With diverse flora and fauna, magnificent natural landscapes, and an ecological biosphere that supports life, this wondrous planet is our earthly home. From our animal co-inhabitants to the lush rainforests and life-giving soil, we cherish all these as gifts from the Creator. It is a common theme in the world’s major faiths that during our temporary stay here, we should be good stewards of Mother Earth.

Throughout the years, Supreme Master Ching Hai has shared the message of leading a balanced life while following a spiritual path. Not only must we nourish our spirits, but we share the responsibility to care for nature and our fellow beings. In light of recent scientific evidence which pinpoint the raising of livestock as the number one contributor to climate change, Supreme Master Ching Hai affirms the important message she has noted for over the past two decades: we must be vegan and

practice sustainable living. We invite you to listen to a compilation of excerpts from Supreme Master Ching Hai’s lectures titled “Stop Soil Erosion and Desertification: Make the Switch to the Animal-free Lifestyle.”

Eco-friendly viewers, We appreciate your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples here on Supreme Master Television. Join us again tomorrow for part 2 of “Stop Soil Erosion and Desertification: Make the Switch to the Animal-free Lifestyle.” And now, Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants is coming up next, right after Noteworthy News. Please stay tuned. We wish you abundant blessings and love from God.

It’s been a pleasure to have your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples. Part 3 of “Stop Soil Erosion and Desertification: Make the Switch to the Animal-free Lifestyle.” will continue next Friday. Up next is Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. Please stay tuned. May Heavens bless you with much love and light.

Thank you for your company for today’s episode of Between Master and Disciples.

Up next is Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants right after Noteworthy News here on Supreme Master Television. Please stay tuned. May Heaven bless you and your loved ones with abundance health and happiness.

The livestock industry causes a large part of the world’s soil erosion. It is a leading driver of desertification, biodiversity loss, and water waste and water pollution, despite water becoming scarcer each day due to global warming.

Moreover, the livestock sector inefficiently drains our fossil fuel and food grain resources. In short, we throw away 12 times more grain, at least 10 times more water, and 8 times more fossil fuel energy to produce a portion of beef compared to a nutritionally similar or even greater amount of vegan food. By the way, fishing is also horrendously wasteful and murderous. A major study predicts that all fished animals will be 90% gone by 2050 due to overfishing and over-wasting by-catch. It means those fish and other marine lives that they don’t need, but while catching other fish, they kill them as well, by the billions.

Moreover, it is such an alarming picture when we think about the billions of animals killed each year for so-called “food.” Fifty-five billion – which is not even counting fish and other species! That is 8 times more innocent beings murdered each year than there are people on the Earth. How can our planet and our conscience support such unsustainable, damaging, and criminal practice? And all for a piece of dead flesh every day, which we now know isn’t even healthy and, in fact, kills us.

I pray that our world’s leaders will take swift actions to ban the destructive meat production and, instead, use subsidies for organic vegan farming which helps absorb emissions. Then we can have an immediate effect on climate change and have more time to develop and perfect our green technology to address CO2. I call upon the media to help as well, and thank you and the Irish Dog Journal for their part.

And most important, individuals must turn to the planet-saving, organic vegan lifestyle, because the dangers are mounting and time is urgent. If every one of us would only switch now, we would ensure a future for our children and generations to come.

Hallo, Master. I recently visited the Grand Canyon in the USA. I heard it became like that about 2 billion years ago due to the movement of the Earth’s crust caused by gas emissions, erosion, and weathering. I felt a lot upon seeing such a wide area becoming a wasteland where living beings cannot live. Is the Grand Canyon that I’ve seen similar to the appearance of the Earth in the future, in the case that we cannot stop global warming? It is of course very sad to remember some unpleasant event, or destructive phenomena that has happened on our planet. I understand how you feel. It could be similar to the Grand Canyon, but not all like that. Some parts will look similar like that, some parts look different.

It depends on how big the destruction. If it is total destruction, then it will become like a desert. Nothing can survive because of too much poisonous gas. It’s uninhabitable for anyone, animals and men. And then all the water might be evaporated, and then there will be no trees and no flowers; no plants even survive. So if you don’t want to be sad, don’t go to the Grand Canyon, all right?

Do not focus on the negative side of nature. Things happen according to the destiny of the inhabitants of each planet. So right now we should concentrate more on informing people how to stop the global warming on our planet and to encourage people to be veg and that should be enough work to do for now. Positive thinking, positive vision, positive action.

Some of the global warming effects that we hear about are a continued rise in the Earth’s atmospheric temperature, warming of the ocean, along with acidification, more frequent and stronger storms, prolonged droughts and intensified heat waves, soil desertification, plant and animal extinctions, and even melting of permafrost, which could trigger massive releases of more methane gas. That would be catastrophic beyond an unthinkable scale. Mexico and your neighboring nations have already suffered from some of these effects.

Besides the drought that has stricken parts of Mexico for over a decade now, other countries like Guatemala have been facing extreme shortages, with over 550 fatalities and more than 400,000 families who have been in need of food and water assistance. In Ecuador, officials have started rotating electricity outages due to low water levels in the nation’s hydroelectric dams. Venezuela is also beginning to ration out water as she suffers from the worst drought since 1947, with June and October 2009 being the driest months in over 100 years.

“How is livestock production connected to these damaging effects?” you will ask. There are so many ways that I’m sure I don’t have enough time to tell all of them, but we can list the activities that are associated with meat production that are causing some of the biggest problems for us. These include deforestation, soil erosion and desertification, excessive use of precious resources, land and water waste and pollution, and animal, plant and human disease or disappearance.

Soil erosion and desertification: the clearing of land for livestock has created instability and serious soil degradation across the country of Mexico. In the northern regions of Mexico nearly two-thirds of the land is classified as being in a total or accelerated state of erosion. In these regions, which are highly vulnerable to desertification, researchers have found that the soil condition is made worse by livestock grazing. So, when the livestock eats all the vegetation and tramples the land, what is left behind is cement-like ground, unable to grow anything.

This worsens global warming because more carbon is released from the dying plants and bare soil. The soil then becomes hotter and overloads the atmosphere with even more heat-trapping carbon. And this is on top of the methane generated by the livestock itself. So, actually, the livestock industry generates more methane than what we can even calculate because of the related effects. Such extensive damage makes it difficult to revive, and continued livestock raising in this case obviously leaves little hope for recovery. In a magazine interview over a decade ago, the President of the National Cattlemen’s Confederation of Mexico spoke of your nation’s prolonged drought and its adverse effect on the cattle industry. Already then there were such distinct signs of global warming effects.

But what he did not realize then is that the cattle industry is causing the drought. So, it’s easy to see that if we stopped this raising of animals for meat, the weather patterns would be quickly restored, along with the land. In the interview, the president of the Cattlemen’s Confederation also mentioned the need for more government subsidies for cattle raising. But what we actually need are subsidies for life-giving practices, not the ones that take the life away from the animals, take away life from us and take away life from our future generations and take the life from our one and only planet. The government could easily subsidize organic farming instead, which would provide abundant benefits for all the people of Mexico and even would remove 40% of the atmospheric carbon if all tillable land on Earth were organically farmed.

So, the solution is very simple: we just have to turn away from the animal products. We stop eating meat, dairy, eggs, fish. If everyone does this, we will have a transformed world in no time. It really is that easy – just one bite at a time. Removing methane from the atmosphere will remove the majority of the global warming effect, and then we can have time to find greener power for our world rather than oil, after we save the planet. Also, the vegan diet will bring more clarity and creativity for everyone, so we will be able to develop all the necessary resources in time. It’s just that we need to make the switch to the animal-free lifestyle now. Then everything will improve, life will be easier, and we can rest knowing that our children will have a future to look forward to.