It's time to re-define "veganism"
because our future as a species may be riding on it
SOS #117 J. Morris Hicks (8-3-21)
|
|
As I started writing this memo, I did a quick online search asking this simple question: How popular is veganism?
This is what I found in less than one second:
|
|
According to a report by research firm GlobalData, only 1% of U.S. consumers claimed to be vegan in 2014. And in 2017, that number rose to 6%.] A 600% increase in veganism in the U.S. in only 3 years is a staggering statistic. It's pretty obvious that more and more people are moving toward a plant-based lifestyle.
|
|
|
|
Wow, with that kind of trend underway, I think it's time to take a closer look at the term vegan.
|
|
In my case, after searching for the "optimal" diet for humans in 2002, I immediately shifted to a dietary regimen defined by Cornell's T. Colin Campbell, PhD, as a whole food, plant-based diet.
|
|
Why didn't he just call it vegan? Because the word vegan typically conveys more about what you don't eat -- than what you do eat. After all, someone could eat nothing but potato chips and Diet Coke and call themselves vegan, but they'd be a dead vegan in just a few weeks.
|
|
Dr. Campbell knew that people needed a dietary handle that would convey exactly what they needed to eat if they wanted to promote health and reverse chronic disease. So, he created a new way to describe a truly health-promoting diet: whole food, plant-based, and described it with this simple statement:
|
|
The closer we get to eating a diet of whole, plant-based foods, the better off we will be. |
|
The average American derives about 7% of their calories from whole plants and I suspect that the average vegan gets no more than 30% from those healthiest of all foods.
Since 2002, I have learned that the word "vegan" conveys a lot more about a person than simply what they choose to eat. And it means different things to different people.
|
|
That said, we know that there are a lot of people out there who simply do not want to call themselves vegan -- even though the adoption of a vegan mentality may be necessary for saving our civilization, our species and most of life on Earth.
|
|
That's why it's time for a new definition |
|
Below the next image is a new definition that was created by my friend, colleague and lead author of a new position paper that was submitted last month to the scientific journal Nature. Click on the image below to access this paper.
|
|
In the above position paper, I am honored to be one of the three co-authors, along with Dr. Sailesh Rao, the lead author. |
|
From the bio on his website, Dr. Rao has over three decades of professional experience and is the Founder and Executive Director of Climate Healers, a non-profit dedicated towards healing the Earth’s climate.
A systems specialist with a Ph. D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, he is the author of 22 peer-reviewed technical papers, 50 standards contributions, 10 US patents and 3 Canadian patents.
In Section 4 of the above paper, Dr. Rao defines "vegan" with a powerful new acronym that describes what our role should really be in this world:
|
|
Vitally
Engaged
Guardians of
Animals and
Nature
|
|
As Dr. Rao says, VEGANism is a way of living in which we seek to never intentionally hurt animals but care for them and nature instead. By that definition, most of us are already VEGAN in our hearts.
|
|
He continues: However, we live in a society where what we say and what we do are not always in alignment, because we have been systematically lied to regarding the necessity of consuming animal foods, among other things.
|
|
This is why human supremacism, the opposite belief system to VEGANism, which conditions us to abuse animals, is so prevalent in the world today.
As a result, the birthing of a post pandemic VEGAN world will likely be viewed as the “greatest transformation in human history,” even though it is just a return home to who we really are.
|
|
Let's take a look inside "our" new position paper -- starting with Sailesh's opening words. |
|
Imagine reframing the story of climate change differently. After all, once we acknowledge that humans are changing the climate of the planet, have we not automatically assumed responsibility for regulating it on behalf of all life on Earth? That is HUGE!
We are in a Double Galileo moment in human history when we have to overturn two false axioms of our global industrial civilization, not just one, in order to begin the Sustainability Revolution.
During the 17th century, Galileo had to overturn the false axiom that the Sun goes around the Earth in order for the Scientific Revolution to take hold. Today, we have to overturn two false axioms:
1) The False axiom of Consumerism, that happiness comes from stoking and satisfying a never ending series of latent desires – the “Greed is Good” rule, and
2) The False axiom of Supremacism, that life is a competitive game in which those who have gained an advantage may possess, enslave and exploit animals, nature and the disadvantaged for their pursuit of happiness, the “Might is Right” rule.
|
|
Dr. Rao summarizes: When we overturn these two false axioms, we will transform our education system, our economic system, our governance system, our food system, everything.
|
|
From the Abstract of our Engineers' Solutions Paper
Two Scientists’ Warnings issued twenty-five years apart by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1992 and a group of 15,372 scientists in 2017 underscore humanity’s abject failure to address global ecological challenges.
This paper points out the axiomatic flaws in our global industrial civilization that prevent any solutions to these global ecological challenges to emerge by tweaking policy parameters within the same framework. Instead, it issues a clarion call for a civilizational transformation to a VEGAN World by 2026 in order to correct for these axiomatic flaws.
Furthermore, it shows that the implementation of the Paris Climate Accord by focusing entirely on fossil fuel elimination will accelerate the warming of the planet. Since quite a few global biogeochemical cycles are on the cusp of nonlinear phase transitions, it is important to implement such planetary scale interventions with engineering integrity in order to minimize the risk of runaway climate change and near-term extinction.
The paper shows that humanity must first transition to a vegan economy as quickly as possible so that the loss of cooling gases due to the reduction in fossil fuel usage can be compensated with the gain in carbon sequestration through active rewilding of former grazing lands, possibly augmented with the use of reflective mirrors. It then shows how we can go about implementing the necessary civilizational transformation over the next five years in a systematic fashion using seven strategic actions deployed globally.
|
|
The Bottom Line. We are living in an era of almost complete ignorance in this world when it comes to what we must do to survive. And, as many great scientists have concluded, we've waited far too long to get started on the crucial task of making things right.
In our book, Outcry, and in most of my SOS Memos since that book was published in April of 2020 -- we talk a lot about the urgent need to design a completely new -- and far more efficient, way of living on this planet.
|
|
As Dr. Rao skillfully points out in our Engineers' Solutions paper, a rapid shift to a vegan diet by most humans -- can possibly buy us enough time to design and transition to -- a completely new way of living on this planet -- one that is at least five to ten times more efficient than the way we are living now in the developed world.
That brings to mind the situation so cleverly illustrated in this cartoon. Whenever money is involved, we can always rely on the leaders of the world to follow the money.
Very sad, but maddeningly true -- and definitely not funny.
Legendary cartoonist for The New Yorker, Robert Markoff, brings this crucial information to life.
|
|
FYI, the cartoon above was the all-time favorite of my friend and co-author of Outcry, Stuart Scott who passed away last month. Since the caption is tough to read in the above image, here it is in a larger font:
"And so, while the end-of-the-world scenario will be rife with unimaginable horrors, we believe that the pre-end period will be filled with unprecedented opportunities for profit."
|
|
What can you do? Invite me to conduct a free Zoom session (from 30 minutes to one hour) with your group. Click this link to view all 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 near the end of my talk.
Finally, please do whatever you can to help spark the global "conversation" about our need to urgently transform our way of living into one that has a much better chance of keeping us alive indefinitely.
The billions of innocent children
of the world deserve no less!
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, a conversation 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. It was published in 2011.
|
|
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.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
