The National Emergency Briefing - Challenges to Action

FROM CHALLENGES                 TO     SOLUTIONS.

FROM MISINFORMATION          TO     FACT-DRIVEN

FROM COMPLEXITY                     TO   SIMPLICITY

FROM DIAGNOSIS                         TO  TREATMENT

“The key to solving our existential crises is just like treating a patient in ICU. If we correctly diagnose the illness, we can treat her back to health.” – Dr Keval Shah

1. What are the symptoms?

   
   

   Humans and all other life on Earth are completely dependent on the health of the planet’s life-support systems (like foetuses dependent on the function of their mother’s organs).

   
   

   Human activities are responsible for the breakdown of 6 out of 9 of these life-support systems/ organs. This is now an existential crisis.

   
   

   

Stockholm Resilience Institute (2023) – Planet life-support systems breakdown

The CLIMATE crisis is just ONE OF THE SYMPTOMS of this breakdown

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2. What is the diagnosis? 

   
   

   The destruction of our planet’s life-support systems (forests, soils and oceans) and the wild animals that maintain them. 

As a result, the living planet is now in ‘multiple organ-failure’ and severely

threatening our survival and global economies ($58 trillion in global GDP).

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3. How much time do we have?

   
   

   This depends on the survival of wild animals that maintain the planet’s life-support systems. The year when most wild vertebrates will go extinct is 2026

   
   

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4. What is the main cause?

   
   

   The leading cause of this destruction is the animal agriculture industries and the consequent death of forests, soil and oceans. The leading cause is NOT the burning of fossil fuels.

A simple way of explaining this is showing how much of Earth’s land and ocean is used up by these industries.

The animal agriculture industry breeds, raises, exploits and kills over 80 billion animals on land, and 2-3 trillion beings from the planet’s waterbodies.

It uses over 43% of all ice-free land on the planet, and bottom-trawls over 4 billion acres of ocean habitats (an area the size of South America) every year.

In return, the meat, dairy and egg industries only produce 12% of ‘food’ for humans (in dry weight), and only 3% of ‘food’ from killing vast areas of Earth’s oceans. In contrast, 85% of all the food humans eat, comes from plant foods – using only 7% of Earth’s land.

 Animal agriculture (meat, dairy, eggs and fishing industries) is also the leading cause of:

- resource depletion (freshwater and fertile soils)

- habitat loss and the mass extinction emergency

- air, water and land pollution

- climate change (responsible for over 87% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions)

- antibiotic resistance crisis

(The problem is not fossil fuels per se, but how they have accelerated destructive industries. Shifting to renewable energy alone will only fuel the destruction of our life-support in another way.)

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5. What is the treatment/solution? 

   
   

   In an emergency, we address the leading causes of devastation, first.

1.     Enable the transition from animal agriculture to a planet-conserving plant-food system

2.     Heal the planet using nature itself (reforestation and ocean conservation).

This transition will liberate 40% of Earth’s land (5 billion hectares) that can be reforested and rewilded, while allowing the oceans to recover from near-collapse.

The entire human population can be abundantly fed on health-boosting plant-based nutrition, using only 10% of Earth’s land.

“If we shift away from eating meat and dairy and move towards a plant-based diet then the sun’s energy goes directly into growing our food. And because that’s so much more efficient, we could still produce enough to feed us but do so using a quarter of the (agricultural) land.” - David Attenborough

The resultant rewilding and ocean conservation will:

- sequester all excess carbon emissions (released since 1850)

- cool the biosphere, significantly reducing floods, fires, hurricanes and famines

- enable species recovery from extinction

- significantly reduce pollution

- conserve fertile soil

- halt global crop failures

- enable a realistic transition to renewable energy infrastructure

This is the only way to:

-        Ensure the survival of life on Earth

-        Address the antibiotic resistance crisis

-        Secure the NHS

-        Secure our economy by reducing costs resulting from widespread floods, fires, famines, food failures, deforestation and climate refugee migration, while saving trillions of dollars in the process

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“A simple way to remember the solutions is the lung cancer analogy. In order to survive it, we need to stop the cigarettes and heal the lungs. The same goes for our living planet” – Dr Keval Shah

EMERGENCY ACTION CHART TO HEAL EARTH (click on underlined words)

SOLUTIONS	EDUCATION CAMPAIGNS	INVESTMENT/ INCENTIVES	SUBSIDIES	GOVERNMENT POLICY
Plantbased food system. Normalise non-violence towards all fellow animals (Addresses primary cause of climate and extinction emergencies)	Via schools Healthcare Media Sanctuary visits	Incentivise provision of wholefoods plant-based nutrition in institutions and businesses Invest in places that rescue and heal - animal sanctuaries. This further emboldens non-violence and justice	Shift subsidies from animal farming to plant proteins  To secure farmers’ economic future	Support farmers to transition away from using animals in agriculture. Introduce a meat, dairy and fishing tax. The financial boost can be given to the public as tax credits – enabling more accurate price signals and vital shifts in consumption towards nourishing plant-foods. Penalise dumping of animal manure in rivers and waterways
Reforest and rewild (Stops extinctions, enables CO2 sequestration, lowers pollution, reduces flooding, rehabilitates soil, restores ecosystems)	Normalise regular tree-planting schemes for schools, public institutions and businesses.	Rewild existing land owned by the world’s largest land owners e.g. The Crown and the Church of England Fund reforestation and rewilding (from local to national)21 Incentivise private land purchase to rewild/reforest via tax breaks or as part of pension	Subsidise and support farmers to rewild instead of using/killing animals Same stakeholders	Divest out of corporations profiting from deforestation, animal agriculture and fishing industries. Shift investments to: Plant proteins, Reforestation and kelp forests, Education - sanctuaries, Ethical banks and pension funds (see below)
Protect rivers, lakes and oceans (Stops extinctions, enables CO2 sequestration, restores ecosystems)	Media and facts	Fund river and ocean restoration - kelp forests	Shift subsidies from industrial fishing to growing kelp forests and reclaiming discarded nets. Same stakeholders.	Protect marine areas from industrial fishing

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Challenges to overcome – public education, subsidies and investments

1.     The healthcare, education and media systems still believe and perpetuate the idea that it is normal, natural and necessary to continue killing the planet’s life-support systems and the other species we share this planet with. This life-threatening myth needs to be dispelled, across the board, in order to ensure the survival of life on Earth.

The fact remains that animal flesh and secretions are not necessary for human health and wellbeing. In fact, the animal agriculture industry is significantly responsible for chronic diseases, zoonotic pandemic diseases and the antimicrobial resistance crisis – severely threatening survival, health and economic stability.

2.     While the animal agriculture industry is given annual subsidies totalling over $1 trillion globally, it is responsible for over $12 trillion in health and environmental damage every year. (This is more money than what the entire world possesses many times over).

Nonetheless, there is no price that can be placed on extinction, deforestation and ocean death.

Compared to the irreversible and unaffordable damage done by the animal agriculture industry, shifting to a plant-food system is financially achievable and heals the planet, saving trillions of pounds in the process.

Subsidies need to shift from killing to healing.

-        Farmers supported to establish a plantbased food systems

-        Land owners incentivised to rewild excess land

-        Fishing corporations supported to recover marine habitats

3.     Government and public investments need to be urgently shifted away from destruction of life, and into the global establishment of:

-        Plant proteins

-        Recovery (reforestation and kelp forests)

-        Education and inspiration (sanctuaries)

-        Ethical banks and pension funds

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TREES AND OCEAN targets

Tree planting targets

Currently the UK is using more than 72% of its land for farming. And 85% of this dedicated to the breeding, exploitation and killing of animals and growing their feed. Only 15% is used to grow plant foods for humans. To obtain all of our nutrition and protein from plant foods, we would need only 25% of the land we are currently using as farmland. That means we would have 75% of all UK farmland available for rewilding and reforesting, in order to secure our survival.

That means 75% of 17.6 million hectares. That equates to 13.2 million hectares. In each hectare we can plant at least 1000-2500 trees, which means we have enough land to grow 13.2 billion to 33 billion trees in the UK alone. Each country needs to form their quota in this way. But it has to be done urgently before rising temperatures, flooding and fires make it impossible to do so.

The global target is to grow 3 trillion trees. Considering the urgency, we need to approach and work with the world’s largest land-owners first - King Charles III / the British Royal Family linked to about 6.6 billion acres, and the Catholic Church (the Pope / Vatican) owns around 177 million acres globally.

If the oceans die, we die. The oceans store more carbon than all the forests and soils combined, and produce 50-85% of the oxygen for the planet. But they can only do so if they are habited by ocean dwellers (fishes and marine mammals) sustaining phytoplankton populations. The fishing industry (wild and farmed) are hunting and killing 2-3 trillion beings from the ocean every year – this precious life-support is now near total collapse.

Therefore, industrial fishing needs to be phased out AS A MATTER OF URGENCY.

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HOW FARMERS ARE ALREADY TRANSITIONING

 - https://vivafarming.org.uk/for-farmers/transitioned-farmers/

LEGAL BRIEF

Animal agriculture and the Environment Legal Brief - https://climatehealers.org/the-science/animal-agriculture-legal-brief/

ENGINEERS' SOLUTIONS

8. Engineers’ Solutions to Scientists’ Warnings - A Climate Healers Position Paper - Engineers' Solutions paper - Climate Healers

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The above document has been compiled by Dr Keval Shah

To discuss this action plan further, and how we can implement it, please contact me:

Phone number – 07894719374

Email address – keval.a.shah@hotmail.co.uk