Meat Me Halfway

Food is emotional.

If I don't eat, you know, eggs, that means I can't have, you know,

the cookies that my grandma used to make when we were little.

Nobody enjoys the concept of less.

People like eating meat.

So how is it that eating less meat

will change the temperature of the world?

So it's not just a matter of, oh, I hear information,

and then I go make a change.

So what happens when people

that you really love and care about

just don't see this issue, right?

You know, do you dismiss them?

One of the reasons why I wanted to make

this documentary is that I'm confused.

I'm a guy who wants to end factory farming.

And I started a nonprofit organization to help make that happen.

And so many people

seem seriously pissed off about it.

I'm confused why it's so difficult to get people to eat less meat.

I mean, there are so many alarms going off from countless scientific bodies

about the problems with our food system, particularly factory farming,

and yet, meat consumption continues to climb.

So at the moment,

the extra carbon that we're trapping is the heat equivalent

every day of about 400,000 Hiroshima sized explosions.

That's enough extra heat that we've been able to melt

most of the summer sea ice in the Arctic.

That's enough extra heat that the world's coral reefs

are now dying at a stupendous rate.

It's enough heat that cities in tropical Asia

are becoming almost impossible to live in.

So, a fight is on to see

not if we can stop global warming, at this point

It's too late for that, but to see if we can stop it

short of the point where it takes out

the kind of civilizations we're used to having.

Global temperatures reached extreme highs this past week.

Sixteen rivers and North and South Carolina remain at major flood state.

Strongest storm to hit Puerto Rico in more than 80 years.

...now largest wildfire ever recorded in California.

More snow at the city's airport in a single day

since they started keeping records.

20 to 30 million people

will become climate refugees in Bangladesh by 2015.

The greenies say raising beef contributes to global warming.

And what is the relationship between meat consumption

and anthropogenic climate change?

So... almost everything that a human being does in the course of a day...

burns some fossil fuel.

Uh, releases some carbon. I mean, from the moment you get up

and turn on the light or the radio or, you know, whatever it is.

But one of the things that produces a fair amount is livestock.

The latest estimates I've seen from the FAO

and others think that if you add up everything,

you may get 18-19% of the world's global warming emissions

coming out of agriculture, especially out of livestock.

So it's not as big, perhaps,

as the drivers were sort of used to talking about.

Power plants and cars and things but it's big,

and obviously it's one of those places where change is possible.

You know, you don't have to wait for someone to build an enormous wind turbine

next to you, you can change what you're having for dinner tonight.

I always cared about the environment

and that became especially true In college.

I was that guy on campus who told people

that they should recycle, walk instead of drive.

Use a refillable bottle of water instead of a plastic one.

And when I learned about the problems with factory farming, I was outraged.

I decided that the sensible thing to do was for me to go immediately vegetarian

with the aim to be fully vegan, and for the most part that worked out.

But there were some problems.

I remember one Thanksgiving in particular,

where my dad was kind of cajoling me to have a small piece of turkey.

And when I popped it in my mouth, my sister said,

"I thought you were a vegetarian, Brian."

They were kind of making fun of me even though I was the only person

at the table who was trying at all.

And I thought, "Well, maybe I'm not a vegetarian,"

but I still cared a lot about the problems.

And so, my friends and I came up with the concept "reducetarian",

wants to inspire as many people as possible

to cut back on animal products, especially people

who were never going to go vegan or vegetarian.

Failure to do so could result in serious injury.

In case of an emergency,

listen for announcements and instructions from the group.

Please familiarize yourself with the location of life jackets on this ferry.

They are located...

I love seeing my parents.

I have to practice patience. You know, it's always...

When you're different people,

it could be challenging sometimes,

but I love them, and I'm always glad to see them.

I just have to always, you know... Not too many religious debates,

maybe not too much politics and then everything is okay.

My dad is the happiest man alive.

I don't know who dropped him as a kid

or what happened, but he is just always happy.

No matter what's going on, he's happy.

He has faith things will work out.

Everything happens for a reason.

As a kid, whenever I was scared, he would say, "Fear is just acronym

for false evidence appearing real."

He loved to tell me that whenever I was scared.

But as far as, Isn't it hard to eat healthy and exercise?

No... If my life depended on it,

if I, if I ate meat, a steak,

and if I thought that it would kill me right away, I would never have it.

The problem is, everything is a slow process.

You're having that one drink, doesn't kill you.

You're over eating one meal, doesn't kill you.

It's what you do on a routine basis,

day in and day out that kills you.

And stress is the number one, probably.

What about not what it does to our bodies,

but what it does to the planet,

what It does to other animals. What are...

Yeah, I am not as much a humanitarian as I should be.

I'm very concerned about you, you, my immediate family.

My daughter. You know, my immediate family,

I'm incredibly interested in and my own health,

I'm interested in. I talk to people every day, see a lot of patients.

So I feel like I'm doing my service there.

But people talk about the... What's it called?

What's it with the heat, uh...

Oh, global warming? -Global warming.

-So-- -That pail out there.

Did it work? Did it work on you?

I guess not. So I am not that concerned about global warming

to be honest. I shouldn't be saying this,

but I'm being honest with you.

Um, everyone has a certain number of hours in the day,

and, uh, I'm more concerned when I walk in the house,

the temperature of the house.

I'm not, I guess, a humanitarian.

Do you think it's arrogant to think that humans are changing

the temperature of the planet?

I don't recall though, which is it, today?

That's global warming. -The world is getting hotter.

The summer has been very hot here, I don't know.

But the winter, I don't feel it's...

I think it's... a joke.

I don't think there's anything to it.

Why do you think that there's nothing to it?

The world has been going on for how many freakin' years?

And I guess 'cause we don't really see any proof to it.

-What, they put thermometers in places and they measure it? -You know like it hasn't...

-Because things are melting? -Like he said, the summers have gotten...

God is controlling everything.

I think, actually, the summer is the way the summer always is.

Some summers were hotter than other summers.

It's a worldwide situation. Not talking about Staten Island.

I'm not either.

What if I told you that most--

99% of scientists thought that global warming

was a real phenomenon, and it was happening, in part,

because of our actions on the planet?

-Do you think... - That's unbelievable.

These people actually study that.

The world is falling apart and they're worried about the temperature.

Or do they think it's going to affect everything?

I don't know. They're worried about the temperature.

Call me crazy, I think they're spending a lot of time

doing something that has not much validity.

In a few years from now, they'll be talking about

if everything is getting too cold.

God is taking care of everything.

He's in control. Leave it alone. Worry about what you do.

- -Eat less meat, don't worry about the...

How is it that eating less meat

will change the temperature of the world?

If everyone ate less meat...

What if no one ate meat? They produce less animals.

Then the temperature would change? I don't get this.

I gotta talk to one of these PhD scientists about this.

-Well, let me be the resident... -Spokespersons.

What would they say? So they would say that factory farming

is when you put lots of animals in these very intense environments.

And you have to have all these inputs.

You have to water the feed so that the feed grows.

You have to feed the animals.

This resource.

You have to butcher them, grow them.

You have to ship them far distances.

And through this process there are results,

and these results are greenhouse gas emissions

and these are gasses that go into the atmosphere.

And there's through this process, the planet heats up.

And so it is the same thing when you drive a car,

or you go on an airplane.

Everything that we do has some impact on the planet.

Well, I do think that the technology is getting out of hand,

that that the world is getting not better,

but worse because of all the technology.

But one of these technologies

is the way we raise animals for food, that we raise them with such efficiency,

and at such high volumes that were spewing all of these

-gases into the environment. -Then which is worse, driving cars or that?

Like, where do you pick?