't come back we're not giving them an opportunity the oceans are in complete
collapse the earth is the largest fish species are nearing extinction the way fishing is done today to feed the demand for 90 million tons of fish is primarily through massive fish nets for every single pound of fish caught there's up To five pounds of untargeted species trapped such as dolphins whales sea turtles and sharks known as my kill if we were to imagine this same sort of practice happening on the African savannah targeting gazelle but in the process scooping up every single lion giraffe oestrogen elephant nobody would stand for it yet this is what is
happening in our oceans every single day between 40 to 50 million Sharks each year are killed in fishing lines and fishing nets as by kill then their fins might be cut off or not cut off but they're caught and initially as by kill and it's from fishing it's from fishing and sustainable in a sustainable manner in many cases for fish that are labeled sustainable by for instance Oceana and these sustainable certified organizations so my thought is is that why would we want to stop at banning shark fin soup if you're concerned about Sharks which all
these organizations are and most of the public at large is now if we really are concerned about sharks we would ban fishing I went on the world's largest ocean conservation groups website Oceana to see what they were doing about this on their site along with the TED talk by CEO Andy Sharples I was astounded to read they actually recommend that one of the best ways to help fish is to eat fish with a world's fish population in near collapse This seems like saying the best way to help endangered pandas is to eat pandas I couldn't
understand how Oceania could say we could remove close to a hundred million tonnes of fish per year and that could somehow be sustainable and good for our oceans many of the species that are nearing extinction have done so are being ravaged and becoming nearly extinct in a declining fashion and haven't recovered on the watch of Oceana and on the watch of Marine Stewardship Council and very much on a watch of Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch which I mentioned one of my lectures that's you know they're aptly named because that's what they're doing they're sort of
watching this happen instead of you know aggressively halting it I mean according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization you know roughly three-quarters of all the fisheries out there or either fully Exploited or overexploited so there's really not a whole lot of fish stocks out there that you might consider at healthy levels for the ecosystem watching Andy's TED talk Eva about feeding the world in 1988 fish cats as you mentioned peaked at 85 million tons how is it possible that we can sustainably catch a hundred million tonnes by 2050 regardless of its width are
lifted if it's in a farm or if it's in the ocean if for every pound of fish You're taking out you're essentially taking out 5 pounds of wild fish no matter whether it's a pond or it's or it's in the ocean how can that be sustainable the ultimate the ultimate question right is is that there is a tremendous amount of natural production that that is you know basically coming out of the oceans all the time so we have major a massive amount of upwelling from our ocean conveyor belt that's bringing up you know ancient Thousand-year-old
nutrients and and our ecosystems are turning that into fish yes they're eating each other and you're losing you know some of that production every step up in the food chain but you get more every year you can fish and take some out and next year there will be more and if we do that right without ultimately hitting the fundamental driver it's sort of like living off the the interest right as long as you don't as long as you don't bring your Principal down right if you're investing in something as long as you're not hitting into
that principal and your principal remains high you could potentially live off the interest forever and that's the basic idea with fish with our population right now what we're doing is seventy is 75% depleted the fishery is now depleted and you know it's a good analogy with money we're not living off interest we're an extreme debt and Where our population who's trying to live as a family on the same amount of money and it's increasing 35 percent to 9 billion people right isn't it just hey we got to stop spending money yeah - stop being fish
well if you could bring the principal back fishing of any type is is depleting not only the species but you get into this serial depletion where one fish species will be minimized and they'll the fishing industry for that fishery will move on To the next species it's it's called serial depletion just aptly named and in the process so the fish are being lost not only not only the species is being lost but the next in line is being lost and then the mechanism is still extremely destructive so they're losing the fish species but it needs
to be kept in mind they're also destroying habitat think they came up with this term sustainable fishing to make ourselves feel good about eating fish and Continuing to take fish out of the oceans when in fact really it's Sea Shepherd's position that there is no such thing as sustainable fishing seafood is not a protein source for a sustainable protein source for the for the feeding of the planet or the people on the planets it's not people don't want to hear it because that makes them feel like they have to take action they have to stop
doing something and a lot of people don't want to and people don't Want to they don't put it out there because it's uncomfortable they don't want to propose to tell people what to do but we're at a point where we all have to be cognizant and we have to realize we have to take an action our founder captain Watson likes to say if the oceans die we die that's not a tagline if that's the truth perhaps the only other ecosystem that is being destroyed at such a rapid rate of the world's rainforests our global Rainforests
are essentially the planets lungs they breathe in co2 and exhale oxygen an acre of rainforest is cleared every second and the leading cause is to graze animals and grow their feet crops that is essentially an entire football field cleared every single second and it is estimated that every day close to a hundred plant animal and insect species are lost due to rain forest destruction [Music] What is the leading cause absolutely Dean concentrate force destruction human intervention and terrain forest is the leading cause and so it's either for logging or it's for agribusiness and that's when
you're looking at the top global drivers it will vary a bit by the rain forests that you're talking about but the way that we're choosing to use these natural resources on a large industrial scale is the leading driver when I went on rainforest section Networks website I couldn't believe I didn't see anything about cattle but I did see that a large campaign against palm oil palm oil plantations are causing tremendous deforestation in Indonesian rainforest it is estimated that palm oil is responsible for 26 million acres being cleared though compared to livestock in their feed crops
they were responsible for a hundred and thirty six million acres of rainforest lost to date but on their Website I was shocked to find cattle was not included as one of their four main key issues instead they focused on palm pulp and paper coal and tar sands how could they not have the leading cause of rainforest destruction I had to wonder why focus on fossil fuels and not cattle I don't know why we would ever do a one or the other I don't necessarily know what it is could the executive director of one of the
world's largest rainforest protection groups honestly not know what Was going on or even worse were they hiding it on purpose and if so why I immediately went to Amazon watch to see if they would say what the leading cause of rainforest destruction truly is the most biologically and culturally diverse place on the planet is under massive attack right now the Amazon rainforest itself could be could be gone in the matter of the next ten meters well what is the leading cause of rain first Assertion the leading cause of rainforest destruction I would say well just
to put it into the context of what Amazon watch works on you know there's there's many drivers of destroyed afforestation as we call them many different reasons and ways that rainforests are destroyed the main the ones that cause the most damage and are the most widespread farm mega-projects such as oil and gas pipelines such as mining projects such As mega dam projects we're not talking about I felt like I was going in circles with all these groups as if I were stuck in some strange cowspiracy Twilight Zone where no one could talk about cows I
couldn't believe these organizations just wouldn't say what the leading cause of rainforest destruction truly is I had asked one more time it's hard to say what is a leading cause of deforestation of the Amazon because they're all destructive oil and gas mining dams Agriculture but in terms of land use in terms of the amount of land that is destroyed by the we talk about in comparison all those different causes of deforestation what is what is causing the most trees to fall for example I think it would definitely be agriculture unfortunately one of the biggest causes
of deforestation definitely in the Brazilian Amazon is agribusiness cattle cattle grazing and soy production in particular this is really what's going On mm-hmm why do you think that's like knowing that Greenpeace or nobody was saying a whole the whole story the whole story about one of the main cause of deforestation I think you've brought for some really good points about why isn't why isn't anybody doing anything about this and I think in Brazil in particular I think when we look at you know what happened after the forest code was passed and People people who were
standing up against the lobbyists and the interest of special interests the cattle industry the agribusiness industry what was happening to them a lot of people were speaking out got killed if you look at you know say Carlos you look at Claudia there's no there's people who people who are putting themselves out there and saying you know cattle ranching you know is destroying the Amazon you know a lot of those People who are really putting themselves out there and look at Dorothy stating the nun who lived out in paadhai who was killed a lot of people
will speak up a lot of people just keep their mouth shut because they don't want to they don't want to be the next one with the bullet to their head sister Dorothy staying was a u.s. born non living in the heart of the Brazilian rainforest her life's work was to protect the Amazon she spoke out openly Against the destruction of rainforests from cattle ranching for years walking home one night she was brutally gunned down at point-blank range by a hired gun from the cattle industry [Music] [Music] after green pieces initial denial for an interview I
wrote again begging they reconsider Greenpeace got back again and said again I'm afraid we've explored the options Here in terms of helping you and are not going to be able to be involved this time you mentioned you were also speaking the Oceania I'm sure they'd all be able to give you some great quotes about ocean related issues thanks again for thinking of us with Greenpeace unwilling to be interviewed I had to find a different Avenue from there's something really fishy going on over there fortunately I found a former Greenpeace Board of director who now speaks
openly about the industry environmental organizations like other organizations are not telling you the truth about what the world needs from us as a species it's so frustrating when the information is right before their eyes it's documented in peer-reviewed papers and journals it's there for everybody to see but the environmental organizations are refusing to act no where do you find in their policies and nowhere do you find In the Greenpeace mission that diet is important that animal agriculture is the problem they are refusing like other environmental organizations to look at the issue the environmental community is
failing us and they're failing ecosystems and it's so frustrating to see them do this [Music] NRDC the Earth's best defense alright so here they actually do have a few things On animal agriculture [Music] the leading cause of environmental degradation is too much pollution and too much too many too many engines churning too fast in too many places around the globe livestock causes 15 national internationally or nationally I I think energy production and transportation are still major sources so I think I know I guess I'm not going to comment on that because I'm not Familiar with
those numbers so it's don't quote me on this but that's cow farts that's what I think that what that is I think that's cow farts well that's part of the story methane production from cows and other livestock flatulence is a major contributor but mostly it is due to deforestation in the waste they produce which is a hundred and thirty times more waste than the entire human population virtually all without the Benefit of any waste treatment NRDC absolutely as I said has a big Food Program in fact we just every year we do the growing green
Awards and we recognize food innovators in this last year one of the awardees was a sustainable pork producer actually that doesn't use any antibiotics and and also the the antibiotic use that industrial food production in the United States is uses right now as you know we're giving the majority of antibiotics in the United States are administered to healthy livestock [Music] I wanted to visit one of these sustainable farms and I found the market guard grass-fed beef farm on the lush misty California coast [Music] I'm at Eric and Donna go Marco guard and their four children
Lee and Larry are usually up at 6:00 and out milking the cows slopping the Hogs [Music] altogether we graze about 4,500 acres and this is our home ranch and this is 952 acres of that on average it's about one cow or cow and a calf per every ten acres we would produce annually roughly 80,000 pounds of finished plate ready meat [Music] we keep about 10 pigs in roughly a 50-acre area and we move them around in ten acre pastures some people think that Pigs are dirty why shouldn't you bond with them these pigs are about
seven months old now so these bigger ones are getting ready to be killed those two smaller ones there you know they could grow up a few few more months I love I love animals and I that's that's why I'm in the meat business it's what more of society needs to see is that that packaged piece of meat is a living animal living and breathing Creature that yeah it's hard it's hard but like what Donna get said earlier we do it because we love them with the land use there's anywhere the industrial as well as 2
to 2.5 acres per cow all the way up to some depending it's not as lush as this up to 35 acres yeah we have a ranch in South Dakota that's 50 acres same thing it was just farmed and robbed of all the nitrogen you know is it possible as a practical for the whole world to say grow of Grass-fed cattle like say Brazil where you know 80% suppose 80% of the rainforest was destroyed for for a cattle it shouldn't be eaten beef if their environment wasn't designed to raise beef then they shouldn't be eating it
yeah we don't feel like livestock have a carbon footprint I left there feeling confused and as far as grass-fed beef not having a carbon footprint it actually sounded like it could make sense until I added up the numbers on Land use in population if we're to use the market guard model of raising animals which requires 4,500 acres producing 80,000 pounds of meat the average American eats 209 pounds of meat per year that was all grass-fed beef only 382 people could be fed on their land that equates to 11.7 acres per person times three hundred and
fourteen million Americans which equals 3.7 billion acres of grazing land unfortunately there are only one point Nine billion acres in the US as lower 48 states currently nearly half of all United States land is already dedicated to animal agriculture if we were to switch over to grass-fed beef it will require clearing every square inch of the United States up into Canada all of Central America and well into South America and this is just to feed the United States demand on meat but that figure doesn't even take into consideration that much of that land Isn't suited
to graze livestock we would have to convert all ranges to grassland clear ancient forests and national parks to grazing and demolish every city just to make room to graze cows just like Brazil the United States isn't suited to meet the demands for me it takes 23 months for a grass fed animal to grow to the point to the size and age that it slaughtered whereas a grain fed takes 15 months so that's an additional eight months of Water use land use feed waste in terms of a carbon footprint it's a huge difference turns out due
to land use grass fed beef is more unsustainable than even factory farming I had to come to terms with the fact there was no way to sustainably raised enough animals to feed the world's current demand on meat and had my doubts on dairy as well but I did want to talk with a premier organic dairy company to see if they believe their product was sustainable for the World's population it requires a lot of inputs to produce milk the feed the water the land it does and it may not be practical to expect that there can
be enough dairy production produced in a sustainable way to to feed the entire world I just don't think that that's necessarily a given I think it's maybe too too much to expect that the world can be fed with dairy in a sustainable way I don't know the answer but common sense would say that that's a long shot I was shocked to hear such an honest answer if this is what the dairy CEO would say I wonder what the farmer would claim based on their marketing and seen their farms were an oasis for cows it was
not what I expected typically a cow will eat you know 140 250 pounds of feed a day 40 to 50 pounds of feed every day and then she's also gonna drink between 30 and 40 gallons of water probably go through about probably 20 tons per week 20 tons of grain per Week primarily for our milking cows so about 250 cows yes so the biggest part of sustainability to me the number one thing on the list should be profitability so how the process completely works start to finish is the cow needs to have a baby in
order to give milk and so she'll have her baby that baby's gonna stay with the mother for at least two days the babies will go off to our calf raising facility so they have an individual hutch that they'll be Raised in since we're a dairy it's only the girl cows that give us milk so the boys on typical dairies they're sold off to be freezing facilities but we do keep approximately half and we raise them for two years and sell them as organic grass-fed beef so all dairy cows eventually go to keep industry at some
point in time she's really gonna drop off and say you have to make a business decision at that point are you gonna keep investing in Her you know to give milk or you gonna sell her off again to another dairy or two into the beef industry there's very few places on this planet that have this type of environment but the demand on dairy based protein in the world is only going to increase and there's not enough land on the planet to do this type of daring around the world that it's just the environment is not
going to be that way the lands are not there so I guess on a global scale Conclusion of the dairy is not sustainable unless we start digging up houses and putting pastures back and the only way to start digging up houses and development is to have less people you know we only know that you know population is going to continue to grow so that means more commercial dairy and I'm sure yeah where some other products gonna take its place I mean we see there certain all sorts of you know soy milks and almond milk and
a lot of other Products that are coming out and different blends you know where you take juices and in proteins and I think you'll see a lot more of that he was right how could cow's milk be sustainable for when one gallon of milk it takes upwards of a thousand gallons of water to produce doing research on grass-fed livestock I kept coming across the work of Allan savory almost a third of the planets land is becoming desert with a vast majority due to livestock Grazing savory claims that the best way to reverse this desert vacation
is to actually graze more animals this reminded me of Oceana saying the best way to help fish is to eat fish this is the same man during the 1950's working as a research officer for the Game Department of what is now Zimbabwe came up with a theory in spite of scientific evidence that actually elephants were the cause of desertification there his solution was convincing the government To kill 40,000 elephants yet after 14 years of a relentless slaughter the conditions only got worse his theory was wrong the coaling finally ended but not until tens of thousands
of elephants and their families were killed this is not someone I would ever take ecological advice from it turns out the cattle industry is having the same effect on wildlife in the United States the government has been rounding up horses in mass and we now have more wild Horses and burros and government holding facility 50,000 wild horses from burros and government holding facilities then we have free on the range basically you have ranchers who get to graze on our public lands for a fraction of the going rate so they're getting like this huge tax subsidy
it's about one fifteenth of the going rate and what the Bureau of Land Management has to do is say how much forage and water is on the land and then they divvy it up they give so much To the cows so much to you know wildlife and so much to the wild horses and burros and what we see is the lion's share of the forage and water's going to the livestock industry and then they scapegoat the horses and burros and say oh there are too many horses and burros let's remove them I always tell people
that wild horses and burros are just one of the victims of the management of our public lands for livestock because we also see the predator killing going on We know wolves are now being targeted by ranchers to get rid of wolves USDA has aircraft and all they do is aerial gunning of predators so all Rancher does is call up and say I've got coyote here they'll come over and they'll shoot the coyote or they're shoot the pup mountain lion or they're shoot the Bobcat and this is all for ranching in Washington State after cattle were
found to be attacked on public lands where there were grazing Under permit Washington State did put decided to kill the entire wedge pack of wolves and those wolves were not introduced they had in migrated from Canada but if they're no longer there it starts at the local level with the Bureau of Land managements but then it goes all the way to Congress and we see Congress you know sitting there willing to allow this type of mismanagement of our public lands to continue it is the insistence Of and the lobbying power of the animal agriculture industry
that continues to see wolves killed continues to see an insistence that predators be maintained at a low level that does not benefit ecosystems I've seen so many pieces of land I've looked at so many environmental assessments from the Bureau of Land Management where they say the Range lands are not meeting standards and they say straight up livestock grazing is a cause for not Meeting range standards and yet they will continue to allow livestock grazing they're at the very core of making sure and that Cougars are treed by hounds and that wolf pack's are run down
and that hunting seasons are opened up your own and that traps are set so that they can suffer if anyone cares about wild horses and wildlife and public lands and the environment you can't ignore the livestock the impact the negative impact that livestock raising is having on our Public lands and the rest I've added up the costs of animal food production that the producers don't actually bear themselves you know these are the hidden costs or the externalized costs that they impose on society and those are in categories like health care environmental damage subsidies damage to
fisheries and even cruelty if you take those externalized costs which are about four hundred fourteen billion dollars if if the meat and dairy industries were Required to internalize those costs if they had to bear those costs themselves the costs of the retail prices of meat and dairy would skyrocket so a $5 carton of eggs would go to $13 a $4 Big Mac would go to $11 the problem with these externalize costs being imposed on society is that whether you eat meat or not whether you're an navour or an herbivore you are paying part of the
costs of somebody else's consumption so that when somebody goes Into a McDonald's and buys a Big Mac for $4 there's another seven dollars of costs that's imposed on society I'm paying that you're paying that whether you eat meat or not when you really look at who's benefiting and who's lobbied for this system of Agriculture it's the largest food producers in the country and the largest meat producers and once they become so large and wealthy then they can dictate the federal policies around producing food Because they have so much political power was this why Al Gore
even during his vice presidency never addressed the issue of animal agriculture and failed to talk about it in his film An Inconvenient Truth or his organization the climate reality project was this truth just too inconvenient for even him I felt let down by the man who inspired me on this entire path I knew I needed to talk to an animai agriculture lobby group to see what they had to say if They could silence the government are they influencing and possibly have connections to these environmental groups as well animal agriculture Alliance when the biggest livestock lobby
groups Americas agreed to an interview Greenpeace won't give us an interview but animal agriculture alliances agreed to an interview now that now that is saying something people hear the word GMOs and that's a really scary term and Again I think agriculture is kind of struggle to explain what that means but in reality what we've done is to use technology to make advancements in how we raise crops and how we raise animals we're not going to feed the world going back to how it was a hundred years ago where all the animals were you know pasture
fed we didn't just move animals inside and just implement these large vertically integrated systems because of sustainability it certainly reduces the Environmental impact while improving animal well-being and food safety so that to saying that animals like it just as much being inside the chickens and the cows like being just as much inside as pasture grass fed and a lot of cases it's been a significant improvement in their well-being just in terms of the amount of care they can get individualized care does the mean dairy industry ever support or donate to environmental nonprofits I don't know
That I would want to comment on that does mean dairy industry ever support or donate to say Greenpeace again I don't know that whoops hey sorry we didn't get back to you earlier I have some bad news unfortunately we are no longer able to fund yourself projects we had a meeting and due to the growing controversial subject matter we have some concerns why was this subject so controversial the first person I could think to speak with was Howard Lyman who had been sued by Cattlemen for simply speaking the truth about my agriculture on The Oprah
Winfrey Show I was born on the largest dairy farm in the state of Montana in 1938 grew up my entire life on a livestock farm went to Montana State University got a degree in agriculture came back and started a mega agriculture endeavor where I had ten thousand acres of crop 7,000 a head of cattle and about 30 employees so I spent 45 years of my life in animal Agriculture and so I've been there done that when I was on The Oprah Show we had the food disparagement law now the food disparagement law in my opinion
was unconstitutional but what it basically said that it was against the law to say something you knew to be false about a perishable commodity I didn't say anything on The Oprah Show I thought to be false I went there and told the truth now it took five years and hundreds of Thousands of dollars to end up extra hating myself from the suits from the cattle industry but if I was to go on The Oprah Show today say exactly the same thing today that I said back then I would be guilty and for me when they
were talking about the food disparagement law it was the fact of whether I told the truth or not you can go today and tell the truth and you will be guilty because if you cause a disruption in the profits of the animal Industry you're guilty under the Patriot Act any concern of us making this dr. day of course if you don't realize right now that you're putting your neck on the chopping block you know you you better take that camera and throw it away the animal agriculture industry is one of the most powerful industries on
the planet I think most people in this country are aware of the influence of money and industry on politics and we Really see that clearly on this play with this industry in particular most people would be shocked to learn that animal rights and environmental activists are the number one domestic terrorism threat according to the FBI and why is that it's a difficult question to answer why these groups are at the top of the FBI's priorities I think a big part of it is that they more than really any other social movements today are directly threatening
corporate Profits you know when we try to find out how factory farms and how animal agriculture is put in the environment they try to claim exemptions to that information either under national security terms or public safety trademark issues business it's a business secret we've seen all these attempts to keep people in the dark about what they're actually doing and one of the largest industries on the planet with the biggest environmental Impact trying to keep us in the dark about how its operating through the Freedom of Information Act we obtained documents from the counterterrorism unit that
show they're monitoring my lectures media interviews like this one my website my book we risk filming this and showing it you're going up against people that have massive legal resources I mean it's just overwhelming the amount of money at their disposal and you have nothing and I think that fear is a big Part of that tactic as well what was right I was scared when I learned about the activists being killed in Brazil I was disturbed but I felt removed but to learn about American activists and journalists being targeted by the industry and FBI my
funding being dropped I was genuinely worried to hit close to home was this why no one was willing to talk about the issue I decided to take precautionary measures with all the Footage I was beyond frightened to imagine what could possibly happen if I pursued this subject any further it seemed the only decision to make was to put down the cameras and walk away the fen I realized this issue was way bigger than any personal concern I could ever have for myself this was about all life on Earth hanging in the balance of our actions
now you either live for Something or die for nothing and I actually had no choice all along I decided then to surrender not to fear from the secret but rather to a cause towards truth I couldn't be like these environmental organizations and sit silently while the planet was being eaten alive right in front of our eyes I had to stand up and continue on some people would say the problem isn't really animal agriculture but actually human overpopulation in 1812 there are 1 Billion people on the planet in 1912 there are 1.5 billion then just 100
years later our population exploded to 7 billion humans this number is rightly given a great deal of attention but an even more important figure when determining world population is the world 70 billion farm animals humans raise the human population drink's 5.2 billion gallons of water every day needs 21 billion pounds of food but just the world's 1.5 billion cows alone drink 45 Billion gallons of water every day and eat a hundred and thirty-five billion pounds of food this isn't so much a human population issue it's a human eating animals population issue environmental organizations not addressing
this is like Health Organization's trying to stop lung cancer without addressing cigarette smoking but instead of second-hand smoking it's secondhand eating which affects the entire planet we're growing Enough food right now in the world to feed between 12 and 15 billion people we only have 7 billion people we have roughly a billion people starving every single day in worldwide 50% of the grain and legumes that were growing were feeding to animals so they're eating huge amounts of grain and legumes in the United States it's more like closer to 70 depending on which grain it is
90 about 90% of the soybean 82% of the world Starving children live in countries where food is fed to animals in the livestock systems that are then killed and eaten by more well-off individuals in developed countries such as the US UK and in Europe the fact of it is that we could feed every human being on the planet today an adequate diet if we did no more than take the feed that we are feeding to animals and actually turn it into food for humans and so somebody trying to justify GMOs that's like Trying to give
a drowning man a drink of water you can produce on average 15 times more protein from plant-based sources than from meat on any given area of land whether it's using the same type of land whether it's a very fertile area in one area of the world or it's an area that's depleted if we would reduce the amount of meat we're eating and dairy and eggs we could allow all these mono crop fields of genetically engineered corn and soybeans to revert back to Forests again to be habitat for animals you know anytime somebody tells you that
we can't grow food for humans on the land that we're growing feed for animals this is somebody that if moking the number one crop out of California they the fact of it is if you can grow corn to stuff down the throat of an animal you can actually grow corn and treat it to a human you encourage people eat less meat and for the tremendous resources required in a toll on the environment And on the animals and the workers in the system and it's a brutal system at every level as the world population continues to
grow an almost 9 billion people do you foresee someday that we might just completely have to stop eating meat altogether I don't know that will completely stop I think that the amount of meat eaten will decline there's no way to support 9 ounces per person per day which is what Americans are eating now if the Chinese alone Decided they want to eat that and they've decided they want to eat that much there's an you know we just can't we don't have enough world to produce the grain to generate that much meat I think we you
know a plant-based diet is is the most sustainable but what you recommend see for 9 billion people can eat for the planet to not only sustainment to thrive would you like an ounce 1 ounce so for me yeah I don't think I I don't know Enough but yeah it would be on the order of a couple ounces a week you know it's not gonna be the way we're eating it now we're gorging on me we're eating huge amounts and thank food cheese - yeah yeah yeah cheese and milk ounces only 2 ounces a week seem
like nothing people could probably raise that in their own backyard maybe backyard farming was a sustainable solution I have 42 ducks I started off with three ducks three years ago and then those Burdened into a population I by 75 pound bag of seed and that seed bag will last me right now about two weeks the Ducks know that we're gonna be calling are about two years old when you're living with them they get used to you you know they don't or they're not intimidated or whatever and so they make all their vocal sounds like natural
[Applause] okay yeah we're gonna keep you run these two go first being smart wise compared To a chicken they're probably the same yeah yes all righty okay right there that's gonna be a little gruesome hmm they're not that's nerves and nerve reaction five years old or something like that I think it was the first time my dad came out and made us watch as we did rabbits and we'd raised probably a couple dozen rabbits each year and then we would take those rabbits and skin him and clean him up and keep him for food as
a young kid I was kind of I don't wanna say it was hard but it was kind of from my memory because some of the some of the rabbits I had named so he was kind of like going here I going hmm but after doing it a couple of times you kind of just learned it's just something that it has to be doing not the fingers I just can't do it I don't think I could I don't think I could have someone else do it for me if I can't do it if I can't do
it I don't Want someone else doing it for me and then sustainability for Saint sustainability 75 pounds is 2 pounds per so it's a pound per week burdock 52 weeks 110 it's 110 pounds of food for one that one and a half pound of me so on a sustainability issue its 101 and that green gets you know who knows where I think I'm from but I mean when it gets this point it's not even though sustainability is uh it was just You know I feel real good inside first time I've ever seen out so yeah
I'd been so caught up in the destruction caused by animal agriculture I realized I had never truly dwelled on the obvious reality that every one of these animals was killed there's always a disconnected abstract fact of eating meat but when it became personal face-to-face the story changed I had already scheduled weeks in advance to film another backyard slaughter of a Chicken that stopped producing eggs I didn't know how it was gonna possibly go through another slaughter so I didn't [Music] animal places a farm animal sanctuary in Northern California that focuses on rescuing animals from the
animal agriculture industry a lot of people don't realize that meat breed chickens like this guy behind us they're generally slaughtered at about 42 days old Whereas chickens that are bred for egg production are killed when they're when their productivity starts to decrease when when they start laying less eggs and that generally happens about 18 months to 20 months it doesn't matter if you buy caged eggs eggs from hens on cage-free farms or free-range farms or pasture based farms hi Carol it doesn't matter it turns out there's a successful movement of sustainable animal alternative food producers
based right Here in California funded by big names like Bill Gates and Biz Stone when you imagine all those egg-laying hens eating all that soy and all that corn you have an energy conversion ratio at about 38 to one whereas alternatively you can find plants and you can grow those plants and you can convert those plants in the food and the energy conversion ratio for the plants that we're using to replace the eggs is about two to one compared to 38 to one for eggs so our Explicit goal is to have the maximum amount of
impact by creating this new model that makes the global egg industry entirely obsolete we're making the Omega products improving that we can make better tasting food that's great for you and it takes one twentieth of the land and resources that dairy do but I could tell you that you could have the fiber structure of me the satiating bite of meat the protein and all the nutritional benefits of meat without actually having Animal protein itself and by doing that you could address climate change you could address the human health epidemics that we're seeing you could address
animal welfare and you could rest natural resource conservation would you make the change but what if people just say less animal products like going meatless on Mondays when you go mean this on Monday if you ascribe to that campaign you're essentially contributing to climate change pollution depletion of Our planet's resources and your own health then on only six days of the week instead instead of seven you're creating a false justification clearly a false sense of justification for what you're doing on those other six days of the week so in other words you know which really
shouldn't be resting on our laurels of what you do right not only 1/7 of the time you can't be an environmentalists and eat animal Products period kid yourself if you want if you want to feed your addiction so be it but don't call yourself an environmentalist I knew I had to stop eating all animal products I wanted to help the planet be sustainable but I needed to sustain myself I had doubts about being healthy not eating meat dairy and eggs all I knew was a standard American diet I grew up on was impossible to be
a healthy vegetarian or vegan is that possibly a healthy Vegetarian or vegan I became vegan four or let's see 32 years ago now and I run several miles every day yeah you gotta go biking 4050 miles through the countryside I worked long hours I feel great it's nice waking up in a light trim body every day and so many of my vegan friends and patients you know are just you know they're thriving and since their transition to a vegan diet so yes and I've seen vegan moms go through healthy vegan pregnancies and Deliver healthy vegan
children and raise them too tall full size intelligent vegan adults and yes certainly all the nutrients are they are in the plant kingdom to do this that is correct I think anyone should be consuming dairy I really don't when you think about it the purpose of cow's milk oh I did most of my growing up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin the purpose of cow's milk is to turn a 65 pound calf into a 400 pound cow as Rapidly as possible cow's milk is baby calf growth fluid that's what this stuff is everything in that
white liquid the hormone so lipids the proteins the sodium the growth factors that I gfal every one of those is meant to blow their calf up into a great big cow it wouldn't be there and whether you poured on your cereal is a liquid whether you clot it into yogurt whether you've it's it into cheese whether you freeze it into ice cream It's baby calf growth of the fluid and women eat it and it stimulates their tissues and gives women breast lumps it makes the whole uterus get big and they get five words and they
bleed and they get hysterectomies and they need mammograms and gives guys me and boobs this is cow's milk is the lactation secretions of a large bovine mammal who just had a baby it's for baby calves you know I tell my patients go look in the mirror now do you have big ears you have A tail are you a baby calf if you're not don't be a baby calf growth through it in in any level there's nothing in it people need it was a relief to hear I didn't have to eat any animal products to be
healthy and even thrive but I still thought you needed animal in manure to grow organic agriculture it turns out there's an entire movement with people growing food without any animal inputs I visited earthworks urban farm in Detroit where they are working With and growing food for the low-income community we tend to see ourselves and as individuals in a bubble and forget that we inhabit this this land and this earth with other creatures so we have to learn how to share more I guess jazz here is working on his garden you'll be surprised what you can
do with what seems to be not allowed space by the full body what's your goal this year how much to cookie the one full year after we this was constructed we doubled our Yield to over 14,000 pounds of food fourteen thousand pounds yeah many about two and a half so as much food as we produce and we grow or the earth helps us grow is we also have to return those nutrients back to the soil so we like to think of our work as being regenerative that we're putting us as much life-giving substance in the
ground as we as we're taking out just kind of healthier and safer to use vegetarian or vegetable yeah that's what we found but Also because it takes less time it's a lot easier to manage yeah yeah absolutely not only is a big annek more compassionate it's also more efficient and in a society with this many billions of people we need to be as efficient as possible some people might go back and say if we embrace this this primitive approach of only wild animals everywhere and we go back to like a hunter-gatherer system that sounds great
but that was Ten million people on the entire continent maybe a little bit more a little bit less no one really knows today now we have what we have 320 and million in the u.s. 25 million in Canada another hundred and so many million in Mexico so North America is up to almost you know 450 million people trying to figure out a way to bring animal agricultural imbalance with 450 hungry million hungry people is impossible this is amazing I didn't believe it when I First learned it but two hundred and sixteen thousand more people are
born to the planet every day every day it's extraordinary but what's really extraordinary is you need per day thirty four thousand new acres of farmable land that's not happening to feed a person on an all plant-based vegan diet for a year requires just one-sixth of an acre of land to feed that same person on a vegetarian diet that includes eggs and dairy requires Three times as much land to feed an average US citizens high consumption diet of meat dairy and eggs requires 18 times as much land this is because you can produce 37,000 pounds of
vegetables on one and a half acres but only 375 pounds of meat on that same plot of land I also learned the comparison doesn't end with land use a vegan diet produces half as much co2 as an American omnivore uses 111th the amount of fossil fuels one-thirteenth the amount of water and An 18th of the amount of land after adding this all up I realized I had the choice every single day to save over 1,100 gallons of water 45 pounds of grain 30 square feet of forested land the equivalent of 20 pounds of co2 and
one animal's life every single day if we all as a society did go vegan and we moved away from eating animal foods and toward a plant-based diet well what would happen if we didn't kill all these cows and eat them then we wouldn't have To breed all these cows because they're because we're breeding cows and chickens and pigs and fishes we're breeding them and you know over and over again relentlessly so if we didn't breed them then we wouldn't have to feed them if we didn't have to feed them then we wouldn't have to devote
all this land to growing grains and legumes and so forth to feed to them and so then the forest could come back wildlife could come back the oceans would come back the rivers Would run clean again the air would come back a health would return renewable energy infrastructure such as building solar and wind generators all over our country to reduce climate change I mean that's has a pretty good idea but it's projected to take at least 20 years and at least minimally 18 trillion dollars to develop you know it's important to realize that we we
don't have that long of a time frame we just talked about how it might be a three to four year time Frame so we don't really have 20 years and we really don't have 18 trillion dollars to develop these so so another solution to climate change we could we could stop eating animals and it could be done today it doesn't have to take 20 years and it certainly doesn't have to take 18 trillion dollars because it cost nothing some people say well let's fix co2 and then we can worry about the methane well that's the
wrong it's the other way around it actually makes sense Do something about methane because you get a response right away quietly and unmistakeably the most powerful thing that summer we can do for the environment no other lifestyle choice has a father reaching and more profoundly positive impact on the planet and all life on Earth then choosing to to stop consuming animals and live a vegan lifestyle if you realize 75% of Americans consider themselves to be environmentalist you don't think we Couldn't solve this problem in a heartbeat I'll tell you what all we would need is
for the environmentalist to live what they profess and we'd be on a new course in the world we will not succeed until we stop animal agriculture and when I succeed I mean we will not save ecosystems the extent necessary we will not have enough food for people around the planet we will not stop global warming we will not stop pollution and the dead Zones that run off all the fields of corn and soy that are grown to feed livestock and we will not stop though the hunting of wolves and other predators now organic farming is
one major positive step in the right direction but we need to keep walking we need to get beyond organics we need to get to sustainability when you take the animal out well you also take the greenhouse gas issue out and you take the food Safety issues out and you take some of the other externalities related to food scarcity but one thing that's amazing is I think you put our values back in you put values like compassion and integrity and kindness values that are natural to human beings you put that in you build that back into
the story of our food and I think as this begins to progress I think it also helps people to pause before they eat that egg before they eat that steak before they that chicken Nugget and ask themselves is that really what they want or do they actually want something more I had to come to the full conclusion the only way to sustainably and ethically live on this planet with seven billion other people is to live in entirely plant-based vegan diet I decided instead of eating others to eat for others at first like these environmental groups
I was afraid of what it mean to change but now I embrace it all this talk about sustainability Sounded like our planet was on some sort of life-support and I don't want her to simply survive or to sustain but to thrive life today is not about sustainability it's about thrive ability she's given so much to us for so long it was time to give back one hundred and eight percent of everything we have it felt good it was in alignment and we see this movement not just about providing cheaper inexpensive food that everyone Can have
but also a spiritual move a move towards understanding who we really are and how we can really connect to each other do what you can do as well as you can do it every day of your life and you will end up dying one of the happiest individuals that ever ever died we become part of a gathering momentum of other people it's been happening is was really what's happening this is the new selflessness is a nice way to be it has all these benefits for yourself as Well as the planet and other people so it's
a beautiful way to live ecologically it's just it just feels better this is about massively transforming how our society eats because it's a necessity it's acting on what we know and acting kindly and gently on the whole climate and with other people to accomplish the goals of living better we can do it but we have to choose to do it you can change the world you must change The world [Music] you [Music]
