Will Greta tackle ISSUE #1 in Glasgow?
A huge reminder will be flying above the COP26 throng
SOS #130 -- J. Morris Hicks -- (10-31-21)
|
|
I am hopeful and mildly confident that she will.
This rare SOS Memo is being delivered to you on a Sunday morning. For two reasons:
-
#1. The COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow began a few hours ago.
-
#2. Today is Halloween -- and it's the scariest one we have ever seen! That's because we are losing the battle against climate change in a big way -- all while the world's feckless leadership fails to even mention, much less seriously address, its #1 cause.
|
|
I mentioned "a huge reminder" in the title
It's not the "elephant in the room" this year. Rather, it's the "COW in the Room" literally...
I am talking about the huge, helium-inflated dairy cow (named Vega) who will be flying overhead at COP26. She will be over 20 feet tall and people will have trouble NOT seeing her.
Vega will be joined later in the week by a pig, a laying hen and a fish. Without a doubt, all four animals will be saddened to see that many COP delegates are chowing down on animal-based foods, which they simply don't seem to understand is the leading driver of climate change.
The image below is from the press kit.
The real Vega, the dairy cow, will be much more impressive and unforgettable
|
|
Vega has been sending out letters to prominent leaders around the world. She ends them all with this message:
Let's start a moovement together!
Watch for this animal activist in the news this week.
|
|
Back to Greta and her amazing influence. Based on a 2020 film (see below) that I saw for the first time this week, I am thinking that Greta Thunberg may very well be ready to personally and loudly address what is by far the leading driver of climate change -- animal agriculture.
But will she? Based on what she said in that film, I think she just might be ready.
She is no longer the 15-year-old child we saw at COP24 in Poland three years ago. Today, she is a much more knowledgeable, mature and confident young woman of 18 -- who is capable of accomplishing much more than she, or most adults in the world, may realize.
For the remainder of this SOS Memo, I will make a case for how the entire world could best leverage Greta's fame, knowledge and readiness to foment massive change all over the world -- massive change that is so crucially necessary.
About that 2020 film. Click the image below to watch a two-minute trailer. The full-length version is only available on hulu. If you don't have hulu, arrange to watch this film sometime soon in the home of a friend or family member who does. Meanwhile click below to watch trailer:
|
|
There is one very poignant moment (in the full-length film) during the sailboat crossing of the Atlantic (pictured above) when she talks sadly about the situation she is in and the fact that she misses her home.
|
|
But then, she arrives to a cheering throng in New York a few days before her “How Dare You” speech at the U.N. Climate Summit. She was 16 at the time. |
|
That famous speech was the inspiration for Chapter 5 in Outcry.
For your convenience, just click this link to that chapter that you can read in ten minutes.
What am I confident about this week? Why do I think that Greta may be ready and willing to speak out loudly in Glasgow -- about what is by far, the leading driver of climate change?
It's something that she stated around the 23-minute mark of that film on hulu. While walking through the mostly empty COP24 venue in December of 2018 with her father in Poland, she exclaims angrily:
“I can’t believe they’re selling meat and dairy products at an event like this!”
And we all know how that ended.
In the movie, an interviewer asks Greta what personal steps she had taken to combat climate change. She mentioned three actions:
- I stopped flying on airplanes.
- I stopped eating meat and dairy.
- I stopped buying unneeded stuff.
Then, it finally dawned on me...
|
|
Greta is quite capable of totally bypassing the feckless global bureaucracy
Since 2018, she has been focusing primarily on demanding that world leaders follow the science to combat climate change — but she has been reluctant to strongly insist that her millions of followers start taking the same trilogy of actions that she has taken.
Particularly, she should loudly encourage all of those followers (and their families) to totally eliminate the #1 driver of climate change from their lives:
-
ALL animal-based foods. The sooner the world starts rapidly eliminating them from their lives, the sooner we can slow climate change.
- After all, it's the ONLY major driver of climate change that any individual in the developed world can totally eliminate overnight.
Since Greta has seen almost zero action by our so-called world leaders during the last three years -- she might be ready to immediately begin instigating and encouraging bold, immediate action by her followers (and their parents and their parents' friends).
In so doing, she will be bypassing the global bureaucracy as she takes her plea for action directly to the people.
If you ask me, I would love to see Greta literally BLAST Secretary Guterres and the entire COP26 leadership team for hosting a venue that serves food products that comprise the single largest driver of climate change.
Here's my dream for the week. I see Greta in Glasgow — making her case with the giant, beautiful, helium-inflated Vega, the dairy cow, flying above her.
This could be the break that we so urgently need and here is the man who has made that possible.
|
|
Conveniently, my friend and colleague -- the scientist who arranged to have Vega and friends in Glasgow this week, is also the author of the most recent peer-reviewed paper on climate change.
His name is Dr. Sailesh Rao, and he is pictured here. To access his recent world-changing paper, the one that concluded that animal agriculture is responsible for driving 87% of climate change: Click on image below
Sailesh is at COP26 all week and would cherish the prospect of collaborating directly with Greta ASAP.
|
|
A recent piece by Sailesh Rao, published in Journal of Ecological Society, presents the results of a Global Sensitivity Analysis to support his position that animal agriculture is responsible for 87% of greenhouse gas emissions...
...pointing to the cumulative impact of deforestation for animal farming and annual methane emissions produced by cattle, which “cause more incremental global warming than the annual CO2 emissions from all fossil fuel sources combined.”
|
|
Greta might like Dr. Rao's
Baby in the Bathtub Challenge
An illustration of that challenge appears below. The more I learn about Greta, the more confident I am that she has brainpower that is far beyond what the public might be thinking about this little girl from Sweden.
First of all, she is no longer a little girl. She is a fearless 18-year-old woman with a mind like a steel trap. She is probably aware of the phenomenon called the aerosol masking effect and the disaster that would ensue if we stopped all carbon emissions immediately.
Dr. Rao explains the aerosol masking effect in a new game that he created, The Climate Bathtub Problem Challenge. In the game, the objective is to save the baby from drowning by taking steps that will either allow the bathtub to drain faster and/or slow down the flow of water into the bathtub.
|
|
In the illustration above, notice that the flow of water into the bathtub is from three possible sources: the Burning Machine (fossil fuels), the Killing Machine (animal agriculture) and the Aerosols Reservoir.
Maybe Dr. Rao can share his "Baby in the Bathtub" challenge with Greta at COP26.
|
|
The Bottom Line. This SOS Memo has been primarily focused on our food choices; therefore, I choose to end it today with a recent 5-minute video of Greta as she talks sincerely about the horrors of animal livestock.
As she explains, fighting climate change is NOT just about reducing carbon emissions -- it's about changing the way we live: the things we buy, the way we travel and, most of all, the food that we eat.
The most powerful step that any human can make when it comes to slowing climate change is to shift immediately to a 100% plant-based diet. And Greta makes that point very well in this short video.
|
|
As 20,000 delegates representing 195 countries gather in Glasgow this week -- to decide what we should do about climate change, we should point out that Mother Nature is very sick. And she has been very sick for over fifteen years.
She has a deadly disease known as a "case of the humans." Even kids (much younger than Greta) have no trouble understanding this disease -- but our elected officials and UN climate delegates do not seem to get it.
Our disease is all about the highly destructive way in which we have chosen to live on this planet. We have embraced an overall way of life that is not sustainable for much longer.
This short video focuses on our grossly unsustainable way of living. It was published in 2006 and is still relevant today. Click image below (one minute video)
|
|
One more thing. Back to our feckless world leadership mentioned earlier. Did you hear the big news about the tiny country, The Gambia, population 2.4 million?
Of all 195 countries represented in Glasgow this week at COP26, Gambia is the ONLY one that is in the "Paris Compatible" category with respect to climate change.
Here's what the Climate Action Tracker had to say:
|
|
- Only Gambia has a plan "compatible" with the Paris agreement, CAT said, and the United Kingdom is the only one of the G20 countries among those with "almost sufficient" plans. CAT determined its rankings based on countries' mitigation targets, policies and action, and climate action.
- The majority of G20 countries, which includes 19 countries and the European Union and make up more than 80% of the world's GDP and 60% of the global population, have failed to met their obligations, the analysis found.
So there you have it. The adults in the room are NOT getting it done. Not only that, well over 99% of those adults have no clue what it will really take to slow climate change and put humanity on a path to sustainable living.
Want to know what must be done and what can be done? Watch the videos in this SOS Memo and read the various materials by Dr. Rao referenced herein.
And if you really want to understand the deep mess that we have created for ourselves, take just 83 minutes to watch this powerful film (free) by Dr. Emmott in 2015. In it, he points out that our survival challenge goes far beyond just swapping out our sources of energy.
|
|
This powerful film can help when it comes to more people grasping that "big picture." I featured it last week and will continue sharing this link >
in my weekly SOS Memos.
Greta marching and speaking last week. Click on the COP image below to hear her latest 2-minute message to the world.
|
|
In case you want to refer to some of the data in the past few SOS Memos, here are four links that you can access when questioned about the sources of your numbers.
Finally, there is a glimmer of hope at the COP. I noticed this piece in Bloomberg News reporting that a "plant-forward menu" would be featured at COP26.
Well, it's about time. And maybe way too late. After all, the entire menu should be plant-based NOW!
|
|
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.
- Inform all the young people in your world that you are deadly serious about this topic.
|
|
- 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 this SOS Memo 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: 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 friends via Zoom. To help you jump-start that all-important conversation with your group, I will be happy to present and discuss this topic. Here's an advance link to my 62 slides.
|
|
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.
|
|
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.
|
|
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
|
|
If you got this blog from a friend or found it on our website and want to receive more of these Bite-Size Blogs? Join Our Mailing List
Want to get started nurturing your own health and the health of our planet? Take our survey at 4leafsurvey.com
Click here to learn more about this free online dietary assessment tool.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
