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Humanity's Leap to the Golden Era - Washington DC Climate Change Conference P4/10 November 8, 2009 - USA    
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One of the things is that the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has done is implemented a kind of an innovative approach to tackling this, starting with our children, and that's our Healthy School Lunch Program. And in that program what we do is help schools introduce vegan options into their lunch line. We show them how to do that in a sustainable way, and a way that is friendly to the children; and they accept it and usually prefer it over some of the other options that they're given.

As a matter of fact, we did a study in Broward County, Florida, where we introduced these options over several weeks in the school lunch program. And so, what we had was a vegan option right next to your regular meat-based option. The vegan option in this graph is represented in red and the meat-based option is in blue. And the children had open opportunity to choose whichever they want.

Now, we will say we promoted the vegan option so they knew they would be there and that they would be available. But even after this promotion period, these items stayed on the menu. So, we can see that the vegan options - the veggie burgers, veggie chili, black beans and rice - sold almost three times as much as the meat options. So, the vegan options were very well accepted by children, which is contrary to a lot of what we hear sometimes by school officials or parents saying, “Kids won't choose healthy food if you give it to them.” And we've seen the opposite, that when it's presented to them and they're included in the process, this is what they want. Not only are our school children accepting it but parents are as well.

We did a survey of over 1000 adults and asked them about: Do they think that vegetarian or vegan options should be made available in the school lunch program? And over 80% agreed that this should be an option. So, we have a lot of support and momentum for this. A second approach that we're taking is on a federal level with the Child Nutrition Reauthorization Act. And what we're doing there is we're lobbying Congress to make it more affordable, accessible, and easy for schools to include these healthy, high fiber, low-fat foods in the School Lunch Program. So right now we are meeting with representatives from all over the country and getting a lot of support, and things are looking very positive in pushing our bill forward, that this will be very accessible for schools.

Secondly, we're looking at the commodity structure. And what that means is almost all schools who participate in the School Lunch Program get their foods, lower cost foods, through commodities from the USDA. So, what we want to see in that, instead of spending a large amount of money which they currently do on meat and cheese products, we would rather that the commodity structure favor low-fat, high fiber, healthy, nutritious, plant-based foods so that schools can then in turn order those foods. And so, that's another initiative that we're pushing forward in Congress as we're lobbying for that change. So, we believe that change is possible. We have over 100,000 children, students, parents, and supporters who have signed on at healthyschoollunches.org and other places to sign our petition to Congress saying, “This is what we want. This is what we want to see in our school lunches.”

We want to see healthy kids. We know healthy food relates in better behavior, better academic performance, better physical health, and so, we're building a momentum. And when we presented this petition to Congress, it has made an impact. So, we're continuing to gather those signatures at a grassroots level, trying to work this from more than one angle, getting people involved, schools involved, and also lobbying our government. So, schools have also picked this up and gone on their own with a lot of what they've done. For example, we have school districts that are implementing Meatless Mondays to cut cost and in turn increase child health. We have California, New York, Hawaii, and Florida have all implemented resolutions encouraging vegetarian meals and non-dairy beverages in place of cow's milk to be served in schools.

The American Medical Association, as well as the American Public Health Association, have issued resolutions recommending that vegetarian meals and non-dairy beverages be served in the School Lunch Program. So, people are listening. We also had a recent report from the Institute of Medicine, which influences the School Nutrition Association and the USDA in terms of what they serve, that came out about three weeks ago that said there needed to be significant increases in fruits and vegetables, legumes, whole grains, in the School Lunch Program.

So, we're finally seeing people catch on. So, as we're collating this information there's really no way to deny that these changes need to be made and they need to start with our children. Because when children adopt healthy practices then they become healthy adults and continue those same practices into adulthood. And we think this is particularly important for our country as we're talking about healthcare, because if we can stop the problem before it starts, we'll make quite a few strides.

And I'd like to briefly introduce eleven-year-old Nina, who is part of the reason we're here today, addressing methods of preserving the planet that we're going to leave behind for our children. So, I'm going to ask Nina to come on up and I'm going to ask her a few questions. Now, she's quite a little activist herself and a vegetarian. And she's been so kind to come up and answer a few questions about how she feels about what we're doing here, and particularly healthy school lunches.
So, Nina, what grade are you in?

Nina (f): I'm in sixth grade.

Ms. Lathon (f): Great, great. And why are healthy school lunches important to you?

Nina (f): Well, they are important to me because if we have healthy lunches then a lot of people will be healthier.

Ms. Lathon (f): Okay. Seems like common sense, right? So what foods would you like to see served at your school?

Nina (f): Well, I think a lot of fruits and vegetables would be really good. Instead of having like fruit cups which a lot of people have at their schools, they could have fresh fruit.

Ms. Lathon (f): That's wonderful. Absolutely. Absolutely. And why do you prefer to eat fruits and vegetables rather than animals?

Nina (f): Well, I've loved animals all my life, and I think it would be really hard if I had to eat one.

Ms. Lathon (f): Thank you. And my final question is: Why do you think it is important to stop eating meat?

Nina (f): I think it's important to stop eating meat because if more people stopped, then it would be really good for the environment.

Ms. Lathon (f): Absolutely. Thank you, Nina.

And I'd like to just close with a statement that President Obama made at his climate change speech to the UN in September. He says, “The good news is that after too many years of inaction and denial, there is finally widespread recognition of the urgency of the challenge before us.” And so, I would like to say: Let's continue our tireless work to create a sustainable future for our children. Thank you.

MC(f): First, we want to thank Nina for being so compassionate toward our animal friends. And Dr. Lathon, may all schools and communities worldwide follow your noble example to feed our children healthy vegan food.

MC(m): Our final speaker is Dr. Peter Carter from British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Carter has been a family physician for 30 years. He is also the founding director of the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment and a climate policy advisor for Canadians for Climate Action. He is also a vegan. Please welcome Dr. Peter Carter.

Dr. Carter (m): When I was a boy growing up in England - I've just remembered watching the speakers - that when I was getting behind in my jobs, my father used to say, “Peter, come on, you better leap to it.” So, maybe this is a message that the whole world is being given here by this wonderful conference. First of all, I would like to thank you all. The room, the huge ballroom, is packed. I want to thank you all for coming out here, from the bottom of my heart, and the reason is this: We hear increasingly that global climate change is the greatest threat to the survival of civilization and indeed humanity, but that's not quite right.

The greatest threat is the denial. The denial is huge. There are powerful forces behind it, still confusing and misleading people. So you people coming out and showing that you are breaking through the denial yourself, and you're facing the reality of what we all face, and our children, is the best news there is and the best hope there is. So you can see what I'm interested in and what I want to share with you today, which is the “Zero Carbon Emergency Response.” The Golden Era, which in fact we have no choice but to leap to it... the Golden Era is a zero-carbon era, that's what the scientists are telling us.

There are 3 essentials that we have to achieve, and we can achieve these 3 all together.
First is what most people call sustainable, but it's perpetual, you see? Perpetual nonpolluting zero-carbon energy. We live on an energy planet. All right? So, this idea that we have to carry on poisoning our planet and ourselves with fossil fuel is just absolute nonsense, and we've known it for decades.

Second, sufficient zero- carbon nonpolluting food for all. And as you've already heard, this is eminently achievable as long as we switch the way we produce our food, and we are more wise in the food that we choose to eat. Third, is that we have to create world peace. So we have a lot of converting to do: We have to convert our energy completely, we have to convert our food production and diet completely, and we have to convert the militarization of the world completely.

We can do it. How do we get there?

Because we have to leap at it, and we have to leap at it all together. So, in actual fact, we are very privileged to live at this time, because we get to realize and create, in actual fact, a sort of an eternal dream of humanity that you can find throughout all civilizations in all cultures, which is this yearning for a Golden Age. It's been a dream before, but now we can actually make this happen. We, as Ban Ki-moon said, we have all the resources to deal with and get over climate change. The only thing we lack, as he said, is time.

We are in an emergency. So, the idea of deep peace has been around for a long time, and all the religions and all the cultures also have this idea of deep peace. So, I want to stress this: we're not going to get to this Golden Era, we're not going to make this conversion of our agriculture and our fossil fuel energy, without abandoning this hostility which we've inherited generation after generation after generation. We're spending US$1 trillion on armaments, still.

I remember working against this in the peace movement in the seventies and eighties and I believe, yes, we did save the planet from destruction by nuclear holocaust; but we face another one now. And this time we have to change our world to save our Earth. There's something missing, obviously.

We all know how bad this is, so there's some missing ingredient in how we deal with this at our political levels and everything. Well, the first is the denial again. We've got to face the situation. We've got to open our hearts, face the fear, and say to ourselves, “Okay, we're not going to let this happen.”

It's really terrible, it's really scary.
So that's the first thing. Well, obviously we have to have a compassionate culture. We have to create a compassionate culture as the Dalai Lama and all the spiritual leaders, indeed, Supreme Master Ching Hai, say is the essential.

I often think that the greatest invention of humanity is our ethics of compassion. This was actually invented, right? By ancient cultures. It's the most essential “invention” that we ever came up with. We have to get over this hostile competitiveness, which is our perpetual war economy. We have to convert this.

Nicholas Stern in The Stern Commission explained that global climate change is the greatest market failure ever, because we think it's fine to make war all the time, and prepare for war, and not worry about all the damage which is being done to the planet. By the way, Sir Nicholas Stern… I was very glad because he's sort of one of my climate heroes. I thought the Stern Commission report was great. So, I think last month he made a statement to the media that he said, “You know, I think people are going to have to become vegetarian to save the Earth.” That was very good. Well, guess what he did last week? He made another statement, “I'm vegetarian!” Good for you, Sir Nicholas!

This conference reminds me of a conference in Columbia University in a special edition by Scientific American back in 2005, called “Crossroads for Planet Earth.” Of course it's humanity which is at the great crossroads. And the theme of the conference was that the human race is at a unique turning point, and will we choose to create the best of all possible worlds? This is still an open question. All you people here I know have made the choice. We have everything we need to create this best of all possible futures, but if we don't, if we don't get engaged, if we don't address it, if we don't look at it, by default, we're leaving the worst possible world for our children and all future generations - and nobody wants to do that.

So, a few reports here… 15th of September 2009… I was immensely proud of my medical profession when they issued a special open letter in the Lancet, in the British Medical Journal, September 2009, addressing the issue head on, saying that “failure to agree to a United Nation's climate deal would bring a global health catastrophe.” And that was signed by the presidents of 18 of the world's professional medical organizations. That really did my heart good, of course, to get that news. Thank you.

MC(m): Thank you, Dr. Carter, for your sensitivity, your broad perspective, and for encouraging all of us to take immediate action.

MC(f): It looks like, if we want to save our planet, we will have to change our lifestyle. An organic, vegan diet would definitely resolve many of the problems our world is facing today.

MC(m): Yes. It is getting easier to be a vegan. More and more restaurants are offering vegan options. There are even chains of vegan restaurants being opened up around the world.

MC(f): So, it's becoming easier to make the change! And speaking of being able to make changes, we are pleased to present two incredible contortionists from Mongolia.

MC(m): Narangua Dulamsuren and Hongorzul Tseven-Oidov are talented artists who are currently performing with the world renowned Cirque du Soleil in Las Vegas. They have won several awards, including the gold medal at the 2006 International Circus Artist Competition in Latina, Italy. For our conference this afternoon, they have prepared a magnificent performance called “Swan Dreams”. Please give a warm round of applause to Narangua and Hongorzul.

MC(f): That was just amazing. And they look just like swans! Let's give them another round of applause, these incredible young people from Mongolia!

MC(m): The beauty of that act reminds me of Supreme Master Ching Hai.

Out of her loving oneness with all animals, Supreme Master Ching Hai has penned three international bestsellers The Dogs in My Life, The Birds in My Life, and The Noble Wilds. While she was writing The Noble Wilds, Master Ching Hai became acquainted with a family of wild swans and was able to communicate with them telepathically. She discovered that swans have Noble Qualities that exceed most humans.

MC(f): One day the mother swan told Supreme Master Ching Hai, “We do not have to use verbal language. We communicate in silence. We do not need to talk about love, harmony and peace. We live in them.” In other words, swans simply exude unconditional love.

MC(m): Now, getting back to our topic of global warming, let's find out how some cities around the world are taking concrete steps to halt climate change. We will now hear from their leaders.

Mr Falkin(m): Good afternoon. My name is Larry Falkin, I'm Director of the City of Cincinnati's Office of Environmental Quality. And I'd like to send my greetings to Supreme Master Ching Hai and all of the participants in this conference. The city of Cincinnati has adopted a “Green Cincinnati Plan,” which is the city's climate protection action plan. What we did is we got together a large cross-section of the community - both leaders of the business community, labor community, and non-profit organizations - and had them help us identify things that could be done in Cincinnati that would reduce our contributions to global climate change, and at the same time improve our local environment, improve our local economy, save more money than it costs, improve public health… set out to achieve all of those objectives simultaneously.

What we found, and we're very happy to find, is that most of the things that we would do to reduce climate change are things that we had good reason to do anyway, that did save more money than they cost, that did improve local public health, that did improve the local environment. One example of a recommendation in the Green Cincinnati Plan is to encourage residents of the city to eat less meat. And not only does eating less meat significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it also helps people be healthier, helps people save money; it does all of those objectives. So, a lot of people are making personal decisions to alter their lifestyles to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including by changing their dietary choices.

So, I want to thank you all for giving me the opportunity to participate in the conference this afternoon and for sharing the experience of Cincinnati and our efforts to reduce climate change and help people move towards a diet that contains less animal products.

Mr Termont (m): Hallo, everybody. Hallo, Madam Ching Hai. My name is Daniel Termont, the Mayor of City of Ghent, Belgium. Already a couple of months ago we declared Thursday as the “Veggie Day.” Because you know, perhaps all of you, that indeed the production of meat is responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gas emissions. That means that we want to do something against it - then we declared Thursday a Veggie Day. But there is more: all our schools, and we have a lot of schools in our city, are also eating vegetable meals on Thursday. And what's more, we're looking now that all our receptions in our City Hall will be veggie receptions. So, I hope you have a very good meeting there, that you can do something against the all-over-the-world emissions of greenhouse gas. Thank you very much and a lot of success.

Dr Hermans (m): We have made a very, very important decision: We go for veggie! And veggie means that we will encourage our citizens to have less meat. And why do we make this important political choice? It is important for the health to eat less meat, but also for the environment. We know that the production of meat gives significant environmental problems.

So, we have given our citizens a book, a little book. All 70,000 citizens have a book with recipes of veggie dishes. We work with the schools, we work with our hospitals, we work with organizations to have Thursday as our Veggie Day. So, for us the political choice was important. That gives us the opportunity to take some actions about health, and about meat and veggie. So, be veg, go green, and save our planet!

MC(f): Our thanks to these dedicated statesmen for sharing their success stories. We appreciate and laud their noble leadership!

MC(m): That's great news, that entire cities are working to halt climate change. I wonder if there are other positive developments happening in the world?

MC(f): Well, Mrs. Hazel Henderson is a distinguished futurist, evolutionary economist, and the author of the bestselling book “Planetary Citizenship.” Let's hear what Mrs. Henderson has to say about our future.

Mrs. Henderson (f): I'm very happy to be at this wonderful conference on “Humanity's Leap to the Golden Era.” So, greetings to all of you who are there! And we need now to really restore our vision. And so, let us now learn from our children and the vision that all children in the world share. And they know that we can build a happy and harmonious and just and peaceful and sustainable future. So, we have to thank all of our children for their wonderful vision.

And I have worked all of my life in the belief that we humans are standing at the brink now of the Solar Age. And this is the great transition, if we move to more vegan, vegetarian diets, we would go a long way to reducing the carbon on this planet. What I see happening now is that all of the new companies who are creating healthier food, healthier lifestyles, preventive medical care, and fitness, and all the companies who are working in solar energy, in wind energy, all of the other sustainable technologies, making our appliances and all of our energy systems more efficient.

Financial crisis and the climate crisis are a huge learning opportunity to help us now shift very rapidly into building this new economy. We have all the technologies we need. We have all of the resources we need. So, again, I congratulate you all for being here, and let us all move together to this new Golden Age, this Solar Age, where we can all live together on this planet in a healthier, more humane, more just, and more sustainable way of life. Thank you. Be veg! Go green! Save the planet!

MC(m): Thank you for your warm wishes, Mrs. Henderson, and for including children in your vision of the future.

MC(f): Mrs. Henderson talked about the beginning of a new economic era on Earth, but what about people? Will they be different, too? Will the children of the new era be more intelligent and more talented?

Sister Mity (f): The whole conference was really enlightening and I really liked it. Listening to the Supreme Master was a really wonderful experience. It was unimaginable! I'd love to be a 100% vegetarian now. I am deciding already to enjoy eating this and I really liked it!

Steve(m): I think that it's simple enough to go vegetarian. It takes a little work the first couple of months and then you get used to it.

Our next speaker, Dr. Noam Mohr, is a graduate from both Yale and Pennsylvania State Universities. He is currently an adjunct professor of physics at New York University. Dr. Mohr will explain the importance of short-lived greenhouse gases. Please give a warm welcome to Dr. Noam Mohr.

Supreme Master Ching Hai: According to precedent, non-violence is, in fact, vegan, a requirement for advancing to the next levels of civilization.

Join us on Supreme Master Television on Tuesday, February 16, for part 8 of the rebroadcast of the videoconference “Humanity's Leap to the Golden Era: Washington, D.C., Climate Change Conference” on Words of Wisdom.

Tune in to Supreme Master Television today for the rebroadcast of the live videoconference “Humanity's Leap to the Golden Era: Washington, D.C., Climate Change Conference” with Guest of Honor, Supreme Master Ching Hai, on Words of Wisdom.
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