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Chapter 1. The Vegan Solution to Save the World > Our Food Choices are a Life-and-Death Issue
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II. A Our Food Choices are a Life-and-Death Issue
We are Devouring the Planet
If meat eating is not banned or not limited, then the whole planet will be gone. This is a life-and-death matter for everybody; it’s not a personal choice. And we are eating meat, eating up the whole planet, eating up 90% of the food supply and letting other people hungry.5 It’s not a necessary choice at all.
Even before the planetary urgency, meat-eating people ate up the whole planet, ate up so much food and resulted in hunger and war, and it has never been a right choice in the first place.
“Unless we change our food choices, nothing else matters
because it is meat that is destroying most of our forests. It is
meat that pollutes the waters. It is meat that is creating
diseases, which leads to all our money being diverted to
hospitals. So it’s a first choice for anybody who wants to save
the Earth.” 6
—Maneka Gandhi
All these [global warming] situations are getting worse and worse and won’t stop until we really change the way we live our life. The solution is quite easy: simply stop eating meat; that is the best solution. This is imperative now because of the perilous state of our planet and our limited time.
Stopping meat production will lower greenhouse gas emissions in the fastest possible way and halt the unspeakable environmental damage, ranging from climate change to land and water misuse, pollution, loss of wildlife and threats to human health.
Besides stopping 50% [of global warming]—I mean even more than that, this is just a very conservative estimate—there are many more other crucial benefits. It solves our water scarcity problem, our world hunger crisis, and land degradation and pollution problem.
If you compare [it] to a vegan diet, a meat diet uses up to 17 times as much land, 14 times as much water and 10 times as much energy.7 We produce enough cereals to feed the entire human population over, abundantly. Yet, one-billion people are hungry, and 10.9-million young children die every year—that’s one child dying every five seconds while we have abundance of food to feed all the world population and more, two times over even.8 On the other hand, about one-billion people suffer from obesity and related diseases, from eating too much or too much meat.
So there are many, many practical reasons to be veg, aside from the compassionate nature that is cultivated by preserving all life. This is important, too. But if people just start with the vegan diet, the care for all life will also come by the way.
UN urges global move to a meat and dairy-free diet:
“Impacts from agriculture are expected to increase
substantially due to the population growth increasing
consumption of animals products. A substantial reduction
of impacts would only be possible with a substantial
worldwide diet change away from animal products.” 9
The Plant-Based Diet is the Quickest Solution
“Action to replace livestock products not only can achieve
quick reductions in atmospheric GHGs, but can also
reverse the ongoing world food and water crises.” 10
—World Watch Institute
Being vegan will have the immediate effect of removing methane from the atmosphere, which is one of the highest heat-retaining greenhouse gases, up to 72 times the heat-trapping effect of carbon dioxide.11 Being vegan will surely slow down desertification and preserve your natural resources, like lakes and rivers, and protect your forests.
You can also employ other green measures, such as planting trees or changing to green technology, but those take longer to have an effect. The vegetarian diet is the fastest and also reduces the bad karma of killing, and thus, is the most important.
We conserve 70% clean water, save up to 70% of the Amazon rainforest from clearance for animal grazing.12 And it would free up to 3.5-million hectares of land annually. It frees up to 760-million tons of grain every year—half of the world’s grain supply, can you imagine that?13 Consume 2/3 less fossil fuel than those used for meat production, reduce pollution from untreated animal waste, maintain clean air, save 4.5 tons of emissions per US household per year. And it will stop 80% global warming.14
Just talking about financial saving alone, scientists in the Netherlands found that of the estimated US$40 trillion needed to stop global warming, a full 80% of this amount would be saved with the vegan diet! That’s a saving of US$32 trillion for the simple step of turning away from the meat to eating plant-based goods.15
The Earth has a mechanism to repair herself. It’s just that we overload the planet. We pollute too much and we create too much of murderous karma. Therefore, the Earth is not even allowed to repair herself because of the bad karma of the inhabitants. As soon as we erase this bad retribution from the killing effect, then the Earth will turn around, will be allowed to repair, reproduce and sustain life again. It’s all come around about the bad karma. We overload her capacity, the Earth, so we have to reverse our actions. That’s all there is to it.
Then we will save the Earth, save our lives, and the lives of our children and animals as well. The Earth will become a paradise. Nobody will ever lack anything. No one will go hungry. No war, no disease, no disasters, no global warming, nothing anymore except peace, happiness and abundance. I promise in the name of the Buddha; it is like that.
Killing Animals Brings Bad Karma
“As you sow, so shall you reap.” “Like attracts like.” Scientifically speaking, spiritually speaking, we have been warned. So, all the disasters that have happened around the world, of course, are connected with the human unkindness to the co-inhabitants. That was the price we have to pay for what we have done to the innocents who have done us no harm, who are also the children of God, who have been sent to Earth to help us and to cheer our days.
It’s not the technical problem; it’s not the technical reparation we have to concentrate on. It’s the retribution, the cause and retribution that we have to pay attention to. The cost of killing, the cost of violence is far worse than any car, any sun’s explosion or any ocean explosion combined together, because we have to be responsible for our actions. Every action provokes a counter reaction. So, we just have to stop killing. We just have to stop killing animals and man.
We have to stop it. And then everything else will suddenly become clear.
We will find better technical means to tackle the climate problem. The sunspots might even stop exploding. The ocean explosions might just stop. The typhoons might just stop. The cyclones will be silent. The earthquakes will just be gone. Everything else will turn to a peaceful way of life because we create peace and then we will have peace, peace not only among humans but among all co-inhabitants. That’s why I keep emphasizing the vegetarian diet. It’s the moral code of being a human. It is the mark of a great human.
Compassionate Energy Can Change Everything
Now the vegetarian diet is benevolent, so it will bring you happy energy and that in turn will breed more happiness, will attract more happiness and when you’re happy everything will be better. You think better; you react better; your life becomes better. Your children will be better; everything will be better.
And the powerful collective, positive and loving power of the whole world will repel darkness that is coming towards us, that is facing us right now. That’s the only solution I have.
You see, we have the energy to change everything, we have the power to dictate what happens around us, but we must use it. We must use it for the sake of all. We must use it for the benefit of every being on this planet. Our thinking, our action, has to send out a message to the universal energy that we want a better planet, we want a safer life, we want a saved world. Then the universal energy will do just that.
But we have to act in resonance with this energy, you see? If we want good things then we have to do good. If we want life, we have to spare lives. So the good energy we create can do these things, and more wonders. The compassionate, loving atmosphere that we, as the whole world, generate, can and will do more miracles for us.
We create everything that we want if we live but in accordance with the law of the universe. Such is the power of just being vegan. Because that means we spare life, we want life, we want constructive energy, we don’t want destruction. So vegan is the answer.
The more spiritually elevated humankind is, then of course, the more global warming will lessen. When humankind becomes more spiritually uplifted and has more love for all people, for all beings, all situations, and all their environments, then global warming will be reduced day by day and will disappear completely. And after that, everyone in the world will live in peace, happiness, and will love one another. But everyone must wake up.
I’m positive that our Earth will reach a
higher level of consciousness and miracles
will happen under Heaven’s mercy.
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