Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret Page #2

Yeah, that would be good.

What does your schedule look like

this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon?

- Tomorrow afternoon.

- Tomorrow afternoon could be good.

For the urban environment, a lot of

things can be done. Indoors, you know...

...using low-flow shower heads,

low-flow faucets...

...efficient toilets...

...efficient water-using appliances.

All of those are really good areas

that can help quite a lot.

But the biggest water savings

is from outdoors.

We have to be mindful of the way

we use water.

We have to use it efficiently,

protect its quality...

...and be good stewards

of the environment that depend on water.

And checking the sprinklers.

A lot of times you get a lot of leaks...

...and broken sprinklers

and things like that that waste water.

Those are the areas that there is

a lot of room for conservation.

It kept on coming up a lot,

was animal agriculture.

Can you comment on that at all,

about how much that plays a role...

...in water consumption and pollution?

That's-I mean, that's not my area.

There's one study that found

that 1 pound of beef...

...2500 gallons of water.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

Eggs are 477 gallons of water.

And cheese, almost 900 gallons.

I mean, why isn't it on Save Our Water?

It's kind of like if you went

to someone's house...

...and my neighbour has a faucet,

you know, dripping.

And then you see

this giant hose turned full-blast...

...until 660 gallons of water

are shooting out into the street...

...flooding the entire street.

I think I would say,

"Hey, you know, turn that off, please."

Seems like it's a huge thing

that we could be doing...

...by far more than anything else.

Just, like, if that is really the case.

I think that the water footprint...

...of animal husbandry is greater

than other activities.

There's no ifs, ands or buts about it.

That would be really powerful.

Rather than waiting till we're in a drought,

what do you think about starting now?

And say to whoever's in charge

of Save Our Water:

"Hey, let's start encouraging people

to eat less meat now...

...because these studies

are coming out"?

- I don't think that'll happen.

- Why?

- I don't think that'll happen.

- Why?

Because of the way government

is set up here.

That's interesting, though.

Why, though?

One is water management

and the other is behavior change.

Behavior of taking showers...

...and not watering your lawn

and doing all that, that's behavior.

Yeah.

Clearly the government did not want

to talk about this issue.

Their inability to answer...

...along with the organization's silence

on the topic of animal agriculture...

...made it seem

something more was going on.

I did more investigating

on the impacts of livestock...

I did more investigating

on the impacts of livestock...

...and found out the situation

was actually worse than I'd thought.

In 2009, two advisors

from the World Bank released...

...an analysis on human-induced

greenhouse gases...

...finding that animal agriculture

was responsible not for 18 percent...

...as the U.N. stated, but was actually

51 percent of all greenhouse gases.

Fifty-one percent.

Yet all we hear about

is burning fossil fuels.

This devastating figure is due

to clear-cutting rainforests for grazing...

...respiration, and all the waste

animals produced.

This makes animal agriculture

the number one contributor...

...to human-caused climate change.

But not only that, I found out

raising animals for food consumes...

...a third of all the

planet's freshwater...

...occupies up to 45 percent

of the Earth's land...

...is responsible for up to 91 percent

of Amazon destruction...

...is a leading cause

of species extinction...

...ocean "dead zones"...

...and habitat destruction.

Yet the world's largest

environmental groups...

...that are supposed to be saving

our world didn't mention this anywhere.

I had to speak with them to find out why

they weren't addressing this issue.

I sent off dozens of e-mails,

made call after call...

...spent hours on hold.

Days became weeks,

weeks became months...

...and for some reason,

no one wanted to talk to me about this.

So bizarre.

I supported these organizations

for so long and now was met with silence.

I was, however, able to connect

with a handful of environmental authors...

...and advocates that were willing

to address this issue.

I took my old, trusty van "Super Blue"

out of retirement and hit the road.

So my calculations are...

...that without using any gas or oil or

fuel ever again from this day forward...

...that we would still exceed

our maximum carbon-equivalent...

...greenhouse gas emissions,

the 565 gigatons, by the year 2030...

...without the electricity sector

or energy sector even factored...

...in the equation,

all simply by raising and eating livestock.

You reduce methane emissions,

the level in the atmosphere goes down...

...fairly quickly, within decades,

as opposed to CO2...

...if you reduce the emissions

to the atmosphere...

...you don't see a signal

in the atmosphere for 100 years or so.

The single largest contributor to every

environmental ill known to humankind...

Cutting down the forest

to graze animals...

...and to grow soybeans,

genetically-engineered soybeans...

...to feed to the cows and pigs

and chickens and factory-farmed fish.

Ninety-one percent of the loss of rainforest

in the Amazon area thus far to date...

...91 percent that's been destroyed

is due to raising livestock.

The lead cause of environmental

destruction is animal agriculture.

I just couldn't understand why the world's

largest environmental organizations...

...weren't addressing this when their entire

mission is to protect the environment.

That's the thing, too, is they say:

"Use less coal, ride your bike."

What about "eat less meat"?

I think they focus-grouped it

and it's a political loser.

Yeah, because they're membership

organizations, you know, a lot of them.

They're looking to maximize the number

of people making contributions.

And if they get identified

as being anti-meat...

...or challenging people

on their everyday habits...

...something that's so dear to people,

that it will hurt with their fundraising.

They do not want to address

the primary driving cause...

...of environmental devastation,

which is animal agriculture...

...because they're businesses.

And they want to make sure that

they have a reliable source of funding.

I was invited to a meeting with Al Gore

some years ago...

...made these methane arguments, and

he pushed back. That's just his argument.

"It's hard enough to get people

to think about CO2. Don't confuse them."

The problem with a lot of organizations

that are focused and have a laser focus...

...don't go off message

because they don't wanna piss off...

...another whole group of people

that will make their lives difficult.

Major environmental organizations

don't tell you to do much...

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