Earth Regeneration

Thanks to my friend and World Peace Diet author Will Tuttle, I recently watched a film called Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret. (www.cowspiracy.com) Produced by Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn, Cowspiracy movingly shows us, more than any film I have seen, how our food choices impact the health of the Earth. It is very well done and convincing.

The documentary clarifies how animal agriculture, as part of the overall soil-mining and species-destroying extractive agriculture, is the most harmful industry on Earth today. The secret is how relatively few people are consciously aware and responsive to this crisis of ecological and human health, and that even many top environmental organizations in the world are unwilling to talk about it, or seriously lobby for the social, political and economic transformation that wisdom and the facts tell us is essential.

Let’s consider some of those facts, as summarized in Luke Jones’ infographic (below).

Climate Change

51% of global greenhouse emissions are due to livestock and their byproducts, compared to 13% due to transport (road, rail, air and marine).

Deforestation

One to two acres per minute are cleared, or up to 50 million acres per year, with 91% of the Amazon destruction due to animal agriculture. While palm oil plantations have cleared 26 million acres, animal agriculture has cleared 136 million rainforest acres, and this figure may be conservative.

Species Extinction

110 animal and insect species are lost daily from rainforests due to habitat destruction.

Water Use

33% of Earth's fresh water is used by the meat and dairy industries, with animal agriculture using 11 times more than human domestic use. One hamburger can take 660 gallons of water to produce, equal to two months of home showers.

Waste

2,500 dairy cows produce about as much waste as a city of 411,000 people.

Fishing

3/4 of the world's primary fish habitats are over-exploited and in decline, with 90 million tons of fish being harvested, often by giant nets that kill many more fish and mammals than targeted annually.

Desertification

One-third of the land is deserted due to extractive livestock raising and usually giving nothing back to the land, with livestock now using 45% of Earth’s land.

Aside from the reference to desertification, not even mentioned is the vast amount of soil demineralization and physical erosion that result from most extractive animal-based agriculture. Along with the late John D. Hamaker and others, I have been writing since 1978 about soil demineralization and the imperative need to remineralize the Earth’s soils to save our species and the interglacial Biosphere from the threats of malnutrition, famine, climate disaster, burning forests, global conflict and possible extinction.

As we continue down that road, this topic grows more compelling, and more of us are becoming inspired to take action to regenerate our gardens, farms, orchards, forests and thus the planetary biosphere. As Hamaker used to point out, a nice side benefit is that we humans can continue living on this Earth.

The inspiration comes naturally from our survival instinct, but in a world of much pain, conflict and suffering we need to consciously cultivate this desire to live and to thrive. We might otherwise succumb to our “pain body” (as Eckhart Tolle describes) and a wish for death and destruction that our species appears to drag along from the past into the present and future.

I suggest saying “yes” to life, withdrawing support from the Cowspiracy damage. We can accomplish this by planting gardens and orchards, remineralizing the soil, embracing veganiculture, eating mainly fresh, whole, delicious, real mineralized plant foods, and planting enough trees and plants on remineralized soil to withdraw the excess CO2 from the air.  We can also re-dedicate ourselves to both time-tested and new ways of living wisely, ecologically, constructively, cooperatively and compassionately.

Does anyone have any better ideas? Why aren't we all doing this already in 2015, 45 years after the first Earth Day? Is there another conspiracy in place to prevent the health regeneration of planet Earth? What difference might you make? Imagine the transformation that would occur if enough of us translate our compassion into regenerative action!

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by Don Weaver  •  [email protected]

Don Weaver is the author of To Love And Regenerate the Earth and co-author of The Survival of Civilization, both free at www.soilandhealth.org (Agriculture section)

More info: www.remineralize.org

Don’s 2011 ebook is titled Regenerate the Earth!: Nature's Call to Remineralize Our Soil, Re-Green Our Land, Rescue Our Climate and Restore Our Health. It is summarized and available here: http://www.vibranthealthandwealth.com/bookstore/bookstore-individual.php?ID=58