Why You Should Go Vegan for the Environment

Dear world, please take to heart this letter, completed on the ninth anniversary of my embracing a vegan diet, about why you should go vegan for the environment. Please ponder it, act on it and share it far and wide if its message resonates with you.

We—all 7.7 billion of us—are on the precipice of stepping into 2020. I believe we’re at an all-hands-on-deck and gradually unspooling moment that’s kind of like the slow-motion feeling that takes hold during a fall or automobile crash. We’re veering and veering and veering—and still might slip off the map for good.

I’ll get right to the point: For the masses to continue eating and living the way people have been for the past several decades, there is a strong possibility that we will run out of land and fresh water as well as go underwater because of rising sea levels.

Come 2050, between 9 billion and 10 billion human beings will inhabit the Earth. This skyrocketing population is projected to make the precious, finite resources land and water scarce. Moreover, climate change, triggered by a number of factors such as automobile exhaust, is projected to lead to increased sea ice melting, flooding much of the planet.

No one person or organization is going to get us out of this jam, as some think will be the case and have told me so. This is a responsibility not only to yourself and loved ones but to all living beings alive today and many, many tomorrows—I mean decades and decades—from now. If you’re in your 60s or are older and think that, because you’re closer to death than birth, you don’t have to do anything, as some in this age group have told me, trust that your actions today carry repercussions deep into the future. If you’re the kind of person (I am) who believes in the concept that we live multiple lives, you’re more likely to grasp the severity of our situation and spring into action.

Understand All the Reasons Why You Should Go Vegan for the Environment Today

In this open letter to the world, I’m calling on everyone alive to learn and lead as educated and engaged participants in this discussion. I’m planting seeds and giving you food for thought on why you should go vegan for the environment.

I’m aware of many urgent issues needing the world’s attention—GMOs, chemtrails, morgellons and vaccines, among them—but can’t think of anything more critical than this perfect storm of overpopulation, dwindling space and climate change.

I’m also calling on everyone to get serious about why you should go vegan for the environment and truly embrace a plant-based diet. Today. Not tomorrow, next week, next month or next year. Today.

Are you aware that animal agriculture is the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, with one study pinpointing the percentage at 51 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions and another study documenting 18 percent? What’s more is that emissions for agriculture are projected to increase 80 percent by 2050. To put this into perspective, all the 1 billion automobiles on the planet account for 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of global water consumption, and livestock covers an astounding 45 percent of the planet’s land. Animal agriculture is the No. 1 cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones, water pollution and habitat destruction. (Want some more stats? Check this out.)

And animal agriculture might wind up being the death of all human beings in ways beyond cancer, diabetes and heart disease are already slowly killing people.

Slowing Climate Change Is Perhaps Tops Among Reasons Why You Should Go Vegan for the Environment

Even worse than the end of the human race, in my mind, is that we’re wrecking the party for all the other species—from aardvarks and cats to monkeys and zebras—calling Earth home. They’re all living by their design, as much as possible in world taken over by human beings and development.

What have humans done? Human beings left their origins in the tropics (for survival or by choice, we wonder), paved over and built on a good chunk of the planet, used animals as a means of sustenance, destroyed nutrition in foods by cooking them and created a mind-boggling galaxy of processed foods. With every bite, most people bury their health without giving a thought about the freedom and lives of the chickens, cows, deer, pigs, salmon and tuna (plus the milk, eggs and honey) they ingest or know a thing about the tremendous environmental toll in terms of land, water and carbon emissions raising these sentient living beings causes.

Dear world, it’s not working! More than 70 percent of American adults are overweight or obese. Diabetes affects about one out of three Americans, and two out of five male and one out of three female Americans receive cancer diagnoses in their lifetimes. I dare anyone to spend time comparing these statistics with data available from 50 to 100 years ago and tell me things are working just fine!

If all this isn’t enough, human beings created careers, trading survival of the species for climbing the corporate ladder. We’ve traded being barefoot and climbing fruit trees with the sun warming our bare-skinned bodies for sitting all day long in front of computers or building widgets. As if all this still weren’t enough, we’ve even created entertainment diversions for folks to get lost in, losing sight of the meaning and purpose of their lives and leaving people to wonder, in the rarest of quiet moments, when their phones are finally turned off, why they’re not fulfilled or connected to spirit and their true selves.

We have taken our eyes off nature, and it’s no wonder we can’t see how we’re impacting it in untold ways.

News Media and Environmental Advocates Often Fail to Educate People on the Leading Cause of Climate Change and Best Solution

It is absolutely mind-blowing to me that most people are unaware that the state of our environment is this bad. Many people get their information from mainstream news media and some choose not to take in any news whatsoever. Just like how most mainstream news media stories about the soaring incidence rate of autism spectrum disorder in the United States fail to or purposely do not make the connection to vaccines, so, too, do most mainstream news media stories about the delicate and urgent state of the environment fail to or purposely do not make the connection to a plant-based diet, especially a fruitarian diet, considering the fact that cooking food causes climate change, as one vital part of the solution.

USA Today, the second-largest U.S. newspaper, published a story September 21, 2019, about how millions of people the world over participated in the Global Climate Strike, the largest climate strike ever. There is not one word about diet in this piece.

Yes, we could be looking at the end of world, as we know it, anyway, and people are tragically misinformed at a time when the news cycle is all of one second flat and alternative sources abound on the internet.

But there’s still time and hope to turn this doomsday forecast around.

What’s amazing is that children, with 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg emerging as the poster child for youths demanding governmental action, get all this more than elected officials and so-called leaders of environmental organizations, as the impactful documentary Cowspiracy, produced by the fearless duo of Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, makes so clear. Some youths and adults have even vowed not to bring children into the world until they see governments take action to merit children’s safety.

What’s still missing is for activists to bring up the need for dietary change with every chance they get. Animal agriculture is the leading cause of greenhouse gas emissions, after all, and represents the biggest way for people to bring about needed change and quickly. Greta Thunberg has the ear of the news media, and yet even in her full speeches such as this one from September 27, 2019, she fails to tell people what they can do. I’m all for holding governmental officials to be accountable, but I’m also bright enough to recognize that President Donald Trump and other presidents are not going to fix the problem because it is bigger than all them combined.

President Trump, head of the most powerful office in the world, spits on the notion of climate change every chance he gets, neglecting action and embarrassing the country while leading astray people who believe his warped views and lies. Donald Trump, tell me Miami isn’t facing massive flooding issues because of rising sea levels!

President Trump and other presidents, I challenge you to eliminate all subsidies that support animal agriculture and fisheries, driving the price of Big Macs to $25 and leading to widespread adoption of plant-based foods. I challenge you to be so bold! Even more, I challenge you to apply special taxes to animal products! The U.S. government applied taxes to tobacco products to discourage smoking. Just as with tobacco products, animal products have been shown to be carcinogenic, according to the results of the largest nutritional study ever completed.

People Have the Power to Go Vegan to Improve the Environment

I’m not holding my breath for elected leaders to save us or to even acknowledge what science is showing. I’m looking to you and everyone. We have the power!

We’re dealing with forces of nature, and we’re running out of time.

Thirteen years ago, when Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth came out, people were into changing lightbulbs and driving Prius vehicles, thinking they were going to save the world in these ways. We need to do a lot more. I’ve learned over the years that spirituality/religion, politics and diet are the topics that trigger folks the most. But this conversation about diet must be had—and this conversation starts with oneself.

Dear world, it is up to every one of you—every child, woman and man—to get illuminated and inspired and make your decision about whether to be part of the solution or to continue living on borrowed time, with your choice impacting every living being around you. Do you want to be a steward of life and the environment or do you want to stick to your health-, life- and environment-destroying animal and seafood fare?

The rise of veganism comes at the time awareness of this lifestyle is most needed. On Google, people are searching for the word “vegan” twice as much as they are now compared with five years ago, discovering all the ways they and you should go vegan for the environment. Headlines about plant-based alternatives to hamburgers such as Beyond Meat have infiltrated the news in recent months, and this is progress. I wish folks would skip the science-experiment foods, however, and stick to whole plant foods and, ideally, mostly fruits. The less we heat our foods, the better our odds for survival in terms of our health and environment, you see. If there’s ever a time for discussion about the health, ethical and environmental merits of a wholly raw food diet, this is it!

Human Beings Are Truly Fruitarians, Making for Another Reason Why You Should Go Vegan for the Environment

If you say, “I’ll miss my chicken wings and hamburgers,” I challenge you to go up to a living chicken or cow and try to make a meal out of the animal with your bare hands and teeth! This is the way it’s done across nature by true carnivores and omnivores. They eat blood, bone fragments and fur—and don’t think to cook it and add salt, pepper and hot sauce or ketchup.

We are fruitarians, you see, designed to eat mostly fruits! Fruits are just perfect for us! I say eat fruit for the environment, for the freedom and lives of fellow living beings, and for your health.

Dear world, I ask you: Are you worth it? Are your children or grandchildren worth it? Are all your family members worth it? Are your friends worth it? Are aardvarks, cats, monkeys and zebras worth it? Is this planet worth it?

I hope you get it. I hope you understand why you should go vegan for the environment. I hope you do indeed go vegan for the environment. I hope you do this today.

I’m asking you to rise and change, to lead and shout from the mountains and city streets!

Silence simply may be the end of us and other land species one day in the not-too-distant future.

Enjoy your journey to vegan and raw food diets! You’re going to love them!

With love,
Brian Rossiter