By Nneka Nwogwugwu
Animal Agriculture and Climate Change, a Cape Town, South Africa-based nonprofit, has launched a global campaign and petition targeting influential environmental activists to publicly acknowledge that animal agriculture is the primary cause of climate change and support veganism as a solution to saving the planet.
Several prominent environmental activists and influencers continue to fail speaking out about the enormous negative impact animal agriculture has on our environment, despite a major report on climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) proving animal agriculture is fueling global warming, and a recent analysis published in Journal of Ecological Society revealing that animal agriculture is responsible for 87 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.
The petition, which has already garnered nearly 200,000 signatures at the time of writing, calls on eight climate change influencers with outstanding green credentials who have the potential to shift the conversation in the right direction within public discourse: Pope Francis, Prince William, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sir Richard Branson, Greta Thunberg, Leonardo Di Caprio, Naomi Klein, and Bill Nye.
While a few of the above activists have mentioned the impact animal agriculture has on climate change, such as Di Caprio and Thunberg, the nonprofit says they do not go far enough to consistently address the correlation.
“At a time when countries across the globe are battling the worst heat waves, wildfires and flooding seen to date, the world can’t afford to wait for people to finally view climate change as a pressing crisis impacting our everyday lives,” said Marda de Wet, Founder of Animal Agriculture and Climate Change. “We need to make this actionable and personal and that means accurately addressing the factors influencing climate change, like animal agriculture most importantly, and convincing those with the biggest voices to help universally spread this pressing message.”
Animal Agriculture and Climate Change will present the signed petition to the UN Summit on Climate Change in Glasgow, England Monday, November 1st.
The organization has made it its mission to curb greenhouse-gas emissions through public awareness campaigns proving that a shift to a vegan lifestyle has the potential to generate co-benefits, such as a stable climate, cleaner air, better human health, solve food insecurity and end unneeded animal cruelty.
Additionally, the organization is strongly concentrated on raising awareness about animal agriculture’s role in the destruction of the world’s ecosystems as the main reason for destroying forests and grasslands is for animal agriculture, and as a result, global biodiversity is a grave concern.