3rd Grade Math that Can Save Humanity!
But we mustn't leave our mess for the children to solve
SOS #154 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (4-19-22)
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As for the "third grade math" in the title, it alludes to the fact that the unsustainable situation in which we find ourselves is really not that complicated. And yes, we can solve it with 3rd grade math. |
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First, with an open mind, we must assess the situation in which we humans find ourselves. The key phrase in that sentence is "with an open mind."
Leveraging that open mind, the solution to our situation could be much simpler than most people realize. I will delve into that topic in a few minutes -- but first, I want to honor my parents.
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This is the time of year when I think about them a lot -- Agnes and Adron Hicks who were married in April of 1939 at the Epworth Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Six years later, in 1945, their first son, yours truly, was born in the Methodist Hospital near that church where they were married. Ironically, as this SOS Memo is being posted, we are on a lengthy road-trip down memory lane that includes a stop in Memphis tomorrow night -- my first time there in almost thirty years.
Meet my mother. This is a picture of her that I saw recently for the first time. It really captures the warm and caring spirit of this exceptional woman -- Agnes Ware Stanfield Hicks who passed away in 1995 at the age of 78.
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When I think about my mother, I always think of two inspiring expressions of encouragement that she repeated many times during my youth.
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Jim, I've always known that you would be a success because you were born on "Success Road." Truly, their address when I was born in 1945, was 2200 Success Rd., Memphis, TN -- an address that no longer exists. It is now part of the land that comprises the Memphis airport along with the huge FEDEX terminal.
- She also reminded me throughout my youth that God had given me a brain and that he expected me to use it. And that is exactly what I am trying to do with these SOS Memos.
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Now, meet my father, Morris Adron Hicks, pictured here in a photo that I took near my home in Ridgewood, NJ circa 1989. He was born in Belmont, MS, in 1914 and passed away in Dallas, Texas, in 2006 at the age of 91. |
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Born on a farm in northeast Mississippi, he spent the great majority of his life in the various industries that produce animal-based foods. That said, he was a man that prided himself on keeping an open mind, remaining flexible, and following the resident scientists at the various agricultural corporations where he worked.
When I think of my dad, I think of two meaningful things that he told me. The first in 1986, occurred at about the midway point of my corporate career:
Jim, I never thought you that you would be very successful in the corporate world -- for one sad reason. It's because you are just too honest.
Turned out he was right about that prediction. And that's a good thing. Although I enjoyed great success in the early years of my career, I simply refused to play the political game necessary to reach the very top of large corporations.
So, in 1999, I made the decision that I didn't want to work for anyone else -- ever again -- and so I started my own executive search firm. As the CEO of my own firm, I had the freedom to choose where I focused my attention at any given time.
One of those times occurred in late 2002, when I got curious about the optimal diet for humans. I took all the time I needed to get to the bottom of that topic -- and I'm still working on it. Along the way, I started telling my dad about the remarkable discoveries I was making regarding our food choices.
Knowing that his entire life's work had been in the livestock business, I never expected him to really "get it" about my decision to move immediately to a diet-style consisting almost exclusively of whole, plant-based foods. But he surprised me shortly before his death, saying over the phone to me in 2005.
Jim, when it comes to what we humans should
be eating, I really think that you are on the right track.
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Now, what about that 3rd grade math?
On that topic, a picture is worth a thousand words.
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Check out the Energy Graph below that I found earlier this month. As we know, when it comes to climate change, our world leaders, the UN, the IPCC, the corporations of the world and, even our ministers and our elected officials are not willing to really address the facts.
Without even acknowledging the leading driver of climate change, animal agriculture, they're all trying to make us believe that we can slow climate change enough to save ourselves without changing what we eat.
Tragically, I think most of our so-called climate experts actually believe that grossly harmful falsehood to be true.
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Take a look at the above graph. Now, let's ask the 3rd graders what they would choose to do about quickly and sharply reducing our consumption of the huge Blue, Brown, Black and Red areas on the graph.
Those kids would look at the image above and likely conclude that we adults are stupid and irresponsible.
They can see from the graph that it took almost 200 years to get into this energy dilemma -- and now the foolish adults are telling us that we can reduce fossil fuel consumption enough in one or two decades to slow or stop climate change.
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About this time, some of the kids begin to get angry, like this young man.
Just imagine what he and the other kids are saying. It is a nine-letter word that begins with HORSE.
They are realizing that the adults want to leave the problems that they created for the next few generations of kids to solve.
To calm them down, we ask Dr. Sailesh Rao to tell the kids a story about a simple, fast and easy solution to climate change that the adults have not shared with them. In just six minutes, Dr. Rao explains how the older generations are trying to pass this climate change mess on to the innocent children.
Click on the image below to hear him explain how we can literally reverse climate change in less than six years -- while giving the children of the world a lot more time to get rid of those nasty fossil fuel emissions (on the earlier graph). Today's adults have abdicated their most crucial responsibilities and are leaving them for the 3rd graders of the world to address.
Take just six minutes to watch this world-changing video:
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After watching the video, we suggest that the teachers host a delicious plant-based luncheon for all of the 3rd graders. After they finish enjoying their delicious lunch, we can ask them which method of fighting climate change makes the most sense to them:
- Stupidly, trying to completely change the way we produce energy -- a process that will probably take 100 years or more with no guarantee that their energy replacement strategy will slow climate change enough to save us -- as we continue to burn down forests to grow animal-based foods.
- Or, wisely focusing on feeding ALL of the world's humans with the best-tasting plant-based foods imaginable -- a process that has the potential to get us back on the right track in less than six years -- while buying us plenty of time to carefully lower all those emissions which, due to the aerosol masking effect, are, for the moment, keeping temperatures lower than they would be otherwise.
The 3rd grade kids all agree with what's at stake and they understand what must be done.
Unlike most adults, they all can easily see that we have no choice but to enthusiastically embrace the plant-based solution for reversing climate change.
They can also easily see that we still have a chance to avoid the horrible global suffering and death that is in our future if we choose to stay on an impossible path that the selfish adults are trying to pass along to future generations.
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The Bottom Line
We really are running out of time. In fact, we may very well be past the point of no return
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He candidly and alarmingly describes the unprecedented situation in which we find ourselves. His prescient words read almost like an epitaph for humanity as he begins with this line:
If the history of the 21st century is ever written...
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If the history of the 21st century is ever written it would report that, while large parts of the planet were becoming uninhabitable, the extreme rate and scale of global warming and the migration of climate zones (~100 km per decade), the extent of polar ice melting, ocean warming and acidification, and methane release from permafrost, threatened to develop into one of the most extensive mass extinction events in the geological history of planet Earth.
- Climate scientists have been either silenced or replaced by an army of economists and politicians mostly ignorant of the physics and chemistry of the atmosphere, but quantifying the cost-benefit economies of mitigation like corner shop grocers.
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Proposed mitigation action were mostly focused on reduction of emissions, neglecting the amplifying feedbacks and tipping points projected by leading climate scientists such as James Hansen.
- But climate change was not the only threat hanging over the head of humanity and nature. As nations kept proliferating atomic weapons, with time, the probability of a nuclear war increased exponentially.
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But even Professor Glikson, with all of his brilliance and knowledge -- fails to mention the one possible solution that might still be able to save us from extinction.
To me, this is exasperatingly painful. The only plausible explanation must be that humankind has been eating animals for so long that even the brilliant scientists like Dr. Glikson somehow still believe that we cannot survive without continuing to eat animals.
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As I concluded in the SOS Memo about Apple's Tim Cook last week, it's going to take a very special leader to be able to re-write the history of the 21st century that our political leaders are in the process of writing today.
Finally, I am betting that fellow Auburn graduate, Tim Cook, is one of those rare leaders. There is still a pathway out of this mess. Let's not leave it to the children to figure it out on their own. As this slide states near the end of my standard talk on this most crucial of all topics:
Let's give the innocent children a chance!
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Also, be sure to check out the "Big Picture Data and Info Section" below. It now begins with five powerful films about healthy eating.
J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
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PS: To clarify, we're not trying to preserve "civilization as we know it." Because what we have now is an extremely wasteful and harmful civilization that is threatening our very existence as a species.
The section below will provide you with an abundance of handy reference materials on this most crucial of all topics.
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"Big Picture"
Data and Info Section
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This section has been appearing at the end of my weekly SOS Memos for six months. It contains links to relevant information that form the foundation of what our options appear to be for responding quickly and appropriately to our global crises.
In order to respond appropriately, we must first grasp the all-important "big picture" regarding how we got to where we are in the first place. The various links below will help you do that.
Added to this section in April of 2022 is my list of five powerful videos that tell the whole story about the health AND the many environmental reasons we should be eating only plants.
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Film #1 in 2014
In 2014, Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn produced their first documentary film Cowspiracy. Executive producer is Leonardo DiCaprio, it runs 90 minutes and has been on Netflix since 2015. In 2020, I met Kip and Keegan in Sedona where I was honored to be able to speak at the same conference with them and other great leaders in this movement like Dr. Sailesh Rao and Dr. Michael Greger. |
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Film #3 in 2021
In 2021, Kip Anderson teamed up with British filmmaker Ali Tabrizi, to produce Seaspiracy, an 89-minute film that vividly and alarmingly reveals what is at stake when it comes to the crucial importance of our oceans to our future as a species. Most people have no idea regarding the environmental horrors of commercial fishing -- a disgusting industry that kills dolphins by the thousands and tosses them back into the ocean. It runs 90 minutes on Netflix. Click here to view the trailer.
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Film #4 in 2021
As our situation becomes more desperate, the documentary films become more terrifying. As alluded to earlier, we are literally Eating Our Way to Extinction, a process that is vividly covered in this 2021 film (81 minutes). Narrated and produced by Kate Winslet, you can watch this great film on Amazon Prime or on YouTube for $3.99. The great ocean scientist and former head of NOAA, Dr. Sylvia Earle lends powerful credibility to such a crucial topic. |
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Film #5 in 2022
This new film (89 minutes) features a young activist who travels around his country, New Zealand in an effort to find out the truth about the horrors of the dairy industry in his native land. The film uncovers alarming information about the environmental and health impacts of the industry -- leading up to the discovery that we are on the edge of the biggest global disruption of food and agriculture in history. This new film is now available for free at waterbear.com
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Next is a half-hour video that was published in November of 2021. It was produced by Michael Dowd, a non-scientific researcher like me who does a very fine job of explaining the many facets of the obstacles standing between us and our survival as a species.
Dowd has a pretty good handle on most things, but he seems to be unaware of the simple weapon that we can all use to fight the leading driver of climate change. Our forks.
That said, he does a terrific job of describing our ever-worsening dilemma. Click the link below to view this very informative 33-minute video, published November 15, 2021.
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This next item is a free 83-minute documentary film that is all about the findings that were documented in Dr. Stephen Emmott's 2013 book. TEN BILLION. |
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This powerful film will certainly help more people grasp that all-important "big picture." Just click on the hourglass image.
I will continue sharing this TEN BILLION link in future weekly SOS Memos
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More Data re Leading Driver of Climate Change.
Beginning in September of 2021, I have been including links to world-changing scientific information that thought leaders everywhere should read and and share with others.
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What can you do? For starters, you can buy the new documentary -- Eating our way to Extinction for $6 on Netflix -- and watch it often with your friends and family.
Also, you can:
- Share this SOS Memo with everyone you know.
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Get an e-copy of OUTCRY. Visit Outcry page on Amazon and get a much bigger understanding of the situation in which all humans find ourselves.
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Inform all the young people in your world that you are deadly serious about this topic. Urge them to read these SOS Memos and our latest book, OUTCRY.
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- Completely stop eating meat, dairy, eggs and fish today and tell everyone why you are taking such a "radical" step. You're doing it for the innocent children of the world.
- As noted above, do yourself a favor and make sure that your plant-based meals of the future consist of whole plants -- the kinds of foods that prevent or reverse most chronic diseases AND enable your body to effortlessly seek its optimal weight.
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A final word. Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious situations expressed in these SOS Memos will soon replace meaningless and trivial topics that dominate a ridiculously large percentage of all of the conversations in the world.
We must all start talking much more about what's really important. That is , we must start doing everything possible to maximize the chances of a meaningful and pleasant life ahead for the young people of the world.
I volunteer to help you do that. For Free. Invite me to collaborate with you and your group via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic at length. Here's an advance link to my standard presentation: 65 slides.
Click on the image below to view the slides that I am currently using for those kinds of sessions:
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The image above is a clue regarding the essence of my "family game plan" that is revealed only in my talks. I do not put that in writing.
Want to share some of my SOS Memos with others? Visit my SOS Memos page where the most recent ones are listed first.
Finally, I am confident that if a few million people carefully read and digested OUTCRY, that there might at least be a more robust conversation taking place about our grossly unsustainable way of living in the developed world -- and what it will take to get us focused on maximizing our chances of survival as a species.
To be sure, we must do a lot more than change what we eat -- and OUTCRY helps explain the "why" and the "how" of that proposition.
To my knowledge, OUTCRY remains the only book ever published that features an envisioned, totally-green, ultra-sustainable, super-desirable, future way of living for humans -- along with ideas for how we might get there as quickly as possible.
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Regarding the free Zoom conferences with your group,
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Our book, for a host of environmental reasons, is only available as an e-book on Amazon. As such, it contains hyperlinks to hundreds of references and videos, is less expensive, does not kill any trees and does not have to be manufactured and delivered.
The links below to earlier SOS Memos will help you understand how these ideas unfolded since 2018.
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One more thing. I first started learning about the supreme importance of our food choices in 2002. After studying the topic for eight years and getting to know many of the medical and ecological experts in the field, I co-authored the book below with my son Jason.
You can find it on Amazon in all formats by clicking on the image below:
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Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth |
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