Lovelock is Disappointed. Monbiot is Angry!
And I am feeling Nauseous about the Glasgow COP
SOS #131 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (11-9-21)

This SOS Memo is dedicated to the memory of Carl Sagan -- on his birthday. He would have been 87 and may have been able to help guide us out of the survival crisis in which we find ourselves.

You can read my thoughts on how he and fellow Cornell Professor, T. Colin Campbell might have been able to do that forty years ago: Missed Chance to Stop Climate Change.(Posted on 8-10-21)

Meanwhile, back to COP26. Starting nine days ago on Sunday, October 31, I have been watching videos and reading articles about the COP almost non-stop.

With each passing day, I have become more frustrated and disappointed with the entire bunch of our so-called world "leaders" over there in Glasgow.

So far, they're celebrating a plan for curbing deforestation -- without mentioning that we might need to change what we eat (animals). It's incomprehensible that they are not even hinting that we might simply want to sharply reduce our consumption of those animal-based foods.

Speaking of the farm animals that we eat, their presence at the COP represent the good news for today. The mainstream media, including the Washington Post, the New York Times and The Guardian, have noticed and written about those huge inflatable farm animals provided by Dr. Sailesh Rao and climateheajers.org.

Here are two of the photos that ended up in the mainstream news. All four of the animals had a simple web address on it, such as: thecowintheroom.org
So, can you guess what they're serving at the largest, and most important climate conference in the history of the world?

Pictured below is just one of of many menus inside the COP venue in Glasgow. Animal-based food options outnumber vegan options by at least three to one.


The campaign group Animal Rebellion said that serving meat and dairy products at a climate summit was tantamount to “serving cigarettes at a lung cancer conference"
Headline and a few excerpts from a
Hungry in Glasgow?
The COP26 menu comes carbon counted

Some of the delegates poring over menus right before suppertime on a recent day were alarmed by the choices.

“I was shocked when I came here and saw all these,” said Peter Odrich, 20, a delegate from Germany, who was referring to the meat options. He was eyeballing a menu at the “fish and chips” stand, and opted for the tempura broccoli, the only vegetarian option on that particular menu, which also had the lowest carbon footprint.

Some of the delegates poring over the menus wondered if the inclusion of Scottish beef burgers was — deliberately or not — a cunning move by the British organizers to showcase how different dishes have a different impact.

“I can’t quite tell if they are making a point by doing that,” Rohan Mehar, 38, who works for the University of Tokyo. “There might be a long game I’m not aware of. Or, have they really thought this through?”
Is our feckless leadership taking notice? The short answer is no.

The thousands of international delegates and leaders at Glasgow seem to be focused on how many promises they can make when it comes to each country's carbon budget along with their plans for how they intend to replace fossil fuels with renewables.

But they won't be able to keep those promises. Why, you might ask?

Because NONE of them are even talking about the three climate-related, monster problems that are constantly driving us further away from sustainable living on the only planet in the universe capable of keeping us alive:

  • Over-population (adding a net six million per month)
  • Over-consumption (more people buying more stuff)
  • Grossly unsustainable way of eating (heavily consisting of meat, dairy, eggs and fish)

As for the last one, it is getting worse every year -- as millions of people in the developing world began eating mostly animal-based foods for the first time.

This, in a nutshell is why I am feeling Nauseous!
Meanwhile, Dr. James Lovelock is Disappointed.

He makes his feelings known in a piece that was published by the Guardian on November 2, two days after the conference started? It is entitled:

Beware: Gaia may destroy humans before we destroy the Earth
(A few excerpts from the piece)

I don’t know if it is too late for humanity to avert a climate catastrophe, but I am sure there is no chance if we continue to treat global heating and the destruction of nature as separate problems.

Explaining the lack of.a "big picture" view of
what is happening, he writes:

Because subjects like astronomy, geology, and meteorology are taught separately in schools and universities, few people are aware of the natural forces affecting the Earth’s surface temperature.

He closes by providing input that the leaders of the COP didn't wish to hear, which is why he wasn't invited. He writes...

We also need to address the problem of overpopulation and to urgently halt the destruction of tropical forests. Most of all, we need to look at the world in a holistic way.

I am not hopeful of a positive outcome at Cop26, knowing who is participating. I was not invited to Glasgow, though that is hardly a surprise. As well as being 102 years old, I am an independent scientist, and the university academics have never been comfortable with that.

But my fellow humans must learn to live in partnership with the Earth, otherwise the rest of creation will, as part of Gaia, unconsciously move the Earth to a new state in which humans may no longer be welcome.

The virus, Covid-19, may well have been one negative feedback. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier.
British Columnist George Monbiot is ANGRY about what is going on in Glasgow.

He blames the COP's failure on the world’s lame media — who are not living up to the responsibilities of their profession.

Mr. Monbiot writes for The Guardian. Here are a few excerpts from an email to the public that I received from him a few days ago.

In just a few paragraphs, I was pleased to see him taking on the media in general -- for their complete failure in ferreting out the simple, big-picture, drivers of climate change and holding world leaders and governments accountable. His subject line was:

If I sound angry, it's because I am!

If I sound angry about my sector, it’s because I am. Across my 36 years in journalism, I’ve seen opportunities to avert this existential crisis slipping through our fingers like sand. If you were to ask me which industry has done more to frustrate environmental action – fossil fuels or the media – I would say the media.

Without the social licence granted to them by media companies, fossil fuel corporations and other destructive industries would not have been able to fend off demands for change. Governments would have been forced to act.

So time is now short. We need to do in ten years what we could have done in 40. We need massive popular movements pressing reluctant governments to treat this existential crisis with the urgency it deserves. And nothing will change unless we know what is happening and understand what we face.
Now, back to my own nausea about the whole situation in which we find ourselves

First of all, is "nauseous" the right word for how I am feeling?

After checking the dictionary, I believe that it is.
Sickening, nauseating, stomach-turning, sickly, disgusting, revolting, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, offensive, loathsome, abhorrent, odious, obnoxious, nasty, foul, vile, appalling and abominable.

Now I know why Greta is referring to this entire COP26 as a bunch of "blah, blah, blah."
On a brighter note. I found a short video yesterday that features the Mayor-Elect of New York City. It turns out that three years ago he was able to quickly reverse his type 2 diabetes by shifting to a 100% whole food, plant-based way of eating.

Too bad the cozy relationship between the animal food industry and our schools of nutrition have prevented this kind of world-changing/Earth-saving news from making it to the general public.

Maybe Mayor Adams can make a huge difference in the lives of many Americans. Just click on the image below to watch this short video from when he was the Brooklyn Borough President.
The Bottom Line. We can't even figure out what we should be eating. Even though numerous scientific findings have identified the Standard American Diet (SAD) -- with meat, dairy, eggs and/or fish at almost every meal -- as, by far, the leading driver of climate change.

Plus, as Mayor Eric Adams now knows, it's also the leading driver of chronic disease.

The underlying problem -- that no one is talking much about -- is simply this:

Think about it. It's like we're willing to sacrifice the future of our civilization and our children -- for a few more years of exorbitant sales and profits for the animal-based food industry.
There's a ton of money at stake. If billions of people rapidly began moving away from animal based foods -- at least two huge global industries would suffer mightily:

  • The meat-dairy-eggs-fish-industry that destroys our forests, pollutes our waterways and promotes chronic disease and pandemics.
  • The world's "Big Health" and "Big Pharma" industries that "manage" and "treat" the many chronic diseases that are driven by those foods.

Signing off today on some good news. In May of this year, Klaus Mitchell, founder of Plant Based News, interviewed Dr. Sailesh Rao regarding his recently peer-reviewed study concluding that 87% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions are being driven by animal agriculture. FYI, I love Klaus's tagline at PBN:

Disrupting the Conventional Narrative
In the 6-minute video below, Klaus and Sailesh simplify what may very well be the most important revelation in the history of humanity. FYI, any senior in high school should have no trouble understanding the message in this video.

Rather than just trying to limit warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, Dr. Rao is audaciously suggesting that we aggressively tackle the #1 cause -- and actually reverse climate change.

Watch this video and share it with everyone you know. The future of our civilization -- and quite possibly our species -- may be riding on the urgency of the actions we take regarding food choices during the next five years.
Click on this image of Trevor Noah for 6-min video.
PS: Big Picture Summary of our Problems. If you really want to understand the deep mess that we have created for ourselves, take just 83 minutes to watch this powerful 2015 film (free) by Dr. Stephen Emmott. In it, he points out that our survival challenge goes far beyond just swapping out our sources of energy. He suggests that animal agriculture also is a huge part of it.

It's near impossible to solve our most challenging problems if we don't have a grasp of the "big picture" -- an understanding that only a tiny sliver of the world's scientists, elected officials or educators possess.
This powerful film can help when it comes to more people grasping that "big picture." I will continue sharing this link in my weekly SOS Memos >>
PPS: Powerful 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.

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.
  • 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.
  • Inform all the young people in your world that you are deadly serious about this topic. Urge them to read these SOS Memos and OUTCRY.
  • 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.
A final word. Hopefully, the kind of crucially serious situations expressed in these SOS Memos will soon replace the 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: 62 slides.

“Food, protein, pandemics and the future of humanity” This is the latest title slide that I am currently using for those kinds of sessions:
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.



J. Morris (Jim) Hicks
PS: Regarding the free Zoom conferences with your group, Send me an email and let's get started.
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.
You can join my mailing list and/or find all of my previous postings by visiting the SOS Memos page on my website. 
As always, I am just trying to help spark the all-important "conversation" about what is needed. By sharing a vision of what I believe is possible, I hope to influence others to think bigger, faster, better and bolder. 

You will find that there aren't many books that cover both the health of your body and the health of your planet. This is one of them -- a book that my son Jason assisted me in writing. It was published ten years ago this month.
Order e-book on Amazon
What else can you do to help? Two things:

1. Live as greenly as possible while doing all that you can to raise the awareness of "big picture" solutions that are crucially necessary for saving our civilization.

2. Share this BSB and my "Mama Ain't Happy" BSB with prominent journalists, thought leaders and/or elected officials whom you respect. They need to learn a lot more about the many reasons why Mama ain't happy.

Promoting health, hope and harmony on planet Earth
Want to see earlier SOS Memos? Click here
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