My favorite movie genre is documentary, and my favorite topics revolve around food, health, and climate change. One documentary I’ve had the pleasure of watching recently is called, “Cowspiracy.” The film was an eye opener; I was never as shocked by a documentary as I was for this one. The film discussed the agriculture industry’s role in environmental destruction, control of information, and policy. Although the documentary did not provide sources upfront, I decided to fact check some of the claims made. Animal agriculture is one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for 14.5% of all emissions (Baily, Froggatt, and Wellesley, 2014). Methane is 34 times more efficient at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, thus faster and more destructive than the latter. Animal agriculture is responsible for 52% of methane and 84% of nitrous oxide emissions globally (Smith et al., 2007). Despite the urgency of our situation and the severity of agriculture, these points are not brought up to many climate change awareness and advocacy organizations. The part that appalled me the most, was the fact that environmental safety and climate change advocacy groups were not talking about it.

So I decided to see for myself whether these groups were hiding something, and I found nothing contrary to the documentary. Agriculture was not mentioned on many of the environmental conservation groups’ websites. As I was researching, I found an old NASA article from 2005 claiming that methane’s impact on the climate change may be twice as much as previous estimates. In fact, some sources claim that emissions caused by animal agriculture could increase by 30% by 2050. As I was researching I stumbled upon the EPA website, I forgot that the EPA was under the control of the Trump administration. I was greeted with this page several times, and it is disgusting to say the least. The fact that we are close-and quick perhaps even by 2050- to exceeding the 2°C limit that climatologists warned and that we already have information hidden from us by other industries, isn’t being helped by the current administration’s adamant attack on the EPA.

The only way we can combat this is via protesting and raising awareness of the impacts of animal agriculture, deforestation, and fossil fuel burning on the environment. We must shift a demand in meat and dairy, gas and oil, and strive for more habitat conservation.