Before 'What The Health', filmmakers Kip Andersen and Keegan Kuhn addressed the effects of animal husbandry on the environment in their 2014 documentary 'Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret'. A new cut of Cowspiracy was exclusively released via Netflix on September 15, 2015, this time with new facts and information, executively produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Davisson and Appian Way Productions.
Agribusiness is really where capitalism and climate literally butt heads. Our diets have been conditioned not to obtain nutrients but to give us emotional and physical pleasure.
These are pleasures we've been conditioned to seek, as we're actively conspired against to do so. Commercial influence strongly pushes animal byproduct consumption. It's easy to obtain one sandwich on the go that contains beef, bacon, and cheese (and wheat). This documentary questions why that is, fairly relentlessly.
Once you learn about the carbon footprint of livestock, logistically, logically you want that to change. Because environmentally we cannot afford the long-term costs, we also cannot sustain this level of meat and dairy consumption worldwide. A better question to ask is should we even? Maybe if you couldn't go slaughter a cow on your own, should you even ever be eating a burger?
It takes 1,000 gallons of water to make 1 gallon of milk. Meanwhile for 1 billion people, safe water is scarce.
Animal agriculture produces 65% of the world's Nitrous Oxide, a greenhouse gas with a global warming potential 296x greater than CO2 per pound. It's projected to increase emissions 80% by 2050 as there's a projected global increase in meat and dairy consumption. The leading cause of environmental damage is animal agriculture, not burning fossil fuels but that's all we ever hear about. Even though there's no animal agriculture waste management system in place globally, let alone in America, and their feces and urine have caused more than 500 nitrogen-flooded dead zones around the world in our oceans.
Combine the dead zones with over-fishing, our oceans are in near collapse. Scientists are predicting fish-less oceans by 2048. We could feed everyone, if we stopped feeding feed to animals and starting feeding it to people. Our carbon imprint would be greatly reduced if we could somehow all switch to a plant-based diet. It would allow our biomass to heal itself. Aggressively attacking methane emissions, in addition, would cause it to go down in decades as opposed to C02 taking 100 years to demonstrate an impact.
We have exactly 31 years to not let that prediction become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
With the companion piece 'What The Health' the argument to go vegan really does seem like a no-brainier.
The long-term cost for a short-term sacrifice, ie - choosing to carry on with carrion consumption as opposed to eating more greens is going to be facing more unpredictable and unprecedented weather formations as climate change is undeniable. So too is the role that agribusiness is playing in it.
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