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[birds chirping]
[chainsaw rumbling]
[insects chirping]
[wood crackling]
[crackling intensifies]
[loud crash]
[light suspenseful music]
But surely you must realize that this is their home.
These Indigenous tribes have been living on this land
for hundreds of years.
[soft dramatic music]
[Kate Winslet] Our Earth...
She is ever in flow and motion.
A dynamic symphony of forces all working together,
breathing life into the four corners of the world.
[thunder rumbling]
And for millennia, cultures the world over
have called her their mother.
[deep inhaling]
[gentle exhaling]
[deep inhaling]
[gentle exhaling]
[dramatic music intensifies]
[dramatic music continues]
[music stops abruptly]
[somber music]
[Mr. Brockway] We live on an incredibly beautiful planet.
A home that we will hopefully pass on to generations to come.
But as the years go by, it's becoming
increasingly hard to imagine
what kind of a world we're leaving behind us.
[thunder rumbling]
We've spent the last four years traveling around the world
filming the stark reality that people now face
from the threat of ecological collapse.
It's now become very clear to us
that there's one thing driving the destruction
of our ecosystems faster than anything else.
Let us show you how this very same thing
might just also be our salvation.
[gentle somber music]
[Dr. Kong] Climate and environmental scientists
warn that we are fast approaching
the point of no return
if we don't make a substantial course reversal.
[Prof. Wadhams] We'll see really serious catastrophic effects
in the next few years, certainly in the next decade or two.
The world will be completely different
from the way it is now.
[Kate Winslet] Since 1900, we have seen a dramatic increase
in worldwide weather related disasters.
There have now been four times more weather related disasters
in the last 50 years than in the previous 100.
[Mr. Rifkin] We began to work together to move
this issue onto the global center stage.
There was a lot of discussion about the contribution
from buildings and from industrial factories,
but I became aware during that same period of time
that there was another factor that was going undiscussed,
and that is the role of animal agriculture, which I could see was playing
some significant role around the planet.
But this was the elephant in the room no one wanted to talk about.
Whatever environmental issue you want to look at
from species loss to water pollution,
to water use, to climate change, animal agriculture
is one of the top causes.
[Dr. Kong] The critical, widespread negative impact
of animal agriculture on our planet is undeniable.
Severe global crises
from climate change
and environmental damage to species extinction,
hunger, poverty, disease and antibiotic resistance,
all of these have direct connections
to animal agriculture
and the massive inefficiency
of our current food production systems.
[Kate Winslet] A report published by WikiLeaks as far back as 2009,
exposed the conversations between Nestlé executives
and U.S. officials called "The Tour D'Horizon."
The Nestlé executives said that their own research had shown
that the world was set to run out of fresh water
within the next 30 years.
It stated that one of the greatest reasons
for our detour down this catastrophic path
is the global demand for meat products.
[Prof. Wadhams] If you look at the impact that food choice has on--
on global warming, it's very significant.
Eating meat is huge for global climate,
and that's something where personal choice is the determining factor.
So there's the only case I can think of
where individual human choice
would have a big effect, would be food.
We're now over the line.
And the idea that we're going to double meat production
between now and 2050,
this is just unsustainable.
This is going to have to give.
Our diet is taking us to an abyss.
[dramatic musical sting]
[Mr. De Schutter] A significant reason why livestock production
has been having such a huge impact on greenhouse gas emissions
is because of the large surfaces
of forests that have been destroyed
in order to make room for pastures and for the growth
of soybean and maize for feedstock production.
[Kate Winslet] Our forests were once full of the most incredible life.
In more recent years, we began to grow an insatiable appetite
for meat and dairy, and as our demand for more meat grew,
we needed more and more land.
So we slashed and burned our way through the pristine forests,
destroying everything in our paths
to make way for the animals we desired to eat.
As these animals weren't allowed to roam free
as they naturally do in the wild,
their grazing areas soon became empty,
and so, of course, we needed to feed them,
so again, we slashed and burned our way
through more and more forests,
sowed the ground with genetically enhanced corn and soya,
and then dowsed it in pesticides,
herbicides and synthetic chemical fertilizer.
[dramatic music]
Animal agriculture has literally changed the face of our planet.
The green land is used for human crops.
A great area that spans the globe.
And yet the land we use for animal agriculture,
shown in red, now occupies vast amounts of our Earth's land,
a far greater area than that used for human crops.
Almost all the Earth's surface has-- now bears the mark
of some kind of human impact,
and most of that is livestock production.
Agriculture has transformed the planet like nothing else.
To produce milk, we farm an area about the size of Brazil.
To produce beef, we farm an area about the size of Canada,
the United States, the whole of Central America,
Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador combined.
To produce eggs, we farm an area the size of Sweden.
To produce aquaculture feed, an area about the size of the UK.
A plant-based diet would reduce the amount of land required
to produce our food by 3.1 billion hectares.
That's an area the size of the entire African continent.
[Kate Winslet] The Amazon is the world's largest tropical rainforest.
This ancient and richly biodiverse world
is slowly being replaced.
It is often assumed that much of the soy
being planted in Brazil is for human consumption.
In fact, less than six percent of the soy
grown across the globe is fed to humans.
The vast majority is grown to create
animal feed for livestock.
The soy is exported all around the world
and fed to the billions of chickens, farmed fish,
pigs and cows that we eat each day.
The forests are not only home to millions
of species of wildlife and plants,
but are also great regulators of our planet's atmosphere.
Day by day, they slowly breathe in the carbon dioxide
whilst producing billions of tons of fresh oxygen
for our air.
[dramatic music continues]
Each year, an estimated 18 million
acres of forest are lost,
which is roughly the size of the country of Panama.
It is thought that about half of the Earth's
mature tropical forests have now been destroyed,
and some scientists have predicted
that unless significant measures are taken on a worldwide basis,
by 2030, only ten percent of the forests will remain.
[somber piano music]
[birds and insects chirping]
[Sir Branson] One of the most precious things we have in the world is our rainforests.
The rainforests are literally being chewed away,
um, by farmers who know they can make money
by cutting another acre, and then another acre,
and then another acre for meat.
[somber piano music continues]
[Kate Winslet] Each year, hundreds of tribespeople,
indigenous to the Amazon rainforest,
have their villages burned to the ground.
They have been forcibly removed from their land,
with many of them murdered by the agribusiness paramilitary
who seek to turn their jungle home
into farmland for growing soy for livestock feed.
[dramatic music]
[gunshot]
[woman cries]
[Kate Winslet] One of the worst affected tribes is the Guarani Kaiowá
in Mato Grosso do Sul.
[somber music]
[dramatic music]
[loud whirring]
[inhabitants clamoring]
[music fades]
So there was actually a report that came out in 2018,
and they found that the world's top five livestock corporations
now release more annual greenhouse gas emissions
than ExxonMobil, Shell and BP.
It is crazy when you think about it
because the EU is spending £24 billion
of taxpayers' money on livestock farming each year,
and this is at a time when we are facing
an ecological collapse, and we drastically need to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions.
So it's no surprise that people are asking
a lot of questions now about the fact that there seem to be
some serious conflicts of interest going on here.
There's some very heavy lobbying going on of government,
and I think that happens throughout the world,
and it's just a historic thing
that needs to be, I think, rebalanced.
[light dramatic music]
[car beeping]
Today, democracy does not always function
as well as it should because of the huge influence
that agribusiness corporations, and livestock producers
in particular, exercise on decision-making.
[reporter] The former director of the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization, Dr. Samuel Jutzi,
warned as far back as 2010,
that interventions by agribusiness lobbyists
were blocking reforms that would offer better standards
for human health and preserving the environment.
Big animal agribusiness corporations'
and food producers' influence over political decisions
about the regulation of their industry, has long been a concern
for campaigners, who see the narrow interests
of the industry taking widespread control.
[Mr. De Schutter] If we have any doubt about how powerful this influence is,
we can recall that, for example,
when the Advisory Committee on Dietary Guidelines in the US
made recommendations to the US government
as to how dietary guidelines should be shaped,
they were blocked by this very powerful lobby of agribusiness interests.
[Kate Winslet] In 2013, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
released a landmark report called
Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock.
The report states that livestock farming
is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions
than all global transportation combined.
[dramatic music]
A growing number of scientists
believe that the impact of animal agriculture is,
in fact, even worse than stated in the FAO report.
There are close ties between the research organizations
and governments, and government policy and industry.
It's very pervasive because livestock industries
depend on government policies that support them.
[Mr. De Schutter] The FAO report was prepared within the FAO
by specialists of agriculture and livestock production,
not by specialists of the environmental issues
associated with agricultural production.
I believe that the more serious concern, of course,
is that the International Meat Association
was involved in preparing the report,
which does raise the question of the independence
with which the study was prepared.
[Mr. Wedderburn-Bisshop] Government policy in that regard
is not for the benefit of the land,
it's for the benefit of the industry.
[Kate Winslet] In their report, the FAO partnered up
with member countries, non-governmental organizations
and many other organizations, including
the European Feed Manufacturers Federation,
the International Dairy Federation,
the International Meat Secretariat,
the International Egg Commission,
and the International Poultry Council.
In an industry worth over a trillion dollars,
are these not the very institutions
that have the most to lose from a damaging
scientific report against livestock farming?
[gentle music]
[Kate Winslet] There are few people that know more
about the ocean than Dr. Sylvia Earle.
Dr. Earle was the first woman to become chief scientist
of the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,
and held the record for spending more time
walking along the sea floor at depth, untethered,
than any living person.
[Dr. Earle] When I was a child,
the idea of a dead zone in the ocean was--
was not even in our vocabulary,
but in the 20th century,
as agriculture began to greatly expand,
the areas around the coast began to show signs of wear and tear.
The first, most notorious...
spotlight area I think was off the Gulf of Mexico.
And it has simply grown over the years, an annual phenomenon.
It is coincident with the application
of massive amounts of fertilizer.
[Kate Winslet] The millions of square miles, given over to growing
feed for the animals we eat,
are heavily sprayed with nitrogen fertilizers.
The nitrogen runs off the fields working its way down rivers,
and eventually into our oceans.
The nitrogen-rich water stimulates massive overgrowth of algae,
resulting in algal blooms so large,
they can be seen from space.
The algae starve the water of oxygen,
leading to the death of the marine life around it.
Since the demand for meat has grown,
these low oxygen dead zones
have been steadily growing and growing.
[ominous music]
There are hundreds of dead zones
that have developed all around the coastlines
of the world.
And...
Okay, people say, "That's-- that's too bad for the fish,
so sorry, fish." But...
we need to understand that what we do to the ocean,
we're doing to ourselves.
[low rumble]
[whale calling]
[gentle music]
I want others to see it and to see for themselves.
This is all we've got, this little blue miracle.
[whale calling]
[ethereal music]
[eerie music]
[Kate Winslet] It is believed by some
that switching from eating meat to fish
will have a beneficial effect on our planet.
This simply could not be further from the truth.
If the ocean dies,
then we humans would probably die with it,
as every other breath of air we take
has been created by our ocean.
[deep exhaling]
As reported in the leading science journal, Nature,
we have lost nearly 90 percent of all large fish
in the ocean since the '50s.
One of the most in-depth studies ever carried out
investigating fish stocks,
also in the journal, Nature,
stated that at the current rate of fishing,
the world's fisheries are predicted to collapse
in less than 30 years.
According to IPBES, the intergovernmental body
which assesses the state of our biodiversity,
the leading cause of marine life extinction is fishing.
Our taste for fish is literally draining our oceans of life.
[light dramatic music]
[somber piano music]
[whale calling]
Today, we have agreed on fishing opportunities
for European fishermen worth more than five billion euros
and benefiting more than 50,000 fishermen.
The catches agreed today will continue to make
the European fishing industry highly profitable also in 2019.
[somber music continues]
[Kate Winslet] Norway, a beautiful country with breathtaking landscapes.
It is also a place that harbors some darker secrets.
Norway is one of the world's largest
exporters of farmed fish.
An industry that is worth billions of euros
to the country's economy.
As much of the wild ocean large fish populations
collapsed to near extinction,
fishermen are turning to aquaculture
as a way of growing fish in a controlled environment.
Norway produces more farmed salmon and cod
than any other country in the world.
About 70 percent of the fish we eat today
now comes from artificial fish farms.
As thousands of fish are kept close together
in very small sea cages, disease and lice spread easily
and have become a massive problem for the industry.
As a result, pesticides, disinfectants
and antibiotics are used extensively
to keep the fish alive long enough to go to market.
In order to rid the fish of lice,
special pumping boats are used,
which suck the fish up in a giant water vacuum.
The fish are then pumped through the system,
and as they flow through, they are either heated
to a high temperature or bathed in a chemical solution
which removes most of the lice
before being pumped back into the cage.
The fish are bathed in chemicals such as hydrogen peroxide
and azamethiphos, to kill the parasites and diseases,
and given feed with chemicals such as teflubenzuron,
emamectin and diflubenzuron,
which, by their very nature, are toxic.
Researchers have found that traces of chemicals
can end up in the fish, and ultimately on our plates.
This is much the same for farmed fish all around the world.
Taryn Bishop, an environmental activist,
is meeting with the Green Warriors,
a conservation organization based in Bergen,
on the west coast of Norway.
The Green Warriors have been investigating the devastating practices
of fish farming on the local ecosystem for many years,
and are taking Taryn to see the darker side
of the farms that lies beneath the surface.
A specially built submersible
has enabled them to see the seabed below the cages.
[light dramatic music]
[Kate Winslet] All along the ocean floor lies a thick layer of sludge
made up of fish waste, bacteria and uneaten feed.
The sludge is full of the pesticides added to the feed,
and new research has shown that the massive amounts of pesticide
being added around the world to the marine ecosystem
in fish farms is having a devastating effect
on the natural ocean biodiversity.
The sludge also releases large amounts
of climate warming methane.
Researchers at Oxford University
have found that some types of aquaculture
are now releasing more methane than beef production.
Liv Holmefjord is the head
of the Norwegian Directorate of Fisheries.
Whilst in Norway, we were given information
that not only is she in charge of regulating
the country's fish farm industry,
but also owns shares in one of Norway's
largest fish farm companies.
Many conservation groups feel this is a great conflict
of interests.
Holmefjord has agreed to meet Taryn
to answer questions about the state of Norway's fish farms.
Well, fish farming is quite a new industry in Norway.
It started back in the 1960s,
so it's some local entrepreneurs starting with hobby,
and it's grown until it's a billion euro industry today.
And, um, seafood is the second largest export
industry in Norway, and fish farming
accounts for two third of the export value of seafood.
So, recently, we found out that you also have shares
in one of the largest fish farm companies in Norway.
Do you not feel that that's a conflict of interest?
Uh, of course, there could be a con-- uh, in--
conflict of interest.
Uh, but this is a fact that's been known
since before I got this position,
and I've been open about it. I have--
do not-- I'm not involved
in the business from day-to-day
or at any-- so it's-- an if this--
Um, we have-- um, I have--
Sorry, I have to-- you have to start over again.
[speaking in Norwegian]
[man mutters]
So all the decisions that I made
will either be for the whole industry,
not specially for this fish farm,
or it's only an advice to the politicians, and the politicians
are setting the limits and the actual regulations.
So if there's an actual case,
uh, handling, regarding this company,
then I will step aside.
[ominous music]
[water splashing]
[birds chirping]
Salmon is marketed as healthy.
It's also marketed in a very devious way,
deceptive way that they think it's a wild product,
but it's a fake product.
It's a fatty product, it's contaminated.
It's marketed as healthy, but it-- but it's not.
So salmon, if you see salmon, alarm bells should start ringing.
It's pretty grim when you dive down to the bottom of the cages
because, you know, we always see the bottom full of dead fish.
And it's basically because many of these fish are
so disease-, so parasite-ridden and laden with chemicals
that they become sick, and they live out their sad short lives,
basically looking like zombies.
[dramatic music]
You know, you don't see this when you go
to the restaurant or the supermarket,
but this is basically what a lot of the fish actually look like
before it ends up on our plates.
So, tonight Don wanted to show us
how much of the farm fish actually dies.
Because of the very unnatural
and unsanitary ways that they are kept,
and they have rows of very large metal containers
that they are constantly filling up with the dead fish.
And I have to say that the smell as we get closer
is actually pretty disgusting.
[dramatic music]
[Mr. Staniford] So this is the sordid side
of salmon farming in Scotland.
This is the-- the dirty secrets
the industry don't want you to see.
This is disease-ridden
farmed salmon, it's 15 to 20 percent fat.
That's where the contaminants, the cancer-causing contaminants,
PCBs, dioxins, and the artificial colorings are.
So this is something to be avoided at all costs.
[dramatic music continues]
This is the salmon farm just here.
We got freedom of information...
data from the Scottish Environment Protection Agency
showing the use of over 50 tons of formaldehyde,
not just at this site, but other sites across Scotland.
It's formaldehyde: "May cause cancer,
suspected of causing genetic defects,
toxic if swallowed,
may cause respiratory irritation,
causes damage to organs. Do not breathe."
[mud sloshing]
[ominous music]
One of the fish farm workers told us that the workers,
um, come down to the farm, um, early in the morning,
spraying the chemicals into the fish cages.
[light dramatic music]
[Kate Winslet] As the ocean becomes a dumping ground of seven billion people
and farms saturate their fish with chemical feed,
eating fish has never been so toxic.
[Dr. Greger] You know, our oceans have become humanity's sewers.
Everything eventually flows into the sea,
so if you had a, you know, time machine
that could go back before the industrial revolution,
it might-- it's a different story, but now,
the highest levels are many of these persistent
organic pollutants. We're talking about,
you know, DDT, and PCBs and dioxins.
The highest levels in our food supply
are found in the aquatic food chain.
Fish are not the safest choice anymore.
-So, Tony it's great to see you. -Great to see you as well.
-Thanks for coming. -Not at all, thank you.
A pleasure being here.
So I wanted to ask you
if you could share with us
what is-- what exactly it was
you began to feel when you realized
something was going wrong?
I was exhausted more than usual,
and then I was losing short-term memory,
and that scared the hell out of me. And then I tore
my rotator cuffs in a really intense snowboarding accident.
And the doctor said, "Do you want to do your metals test?"
And I said, "Ah, I got my amalgams out 25 years ago."
He goes, "There's so many metals in the environment, you should do it."
So I did. I get a phone call a week later,
and I said to my assistant, "Just have them send the report."
And he said, "No, it's an emergency. He has to speak to you."
And it was like, no one wants to hear that.
And so I called him up and he said, "Tony,
I showed your blood tests.
You have extreme mercury poisoning,
on a zero to five scale," which is what they measure,
"five being toxic, you're 123."
The doctor said, "How long has this man been in the hospital?"
And I just got off stage.
So I-- I said, "I can't understand this,"
so I went out and they thought, you know,
maybe someone was trying to poison me because the number was so high.
And I was very disciplined. I was a vegan for 12 years
and then I just went salad, fish, salad, fish. And they brought
the medical group out here and they looked at it,
and I found this man named Dr. Shade
who's the only guy that has an ideation process
where he could see where the mercury came from, and it was fish.
It's been three years, um, and I had some severe moments.
It burned a hole in my esophagus and I literally collapsed.
I lost a third of my blood supply.
I could have died. I lost half of my hemoglobin.
-People begin to lose their hair. -Yes.
Their memory. They lose their memories.
-As you were doing. As you-- as you noticed. -Yes, yes.
But they can also have headaches.
They can complain of fatigue,
and they can also have depression.
What we're seeing now is with the toxic environmental exposure,
and especially with the mercury-- methylmercury
in fish, is that everyone has got to be careful
because their-- the levels are going up.
Udo, tell me, because your specialty is in this,
how do you get the fish oils that we all need
for the brain and for the body
if we can't have fish? What do you suggest?
Well, we used to get them from fish oils.
-Yes. -And-- But there--
We can actually get them from vegetables.
Flax is the richest source of omega-3
that we-- everybody thinks should come from fish oil.
If you get enough of that as starting material,
your body will make what the fish oils make, and it'll be clean.
[Dr. Newman] Many people take fish oils
or have fish for the long-chain omega-3 fatty acids,
and you have to ask yourself the question,
"But where do the fish get them from?"
And it turns out they get them from the algae in the ocean.
They get them from plant food. So if you want the purest form
of the long-chain ready-made omega-3 fatty acids,
the best way of doing that is simply to take
an algae supplement, because then you've got the purest form of it
and you don't have the extra risks
of having the toxins and the heavy metals
and the saturated fat and the cholesterol
that you would get from eating a fish.
[Kate Winslet] A peer-reviewed study
from researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography
at UC San Diego,
undertook one of the largest studies
of fish pollutants in the world.
The scientists found toxic contaminants in fish
right across the planet's oceans.
Nobody would go to the nearest body of water
and put in like a cup and drink the water.
Um, you're basically getting the concentrated toxins
if we're eating fish.
[Kate Winslet] Our oceans have also become filled
with plastic.
As the oceans are so large,
it is a challenge for any scientist to accurately understand
where most of this plastic is coming from.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch,
covering an area of about 1.6 million square kilometers,
may provide a unique opportunity to better understand
the growing problem of microplastics in the sea.
A team of scientists from the organization Ocean Cleanup
have been studying the Patch for some time
and were surprised when they discovered
that the vast majority of plastic in the Patch
is not from old drinking straws or used plastic water bottles,
but from thousands of tons of discarded fishing gear
broken down by the sea into trillions of pieces of microplastic.
A study, recently published in the journal, Nature,
found that about 80 percent of the plastic in the Pacific
is made up of discarded fishing gear.
Many scientists agree that one of the greatest things
we as individuals can do to solve this problem of a plastic ocean
is to move away from eating fish
and switch to a plant-based diet.
At least half of the plastic in the sea today
comes from discarded or lost fishing gear.
Because all those nets, all those lines, all that stuff,
it's just become a plasticized ocean,
but we have a chance.
We have a chance right now to change our eating habits.
[light dramatic music]
[Prof. Lindeque] There's an estimate that there's over five trillion
tons of plastic currently floating in the ocean.
It's absolutely everywhere.
Everywhere we looked, we found microplastics,
whether it's at the polar regions, in remote islands.
Also, if we're looking on the surface or the seabed
and everywhere in between, we find microplastics.
We've also found microplastics
in just about every animal group that we've looked in.
We've been sampling for microplastics for quite a while now,
and we found that there's 27 times more bits of plastic
than there are fish larvae.
[Kate Winslet] Microplankton are found
throughout the oceans.
They are filter feeders.
When the researchers add microplastics
into the plankton's environment, they consistently observe them
ingesting the plastic particles.
Unaware that the tiny particles are made up of toxic chemicals,
the plankton consume them indiscriminately.
The researchers observe how the chemicals accumulate
within the organs of these small marine creatures.
The toxic plankton are then eaten by larger fish,
and researchers have found that much of the fish
that we are eating today has bioaccumulated
these chemicals within their flesh.
[mellow music]
[Kate Winslet] A study by the University of Plymouth
found that over a third of all the fish tested
contained microplastics.
As we eat these contaminated fish,
we ingest the same toxic chemicals into our bodies,
and recent research suggests similar toxic accumulation in humans.
[suspenseful music]
[Mr. Rifkin] Our scientists tell us we're now
in the sixth extinction event
of life on this Earth.
It doesn't even make the headlines.
No one even knows about it.
[soft exotic music]
[gentle music]
[somber piano music]
[bird hooting]
[bird chirping]
[distant hooting]
[somber piano music continues]
[music fades]
[Mr. Rifkin] We've had five mass extinction events
on this planet in 450 million years.
Let me be clear on this, the last time we had
an extinction event of this magnitude,
was 65 million years ago.
It's incredibly sad to realize just how-- how many species, um,
both in the oceans and on land that we're losing at the moment,
um, and it's up to all of us to make sure,
that, um, this doesn't happen in the future.
[Mr. Poore] Today, over 26,000 species
are currently threatened with extinction,
and the most important driver of that
is our use of land for agriculture.
Over time, um, livestock have been a major,
major driver of biodiversity loss.
[Mr. Wedderburn-Bisshop] Some have predicted that by 2045,
the species loss will be so great that we won't recover.
The Earth will suffer ecological collapse.
And the biggest thing you and I can do...
is change our diet.
[Kate Winslet] Some scientists have begun to call this current crisis
a "biological annihilation."
[soft somber music]
According to the journal, Science of the Total Environment
from Florida International University,
livestock farming is the leading cause of biodiversity loss.
According to a study published in the journal Science,
if the entire world were to switch
to an exclusively plant-based diet,
we would free up over 75 percent
of the world's arable land,
and many of the forests, previously cut down
for livestock farming, could be restored.
There are now many great initiatives
around the world doing just that.
Ecosia, an online search engine similar to Google,
is one such initiative that uses the revenue made
from advertising to pay local communities to replant trees.
One of Ecosia's main foresters is Mauricio,
who has been working hard to replant the rainforest in Brazil.
[uplifting music]
[Kate Winslet] Trees breathe life into our world.
When we plant a tree, we sow the very seeds
of our future on this planet.
[somber music]
The most recent in-depth study
into the environmental impact of what we eat,
was a peer-reviewed journal by an international team of researchers.
This landmark study, headed by Dr. Marco Springmann
of Oxford University in England,
found that in order to have any chance of keeping
temperatures below the dangerous two-degrees-Celsius threshold
set out in the Paris Climate Agreement,
in high-income countries we need to drastically reduce
our consumption of meat by around 80 percent.
Policymakers have been
very, very reluctant to address the livestock issue.
It's entirely out of keeping with the urgency
of the crisis that we're facing.
[indistinct]
Hi, Otto Brockway for Broxstar Films.
Um, this is a question for Commissioner Hogan.
The scientists at Oxford University have been very clear
that livestock farming
has a far greater impact than plant-based farming.
With this in mind, would it not be common sense to reduce
the billions in subsidy payments to livestock farming
in Europe and offer them to plant-based farming instead
as an incentive to a much more sustainable food system?
We have made our proposals based on protecting the farmers,
because they are, unlike you and I,
they're out in all sorts of weathers and all sorts
of market risks, and you and I may not know
anything about that because this is their lives.
They're producing high-quality food for us all
so that we can have this particular
good-quality products available to us at all times.
Sometimes under local conditions like organic,
more times it's conventional farming.
So we provide financial support at the moment for that.
And it's a public good that's not always recognized,
but the movement of our policies is in the direction of our farmers
being centrally involved in providing more public goods.
And if you want to do anything in life, you have to pay people.
Sometimes I understand that there's a moral obligation
and there's people of principle, but most of the time,
99 percent of the time, they have to get paid.
So as professionals we're expecting to provide
good-quality food and do more on public goods.
We pay our farmers. This is a decision
that we make at a political level.
[Mr. Rifkin] Livestock emit methane and nitrous oxide.
Now most people, when they think of climate change
they think of CO2, carbon dioxide,
which is a very potent global warming gas.
But methane is 25 times more potent
per molecule when it's released than CO2.
And nitrous oxide is 298 times more potent
per molecule than CO2.
These are very powerful global warming gases.
[Mr. Brockway] So today we have a very special camera
called a hyperspectral imaging camera,
and it basically enables us to be able to see
gases that would be otherwise invisible to the naked eye.
And today we're looking at methane gas.
Methane is a gas that is being produced by cows when they belch.
[Kate Winslet] Methane, together with the other gases
it produces in the atmosphere,
has caused a third of global warming since 1750.
Livestock are the largest source of methane that we can control.
Steep cuts in methane emissions can slow global warming
by 15 to 25 years, making it the most effective means
we have to slow warming in the critical years ahead.
-Whoa, look at that. -Wow.
[ominous music]
[both] Wow.
[Kate Winslet] To demonstrate the different heating potentials
of climate gases, we can look to an experiment
known as the "infrared absorption experiment."
Here we see four Earth-shaped ice statues,
each one in its own airtight chamber.
The chambers represent the atmosphere
surrounding the planet.
Each has an infrared heater placed above it,
set at identical temperatures,
and each one is then filled with a different gas.
[gas hissing]
The first chamber is filled with normal air
that we breathe from day to day.
The second chamber is filled with carbon dioxide,
a well-known climate warming gas.
The third chamber is filled with methane,
a gas associated with animal agriculture,
and the fourth chamber is filled with nitrous oxide,
also a gas associated with animal agriculture.
Over time, we begin to see the ice statue in the carbon dioxide chamber
slightly melting, compared with the normal air.
But in the same short time,
the statues in the methane and nitrous oxide chambers
begin to melt rapidly
as the temperature inside rises considerably higher
than both the normal air, and also the carbon dioxide.
16 hours later, the results are stark.
We can clearly see that the methane and nitrous oxide,
the two main gas byproducts of animal agriculture,
are potent climate warming gases.
[somber music]
Of the estimated 70 billion land animals
reared for human consumption each year around the world,
nearly 90 percent are chickens.
An emerging problem is that chicken consumption
is now on the rise.
Whilst chicken has a lower environmental impact than red meat,
over 90 percent of chicken globally
is now intensively farmed,
and this is having devastating effects on our planet.
If we compare the equivalent protein calories
for meat and plant-based proteins, such as chickpeas,
chicken does less harm to the environment
than commonly consumed red meats.
And yet, still causes 40 times more climate-related warming
per calorie of protein than chickpeas,
and uses 50 times the amount of water.
We know that if we would shift from, um, ruminant meats
to other meats, then we probably would reduce
our footprint just from-- from that particular product
by about a factor of ten, which is quite a bit.
But if you compare that
with how much you would reduce your footprint
if you went to plant-based products,
that is about a factor of 100,
and that's the reason why shifting to more--
towards more plant-based diets has such a big impact,
because we're really talking about different scales here.
[Kate Winslet] Organic meat has been claimed to have
less environmental and climate impact.
However, a study carried out by researchers at Oxford University,
found that, in fact, organic or conventionally produced meat
has little significant difference in greenhouse emissions.
So in our data, we didn't find...
big differences between organic and conventional
across multiple indicators.
What we did find is that no matter
how you produce animal products, even the lowest impact forms of production
still create higher emissions and use more land
than typical vegetable proteins.
So that's saying something really important, that's saying
that even if you go into the shops and try and purchase
sustainable meat or dairy, it's always going to be better
to purchase vegetable proteins instead.
[Kate Winslet] Each year the US Government gives around $20 million
to subsidize fruit and vegetable farming,
but meat and dairy farming get a massive $38 billion
from the government.
It is now estimated that the annual cost
to the US taxpayer of diseases related to meat and dairy consumption
are now around $314 billion.
[light dramatic music]
And when you cram, tens of thousands
of animals in these crammed, filthy, unhygienic conditions,
basically live atop their feces, it's just like a breeding ground.
Animal-to-human diseases that arise
are because of the way we're now treating animals.
Whether it's these live animal markets in East Asia,
whether it's the bushmeat trade,
the concern is that with enough spins at genetic roulette
on these swine factory farms, these chicken factory farms,
we're going to end up with one of these viruses
that's not only deadly to chickens, but can jump
and transmit human to human and cause the next human pandemic.
The risk of large-scale factory farming increases the risk
that we-- or the likelihood that we might have a pandemic,
particularly, of influenza in the future.
This pandemic has been very severe,
but this is not necessarily the big one.
[Kate Winslet] Swine flu, which killed over half a million people
is believed to have originated in pig farming.
AIDS and the Ebola virus are believed to have come
from eating wild animals, while MERS from camels,
and also camels' milk and meat.
SARS is thought to have spread from live animal wet markets
as was the recent COVID-19 pandemic.
Bird flu is believed to have come from chicken farms
and also live animal wet markets.
And the measles virus is thought to have originated from farm cows.
[Dr. Greatorex] People know now what a global pandemic feels like,
and they've seen the effects. They will be feeling the effects
for many years to come, and this is a chance,
I think, an opportunity to point out
that this particular route of infection
is a-- is a very concerning one.
[Kate Winslet] The World Health Organization has announced
that the post-antibiotic era is near.
A time where a simple scrape on the arm could become fatal.
Our miracle lifesaving antibiotics are being rendered useless
due to overuse, not because of overuse by humans,
but because we give them each day to billions of farm animals.
[dramatic music]
[Mr. Bayley] So having been a butcher for six years,
one thing I know is that if people knew what happened
in the production of their food, they wouldn't eat meat.
So one of the things that we would hit every day was
pus nodules, tumors, cysts.
It was something that we would hit on a daily basis.
Having worked in a supermarket chain,
I was-- I saw this firsthand every single day.
So here's one that's running along the shoulder blade.
[both] Oh!
-Yeah. -That is what I remember in the butchery,
it comes out like thick toothpaste.
I remember that every single day.
-That's interesting to hear you had that experience... -Yeah.
...all the way over there because in the UK it's exactly the same.
-Yeah. -We would see that on a daily basis.
But those people who say, "It's-- it's not my butcher who does this."
-No. -They need to open their eyes,
because if their butcher is being honest with them, we know.
-Yeah. -We both know, we were in,
-and any honest butcher is going to admit it. -Yeah.
They're not going to want to tell the public because it's going to affect
-their business, but it is a fact. -Yeah.
And me working in multiple butcheries,
I saw these common trends across the board,
so I know that it wasn't just isolated to the one
that I was working in, it was across the board for me.
People need to reconnect with what they're eating
-and the whole process that we were... -Yeah.
...we're talking about here of how that food gets to them.
Um, it's hidden from them, and it's hidden for a reason,
because if they saw it, it would most definitely make them
want to think harder about what they're eating.
[thunder rumbling]
[water rushing]
[Kate Winslet] As our oceans and atmosphere begin to warm,
the water cycles of the planet are beginning to change.
[ominous music]
[Mr. Rifkin] Climate change changes the water cycles of the planet.
The heat that's being generated
is forcing the precipitation into the clouds,
so we're getting more concentrated precipitation in our clouds,
and more dramatic, extreme,
and unpredictable water events all over the world.
[Kate Winslet] In the northern region of the remote Pacific island of Taiwan,
the Atayal people live high in the mountains.
Taiwan is no stranger to extreme weather,
but in recent years the strength and frequency
of the typhoons have increased.
This has had a devastating effect
on the Atayal people and their way of life.
[dramatic music]
[water rushing]
[thunder rumbling]
[water splattering]
[car crashing]
[crowd yelling indistinctly]
[Kate Winslet] Whilst much of the world has been experiencing
increasing levels of extreme flooding,
in many places, the opposite is happening.
Much of the world is increasingly entering
into extreme drought, destroying thousands of tons of crop,
as millions of farmers struggle to find
enough water for their fields.
[Mr. Michael] I'm definitely worried about the future of our farm.
I think we're seeing, you know, much more, uh--
many more swings in climate than we've seen in the past,
but we want to use all the land that we have to grow food,
but we haven't been able to just because of the shortages of water.
It will have an impact on food supply and prices
and availability, and so estimates now are
between 500,000 to over 1,000,000 acres of farmland
that will come out of production in California.
[light dramatic music]
[Kate Winslet] Almeria, in the south of Spain,
is home to 31,000 hectares of indoor vegetable farms.
Almeria produces half of Europe's fresh fruit
and vegetables, an essential component
in the supply of the continent's food system.
Worryingly, Spain has been in the grip of a 20-year drought,
a drought that climate experts suggest
is closely linked to climate change.
[translation] In terms of water, the truth is that the drought
in Spain has become a complete catastrophe.
Our harvests are decreasing in massive quantities.
Last year, in the area we are now,
there was almost no harvest.
People don't realize the food system is collapsing.
[dramatic music continues]
[Kate Winslet] As a result of this shift in the global climate system,
the drought across Africa has deepened.
Rivers and lakes that supply hundreds of millions
with fresh drinking water are beginning to run dry.
As new conflicts break out over these dwindling resources,
we are witnessing the beginning of a mass exodus of people
moving north, desperate to survive.
These climate refugees are willing to risk everything
to get themselves and their families to what they see
as the safe shores of Europe.
In response to this modern day mass migration,
Spain has built a massive wall
that runs along its southernmost border in Melilla.
Thousands of refugees are beginning to swarm
the border fences, overwhelming the Spanish police.
Amid predictions that this migratory pattern
is set to increase, it seems increasingly clear
that our world is poorly prepared to cope.
[music fades]
[wind blowing]
[hoofs thudding]
[somber spiritual music]
[Kate Winslet] As the Gobi Desert in Mongolia
begins to spread deeper and deeper
into the country, like a beast consuming all life in its path,
many of the lakes that support both the people
and the wildlife have now dried up.
If the lakes continue to disappear,
then the people will be forced away from their home
and into distant and strange lands.
[liquid splattering]
[gentle spiritual music]
A lot of people talk about how much fresh water
we use for hydrofracking.
700 billion gallons globally is wasted on fracking.
So, 700 billion gallons. Sounds like a lot,
but animal agriculture,
the production of animals that we use for meat around the globe
uses 70 trillion gallons of fresh water a year.
Hundreds of thousands of times
as much as fracking.
And we give the cows and the chickens the good stuff, right?
They don't get the Flint, Michigan lead-tainted,
condoms-floating-in-it water.
They get the top shelf stuff,
because we don't want to screw up our sausage links.
And I know what some of you are thinking right now.
You're thinking, "Oh, here's the part...
[with high-pitched voice] 'I'm a vegetarian and pigs
are people too, meh!'"
But no, let's ignore how the animals are treated
in our factory torture farming.
Let's pretend they're treated amazing, for just a minute.
It's like a celebrity backstage at the Oscars,
they're just being fawned over
and they get swag bags with free Apple watches...
Point is, you should still be upset about this
because animal agriculture is killing us,
and corporate media is fantastically pathetic on this topic.
They never mention meat production.
They never mention that a Quarter Pounder
takes 660 gallons of fresh water to create.
That's the-- that's the equivalent of showering
for two months.
So, one, usually underestimated
impact of livestock production
is the huge amount of fresh water required
for that production to be maintained and to be increased.
The problem is that in many places, water is being used
much faster than the natural renewal rates.
Overall, in the world, 1.8 billion people
are living in areas with severe water scarcity.
The livestock sector is the single biggest water user in the world.
1/3 of the water use in the world is being used
for producing animal products, meat and dairy,
and it's not because those animals drink so much,
it's really because there's a lot of water required
to make the feed for the animals.
If we want enough fresh water for future generations,
water alone dictates that we must change our diet,
away from meat and dairy.
[Kate Winslet] All over the world we can see evidence of a global shift
towards animal-free foods that is enough to give us some hope.
In 2021, a record 580,000 people signed up
to the UK's Veganuary campaign, and it's estimated
that there are now over four million people
identifying as vegan across the United Kingdom.
In Canada, it's estimated that ten percent of the population
are now either vegan or vegetarian,
and in the US, over 50 percent of chefs
have added vegan items to their menus,
with a 600 percent increase
in the vegan lifestyle in the last three years.
[onion slicing]
[playful music]
[oil sizzling]
[Mr. Brockway] A few years ago, it was quite a challenge
to get hold of good vegan food, but today we're pretty much spoiled
for choice, and there are vegan options everywhere.
-Mm. -Yeah, thanks.
It tastes like a normal hot dog, is it a normal hot dog?
Like as in like-- or is this like plant-based or something?
-What is it? -So, it is actually plant-based, yeah.
-So every-- -It's really nice.
-I prefer it because I don't really... -Do you?
...eat meat that much, so this is good.
-All right. -I like meat and it tastes good...
-Yeah? -...for not being meat.
[both] Mm-hmm.
-Would you be happy with that? -Yeah.
I'd be stoked. I love meat too much,
so I feel like if I went plant-based, I'd miss it,
but if this stuff tastes the same...
-Yeah. -...I'd be very happy with this.
[oil sizzling]
[playful music continues]
-...nice, messy fingers. -It is, yeah.
-[laughs] -Solid food burger.
-Okay. -Thank you.
Would it interest you to know that that's completely plant-based?
-I wouldn't know. So that, I would definitely-- -Wow.
-That's a winner. -Yeah, I'm amazed.
If burgers always tasted like that,
Would you be happy to just not eat a beef burger again?
-[unintelligible] -Yeah?
I'd like you to tell me which one of these nuggets
is plant-based and which one is real meat.
Okay.
[playful music continues]
It's very hard to say which one is...
[laughs]
They taste exactly the same, honestly.
-These are not the chicken? -No.
-That's interesting. -Yeah.
Which one of this is animal meat
and which one of this is plant-based?
Meat or not meat?
You're not sure? You're not sure.
-No. -No. Yeah, I'm not sure.
-Meat. -You...
-Yes. -...are wrong. [laughs]
-Oh. -Okay, okay. [chuckles]
-...but you think the second one was chicken. -Yeah.
-The second one was actually plant-based. -No way.
-Yeah, and the first one was chicken. -No way.
-Yeah. -Okay, I didn't-- I couldn't have guessed that.
I definitely thought the first one.
Yeah, definitely.
It seems that changing what we eat to a more sustainable diet
can also coincidentally be very beneficial to our health.
There is a growing understanding that we can actually prevent,
and in many cases even reverse some of our most common diseases
all through a shift towards a whole food vegan diet.
Humans can survive on many different kinds of diet,
but many decades of research has now shown us
that the best way of not just surviving,
but truly thriving, is on a whole food plant-based diet.
The human can be healthy on a plant-based diet,
without any animal products.
The major dietetic associations
around the world, including the British Dietetic Association,
have produced statements to say exactly that, that a diet
made up of whole plant foods is healthy for humans,
all stages of their life.
[Ms. Davis] And not only can they be healthy,
but they can restore or reclaim their health
adopting a plant-based diet.
There's certain areas, certain populations around the world
that have extraordinary health and longevity,
for example, a large number of centenarians,
people that live over 100, these so-called "Blue Zones."
What's really interesting about the Blue Zones,
they actually have more centenarians
than anywhere else in the world,
and a centenarian is someone
that lives at least 100 years.
But what-- what's really interesting about the Blue Zones
is when people reach these advanced ages,
they are still productive, so the Blue Zones
have taught us a lot.
And the bottom line is, we really want to try to emulate
what the people of the Blue Zones are doing.
[Kate Winslet] The five regions known as the Blue Zones
are Okinawa in Japan,
Sardinia in Italy, Icaria in Greece,
Nicoya in Costa Rica
and Loma Linda in California.
[Dr. Greger] So the question is, "Well, what do they all have in common?"
[Dr. Newman] They have a predominantly plant-based diet.
They have a diet rich in fruits and vegetables,
whole grains, beans, soy, lentils, chickpeas.
They have a diet rich in all these nutrients
and that's one thing that they have in common.
So the EPIC study is
the European Prospective Investigation
into Cancer and Nutrition.
It followed over half a million individuals
from ten European countries for more than 15 years.
Those in the EPIC study
that were eating predominantly plant-based
or eating high levels of fruits and vegetables lived longer,
had lower incidence of cancer and heart disease.
About two and a half thousand of the individuals
in the EPIC Oxford only ate plant foods,
so they were vegan. And even though
they weren't the most healthy vegans or healthy plant eaters,
you could show that these plant eaters were healthier,
they had lower incidence of heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
From everything we have discovered on this journey,
it seems that moving away from animal foods
to plant-based foods instead
can not only give us a whole host of amazing health benefits,
but also gives us a chance to be able to leave
a sustainable planet for future generations to come.
Perhaps the single most meaningful change
that we can make as individuals
is ultimately deciding what ends up each day on our plates.
[Dr. Kong] We are running out of time.
The world community must acknowledge
that animal agriculture is the most destructive
industry on our planet.
We can't wait for government policies
and other organizations to create
a better life for ourselves.
We need to stand up now and make our voices heard.
Globally, for the typical consumer,
avoiding meat and dairy is probably the single biggest way
to reduce your impact on Earth.
Without addressing what we eat, we simply won't make it.
This is a number one priority.
This is a next step,
in taking responsibility for our communities,
our planet, our biosphere, our fellow species.
[all] Climate justice!
When do we want it? Now!
People say, "What can I do as an individual? Feels overwhelming."
Well, you can make individual choices. We all can.
Our individual choices affect the collective choices.
We hear about airplanes and cars.
And we're still going to use those things,
but the choices we make in our diet,
this agricultural business where we use animals
as the primary source of protein,
the one thing I think we can all do is,
as individuals, is make our own individual choices.
How we're going to live, how we're going to eat.
Plant-based diet makes all the difference in the world.
Just make some choices that are good for you,
and being good for you, it'll be good for the planet.
[Kate Winslet] This planet is our home.
And it is up to us what happens now.
History has shown that when we stand together,
united in a common cause, we can achieve great things.
Before us lies an opportunity to build a world
in which we can thrive.
But the clock is ticking...
and time... is running out.
[dramatic music fades]
[light dramatic music]
[dramatic music continues]
[music fades]