There's one very important issue that Republicans pretend isn't real, and Democrats only provide the bare minimum support for. It isn't one of the "hot" topics during the Presidential debates such as gun control, immigration, or abortion. It's an issue that is usually only given about five minutes of debate time where the candidates babble on and on, running around in circles.

I'm talking about global warming. While Donald Trump goes through eight aerosol cans of hairspray every day and the other Republicans notoriously deny basic science, the Democrats aren't much better. They all seem to ignore the proven facts that animal agriculture is the leading cause of climate change in our world.

It's true.

Commercials, politicians, and "Go Green" campaigns will recommend recycling, riding a bike instead of driving a car, taking shorter showers, or keeping the lights off to help prevent climate change. While those acts do help, why isn't anyone suggesting that we stop eating animal products? Animal agriculture is the most unsustainable industry in the world, as it is responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gases, which is more than the exhaust from all of the airplanes, automobiles, and trains in the world combined.

There are about 50 billion livestock animals in the world, and that might be lowballing it. Factory farms are turning out animals at an alarming rate because animal byproducts are still in such a high demand, despite the harm it causes. Putting aside the health detriments and the animal abuse for a moment, there is nothing natural or organic about an industry that emits the amount of toxic gas, burns as much fossil fuel, and uses the amount of land and water that the animal agriculture industry does. It affects all aspects of our earth, but no one is willing to put in the work to change it.

Here's some proof:

The production of one calorie of animal protein requires more than ten times the fossil fuel input as a calorie of plant protein.

Nearly half of all the water used in the United States goes to raising animals for food.

It takes more than 2,400 gallons of water to produce 1 pound of meat and only 25 gallons to produce one pound of wheat.

Seven football fields’ worth of land is bulldozed every minute to create more room for farmed animals and the crops that feed them. This land being bulldozed isn't old houses and abandoned buildings being cleared, it is the rainforests--home to thousands of species of animals--being destroyed and turned into pastures.

The massive amounts of excrement produced by livestock farms emit toxic gases such as hydrogen sulfide and ammonia into the air. Roughly 80% of ammonia emissions in the U.S. come from animal waste.

Cows produce 150 billion gallons of methane per day. Cows fart and burp just like we do, and with so many cows being needlessly bred every day, the amount of methane produced by their bodily functions is harmful.

In the U.S., 70% of the grain grown is fed to animals on feedlots. We don't live in a time or a country where people are starving to the point that eating animals is our only choice. We are going to run out of land very soon (which is why they are destroying natural habitats), so instead of using this land to grow crops for animals to eat, we should be using the land to grow crops for humans to eat, which would immensely cut down on the amount of waste produced.

A farm with 2,500 dairy cows produces the same amount of waste as a city of 411,000 people.

So why isn't anyone talking about this? Why isn't CNN reporting it as "Breaking News?" Why isn't Hilary Clinton standing up for this? Because the animal agriculture industry is a massive multi-billion dollar industry, and no one wants to be on its bad side.

Howard Lyman is an animal activist that was raised on a dairy farm. After seeing the horrors of the farm, he turned over a new leaf and became a vegan and dedicates his life fighting for animal rights. In 1996, he went on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and talked about how harmful the industry is to animals, health, and the planet. He was then promptly sued by The National Cattlemen's Beef Association (yeah, that's a real thing) for slander (Lyman eventually won--after years of legal battles).

The truth is that the animal agriculture industry is so grossly powerful, and so protected by our government, that no one wants to stand up to it, especially our politicians. Instead, they try to keep it a secret. However, animal agriculture causing global warming is not news, and it is not propaganda, it's fact that has been studied and proven for decades, and it is only getting worse.

Just because politicians are not arguing for this to change, it doesn't mean that they don't know about it, it means that they don't want to lose the votes of the hundreds of thousands of workers involved in the industry. Politicians have their whole public persona down to a science of what will win them the election no matter what, even if that means they ignore the majority of the destruction happening to our planet, and that's sad.

So what we can do to help? Well, adopting a vegan diet is a start. Veganism is growing, and that means the demand for meat and dairy will suffer for it, and less animals will need to be bred, and less land will need to be destroyed. The industry was built on demand, so if we lessen the demand, the industry will eventually crumble.

Then, you should spread the message and make others aware, because all of the facts are there, sometimes you just have to do a little digging.