An Environmental Article used with permission from All-Creatures.org

Sailesh Rao addresses the misconception that fossil fuels are the leading cause of climate change and discusses how going vegan is the first step we must take in confronting the climate crisis.

Vegan First. How Hard is That?
From Sailesh Rao, ClimateHealers.org
January 2025

Images from Canva

“When did fact checking and journalism go their separate ways?” – John Stewart.

Dear Climate Healers Family,

The Newsweek article was an example of such irresponsible journalism that it even used the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), headed by a former dairy industry lobbyist, Tom Vilsack, as a source for the greenhouse gas emissions contribution of animal agriculture.

The very fact that the article was written by a graduate student and not a prominent academic should be a dead giveaway. Academics with a reputation to uphold must have declined to get their hands dirty and instead, Newsweek threw a graduate student under the bus to purvey its irresponsible journalism.

The academics have good reason to be hesitant. History is unlikely to be kind to all those who are conspiring to suppress the fact that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change.

Back in 2009, Goodland and Anhang had estimated that animal agriculture is responsible for at least 51% of greenhouse gas emissions annually. They arrived at this estimate by correcting miscounted emissions in the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)’s 2006 Livestock Long Shadow report and including uncounted emissions of the animal agriculture sector.

Coincidentally, Gerard Wedderburn-Bisshop has now shown that animal agriculture has caused 1.32 W/m2 or 51% of the anthropogenic global warming of 2.6 W/m2 from 1750 to 2020.

In contrast, fossil fuels and industry have caused just 0.64 W/m2 or 25% of this global warming.

This is mainly because fossil fuel combustion also results in the emissions of cooling gases such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), which have contributed 1.27 W/m2 of global surface cooling from 1750 to 2020.

If we eliminate fossil fuel combustion precipitously, then that will increase anthropogenic global warming by nearly 50%, from 2.6 W/m2 to 3.87 W/m2 in a matter of weeks, since these cooling gases have a half-life of a few hours to 3 weeks in the atmosphere.

Therefore, the safest way to address climate change is for the world to urgently go Vegan first and then take a nuanced approach to reducing fossil fuel combustion over the next 2-3 decades, as we showed in the Climate Bathtub model.

This is the exact opposite of what we still keep hearing from journalism outlets like Newsweek. It is also the exact opposite of what we still keep hearing from the Climate Reality Project, 350.org, Climate Action Network or even the Union of Concerned Scientists, who speak incessantly about reducing fossil fuel combustion without breathing a word about going Vegan first.

This is truly baffling. Through deliberately misinforming the public, are they all itching to get sued for the damages caused by the Los Angeles fires and other climate related disasters?

Vegan First. How hard is that?

That’s what the facts show we must do if humanity wishes to address climate change seriously. As Daniel Patrick Moynihan said, “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”

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Posted on All-Creatures.org: April 23, 2025
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