The Greatest Transformation in Human History: Dr. Sailesh Rao’s Vision

On a recent episode of The Glen Merzer Show, Glen welcomed Dr. Sailesh Rao, founder of ClimateHealers.org, who discussed the pressing issue of climate change. Dr. Rao emphasized that animal agriculture, not fossil fuels, is the leading cause of the climate crisis. He highlighted the importance of transitioning from a climate-heating civilization to a climate-healing one.

Dr. Rao paid tribute to the late Dr. John McDougall, a pioneer in the plant-based movement, recalling his dedication to promoting a plant-based diet as a means of healing both people and the planet. Despite facing personal health challenges, Dr. McDougall was committed to educating others about the benefits of a plant-based lifestyle.

The conversation shifted to the urgency of addressing climate change. Dr. Rao shared alarming data showing that our current way of life is destroying the planet's ecosystems. He warned that if we don't act now, the consequences will be catastrophic.

Dr. Rao introduced the concept of veganism as the fastest-growing social justice movement, emphasizing its role in healing the planet. He described veganism as a way of living that seeks to avoid harming animals, which is crucial for reducing environmental destruction.

He shared a personal story about his granddaughter, who asked him to "do his job" of protecting the planet, reminding him of the importance of future generations.

Dr. Rao concluded by urging us to take responsibility for the planet, emphasizing that we must act now to ensure a livable world for future generations.

Watch the full episode of here: Dr. Sailesh Rao on The Greatest Transformation in Human History

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DISCLAIMER: Please understand that the transcript below was provided by a transcription service. It is undoubtedly full of the errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions. To understand the interview more completely and accurately, please watch it here: Dr. Sailesh Rao on The Greatest Transformation in Human History

Glen Merzer: Welcome to the Glen Merzer Show. You can find us across all your favorite podcast platforms. You could find us on YouTube. Please remember to subscribe. You could find us at RealMenEatPlants .com. My guest today is my dear friend, Dr. Sailesh Rao. Dr. Rao is the founder of ClimateHealers .org, and he has been trying to fight the good fight to the public aware and scientists aware of the leading cause of the climate emergency, which is animal agriculture. The burning of fossil fuels is in a distant second place. Sailesh, welcome to the show. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Thank you for having me. 

Glen Merzer: Sailesh is going to be giving a presentation to us on the greatest transformation in human history. But before we get to that, the plant -based community lost an icon in the last week, really one of the founders of this movement, one of the first medical doctors to make the case that people are not omnivores, we are herbivores, we should be eating a plant -based diet or what he called a starch -based diet. We lost Dr. John McDougall. Sailesh, knew Dr. McDougall What would you like to say on this subject? 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Oh, was a dear friend. He emailed me out of the blue in 2019. So was looking back through my emails to see when I got in touch with him. And he emailed me when I had just published the white paper on our website. Before it got published in the journal, it was on our website in 2019. And he emails saying, I read your white paper, I'm reading your book, Carbon Yoga Now. And then he introduced himself and then he said, how can I help you? He was that kind of man, you know, he was always giving of himself, always generous. And he was dedicated to the truth, dedicated to healing the planet, to all the thousands of people that he healed including myself because I wrote a newsletter after I fainted in a restaurant a couple of years ago and he sent me an email saying, you know, I'm going to offer you my course for free and take it. I can give you a few years of your life. Okay. So I took it and I, at the end of the course, I wrote to him saying, this course should be required. in every high school in the world.

Glen Merzer:  Yes. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Because it's basic health promoting information that we are withholding from our children. You know, and he was up for it. He said, get me into schools and I'm happy to tell you about the course. It's unfortunate that he passed away, but I think he was a giant in our field, in our movement, and we'll miss him. But he left enough for us to carry on, you know.

Glen Merzer:  He left a great deal. He died at the age of 77, which is not old, but it is about the average age of death for a male in America. But he had a stroke at the age of 18. So while I'm sure there will be critics out there, some haters out there, some people who are opposed to the vegan diet who will say, oh, he only lived to 77, he started with a stroke at 18. He was also, I don't know at what age, but I know he was a heavy smoker. So he started from those health deficits. When you start from those deficits and you make it to age 77, that's actually pretty good. And I could tell you that he was very, very concerned with the climate emergency. He had been in the fire in Santa Rosa. I believe he lost two houses that fire that came up out of the blue in minutes and he had to run for his life with his family. And that's one reason why he was so committed, even more committed than he was to trying to make people healthy. He was committed to trying to save the planet. And that's why he was so attracted to your work. And he wanted to write a on the subject. And as you know, I leaned heavily on your research from my book, Food is Climate. And then Dr. McDougall got in touch with me and he said, know, Glen, I wanted to write a book on the subject, but you wrote it already. So he interviewed me on his podcast. And that was very gracious of him to try to help promote. what I had written in the book because he felt that was what he would have written. So we lost a giant and the world feels a little different without his presence in it because he was this slightly edgy, but deeply honest and caring spokesperson for sanity in the field of 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. Yeah. He wanted the American College of Lifestyle Medicine to take up climate change as, and public health as its major commitment. 

Glen Merzer: Did he meet with the resistance? 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Well, he, you know, in fact, when he contacted me, he sent me a link to his speech that he had given for the lifetime achievement award that he got. from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine. And during that speech, he had asked the college to take up climate change as its major cause. And I'm going to send that to the current president of ACLM and see if he can revive that, you know, that proposal of his. Because I think it is entirely appropriate. The 200 scientists, actually not 200 scientists, it was scientific journals declared a global health emergency due to the ecological crisis in December of 2023. So they said it's now a global health emergency and we need to address it as if it's an emergency. And the governments are still not addressing it as an emergency. You the only government that is even talking about meat and dairy consumption is the government of Denmark. Right. And they are talking about a hundred dollar, a hundred euro per cow tax to be levied in 2030, starting in 2030. you know, clearly a government starts a tax in 2030, knowing that the next government, because they won't be in power in 2030, right? They're elected now. So by 2030, the next government will come along and delete it. So anyway.

Glen Merzer: That's how our Congresses used to fight climate change by changing the CAFE standards for cars, how many miles per gallon they get, starting in 10 years. So, oh, we have a dramatic piece of legislation that will raise the CAFE standards to 45 miles per gallon starting in 10 years. And that gives them plenty of time to either cancel that legislation or revise Yeah. So unless you're starting to do something now, you're not really starting. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Absolutely. It's, mean, this is the presentation I wanted to make, you know, the greatest transformation in human history, I call it, and the urgency of it, because I see the urgency of it in the science. And I can see the scientists are literally screaming from the rooftops. Okay. The Guardian did a survey of over 300 climate scientists and you know, the terms that they use are like hopeless and broken, know, things like that. And I said, this is not how we adults should be treating the future of the planet, you know, when our children are dependent on it. So I am looking for some adult conversation on this. Putting everything on the and saying, okay, what are we facing here? I mean, what do we have to do? And this is based on my systems research. this is the best that I have come up with. And I tried to use data that is uncontestable because it's data based on satellite pictures, the data based on the compilation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And so no one can say, that's not right. and I say, because when we start using data, that's contestable, then people are going into the weeds as opposed to actually talking about what needs to be done. Right. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: Well, let me, before we see the presentation, let me give a little context and framing to, for our listeners. When a problem is as dire as theof the climate emergency. Everybody with sense knows how urgent the problem is. That means that you have to do everything you can possibly do. And that means that you have to look at both sides of the equation. Now, let me make an analogy to a far less dire problem, but that's the budget deficit. You Fight the budget deficit by cutting spending or by raising revenues, or ideally both. So unless you look at both sides of the ledger, you're not addressing the problem. There's been one time in modern history when our U .S. budget was balanced, it even went into surplus. that was under the administration of Bill Clinton. Did he cut spending? Yes, he did. Did he raise taxes? Yes, he did. He addressed both sides of the equation and brought in, I don't know how many hundreds of billions with a tax raise and cut. I don't know how many hundreds of billions or tens of billions with the spending cuts. And lo and behold, we had a surplus. Well, the analogy to climate change is this, there's too many greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and carbon dioxide can be sequestered. So that's the revenue side of it. If we sequester the carbon dioxide in healthy soils and trees and healthy oceans with phytoplankton, then we're getting that revenue. And if we cut emissions in various ways, then we're cutting our spending. So that's going to be the only way, mathematically, that the problem can be solved. So with that understanding, Sailesh, tell us about the greatest transformation in human history. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Thank you,So the greatest transformation in human history. We right now are called to undergo the greatest transformation in human history from a climate heating civilization to a climate healing civilization. This transformation is more significant than the Industrial Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and even the discovery of fire. For it is the discovery of the spiritual fire within So our tagline at Climate Healers is transform yourself, transform our world. As the greatest transformation in human history is founded on the fastest growing social justice movement in the world today, which is veganism. So I went vegan when I took this photograph of a stone fence in Rajasthan, India in 2008. I could see old former dairy cows walking around eating anything new growing on the ground to the left of the fence and to the right of the fence where they couldn't go there was a lush green forest. The fence was constructed in 2002 when both sides looked barren. The so veganism is an ancient concept practiced even in pre -Vedic times by rishis who went up the Himalayan foothills to seek enlightenment. And no, they did not take cows with them. The modern definition of veganism is a way of living that seeks to exclude as far as is possible and practicable all forms of exploitation of animals for food, clothing, or any other purpose. Veganism is the foundation of a climate healing civilization, just as animal exploitation is the foundation of a climate heating civilization. People come to veganism through three portals, health, ethics, and environment. When we embrace veganism for health or ethics, there is not the same sense of urgency as when we embrace veganism for the Because you might think, you know, I'm feeling better today and therefore I can consume animal products. Well, what's the hurry if you have been exploiting animals for 10 ,000 years? But when I went vegan for the environment, I had a tremendous sense of urgency. It was as if my house was onWhen your house is on fire, you abandon your normal routines and you focus on putting out the fire first. In fact, this was my house that caught fire in 1993. We had just moved into a newly built house and I had bought a brand new car and parked it in the garage. There was a design flaw in the car. The next morning it caught fire. When it happened, I was in the kitchen making my morning coffee and our son came running out of the room above the garage saying that there was smoke coming out of the vents. And I told him that the heater had just come on and it would go away because I was too focused on my morning routine to change. A minute later, he came running out again saying that there was black smoke coming out of the vents. This time I paid attention, ran down to the garage and found the car spitting flames at me. At that point, my only thought was to get our children out of the house as quickly as possible. I wasn't interested in my wallet or my passport or other important materials, but just the precious lives that were in danger. So now we have an ecological crisis. Today we have the same situation in our planetary home. I've been working on our ecological crisis since 2006 and every I see the fires in our planetary home getting bigger and bigger. Back in 2009, the Stockholm Resilience Center estimated that there were three fires in our planetary home. By 2015, they identified four fires. And in September of 2023, they announced that there were six fires in our planetary home. So there are six planetary boundaries in the life support systems of the planet that we have violated. And any one of these violations is sufficient to end life as we know if we let it remain there. So climate change is not even the worst fire. It's actually the fourth worst fire, according to this estimation. In December of 2023, over 200 scientific journals declared a global health emergency due to these six fires on our The worst fire, or the biggest violation in the planetary boundaries, is the rate at which wild animals are dying. The World Wildlife Fund Living Planet report had been monitoring the loss of wild animals through a statistical survey of thousands of representative species who live on land, in the water, and in the air. It reported that between 1970 and 2010, we wiped out 52 % of all wild animals by total weight. When that report came out in 2014, I extrapolated the loss of wild animals, assuming that we were killing them proportional to the size of our global economy. That extrapolation showed that we were on track to wipe out almost all wild animals by 2026. So I was shocked when I made this calculation. Then I thought that my model was simplistic and perhaps my calculations were wrong. If we were really losing wild animals at so fast, why isn't everybody doing something about it? Do they not know that we cannot destroy the web of life without killing ourselves? So I waited until the next report came out. And imagine my shock when the next report said that between 1970 and 2012, 58 % of all wild animals disappeared by total weight. The loss of wild animals had gone from 52 % to 58 % in just two years. That is 3 % per year. And even a linear extrapolation would take the loss of wild animals to 100 % by 2026. So that evening, I was putting my five -year -old granddaughter to bed. And she asked me, grandpa, who were the first human beings? When I explained to her the theory of evolution, she started. Animals are my family. Please make them stop eating my family. I was trying to console her and I said, Kimaya, it's my job to make them stop. She immediately stopped crying and she looked at me wide -eyed. She said, what? This is your job? Then do your job. When will you do your job? And I blurted out, I better do it by 2026, otherwise we are all in big trouble. She said, will you promise me that? I said, sure. She replied, will you give me a pinky promise? I had no idea what it meant, but I agreed. She asked me to hold out my pinky, locked her pinky in mine and said, you can never ever break a pinky promise. Now, in my worldview, nature is the perfect system design. Every species belongs in nature exactly as is and contributes to the well -being of all life, whether they know it or not. This elephant looks like she's being destructive when she's breaking branches of trees, eating the leaves, throwing the branches away, then breaking another branch, eating the leaves, throwing the branch away. But wherever the elephant broke branches of trees, That's where the sunlight streams and nourishes the underbrush. If the elephant were not doing that, the forest canopy would be so thick that the underbrush would die off from lack of sunlight. The elephant stops breaking branches of trees at some point and moves on. Wherever the elephant stomped on bushes in the forest, that's where new pathways are formed in the forest for other animals to use. Wherever the elephant dropped huge mounds of poop, that's where new jackfruit trees are as the seeds germinate in the surrounding manure. The elephant has no choice but to belong in nature exactly as is. So I claim that humans also belong in nature exactly as we are. Our superpower is the control of fire. And we have been using that superpower for the past 10 ,000 years, heating up the planet. We did that at first by cutting down trees and burning them for agriculture and for creating grazing land for our domestic animals. Then 200 years ago, we discovered fossil fuels and burned them to fuel our industrial civilization. Now we have discovered that we have created a mess with too much pollution and we are overheating the planet. As soon as we discover that we are heating the planet, we become automatically responsible for maintaining that climate within acceptable limits for the benefit of our life. We cannot expect the tiger to do it or the lion to do it. Whether we like it or not, our job is to be the climate regulating thermostat species of the and the sooner we take this job seriously, the easier it will be to solve our ecological crises. So if you want to know how to do it, the key to solving our ecological crisis lies in how we use the earth. The data in this map is taken from the UN Special Report on Climate Change and Land Use of 2019. It shows that if you take all the land that we're using for managed forests, monoculture for timber, paper, et cetera, and put it in one spot, it would cover all of North America, all of Central America, and a little bit of South America, 22 % of the ice -free land area of the planet. If you take all the land where original forests still remain, and put it in one spot, it would cover the bottom half of South America with 9 % of the land area of the planet. If we take all the land we using for growing the plant foods we eat today, the fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts and seeds, and put it in one spot, it would cover Australia, about 7 % of the land area. It is providing us with 85 % of the food we eat in terms of dry. If you take all the land we're using for growing our meat and dairy and put it in one spot, it would cover all of Europe, most of Asia and a little bit of Africa, about 43 % of the land area of the planet. And it's only providing us with 12 % of the food we eat in terms of dry weight. Animal foods are so inefficient because we have to feed our animals 39 kgs of food in order to get 1 kg of the meat and dairy we consume in terms of dry weight. 1 % of the land, I mean 19 % of the land is desert, also mainly caused by animal agriculture. The remaining 3 % of the food we eat comes from the ocean, for which you're bottom trolling an area the size of South America every year in order to catch the last remaining fish in the ocean. And believe it or not, built land, land where with all the cities and railroads and highways put together, will fit inside Madagascar. It's only 1 % of the land area of the land. So mainly to accommodate animal agriculture, humans have cut down half the trees on the planet from six trillion down to three trillion. But the remaining three trillion trees in the soil they live on are storing twice as much carbon as in the entire atmosphere and four times as much carbon as in all the fossil fuels we have burned to date. So when we go vegan and restore most of the remaining three, most of the missing three trillion trees, on 40 % of the land that gets freed up from animal agriculture, we can literally reverse climate change. Not only can we reverse climate change, the fourth worst planetary boundary transgression, we can quench all the other transgression fires with the Stockholm Resilience Center identified. The least violated transgression is freshwater change. When we restore native ecosystems on 40 % of the land, we will also restore the water cycles of the planet and reverse this transgression. The next is land systems change, which is solved when we return 40 % of the land back to nature. The next is biogeochemical flows, or nitrogen and phosphorus loading. This is caused by using fertilizers on our cropland. Since half the crops are used to feed animals, this transgression goes from red towards green when we go vegan. The next is novel entities or chemical pollution, which should be safely stored away in regenerating forest and we go vegan. Eating animal foods currently delivers concentrated doses of chemical pollution into our bodies through bioaccumulation. Therefore, going vegan addresses chemical pollution for both the earth and ourselves. All of these transgressions impact wildlife. And so biosphere integrity is the worst of the six planetary boundary transgressions. By restoring habitats for wild animals and allowing them to live freely in the ocean, we will resolve this transgression as well. If instead we let wild animals die off within the next couple of years, we will also die. So we wrote a position paper in 2021 showing that when we take into account the potential carbon absorption of the land used for animal agriculture, animal agriculture becomes responsible for at least 87 % of greenhouse gas emissions on an annual basis. Now based on the sixth assessment report of the UNIPCC issued in late 2021, we are able to update the lower bond to 118%. Now you may wonder, how can a single activity be responsible for greater than 100 % of the total. It turns out that if we all go vegan, but continue our other activities as is, drive around in cars, fly in planes, heat and cool our homes as we do today, we will still see that CO2 levels in the atmosphere decrease year by year because we are letting the planet rewild on 40 % of the land area of the planet. That's the power of trees to reverse climate. And you know, this is not common knowledge today because as Gus Speth, the co -founder of Natural Resources Defense Council and the former Dean of Environmental Studies at Yale University was quoted in a BBC Radio 4 program in 2013 as saying, I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. And I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy. And to deal with those we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don't know how to do that. So this spiritual and cultural transformation must come from the people themselves. Global hunger is a choice we are making at least three times a day. Ecological destruction is a choice we making three times a day. And we can choose differently starting today. Systems based on fear are dictated from the top down, but systems based on love are originated from the bottom up through conscious choices. Love comes with the freedom to choose. In fact, even in the Bhagavad Gita, which is the sacred text of the Hindus, God tells man, I love you so much that I set you free even from me and you are free to choose. So we have to choose to transform from the climate heating phase to the climate healing phase of our civilization. The climate heating ego phase of our civilization was based on the domination paradigm with man over woman over the animals. The ego phase is based on the dilution of separation from nature. Now we have to transform to the climate healing phase where man and woman are serving the and restoring their habitats and ensuring their well -being out of love. This is what I call the seva phase, which stands for service in Sanskrit. Carmen calls this the transformation from homo sapiens, a Latin phrase meaning the wise hominid, to homo ahimsa, a combination of a Latin and Sanskrit word meaning the kind hominid. So once we cool the planet to within acceptable range of the temperature that existed in pre -industrial times in the climate healing phase, then we can transition to the climate harmonizing eco phase where we are all equal to other species. So this is the caterpillar turning to the chrysalis and then into the butterfly, which is the return home to who we really are. You know, as Anton Shakov wrote, in nature, a repulsive caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly. But with humans, a beautiful butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar. Now we are collectively turning from a repulsive caterpillar into a beautiful butterfly. But for each individual human being, it's a return to our childhood selves when we wouldn't hurt animals at all. The transformation from climate heating to climate healing begins with the transformation in what we consider to be sacred, from just a few sacred places to all of creation. As Wendell Berry said, there are no unsacred places. There are only sacred places and desecrated places. This calls for the values transformation. From deception to honesty. In the climate heating civilization, deception is prized in the games we play and in the art of persuasion for the marketing of products. In the climate healing civilization, honesty is prized in the games we play and the responsibilities we fulfill as we work collaboratively to heal the climate. From domination to humility. In the climate heating civilization, domination is used in our relationships with each with the animals and with nature in order to get power over the other. In the climate healing civilization, humility is priced in our relationships with each other and with the animals and with nature. From death, disease and destruction to happiness, health and harmony in our relationships with each other, with the animals and with nature. The former is not sustainable, while the latter is infinitely sustainable. Systems and processes we create in the climate healing civilization will be measured against the 5H values as a litmus test, rejecting any system or process that does not pass this values criterion. But as Stephen Kaufman said, meaningful reforms are not possible until goals change. If our goal is to make money and grow the economy, then no matter what we do, we will be stuck in a climate heating civilization. If our goal is to heal the planet, then that must become the overarching goal of our climate healing civilization. So if you look at the UN Sustainable Development Goals, we have to drop the redundant goal number eight, which is economic growth, and add goal number 18, which is zero animal exploitation for a climate healing civilization. The UN states that its overall objective is to obtain peace and prosperity for people and the planet. And we cannot achieve peace and prosperity for the planet while continuing to exploit animals. Economic growth is a redundant goal because if you meet the other goals like no poverty, zero hunger, good health and well -being, etc., it is absolutely irrelevant whether the economy is growing or not. Then why is goal number eight even there except to deceive people that we are trying to meet all the other goals and we are merely focused on growing the In fact, if our objective is to grow the economy, then we will fail to meet our goal of SDG number four, which is good health and wellbeing for humanity. Because as the American College of Lifestyle Medicine pointed out, there are eight risky behaviors causing 15 chronic diseases that are responsible for 90 % of the healthcare costs worldwide. The eight risky behaviors are poor diet, physical inactivity, smoking,lack of health screening, poor stress management, insufficient sleep, poor standard of care, and excessive alcohol consumption. Now in a system that's constantly trying to grow the economy, these eight risky behaviors are encouraged because they're responsible for 90 % of the healthcare economy. And according to Dr. John McDougall, poor diet alone is responsible for more than half of the healthcare economy in the world which is why in our climate heating civilization, we con our children into poor diet habits with candies at eye level in supermarkets and unhealthy food marketed by clowns handing out free toys in fast food outlets. And we lie to our children in our schools that protein is only found in meat by constantly associating protein with animal foods. But the reality is that all plant foods have all essential and non -essential amino acids. The amino acid profile of plant foods are virtually indistinguishable from those of animal foods. At the moment, average American is eating twice as much protein as they really need and only one third of the fiber that they need. Americans and by extension the whole world is getting sicker and sicker year by year as obesity rates continue to soar mainly due to this fiber deficiency. Logically it should be self -evident that plants are plenty of protein because we see elephants getting bigger and bigger by just eating plants. But perhaps the longest running deception in the history of humanity is the notion that cow's milk is good food for humans. Cow's milk is the lactation secretion of a mammal mother who's five times our size designed to make a baby grow from calf to cow in 18 months while humans grow from baby to adult in 18 years. How can that growth fluid possibly be good for humans? Yet dairy is heavily marketed with the help of national and regional governments throughout the world, even in countries where the vast majority of the human population cannot even digest dairy properly. For instance, India is the largest producer of dairy in the world, and yet 60 to 80 % of Indians are lactose intolerant. The National Dairy Development Board in India was heavily funded and supported by the European Economic Commission in late 70s. Because when people consume dairy, they are paying for the upkeep of the cow on a daily basis. And therefore, when the mother cow stops producing milk, she can be turned into cheap beef and cheap leather. So India is the largest producer of dairy in the world and also one of the largest exporters of beef and leather in the world. European Economic Commission was interested in the beef and leather and Indian public was deceived into going along despite their indigestion. gas and stomach bloating from lactose intolerance. So this is a social justice During colonialism 1 .0, in the climate heating civilization, people were starved in order to make them do things they did not want to do. And we still do that. Between 1857 and 1947 during the British Raj, India went through 25 famines, killing over 60 million Indians. Engineered famines were used to persuade Indians to migrate to distant lands as indentured laborers, with the result that everyone who could not store fat easily died So modern South Asians are the descendants of the Indian ancestors who could store fat easily and survive these repeated famines. As a result, South Asians comprise 25 % of the global population, but 60 % of the heart disease patients worldwide. India is the largest producer of dairy in the world, as well as the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. This is not a coincidence. This is colonialism 2

Today hunger is still used to induce people to work on things they don't want to do. 800 million people around the world are chronically hungry and 8 million people die of hunger related causes annually. But this world hunger is a choice we make three times a day when we consume animal foods.Just like the oxygen mask rule on a plane, the greatest transformation in human history begins with self -transformation. We take the eight risky behaviors listed by the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and do the exact opposite to get the eight healing habits. From poor diet to healthy vegan diet, whole food plant -based vegan diet. From physical inactivity to regular exercise are yoga asanas. from smoking to conscious breathing or pranayama, from lack of health screening to regular health routines or what we call sadhana, from poor stress management to meditation and awareness, from insufficient sleep to adequate rest and sleep, from poor standard of care to a sense of purpose, and from excessive alcohol consumption resulting from a disconnection from nature to contact with nature. It's only when we heal ourselves can we heal the. So putting it all together, the civilizational transformation involves the seven strategic actions. Number one is education, education, education, telling this new story, shining the light on all the deceptions in the current system and spreading the word on the greatest transformation in human history. Second is activating the self transformations. Third is setting our goals straight. Fourth is creating a constitution for a climate healing civilization and how we govern ourselves. Because our purpose is now different. Fifth is implementing vegan donut economics so that we routinely stay within the planetary boundaries without transgressing them. And for that I say please endorse the Plant -Based Treaty and look at what they're doing with that. Sixth is vegan rewilding of the planet on the land freed up from animal agriculture. And seventh is vegan spirituality, helping us to return home to our true vegan nature. And of course, the civilizational transformation requires changing our money game from a fear -based hunting game in which we face the prospect of starvation if we don't succeed in the game to a new game based on love. In the current money game, there is always more debt than money in the system and the money is used to extract resources from the planet in order to return the debt. The game depends on economic growth to sustain just as any Ponzi scheme depends on the growth to sustain itself. In the climate healing civilization, money will flow from the bottom up in the form of allowances, not top down in the form of debt. Healthy food, shelter and clothing and the basic needs of humanity will be met for free so that each of us know that we belong in the family of humans and can securely dedicate ourselves to the task of restoring the ecosystems of the planet. Our purpose would be to restore the blue -green planet that we inherited and the biodiversity that we lost during the climate heating phase. And we use the Bhagavad Gita from an ecological perspective to help individuals identify the roles that they can play in this civilizational transformation. This course is taught one chapter per week for 18 weeks. And the current sessions began on April 5th and will end in end of August. So the next one is starting in September again. So I use this as a way to help people find their roles in the civilizational transformation. We had a debate on this topic of whether the world would go vegan or not at the Oxford Union in November of 2023, and we won the debate. So therefore, even the elite institutions of the world agree that the future is vegan. When we know that the future is vegan, it makes sense to embrace that future as quickly as possible. In alignment with the UN objective. meeting all 17 Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, we propose that goal number two, which is zero hunger, and goal number three, which is good health and wellbeing, be prioritized and met by 2026 through making healthy vegan foods freely available to every human being on the planet at every church, mosque, temple, school, university, and community center in the world in what I call a food healers initiative. So to conclude, I see all this as the culmination of the hero's marathon journey. Our ancestors started the climate heating project 50 ,000 years ago during an ice age when they migrated out of Africa and went to every part of the globe with the knowledge of fire. This is as if humanity has been running a marathon race in which you have completed 26 .197 out of the 26 .2 miles with only 14 feet to the finish line. But to get to the finish line, we have to make a U stop heating and start cooling the planet. On the other hand, if we go straight instead of taking the U -turn, we see a McDonald's with a clown standing outside enticing us to come in. But we know that if we go there, that clown is going to kill What will we choose to do? What will you choose to do. Thank you very much.

Glen Merzer: Thank you very much. Thank you Sailesh for that beautiful presentation.  You know, it's amazing to me that so many people can acknowledge the severity of the climate crisis and the other environmental and planetary crises we face. And still, for some reason, for so many of them, it's difficult to do the easiest thing in the world, which is just to eat human food. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: I know.

Glen Merzer: I don't understand what's hard about it for people. Eat beans and rice, eat fruits and vegetables, eat mushrooms. It's the easiest thing in the world to eat like a human being and that's all we collectively have to do to save the You would think that people would wake up and just say, that's not hard. Let's do it. You talk about in the presentation that humans are the thermostat species, and that's a beautiful concept. The idea that our brains have developed to the point where we alone of all the species on earth can consciously accept responsibility for our climate. And the truth is, is it not that under scientific classifications, we are technically in an ice age today? Is that not right? Yeah. Talk about that. We're in an ice age. It doesn't feel like it. Tell us about it. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: We are in the sixth major ice age in the world's, in the planet's history. Previous ice ages, was basically cold and there was even a snowball earth at one point. The current ice age is the only one in which we've been going in and out of an ice age. know, the little ice ages and then we come out for a little while and then go back into an ice age, come back for a little while. And we've had like a hundred ice ages and warm periods between them. This has been happening over the last three million years. And the reason it's been happening is that we are now, CO2 level in the atmosphere is so low that any small change in how much sunlight falls on is pushing us into an ice age and bringing us out. Because it's very, very sensitive to small changes in CO2 levels in the atmosphere. CO2 levels are going from 180 parts per million to 280 parts per million, according to the ice core record. And we know in the past, you know, CO2 levels used to be at 6 ,000 to 10 ,000 parts per million. It's like much more than what we have today, right? But now in the life 

Glen Merzer: that was before humans existed. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Oh, of course, 500 million years ago, right?

So today, if you go over 500 parts per million, humans will have a hard time breathing. You we go to a thousand parts per million, we pretty much are going to die off, you know, because you'll get poisoning from that.

Glen Merzer: there will be difficulty literally breathing over 500 parts per million. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Well, it's, we'll have difficulty breathing. And then over a thousand parts per million, they're saying, you may even die off. So it is, so it's not.

Glen Merzer: So have to do the math. If it's going up two parts per million per year, is that the latest calculation? 

Yeah. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: And we're at 425?

 Right. 

Glen Merzer: Two parts per million per year, even if it doesn't increase as it likely will without this change that you and I advocate, that's just 30, 35 years and we're at 500 parts per million. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. Look, we're not going to get Because in 35 years, if we keep doing this same thing that we are doing now, other things are going to happen to us. As I said, climate change is only the fourth worst fire on the planet. The other fires are going to engulf us and take us down. So I say, we have no choice but to take responsibility for putting out those fires. Just like when your house is on fire, you don't just say, well, I normally smoke cigarettes. I normally make coffee at this time. No, you change your routines, right? Yeah. So I say that we are facing that same thing. If we are not reacting as if the planet is on fire, then you're behaving like tube lights. Really. You don't understood that the planet is on fire.

Glen Merzer:  It's sobering to think that we can't even think in terms of having 35 more years. No, we can't. I mean, the UN chief, right, said, we have two years to save the planet. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: And you and I are in the same age range. We know by now that 35 years goes pretty fast. I remember 35 years ago very well. Yeah. And we may not even have that in a recognizable world.

 Glen Merzer: Yeah.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Now, look, I'm sure people, somebody will survive, right? People are going to argue with me saying, oh, I'm not going to go completely extinct. But a lot of people are going to die. A lot of the animals are going to die. A lot of life is going to die out and you're going to be on the way down. It will be spiraling down. So it doesn't matter if you survive or not. You'll be so miserable when you survive. Even if you're surviving, you'll be so miserable because there's life is dying out around you. It'll be hard as hell. mean, do you really want to create a system like that? mean, continue a system for what? So that you can continue eating animals? Is that the only thing that's holding us I mean, to me, just makes zero sense that we are still subsidizing animal foods. I mean, it's like, have the governments not understood their role in creating a climate heating civilization that they are heating the planet now, but deliberately subsidizing animal foods, but deliberately lying to our children in textbooks. You know, it's a big con job that we're doing to children. You know, congratulations to your con kids. You're so smart, you can't kids. OK, fine. I'll give you a prize for being a smart guy. Now let's get on with it. Let's be honest. You know, we have to just become serious.

Glen Merzer:  Now, what what has been considered the current climate under which we exist, the Holocene. Now some people call the, say that we've reached a new stage, the, what do they say, Anthropocene? 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: But the Holocene started what? 10, 12 ,000 years ago? 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: 11 ,700 years ago. 

Glen Merzer: There you go. But I say that - when did agriculture start?

Dr. Sailesh Rao:  About around the same time.

Glen Merzer:  There you go. So in other words That was when humans started to act unconsciously as the thermostat species. We started chopping down forests and we started using land for agriculture, changing land use patterns. And unfortunately, we started our dominating animals and using them for agriculture, having farmed animals. And that started slowly heating the planet. But in a good way, because we had been in an ice age. And so the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere went up a little bit, and it was a good thing. But now we have 8 billion people. And now we have 1 and 1 billion cows. And tell us the statistic about what percentage of the biomass of the world is cows and humans versus wild animals and how that's changed. So 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: if you look at the biomass of mammals, 60 percent of the biomass of mammals is our found animals. Sixty percent. Thirty six percent is human beings. There you go. And four percent is wild animals. 

Glen Merzer: Ninety six percent of the biomass of animals in the world is farmed animals and us. Yeah, that's insane. Yeah, especially when you consider how many squirrels there are. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah, now this is again, it doesn't tell the whole story because I'm pointing out that the the animals that we are farming, we kill them and they're very, young and they're still babies.

Glen Merzer: Yeah. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Bigs are killed at the age of six months. You we look at all the animals, we kill them very, very young. So when you're very young, you eat much more than your weight would indicate. So on average, human beings eat, you know, whatever. But as a child, the proportion that we eat is much greater compared to our weight. Right. So when you look at that, our farm animals are actually eating almost five times as much food as we So they are presenting the profile of a biomass that five times our biomass, our weight. So if you take that into account, it turns out that the ratio is really 18 % for human beings, 80 % for our farmed animals and 2 % for wild animals. Based on how much you are consuming from the planet. The planet doesn't care what you actually weigh because we take all the weight of all the animals, put it together. You don't weigh more than a medium -sized mountain. The planet cares what you eat because that's what you're demanding from the planet, from the plants and so on. This is why looking at it from what we eat is, to me, a much more accurate way of looking at the biomass of the planet. That is 18 for humans, 80 % for farmed animals, and 2 % for wild animals.

Glen Merzer: Most people don't know, I don't think that cows are our greatest ocean predators. Because we're raping the oceans for several purposes, but one of the purposes is to feed cows. Not their natural diet. Not that cows are a particularly natural animal in the first place. They were bred from the ox.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. So that's what technology does for you, right? It takes everything and says it's a fungible substance. So what do I do with it? You have all these body parts from the ocean that no one is eating. You say, what do do with those body parts? Well, turn it into some protein meal and feed it to cows. Right. Somebody comes up with a way to make money off of that. And that's what we do.

Glen Merzer: And one of the ways they make money off it is they perpetuate the myth that meat is protein. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah, I know. 

Glen Merzer: we must get our protein, so got to eat meat, meat is protein. Meat is also fat. You don't get to pick your favorite macronutrient. So when the waiter comes and says, what's your choice of protein? You say, you mean what's my choice of saturated fat and cholesterol? None. I'll have the tofu, thank you. But they perpetuated this myth that we must have animal protein and we must eat excessive quantities of it. And even the well -meaning folks who are trying to create lab meat, which is a fantasy. But even they say, we're coming up with an alternative protein source and they're buying into the protein myth. Exactly. Right there, they buy into the myth. We don't need an alternative protein source. We have beans and legumes and broccoli. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. The great Dr. John McDougall had these four deadly dietary deceptions on his website. The protein deception, the calcium deception, the omega -3 deception and the carb deception. So, I mean, he called it out, you know, a long time ago. He did. So these are all myths that we use to perpetuate the system. so I say this system is based on deception. know, look at all the games we play. You know, if you can con somebody, bowl, I pitch a curve ball instead of a fast ball and you get the guy out, you get millions of dollars, right? So we prize deception in the system. And that's what this is all about. They're conning us into going along. So they're factory farming us literally. The system is factory farming humans. The children are brought into the education system. They're trained. They're fed a bunch of lies and turned into adults who become diabetics and so on so they can feed the pharmaceutical industry. So we are all being factory farmed just like the animals are factory farmed.

Glen Merzer: There's this thing called culture that plays a large role here because it's not necessarily the case that there's some evil conspiracy of cruel individuals who are or honing us and making us destroy our planet. What there is, I think, is a culture that developed starting 10, 12 ,000 years ago with agriculture that prized meat eating and made meat part of so many cultures, dairy part of so many cultures, part of their cuisines. that then industries formed to satisfy those cultures. And then the industries are profit -oriented. And then the industries affect the governments, make contributions to political candidates. And the political candidates and the CEOs of those industries are all part of the same culture. They're all eating hamburgers and hot dogs and fried chicken too. There's some evil in there, I acknowledge. There's a documentary now called The Smell of Money, I think it's called, about how cruel and callous some people could be that they just to make money, they will spray the manure of their pig farms on human beings. So I don't question your idea that people are being farmed and people are being conned and there's evil out there, evil interests that take advantage of people. But there's also the power of culture because I know so many good and decent people who keep eating meat. And it's because they love their mommies and daddies who raise them to eat meat. they, you I have cousins, grew up in the same family. We all went to the Thanksgiving dinners together. They would never consider giving up meat. I'm the odd one in the family. They're good people. They're not trying to hurt anybody else. It's part of their culture that they eat meat. And I can't seem to get them to think their way out of it. Even when they get cancer.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: I hear you. A lot of people tend to go along with whatever without questioning things, you know, just go along. An authority figure told me to do this. I'm going to keep doing it. Right. So we tend to go along. But I say, think of the scientist who wrote that textbook, which said that protein is only found in meat. Protein is found keeps associating protein and meat. Did that scientist not go in the lab and verify I mean, acid profiles. I mean, this database that Christopher Gardner is using has been there for decades at the University of Minnesota, listing all the protein in all the plant foods. Do they not think, how did the elephant get so big? I mean, do they not think, and why do they tell this, put this in a textbook? I consider lying to children as a crime against humanity. Okay. And so children should never be lied to. You know, but we make it like a, we think it's, know, these are good lies so that we make them eat their meat. No, these are horrible lies that we're making them eat things that are going to make them sick.

Glen Merzer: There are so many vegan athletes, vegan bodybuilders. The people who spread this lie about protein, how could they look at those people and in good conscience say, you need meat for protein? The greatest tennis player in the world, Djokovic, vegan, so many bodybuilders, vegan, sprinters, vegan. Obviously, you don't the animal protein. So you and I aren't falling down. haven't had animal protein in a long time. people who were born vegan, there aren't too many, but there's some who were born vegan and now they're in their 20s, 30s, 40s and they're thriving.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Dr. McDougall had these 10 favorite one liners. I think these 10 favorite one liners should be required reading for everyone in our movement. And he published it in 2013. And he speaks about protein in there. The first is the fat you eat is the fat you wear. The second is, starches make you thin. Third is sugars do not ordinarily turn into fat. Both the sugar satisfies the hunger And this fifth one -liner is, protein deficiency is impossible even on a vegan diet. Sixth is, there is no such thing as dietary calcium deficiency. Seventh is, plants, not fish, make all the omega -3 good fats. Eighth, it may be a little controversial. He says taking vitamin supplements will increase cancer, heart disease and. Ninth is in order to get the cure, you must stop the cause. And this 10th one is people love to hear good news about their bad habits. 

Glen Merzer: Right. Well, numbers three and four about sugar. I won't I won't endorse because I think sugar is one of the problems too. And, know, we eat an enormous amount of sugar in our culture and, you know, there are two causes of type two diabetes, the number one cause is fat. Too much fat in the diet blocks the insulin receptors in the cells to let the sugar into the cells. Too many doctors, too many people think that the number one cause of type two diabetes is sugar. It isn't, it's fat. But on the other hand, the more sugar you put into your system, the worse that gets. And there are some people on the paleo diet who say, it's helped my blood sugar levels. Well, it's because they're eating meat all day, they're blocking their insulin receptors, they're making themselves more prone to diabetes, but they're needing no sugar. So they're not discovering that they're actually more prone to diabetes as soon as they return sugar to their diet, if they ever do. you know, the glucose, the body runs on glucose, you know, the brain runs on glucose. Some sugar is good, you know, fruits are excellent foods, but we need to be able to process the sugar. And so we can lock the sugar in the cells by eating fat, but white sugar, This isn't good. This is highly caloric. know, there's a theory that it feeds cancer and I don't endorse, you know, using sugar as a food. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Yeah. I don't think he's suggesting that at all. He's promoting a whole food plant based diet. Yeah. But he's he's just addressing the fact that people think that sugar is making them fat.

Glen Merzer: Well, I think too much sugar will help make people fat, but I think that too much fat is also a cause. When I look at a food that's a processed food, try to make sure it doesn't have too much. Number one, try to avoid processed foods. Number two, if I get a food in a package, look at how much fat it has, look at how much sugar it had. I don't want too much of either.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: But these are all the things he teaches in his program. And I just see how to labels, how to how to throw away food that you don't want to eat. Right. 

Glen Merzer: And of course, when you shop in the produce section, you don't have to read any labels at all. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Exactly. 

Glen Merzer: That's where you got to do most of your shopping. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Exactly. 

Glen Merzer: But there's nothing hard about this. There's nothing hard. Two things. One, there's nothing hard about eating like a human being and eating Fruits, vegetables, whole plant foods, legumes, little bit of nuts and seeds, whole grains. It's not hard to do except for other people. Other people are what make this difficult. The culture is what makes this difficult because if I say to friends, relatives who are not vegan, what's hard about this? Why don't you do it? Going out for lunch with friends, having to go into parties, going to Thanksgiving. It's other people go at work ordering in the pizza. It's their fear of standing apart and saying, no, can't join you for that. I'll bring my own food. Happy to share my food with you, but I can't eat your food. And that's what people have to do. They just have to, you know, I started standing apart at 17 when I became a vegetarian and it never bothered me at all. just, I, I was so lucky, Sailesh, because I never got the gene for caring what other people think. Yeah. I just, I still don't. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Good for you.

Glen Merzer: other people have that gene. To me, it's like a mutation. Other people care so much what other people think that they won't stand apart and do what's good for their own body. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: did you, you know, I remember listening to James Baldwin, who told, who said in one of his interviews, he said, the most important lesson I learned from my dad, His dad told him this is that what other people think of you is none of your business. And that freedom, he said that freedom from having to care about what other people think. Yeah, I think that's a very important lesson to teach our children, you know, to be free to. Other people think of you as none of your business. Let them think whatever they want to think. Yeah. 

Glen Merzer: And that's why James Baldwin wrote novels. clearly autobiographical about being a gay man. He's a gay black man living in Paris, as I recall. And, you know, he didn't care what other people thought. Way before what we think of as the modern gay liberation movement. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Right. Yeah. So many gays were in the closet, right? But I think even today, today, there are a lot of vegans in the closet. and they will come out when it becomes fashionable.

Glen Merzer:  I mean, it's, it's okay. You do great work in encouraging them to come out. Yeah. Because, that's, and even if they're not vegan, but they're almost vegan and they don't want to go that last step, they call themselves mostly plant -based or whatever. Well, go all the way, become vegan and become proud of it. You know, many of us in the country celebrate the fact. There's now gay marriage in the country. Well, that only happens because gays became open about being gay. Right. That's why it happened. Right. And we just had, you know, we have to be vocal vegans, not quiet vegans. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Absolutely. 

Glen Merzer: We have to let people know. that this is the leading cause of the climate emergency and so many other boundaries that you talked about that we're crossing. And it's the only hope mathematically to reverse climate change because it's just unbelievable to me that our leading climate spokesmen still to this day only look at half the ledger. They only look at emissions and they don't look at carbon sequestration. How could you not look at that? Yeah. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Now he's hoping that there is some technology that will come along that will suck carbon out of the atmosphere. A mechanical tree, you 

Glen Merzer: It's preposterous. It's preposterous, The planet does not survive unless we have healthy oceans and healthy forests. Nothing could be more clear. I'm not a scientist, but it's just obvious to me. We need healthy oceans and healthy forests, and we need to revegetate wherever we can. And the only way to do that is to use the land will be available if we stop the stupidity of eating animals. You stop farming vast stretches of land, half of the United States, dedicated to raising animals. It's just that's a preposterous use of land to get a few percent of your calories and they're your unhealthiest calories. Sailesh, that was a beautiful presentation. Thank you. And I urge people to share it and post comments. we only have two more years, right? 2026, November 2026 is the - 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: See, sooner the better. The sooner the better. But I know that I can say the sooner the better and let's do it tomorrow. I hope it will happen tomorrow, Realistically, I say, let's give ourselves a couple of years and sort everything out along the way to those seven strategic actions. So we have to figure out a new constitution. We have to figure out how we do the economy. mean, everything is going to change. But I say this is a time of creativity because we are creating something different.

Glen Merzer: Well, if we all just start by eating like human beings, maybe the other stuff will come along.

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Absolutely. 

Glen Merzer: And then, know, I say that, but I really think there's a thought behind it, which is, for example, violence. Well, if children are raised to say, we don't eat animals, animals are our friends, we don't hurt animals, aren't they a little less likely to become violent individuals as they grow up? So there are all these, you know, as you said, and I quoted you in my book There is nothing that doesn't improve. When you eat, have a plant based diet, there's nothing when you end animal agriculture, there's nothing that doesn't improve. And that may just include things like the problem of human violence.

Dr. Sailesh Rao:  Absolutely.

Glen Merzer: So on that note, with the, guess we have two years and four months left to hit the target date of November 2026 for the vegan transformation of the world. Man, the pressure is getting to me Sailesh. So let's all just spread the word. And again, please feel free to share this video and you tell people to listen to some, watch Sailesh's presentation. All right, Thank you Sailesh. 

Dr. Sailesh Rao: Thank you.