It means we have  an obligation to try to solve it and to reduce our burning of fossil fuels and also other issues like livestock agriculture. Having a meat diet is actually very energy consumptive.

 

As never before, awareness of the grave state of our planet is at an all time high.
Citizens worldwide are calling for action from their governments, aware that there is one chance to correct humanity's course.

During a telephone interview on climate change agreed to by Supreme Master Ching Hai with the newspaper Irish Independent, the journalist asked

if she had a message for the leaders of the world.

 

Supreme Master Ching Hai: I would say to the world leaders to please give people more ample encouragement for an animal-free lifestyle, because it's wholesome, it's healthy, it's noble, and it will save the world. Please forgo all the needless protocol and policy.

It's an emergency now. We need different actions, and immediate actions to save the world.
It's urgent. Please be a hero leader. The world citizens  look up to you for saving their lives, and the future generations will remember your righteous legends.

Use your mighty power, for this noble cause. Because you have only one time to take this extraordinary action.

We have only one time, only this time to save the planet.

Please do it.

 

VOICE: Marianne Thieme co-founded the Party for Animals in the Netherlands, a political party with the stated platform that animals are to be treated with respect by humans. She is the leader of the party in the Dutch Parliament.

Ms. Thieme clearly defined what it would mean to the United Kingdom if its citizens adopted a diet with no meat. 

 

Marianne: If everyone in the UK ate no meat for 7 days a week, they would save 91 mega tons of greenhouse gas emissions.
Indeed, this would be the same as eliminating all greenhouse gas emissions from 12.5 million households in the UK.

That is half of the UK households. If all British people ate a meat-free diet for 6 days a week, this would create greater carbon savings than removing all the cars off the UK roads, 29 million cars.

 

If everyone in the UK abstained from eating meat for 5 days a week, they would save 65 megatons CO2 of greenhouse gas emissions.

This would save more than the emissions reductions that would be achieved if the total electricity used in all households in the UK was eliminated.

If all British people ate no meat for 4 days a week, they would save  52 megatons CO2 of greenhouse gas emissions.

This would lead to greater carbon savings than taking 70% of all cars in the UK off the road.
And 3 days no meat would have the same positive effect on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as replacing all household appliances, such as fridges, freezers, dishwashers and washing machines with energy efficient ones, insulating walls, installing double glazing, energy efficient boilers, and thermostats.

 

VOICE: Ireland's most widely read daily newspaper Irish Independent, invited Supreme Master Ching Hai for a telephone interview to share her views on what needs to be done to save the planet.

The following is an excerpt from Supreme Master Ching Hai's answer to the Irish Independent journalist's question of what kind of world we will have if we all become vegetarian.

 

Supreme Master Ching Hai:  We will not have any more Earth; we will have Heaven. Because the atmosphere that we generate, which is all loving and kind due to the vegetarian diet,

which means no killing, no abusing, and no suffering to animals, and also no sickness for us, will be more peaceful, more benevolent.

The positive will attract positive, and we will have abundance of all necessity.
And we'll have a happy conscience, and a loving heart will return to our beings, humans and animals alike.And then we'll be living in perfect harmony and peace.

 

Andrew Revkin, The New York Times journalist, USA:
The cheapest meats would come from industrial scale farming which has other questions.
There is a lot of water, there is a lot of pollution that results from large scale farming.
So eating down the food chain is something that many scientists feel in a growing global population is something that would be important.

VOICE: According to the Stockholm International Water Institute, 70% of all water goes to producing food, compared to 20% by industries and a mere 10% to households. Now consider:

It takes 23 gallons of water to produce a pound of lettuce;25 gallons of water to produce a pound of wheat;49 gallons to produce a pound of apples;

815 gallons to produce a pound of chicken; 1,630 gallons to produce a pound of pork;and 5,214 gallons of water to produce just one pound of beef.

Supreme Master Ching Hai:  We have choices.

We have jobs, we create green energy.

Yeah? Sustainable energy and even growing vegetables now is on demand.

We are short of food; everywhere is food shortage. Everywhere the food price rising so high that people, even middle class people are having difficulty to make ends meet.

So growing vegetables now should be profitable, should be a very good incentive already.

If the government encourages them, explains to them, they will know it. And the best is if the government can do it. But you, individual citizens of the world can also do it.
Try to go to the farmers one by one, whenever you can make the time to go, even though we are not in a power position like the government.

But we can try, one by one to persuade the farmers to change their lives, to grow vegetables to feed humans instead of raising animals.

Tell them the picture. Tell them the situation.

 

 

Dr Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change): If you look at the impacts of climate change on water, on human health, on agriculture, on ecosystems, we really are getting into a zone where these impacts are going to become very serious, even with a 1 to 1.5 degree increase in temperature.

So we really don't have a moment to lose and I think if the world wants to stabilize the Earth's climate and therefore minimize or eliminate the threat of harmful impacts, then we have to move very quickly.

 

SupremeMasterTV Reporter: As the chairman of the IPCC, is there any advice that you would like to give to leaders and governments around the world regarding the huge amount of carbon emissions produced by the animal agriculture industry and what action we should be taking in regarding this?

Dr Rajendra Pachauri (Chairman of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change):
The entire meat cycle is very, very intensive, in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.
Right from the moment you cleared forests as pasture land, you have cattle grazing over there then cattle are killed and then refrigerated.

If you look at some of the estimates, that really seems staggering. But more than anything else I think it's a win-win solution to eat less meat.

There is enough medical evidence, that the levels of consumption of meat that we have in the world today on a per capita basis, particularly in societies where that's a very large part of the diet, it's something that's even harmful for human health. And therefore if you turn to eating less meat then as I said, individuals
would be healthy and so would the planet!

 

The main cause of the danger to our survival right now is caused from meat diet.

The more we stick to the meat diet, the more we need oil and other fuel, resulting in even more shortage in all necessities.

So I suggest only one thing: just to go veg. Be vegetarian. Choose a vegetarian diet. Then all will cool down. All disasters

will disappear.We will see how simple and happy life can be, and how we will think clearly, and how our heart will be more open, more blissful.

We can understand many more things than we have up to now.

And that, we really can live with much far less than what we thought possible, and still be happy, survive, satisfied, and healthy.

 

 

Scientists have calculated that we would actually save more water by forgoing one pound of beef, or four hamburgers, than by not showering for at least six months.

Dr. David Archer: It's very clear that when you grow grain and then feed it to animals and then eat the animals, you lose 90% of the energy from the original grain, and so not only can you feed fewer people on the agriculture that you have but as they discovered, it also requires a lot more fossil fuel energy to make that happen.

 

Supreme Master Ching Hai: We have to choose the vegetarian diet, no more animal breeding. Choose organic farming, helping each other, sharing the food that we have, because if we are vegetarian, all of us, we would have so much food to share with everybody: no one will ever go to sleep hungry at night anymore. And then we will save a lot of time, energy, money to help them also combat disease and rebuild their lives. Everything's possible, because there will be no more war, even with animals.Peace begins at home.

 

Senator Andrew Bartlett - Member of Australian Parliament - Queensland, Animal welfare advocate & vegetarian:
Global warming is probably the most important issue facing all of us and for taking the long term view we're facing an extremely serious threat of major climate change.

And frankly if we allow the current growth in livestock production to continue to occur then all of the other things that we try and do in changing the way

we generate our energy is going to be cancelled out.

Dr. Jonathan Patz, Lead author of United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, Professor of Environment and Public Health:
This is a challenge that is quite urgent.

 
I mean it's really quite urgent, according to climatologists. We need to act soon, as in now.

 

Supreme Master Ching Hai: You see, we all know already through scientific evidence,and UN report that the stock raising causes a lot of methane gas, yes? And also, nitrous oxide,

which is 300 times approximately more deadly than CO2, yes? If we stop the worst cause of global warming, meaning stock raising, animal breeding, then we will be able  to save the planet. We have to stop the killing of man or animals. We have to stop producing animal's products. And we have to stop using it, ok? 

Three stops: Stop killing, stop producing, stop using.
And stop eating it of course;

 stop eating the meat. Then the methane gas and the nitrous oxide gas will stop! And then we cut already, a big chunk of pollution off our air, and