We can save the world by changing our dietary habits

Letter to the Editor:

Climate Change can be addressed with love. Love and action. This was the message our community heard from Dr. Sailesh Rao, Ph.D.; Founder and CEO of ClimateHealers.Org, on Austin May 20, 2018. We can stop most deforestation, renew the soil, increase wildlife populations and heal the climate with one change in our dietary habit. The International Panel on Climate Change AR5 shows that the majority of the human caused greenhouse gases are from deforestation and respiration from animal agriculture which contributes not only to methane gas emissions, but to soil loss, and species’ extinctions.

Dr. Rao, a systems engineer, worked with mathematicians from the University of Illinois to create a math model to find out what would happen of the world went vegan. They found we can sequester more than enough carbon to cool the planet to an optimal level.

Dr. Rao presented this paper to a large group of scientists, the American Geophysical Conference and they did not disagree with the numbers. The World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Reports confirm that we are losing our wildlife at an alarming rate. One report said, 52 percent of wild vertebrates were killed from 1970 to 2012. The next report showed 58 percent of wild vertebrates were killed between 1970 and 2014.

Using the WWF’s numbers, Dr. Rao calculated that if we continue at this rate, 100 percent of wild vertebrates will be gone by 2026.

Farmed animals eat five times the food that humans do. Food that we could serve to humans.

Will we wait and see? Will we check it out? A recent U.S. survey said that most people would rather change their diet than give up driving. We can work on all our environmental, fossil fuel, plastics, and social problems as well! Can we go Vegan in time?

We choose.

Rebecca Jo Allen

Lockhart