Concerned about global warming and the urgent need to act now to protect human lives and the lives of all beings, members of the Supreme Master Ching Hai International Association in Thailand and Âu Lạc (Vietnam) organized another climate change conference entitled 『Solutions for a Beautiful Planet.』 During the conference, distinguished guests and dignitaries from different parts of the world express their support for the meat-free diet as the single most effective solution to stop methane emissions and curb global warming.
Held on August 15 at Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University in Nonthaburi, Thailand,
over 2,500 guests attended the conference.
Among the scores of distinguished guests and ambassadors who attended were Dr. Art-ong Jumsai Na Ayudhya, Member of the Thai Parliament, former NASA scientist; Mr. Ennoo Suesuwan, Senior Executive Vice President of the Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives; Professor Dawan Wiwattanadate, Ph. D., Deputy Director, Energy Research Institute, Chulalongkorn University; Sir Velelo Gardener Kwepile, Counsellor of the Embassy of the Republic of South Africa; Sir Howell Howard, Regional Environment of the Economic Section of the Embassy of the United States of America;Sir Nikolay N. Pomoshchninov, Minister Counselor of Embassy of Russia; and Sir Stepan N. Golovin, representative of Embassy of Russia; Dr. Nguyễn Thọ Nhân, Ph.D., specializing in energy studies at Paris University in France; Dr. Nguyễn Thị Minh Kiều, Ph.D., M.D., Chairwoman of Food and Nutrition Association; and Dr. Ngô Đức Vượng, Ph.D., environmentalist. Invited as Guest of Honor, Supreme Master Ching Hai graciously attended via live videoconference to answer questions from the audience.
In light of the scientific evidence stressing the grave state of our planet caused by climate change and the urgent need for immediate action, Supreme Master Ching Hai affirms the important message she has been delivering for over the past two decades: we must be organic vegetarian or vegan, meaning an animal-free diet.
We now invite you to join us for the rebroadcast of the videoconference on climate change with Supreme Master Ching Hai entitled『Solutions for a Beautiful Planet,』held on August 15, 2009 in Nonthaburi, Thailand.
In
recent years, Bangkok is among 13 of the 20 largest cities in the world
at risk from rising sea levels. Some areas in Bangkok are under sea
level and the highest point is only 3.5 to 5 feet or 1 to 1.5 meters
above sea level.
Bangkok is gradually going under at a rate of
4 inches or 10 centimeters cms a year. Natural disasters which came
simultaneously and continuously have caused enormous economic and
social damage to this country and seriously affected people’s lives and
activities. ... Thirty-five percent of the population as I understand
it, will be in great danger if the sea levels rise by 5 meters. Just 5
meters. yeah! Typhoons with accompanying flooding have continuously
taken place during these recent years, which is a direct result of
worsening global warming.
Every single day we are losing up to
270 species of plants and animals because of global warming. In Canada,
for example, some of the little birds and creatures that I used to see
as a child are no more, they simply don’t exist. And did you know that
we have lost 90% of our large sea creatures such as whales? The oceans
are dying ? we have 400 dead zones now where nothing lives. This is due
to fertilizer runoff largely of livestock contributing to the lack of
oxygen which is necessary to support life. The ice caps are melting
faster than we had expected. The Arctic ice cap is projected to be
melted by the summer of 2012. Huge chunks of ice from the Antarctic ice
cap are falling away. And Greenland is melting very quickly as well.
Due to rising sea levels, 18 islands have completely submerged beneath
the sea with more than 40 other land nations at risk.
Mr. Lin
Hung-Chih Lin, a legislator from Formosa (Taiwan):If one person eats
vegetarian for a day, it can reduce at least 5 kilograms kg of carbon
dioxide dioxide emissions. It will be wonderful awesome if everyone
does this. To improve the convenience for vegetarians and enjoyment of
the vegetarian diet, we are introducing bills in Formosa (Taiwan) to
build a vegetarian-friendly environment. In Formosa (Taiwan), starting
since from since July 1st this year, all vegetarian products must be
labeled with 『vegan,』 『ovo-vegetarian,』
『lacto-vegetarian,』『lacto-ovo-vegetarian』 or 『Wu Shin vegetarian.』All
vegetarians can purchase the vegetarian food items based on their
needs, and avoid accidentally getting foods that contain animal
products.
We hope to create a more vegetarian-friendly
environment. Other than In addition to such food ingredient labeling,
we currently plan to promote vegetarian food certification, or good
vegetarian food recognition to encourage more people to eat vegetarian
food and to widely promote the vegetarian diet.
Park Kwang Joon,
Administrator of Gangwon Meteorological Administration, in Korea : the
Korean government has put together a national strategy for addressing
the global warming issue, namely low carbon, green growth and we’re
trying to achieve not only new green growth, new growth engines but
also sustainable development. Under the national strategy, Korea
Meteorological Administration (KMA) has annexed the role of monitoring,
analysis and the prediction of climate change, particularly focusing on
the research on adaptation of climate change, and KMA has actively
participated in the relevant international
cooperation activities.
In
this regard, let me also inform you that KMA will host the 32nd session
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change in Busan, Korea, in
2010....On January the 15th 2007, I believe it was, Dr. Rajendra
Pachauri, who is the chief of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
change (IPCC) for the UN, came out publicly and told all of us that
there are 3 things that we can do to halt global warming. Number 1:
Don’t eat meat. Number 2: Ride a bike. And Number 3: Become a frugal
shopper. In other words consume less.
Dr. Stephen Schneider,
Professor of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford
University. He’s a lead author, and works with the UN IPCC or
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change 4th Assessment. :Unequivocal
is not a typical word for scientists so, in this case, they really mean
it. And it’s not just because the thermometers tell you this story,
it’s because it’s consistent with 95% of the mountain glaciers in the
world that are melting, including major glaciers that affect the rivers
and a lot of other activities in Asia from the Tibetan Plateau. It also
occurs because we know the sea levels
are rising because as you heat the oceans,they expand.
And
in the last 20 years at least, we’ve been melting Greenland at a faster
rate than anybody predicted, and all the ice up there as it runs out
into the oceans is also raising sea level. And if that continues or
accelerates as many people believe is possible, then we run a real risk
of meters of sea level rise. The consequences are very clear. Meters of
sea level rise would displace hundreds of millions of people in Asia
alone. What else do we know?
Well, we know that hurricanes
have been more intense in the last 30 years than they were before and
we don’t make hurricanes. But when you warm up the oceans, that gives
them more power. They’re going to get significantly intense in the 21st
century if we keep on warming as we’ve been doing. So, this is very,
very significant for Asia because with all the people that live in mega
deltas and all those cities within a few meters of sea level, rising
sea level and intensifying cyclones, which increases the storm surge
and the flooding damage. It’s is not good news when tens of millions of
people every few years are moving into cities.
We really work
very hard to try to control the pollution that’s creating this problem,
we’ll warm up another one to two degrees. That’s the best we can get,
in other words, two to three times more than we already have. The worse
worst looks like it’s somewhere around four to six degrees over the
next century ... So, the IPCC said that there was a possibility of
extinction of up to 40% of known species if we warm up more than 3 or 4
degree C.
The cause of global warming is determined by the
perpetual production of 3 main types of gas that create the greenhouse
effect: carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4), which is 72 times more
potent than carbon dioxide averaged over 20 years; and nitrous oxide
(N2O), which is 310 times more potent than carbon dioxide. The major
source of these gases is from the livestock industry, as indicated by
the United Nations FAO’s report 『Livestock’s Long Shadow.』 About 36% of
the methane dissolved in the atmosphere is primarily produced by the
digestive process of ruminant animals and 64% from their urine,
which
contributes significantly to the development of acid rain. Livestock
farming creates 65% of nitrous oxide related to human activities, the
majority of which comes from chemical fertilizers. Aside from the huge
amount of greenhouse gases released, the livestock industry has also
detrimentally impacted topsoil and water resources in many parts of the
world.
Currently, the livestock industry uses 30% of the
Earth’s surface primarily for long-term breeding farms, but it also
accounts for another 33% of globally cultivated land used for producing
animal feed. Vast tracts of forest have been destroyed to create
grazing pastures for farm animals. For example, 70% of the forests in
Latin America, such as the Amazon rainforest, have been turned into
grazing pastures. Meanwhile, cattle herds trigger large scale topsoil
degradation. Approximately 20% of grazing pastures are degraded through
extreme cattle herding where the topsoil has hardened and eroded. This
figure is even higher in dry regions where permanent desertification
has occurred.
Dr. Art-ong Jumsai Na Ayudhya, a vegetarian,
Member of Thai Parliament, former NASA scientist, engineer, and
educator : You know, the northern part in the North Pole area we now
find a lot of this methane coming up through the ice because ice is
melting and disappearing and methane is now coming up through the ice.
And as you know, methane is much worse than gas carbon dioxide for
global warming. So, this is a very important problem that we have to
take care of because it’s going to speed up the global warming. The
temperature will go up much more quickly in the next 3 years or so.
And
because our world is a water planet especially around the Pacific area,
it’s a huge ocean and when we look from the Moon, it covers almost half
the area of the world. So when you have an increase in the weight,
increase in the water, there will be more weight on one side than on
the other. And our Earth is rotating in space and suddenly, you have
more weight on one side than on the other,then you cannot have like a
top turning around on its axis anymore; it will start to wobble. So
that’s a big problem for our Earth right now, that we have more weight
on one side than the other because of the melting of the ice.
We
have more water in the ocean and so more weight in the Pacific area
than on the other side of the world. So, in order for the Earth to
survive, we can do two things. We are living on earth plates. Thailand
here is part of the Eurasian plate, consisting of Europe and Asia
except for India; we are on a big plate. And you know plates are
floating on some liquid
inner core of our Earth, and so it can
move fairly easily and it has been moving since many, many years ago,
250 million years ago it started to move and it kept on moving. Well,
the Earth plates are likely to move more quickly now.
This is
what scientists have found out, that the Eurasian plate is now moving
towards the Pacific Ocean and the Pacific plate is also moving towards
the Eurasian plate. So right now, on the edge where the two plates are
joining, it’s starting to push on each other, and this is going to
create a lot of problems for those living along the Pacific rim because
there is a big movement going on in the Earth plates now. And it will
create not only a lot of earthquakes, big tsunamis will start from the
Philippines side for example, and this will create tsunamis coming into
the gulf of Thailand.
We never had anything like that before,
but now there is a possibility that this will take place. And, of
course, wherever you have the joint of the Earth plates, you are going
to have more earthquakes. And if we look to the eastern side, next to
United Stated, you see the area which they call most active rift zone.
The most active rift zone is where the plates are separating.
That’s
a big problem for all of us. Around Thailand, along the Andaman Sea, we
have a joint of the plates and therefore that’s where we had the big
tsunami that killed so many people in many, many countries in the past.
Mr. Ennoo Suesuwan, Senior Executive Vice President of theBank
of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives:BAAC ask the banks to
provide credit so we have to provide the appropriate technology to our
customers on how to avoid the global warming. We have also the project
that we call 『1 million customers, 9 million trees for the king.』 And
we have a project to encourage all the energy saving: electricity,
water supply, and anything else.
For the farmers, we also
promote our customers to do the sustainable agriculture such as the
organic farming and also the agro forestry. For our officers, about
14,000 officers through our country, we also serve them the healthy
food. Even in our head office we have the vegetarian food for their own
choice, and also all the food in our cafeteria would be safer. And for
physical health, for our officers, we have the exercise group, sports
group, stretching every day and also have contestants for 『Mr and Mrs.
Good Health.』 For the mental health, we have the counselor in the bank
and also provide them the training for meditation also.
Dr.
Nguyn Thi Nhan, Dr. of Philosophy at the University of Paris,France
where he specialized in energy, the former advisor to the Asia Pacific
Regional Energy Development Program in Bangkok, former head of the
Program of Energy and Environment of the International Organization of
Francophone Countries located in Paris, an author, wrote the book
『Energy and Climate Change.』:And we’ve seen on the graph that the
temperatures are rising. And they can use scenarios to predict the
global warming in the future,at least in the next century,in this
century,21st century and at the end of the 21st century. In the most
favorable conditions,they see that the temperatures would rise about
1.8 degree Celsius,and in the most unfavorable conditions,the
temperatures will rise above 4 degree Celsius and it must be kept under
2 degree Celsius in order to avoid the dangerous consequences to the
Earth.
A recent report released by the United States National
Snow and Ice Data Center found that the rate of Arctic ice melt has
been speeding up dramatically, with a shrinkage during the month of
July equal to 41,000 square miles each day.
Meanwhile,
Canadian researchers have already forecast that the entire Arctic ice
cap would be gone within a couple of decades, maybe quicker. As the ice
disappears, global warming accelerates because of losing the reflective
white cover provided by the ice. The scientists also reported that
Arctic tundra temperatures have been rising 1 degree Celsius each
decade, which is faster than anywhere else in the world.
The
critical mass in this case means that the number of people on Earth who
have adopted the vegan lifestyle has become high enough that it helps
create a kind of momentum you see,for others for others to be more open
to join. This number was reached in June of this year,2009. Till now,we
have altogether 40% of the population on the planet that have become
veg,including vegetarian and vegan,including
waterian,solarian,breatherian breatharian,pranarian meaning people who
only live on water,who only lives on liquid,who only lives from solar
energy,or only live on the chi,the prana energy,or on love from the
Divine. So now,we have 40% of all this combination. This is surely
encouraging.
We need only another 60%,Dr. Phim. However,we are
still working hard to spread the veg message. So,it helps if we all
continue informing as many people as we can,not just sit and wait for
the critical mass to take effect.
You can show that scientists
worldwide have proved that not only meat is unhealthy,but that it is
actually like a poison. Eating meat,or any animal products for that
matter,is directly linked to heart disease,strokes,and all kinds of
cancers. Our distinguished speakers before me have mentioned it to you
also. With over 1 million new colon cancer patients diagnosed each year
and more than 655,000 related deaths by this ailment alone,truly,every
aspect of health does benefit from the『Be Veg』approach,because so many
toxic and poisonous substances are being removed from the diet through
removing meat.
This is not to mention the freedom from
worrying about bacteria and other troubling disorders like mad cow
disease,which is most sadly always fatal ? . If means anyone who
contracts ed mad cow disease ? will be dead,there’s no cure for it. ...
Now second,to show a the better way of living found through the
health-restoring veg diet,we can offer veg recipes,cooking classes,to
show how delicious and fulfilling it is.
Captain Paul Watson ?
Founder and President of the Sea Shephard Conservation Society:Not many
people realize that half of the fish taken out of the ocean isn’t even
eaten by people. It’s fed to livestock. We have turned the pig into the
largest marine predator on the planet.
Pig farms are the source
of swine flu. We have to stop pig farming. We have to stop the place
where the swine flu originated and spread and mutated and become worse
and worse every day first. Thus, the root cause of the swine flu virus
is our cruel meat-eating habit. that makes us a very cruel being, and
not very dignified at that. As long as the meat industry continues,
such viruses will continue to be born. After this one, we will have the
next and the next and the next and the next, and one of them will be
even worse than we can imagine now, and more deadly, as the experts
have warned us long ago. The animal farms must be closed. And to do
that, we must be vegan.
By the way, the swine flu is by far
not the only scary disease - that also comes from or is spread by
humans’ cruel treatment of animals. Avian flu, tuberculosis, listeria,
Crohn’s disease, mad cow disease, camphylobacter, Staphylococcus
aureus, etc., etc. And now, we have its more dangerous form, called
MRSA, namely methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, it’s a
“superbug” ? meaning there is no antibiotic to cure it, no antibiotic
for this superbug. We have it now in our world and its likely source is
because we fed the animals too many antibiotics. So, these diseases
arose because we over-breed animals and create the conditions for the
diseases to form and spread.
Other diseases came from hunting
? another cruelty committed on the poor animals. HIV, the killer of 25
million people since 1981, is from humans’ consumption of primates. And
just recently, as you know from the news, people in China are dying
from the pneumonic plague, which originated from hunting marmots for
food. It’s very contagious and can kill a victim within 24 hours! So,
all these diseases, not just the swine flu, could be prevented if only
humans turn away from such unhealthy, cruel, violent habits ? the
habits of raising, hunting, and eating animal flesh.
Dr.
Art-ong Jumsai Na Ayudhya:because the rising sea,it’s rising up all the
time. We have more weight in the Pacific Ocean,more so than on the
other side of the world. And because of this,there is an imbalance in
the world. The world is going around like a top in space,moving around
the axis,and it’s steady,it’s peaceful. But then,we start to increase
the weight on one side more than the other. So,it’s just like when you
play a top,you spin the top,normally the top will spin on its axis
steadily,but suppose we put a little bit of clay on one side of the top
and then try to spin it again,this time it will start to wobble,it will
no longer spin on its original axis.
So is the world. We are
going to have a lot of problems because of this imbalance and it’s
possible the worst scenario is that it will suddenly change the axis of
rotation. This has happened before in our world in the past. The North
Pole has not always been where it is. It has changed in the past
because the world became hot when we got closer to the sun. Sometimes
we are further away from the sun,so we got the Ice Age. So there is a
lot of imbalance. Many times there is a change in the axis of the
rotation of the world. Well that is the worst scenario that could
happen. But also,because of the imbalance in the weight around the
world,the earth crust is also moving. And because the earth crust is
moving,we are going to get
more earthquakes,we are going to get more tsunamis,we are going to have a lot of problems because when you have tsunamis.
Most
animals are in touch with God’s grace already,at every moment of their
lives here on Earth. They bring to our planet this divine grace and
love,the power of love in its purest form. They are here to help the
planet become more elevated. So in a way,their presence itself is like
a prayer being answered,because they bring the blessings through them
from the Divine to which they are so near. So much more the reason they
deserve our respect and protection. The animals are truly noble,gentle
beings,selfless,and in harmony with one another,the environment,and
with Heaven.
Their role has always been since time
immemorial,that is,to bring love and blessing to the world with their
pure presence. Even in the physical aspect,scientists have shown time
and again how each and every species fulfill a valuable role in nature.
It is true that our efforts to alleviate global warming in the
recent few years helped to postpone already the
deadline,somehow,somewhat,for some time. Not so long ago we only had
about 2 years before we faced the point of no return. Then,as more and
more people put in effort,namely by switching to a vegan diet,with a
wish to help the planet ? this powerful wish helps and this powerful
action helps - so time was added because of each one’s great positive
energy through this compassionate diet and well wish,until we had an
extension of about 4 years now.
Of course,this is also
Heaven’s great merciful grace for giving us this second chance. The
deadline,however,does not get postponed forever. In fact,every day on
Supreme Master Television,there is a countdown of how many days we have
left to change before it is too late. Today is day 1257.
Everything
they feel is worth living for. We can get out of the danger but through
the right direction. Our house is on fire but the water hose is right
there in front of us. Just pick it up and use it,it’s as simple as
that. Just be vegan. And please,be quick. Our days are numbered.