Marya Mann : Blog : Eat Wisely, Watch Cowspiracy & SAVE THE EARTH BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE

Eat Wisely, Watch Cowspiracy & SAVE THE EARTH BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE

Right now, world leaders from over 190 nations are meeting in Paris for the COP21 Paris Climate Conference to give structure and momentum to resolutions that will help restore a healthy climate. The stakes couldn’t be higher, but few are talking about the number one, fastest way to reverse global warming.

And it doesn’t have to do with a “legally binding” mechanism to ensure countries adhere to carbon reduction commitments, as President Obama declares – though that’s important. A successful outcome for the United Nations climate talks will include international pledges, sure, but the one way you, at home, in your own life, today, can nourish a healthy climate is right in front of you — at your dinner table.

Eat a plant-based diet and stop butchering, buying and eating industrially grown animals. If you haven’t seen the research, a quick way to bring yourself up to date on the issue of animal agriculture is to watch the extraordinary film, Cowspiracy. A new cut from executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio is now streaming on Netflix.

Cowspiracy is an eye-opener, as it subjects the animal agriculture industry to searing scrutiny and ultimately concludes that this, more than any other single industry on Earth, is “primarily to blame” for “global warming, water depletion, deforestation, species extinction, and ocean dead zones.

Director Kip Andersen says: “Some people think they know what the film is going to be before they watch it. Because it has the word ‘cow’ in it, it might be some film where you’re going to see some gruesome things about animals. But our focus was really to skip beyond the things such as factory farms, which most people know about, and to focus really on the most ‘sustainable’ farming – the grass-fed and the organic farms – and to show that what’s happening on the factory farm level is essentially happening on those, too. It doesn’t matter if it’s organic or grass-fed beef.”

A shift in diet is one of those revolutionary steps that has raised controversy, because it’s hard to change eating habits we’ve had since birth, but it’s the major change that can save the planet before it’s too late. Driving less is great and important, but we won’t see an impact to climate change for one hundred years, even if everybody stopped using fossil fuels. If everybody stopped supporting animal agriculture, however, we would see immediate impacts, and within ten to fifteen years, the planet would start to regulate itself again. Overuse of water, deforestation, soil and forest erosion, ocean dead zones – all of these things could stop immediately if we all chose to stop supporting this industry. Virtually no other lifestyle change has that sort of impact.

So why aren’t they talking about the meat industry in Paris? Because the meat industry doesn’t want you to stop eating meat. It’s as simple as that. At One Green Planet’s #EatForThePlanet campaign, they believe that our food choices have the power to heal our broken food system, give species a fighting chance for survival, and pave the way for a truly sustainable future.

“The real war against climate is being fought on our plates, multiple times a day with every food choice we make,” says Nil Zacharias, Editor-in-Chief of One Green Planet, ”one of the biggest challenges facing our planet, and our species is that we are knowingly eating ourselves into extinction, and doing very little about it.”

By choosing to eat more plant-based foods you can drastically cut your carbon footprint, save precious water supplies and help ensure that vital crop resources are fed to people, rather than livestock. With the wealth of available plant-based options available, it has never been easier to eat with the planet in mind.

In addition, our meat-heavy diets are linked to most chronic health problems, from obesity to heart disease and diabetes. Most recently, the World Health Organization made news when it linked consumption of red and processed meat to cancer.

Among the major issues surrounding the eating of meat are these:

• Our appetite for meat is a major driver of climate change. Reducing global meat consumption will be critical to keeping global warming below the ‘danger level’ of two degrees Celsius. According to the report, the livestock sector accounts for 15 per cent of global emissions, equivalent to exhaust emissions from all the vehicles in the world. A shift to healthier patterns of meat-eating could bring a quarter of the emissions reductions we need to keep on track for a two-degree world.
• Global meat consumption has already reached unhealthy levels, and is on the rise. In industrialized countries, the average person is already eating twice as much meat as is deemed healthy by experts. Overconsumption contributes to the rise of obesity and non-communicable diseases like cancer and type-2 diabetes, and it is a growing problem: global meat consumption is set to rise by over 75 per cent by 2050.
• Governments are missing a key opportunity for climate mitigation, trapped in a cycle of inertia. In spite of a compelling case for addressing meat consumption and shifting diets, governments fear the repercussions of intervention, while low public awareness means they feel little pressure to intervene.

To find out more about how you, too, can move towards this important lifestyle change,check out One Green Planet’s #EatForThePlanet campaign.

WATCH THIS MOVIE: COWSPIRACY!
The movie, Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, is now streaming on Netflix.

Live today with future generations in mind.

Be informed. Be insightful. Join the delicious upwising! Eat wisely and be kind!