September 5, 2023 • 12 mins
Did you know that your plate holds the power to combat climate change?
Our guest, Glenn Merzer, a renowned playwright, screenwriter, and author, enlightens us with his compelling insights on the complex relationship between food choices and the climate crisis.
Merzer’s valuable transformational journey from a stand-up comic to a fervent advocate for plant-exclusive diets paves the way for an awakening discussion. Tune in as he elucidates on his book, "Food is Climate," and the urgent need for a shift in our dietary choices.
Our guest sheds light on the stark realities of climate change, underscoring the pivotal role animal agriculture plays.
Noteworthy points from this repurposed chat with Glen Merzer from Season 2 :
-Our obsession with fossil fuels and ignorance towards animal agriculture
-Myth of protein necessity from animal products,
-Alternative scenario that promises environmental restoration
This gripping episode is not just about food or climate; it’s about the impact of our choices on the planet we all call home. Let's help make a meaningful change!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Glen Merzer (00:09):
Welcome to Fresh Leaf Forever, a podcast that
gives you fascinating insightsweek after week.
Here's your host, Vaikumar.
Vai Kumar (00:20):
Hey folks, welcome to Podcast Fresh Leaf Forever.
Today I have here with us GlennMerzer, who is a playwright,
screenwriter and author.
Glenn began his career as astand-up comic in San Francisco
before devoting himself toplaywriting.
He wrote for network televisionfor many years before stumbling
(00:42):
into a career writing booksthat advocate the
plant-exclusive diet.
It's such a pleasure to haveGlenn Merzer here on the show
with us.
Hey, glenn, how are you doing?
Welcome to the podcast.
Glen Merzer (00:54):
Thank you, vaikumar , good to be with you.
Environmental Education, kids-They learn about that a lot too
.
What about your book Food isClimate, where you've written
about this climate emergency andsort of this climate erosion
that threatens human existence,right?
So why is being vegan importantin that context, glenn?
(01:17):
There is no way to solve the climate emergency
without a global transformationto the vegan diet.
If you think about it, for thelast 30 years we have known that
we would face this climateemergency, and the temperatures
have gotten hotter and theweather more violent over the
last 30 years.
(01:38):
And what have we focused on?
Fossil fuels.
That's what we always hearabout the burning of fossil
fuels.
Now, if we imagine it 30 yearslater, by the way, we're burning
more fossil fuels than we were30 years ago.
So the first question I wouldask is how's that working for
you?
How's that going?
Just focusing on fossil fuelswhere we haven't made any
progress at all, really?
(01:58):
Second, even if in a fantasy,tomorrow all the airplanes went
solar we don't have solarairplanes, but imagine if they
got invented and tomorrow allthe airplanes went solar, all
the cars were electric and allthe electricity for the cars was
generated by solar and wind, soit's all renewable.
(02:20):
So, in other words, imagine ina fantasy that tomorrow we're
100% renewable energy and we'renot burning any gas to cook with
and we're not burning anyfossil fuels to heat our home.
Even then, the planet will keepwarming.
Why is that?
Because we got 25 billionfarmed animals out there.
(02:41):
We have 1.5 billion cowsbelching methane, and methane is
120 times as potent togreenhouse gas as carbon dioxide
.
Don't let them tell you, it'sless than that.
Nitrous oxide, 300 times aspotent as carbon dioxide,
nitrous oxide coming fromfertilizers used to grow, the
(03:04):
grain that they feed to cows,coming from the manure of cows
and chickens.
And methane coming from themanure of cows and chickens.
And then we would have all thedeforestation of the Amazon.
Why?
For animal agriculture, we havethe grazing of land around the
earth, which degrades the soil,creates the desert.
(03:25):
We have the bottom trawling ofthe oceans, which is kicking up
more carbon dioxide than all theairplanes.
So if we keep eating animals,even in the fantasy world that
we no longer have gas poweredvehicles and we no longer have
airplanes, we have solarairplanes, we're still going to
heat up the world with animalagriculture.
(03:46):
Now let's go with the oppositefantasy we keep burning fossil
fuels, but tomorrow the worldgoes vegan.
Well, if that happens, then wedon't need all that land for
grazing, do we?
We don't need any land forgrazing, so we forest, rewild
the grazing land that's 37% ofthe non-ice land surface of the
(04:09):
earth.
We free up the 6% of the landthat's used to grow feed for
animals and we no longer have totransport that feed to animals
and we no longer have torefrigerate those animal meat
products.
In the vegan fantasy, we havenew forests and new vegetation
all around the world.
And what does that do?
It sequesters carbon dioxide.
(04:30):
And we protect the oceansbecause we end industrial
fishing.
When we protect the oceans, thelife comes back into the sea.
The phytoplankton populationsbecome more robust.
That draws down carbon dioxide.
So, in other words, the onlypossible solution and this is so
obvious the only possiblesolution is to start drawing
(04:51):
down the carbon dioxide.
You can't solve this problemotherwise.
Let me give you an analogy.
Let's say you have a bathtub,you let in the bath and you get
a flood and you realize oh myGod, I have a problem here.
The drain is clogged and thewater isn't draining out.
And then you realize oh, I haveanother problem.
I can't turn off the faucet.
(05:13):
It's letting five gallons perminute into the bathtub.
So you have two problems yougot a stuck faucet, you can't
turn it off, and you got aplugged drain.
Nothing's going out.
You call a plumber and he saysall right, here's what I can do
for it.
I could lower that faucet.
So you just have two gallonsper minute coming in.
(05:35):
And you say well, what aboutthe drain?
He says oh, I can't do anythingabout the drain.
Well, you still got a flood,don't you?
Even if you have two gallonsper minute coming in and
nothing's going out, you have tounclog the drain.
How do you unclog the drain?
Trees they draw down carbondioxide, protecting the oceans,
drawing down carbon dioxide,absorbing carbon dioxide.
(05:56):
So we have to work on both thedrain and the faucet.
We have to slow down theburning of fossil fuels, but we
have to let the carbon dioxideget sequestered and there's no
way to solve the problem unlessyou solve the drain.
We need at least a trillionmore trees on the earth's
(06:18):
surface.
We need to stop deforestation.
There's no way to do that,unless we stop eating animals.
Vai Kumar (06:25):
It's interesting you mentioned industrialized fishing
.
There's so much contaminationand plastic pollution in the
ocean these days and fish arefeeding on these correct, and
everyone is unaware and eatingit still.
Glen Merzer (06:38):
Yeah, people are.
When they're eating fish,they're eating mercury, they're
eating plastic, they're eatingall the pollution, so it's a
terribly unhealthy food.
It isn't human food.
There are many sources of oceanpollution, but by far the
largest source is animalagriculture.
We're destroying the reefs andwe're destroying the
phytoplankton populations andwe're extracting all life from
(07:01):
the seas.
You would think that even ifyou wanted to eat the occasional
fish, you would want amoratorium on fishing, because
if you want to eat fish, itdoesn't make sense to keep this
kind of industrial fishing going, because in 30, 40, 50 years
there'll be no more fish left,but a lot of people tend to
think they need to feed theirchild eggs or fish or animal
(07:24):
products for protein, right,Well, that's a myth.
We have to defeat the myth.
There are a lot of healthy,vegan children out there.
Vai Kumar (07:32):
Like you already pointed out, so many vegetables
have protein content in them too.
Then whole foods like grains,legumes, beans all have protein
in them.
I can relate to that, havingbeen raised a vegetarian and
growing up in a household ofvegetarian food and cooking.
I just hope that your booksserve as an inspiration to many,
(07:53):
because there's recipes thereto follow right.
Glen Merzer (07:56):
Yes, there are recipes in almost all my books.
Vai Kumar (08:00):
I guess in food lies the answer to everything.
What about how we protect theland to be able to eat healthy
and in an age of grass-fed meatproducts, or anyone thinking?
I have done my part as, due toCOVID, I stayed indoors and
everything seems to be thrivingoutside, lush green, so it's all
(08:20):
back.
So what do you say to all ofthat, and how best can we
preserve planet Earth and eathealthy?
Glen Merzer (08:28):
Well, we have to not fall for the myth of
grass-fed beef.
Grass-fed beef is worse for theenvironment than the confined
animal feeding operation, andthe confined animal feeding
operations are a nightmare, butgrass-fed beef is even worse,
and the reason is that the andkeep in mind, by the way, that
(08:50):
grass-fed beef is something like1% of the beef that Americans
eat, and the so-calledregenerative beef is less than
1%.
You know, it's just a small,small fraction of what people
eat and it can't scale upbecause there isn't that much
land.
Where are we going to get theland?
(09:12):
If we're all going to have fivecows in our backyard, it will
never be a significantpercentage of the beef that
people eat.
And the reality is that thegrass-fed cows have to live
longer to fatten up to theweight that their overlords want
them to be when they send themoff to slaughter.
So if they're going to livelonger and they belch more
(09:35):
methane on grass than they belchon grain, so they're creating
more methane per day and they'reliving longer, so they're
creating much more methane intheir short lifespan.
They're also using far, far,far more land.
That's really the greatestenvironmental problem that comes
(09:57):
from animal agriculture is howmuch land they use.
So it's the grass-fed cows thatare preventing us from
reforesting the earth andthey're also degrading the soil
as they do it.
Also, on the grass-fedoperations, we have what's
called pasture maintenance fires.
There's an image on the frontcover of my book here.
(10:19):
This is a NASA satellite mapand all the red are the pasture
maintenance fires.
On one day, nobody's measuringhow much carbon dioxide goes
into the atmosphere from thesefires.
What they do is they burneverything that the cows don't
eat, all the vegetation, andthat's how they graze animals.
(10:39):
And we've been doing that for10,000 years.
And when they started doing it10,000 years ago, this area the
Sahara was a forest.
So we created this desert withanimal agriculture, and that's
across all the way to the GobiDesert in China.
That's 6,000 miles of desertthat was created by at least in
(11:00):
part, by animal agricultureChopping down trees, grazing
animals, degrading the soil.
It's what we're doing to theAmazon today.
So in 50 years, look at a mapof South America.
You'll see a big patch of browncalled the Amazonian Desert.
That's what we're doing to theearth, and obviously it's not
sustainable.
It's the greatest crime onearth to destroy forests and
(11:23):
biodiversity so that people canstupidly eat hamburgers and get
heart attacks.
Vai Kumar (11:28):
Well, I hope everyone can derive inspiration and do
the needful for the planet.
What else is coming up, glenn,and anything else you'd like to
share here All?
Glen Merzer (11:39):
right.
Well, I have a website,glenmerzercom.
People can contact me there.
I have another website that Iput up when Own your Health came
out, which isownyourhealthbookcom.
I have a newsletter from eitherwebsite.
People can join.
I try to do a monthlynewsletter on health and I hope
(12:00):
to have a new book out in thenext year with the chef, Tracy
Childs, and I hope to dosomething with this new
PowerPoint that I have aconvenient truth.
Vai Kumar (12:11):
Thank you so much, Glenn, for taking the time today
to talk to us on the show, andsuch a pleasure having you on.
Glen Merzer (12:20):
Thank you Vai.
Vai Kumar (12:21):
And to listeners.
Thanks so much for tuning inweek after week.
Follow me on Instagram at@vaipkumar and for the podcast
at Fresh Leaf Forever forconstant updates.
I will see you back again nextweek with yet another guest and
yet another interesting topic.
Until then, it's Vai saying solong.
Welcome to Fresh Leaf Forever, a podcast that
gives you fascinating insightsweek after week.
Here's your host, Vaikumar.
Vai Kumar (00:20):
Hey folks, welcome to Podcast Fresh Leaf Forever.
Today I have here with us GlennMerzer, who is a playwright,
screenwriter and author.
Glenn began his career as astand-up comic in San Francisco
before devoting himself toplaywriting.
He wrote for network televisionfor many years before stumbling
(00:42):
into a career writing booksthat advocate the
plant-exclusive diet.
It's such a pleasure to haveGlenn Merzer here on the show
with us.
Hey, glenn, how are you doing?
Welcome to the podcast.
Glen Merzer (00:54):
Thank you, vaikumar , good to be with you.
Environmental Education, kids-They learn about that a lot too
.
What about your book Food isClimate, where you've written
about this climate emergency andsort of this climate erosion
that threatens human existence,right?
So why is being vegan importantin that context, glenn?
(01:17):
There is no way to solve the climate emergency
without a global transformationto the vegan diet.
If you think about it, for thelast 30 years we have known that
we would face this climateemergency, and the temperatures
have gotten hotter and theweather more violent over the
last 30 years.
(01:38):
And what have we focused on?
Fossil fuels.
That's what we always hearabout the burning of fossil
fuels.
Now, if we imagine it 30 yearslater, by the way, we're burning
more fossil fuels than we were30 years ago.
So the first question I wouldask is how's that working for
you?
How's that going?
Just focusing on fossil fuelswhere we haven't made any
progress at all, really?
(01:58):
Second, even if in a fantasy,tomorrow all the airplanes went
solar we don't have solarairplanes, but imagine if they
got invented and tomorrow allthe airplanes went solar, all
the cars were electric and allthe electricity for the cars was
generated by solar and wind, soit's all renewable.
(02:20):
So, in other words, imagine ina fantasy that tomorrow we're
100% renewable energy and we'renot burning any gas to cook with
and we're not burning anyfossil fuels to heat our home.
Even then, the planet will keepwarming.
Why is that?
Because we got 25 billionfarmed animals out there.
(02:41):
We have 1.5 billion cowsbelching methane, and methane is
120 times as potent togreenhouse gas as carbon dioxide
.
Don't let them tell you, it'sless than that.
Nitrous oxide, 300 times aspotent as carbon dioxide,
nitrous oxide coming fromfertilizers used to grow, the
(03:04):
grain that they feed to cows,coming from the manure of cows
and chickens.
And methane coming from themanure of cows and chickens.
And then we would have all thedeforestation of the Amazon.
Why?
For animal agriculture, we havethe grazing of land around the
earth, which degrades the soil,creates the desert.
(03:25):
We have the bottom trawling ofthe oceans, which is kicking up
more carbon dioxide than all theairplanes.
So if we keep eating animals,even in the fantasy world that
we no longer have gas poweredvehicles and we no longer have
airplanes, we have solarairplanes, we're still going to
heat up the world with animalagriculture.
(03:46):
Now let's go with the oppositefantasy we keep burning fossil
fuels, but tomorrow the worldgoes vegan.
Well, if that happens, then wedon't need all that land for
grazing, do we?
We don't need any land forgrazing, so we forest, rewild
the grazing land that's 37% ofthe non-ice land surface of the
(04:09):
earth.
We free up the 6% of the landthat's used to grow feed for
animals and we no longer have totransport that feed to animals
and we no longer have torefrigerate those animal meat
products.
In the vegan fantasy, we havenew forests and new vegetation
all around the world.
And what does that do?
It sequesters carbon dioxide.
(04:30):
And we protect the oceansbecause we end industrial
fishing.
When we protect the oceans, thelife comes back into the sea.
The phytoplankton populationsbecome more robust.
That draws down carbon dioxide.
So, in other words, the onlypossible solution and this is so
obvious the only possiblesolution is to start drawing
(04:51):
down the carbon dioxide.
You can't solve this problemotherwise.
Let me give you an analogy.
Let's say you have a bathtub,you let in the bath and you get
a flood and you realize oh myGod, I have a problem here.
The drain is clogged and thewater isn't draining out.
And then you realize oh, I haveanother problem.
I can't turn off the faucet.
(05:13):
It's letting five gallons perminute into the bathtub.
So you have two problems yougot a stuck faucet, you can't
turn it off, and you got aplugged drain.
Nothing's going out.
You call a plumber and he saysall right, here's what I can do
for it.
I could lower that faucet.
So you just have two gallonsper minute coming in.
(05:35):
And you say well, what aboutthe drain?
He says oh, I can't do anythingabout the drain.
Well, you still got a flood,don't you?
Even if you have two gallonsper minute coming in and
nothing's going out, you have tounclog the drain.
How do you unclog the drain?
Trees they draw down carbondioxide, protecting the oceans,
drawing down carbon dioxide,absorbing carbon dioxide.
(05:56):
So we have to work on both thedrain and the faucet.
We have to slow down theburning of fossil fuels, but we
have to let the carbon dioxideget sequestered and there's no
way to solve the problem unlessyou solve the drain.
We need at least a trillionmore trees on the earth's
(06:18):
surface.
We need to stop deforestation.
There's no way to do that,unless we stop eating animals.
Vai Kumar (06:25):
It's interesting you mentioned industrialized fishing
.
There's so much contaminationand plastic pollution in the
ocean these days and fish arefeeding on these correct, and
everyone is unaware and eatingit still.
Glen Merzer (06:38):
Yeah, people are.
When they're eating fish,they're eating mercury, they're
eating plastic, they're eatingall the pollution, so it's a
terribly unhealthy food.
It isn't human food.
There are many sources of oceanpollution, but by far the
largest source is animalagriculture.
We're destroying the reefs andwe're destroying the
phytoplankton populations andwe're extracting all life from
(07:01):
the seas.
You would think that even ifyou wanted to eat the occasional
fish, you would want amoratorium on fishing, because
if you want to eat fish, itdoesn't make sense to keep this
kind of industrial fishing going, because in 30, 40, 50 years
there'll be no more fish left,but a lot of people tend to
think they need to feed theirchild eggs or fish or animal
(07:24):
products for protein, right,Well, that's a myth.
We have to defeat the myth.
There are a lot of healthy,vegan children out there.
Vai Kumar (07:32):
Like you already pointed out, so many vegetables
have protein content in them too.
Then whole foods like grains,legumes, beans all have protein
in them.
I can relate to that, havingbeen raised a vegetarian and
growing up in a household ofvegetarian food and cooking.
I just hope that your booksserve as an inspiration to many,
(07:53):
because there's recipes thereto follow right.
Glen Merzer (07:56):
Yes, there are recipes in almost all my books.
Vai Kumar (08:00):
I guess in food lies the answer to everything.
What about how we protect theland to be able to eat healthy
and in an age of grass-fed meatproducts, or anyone thinking?
I have done my part as, due toCOVID, I stayed indoors and
everything seems to be thrivingoutside, lush green, so it's all
(08:20):
back.
So what do you say to all ofthat, and how best can we
preserve planet Earth and eathealthy?
Glen Merzer (08:28):
Well, we have to not fall for the myth of
grass-fed beef.
Grass-fed beef is worse for theenvironment than the confined
animal feeding operation, andthe confined animal feeding
operations are a nightmare, butgrass-fed beef is even worse,
and the reason is that the andkeep in mind, by the way, that
(08:50):
grass-fed beef is something like1% of the beef that Americans
eat, and the so-calledregenerative beef is less than
1%.
You know, it's just a small,small fraction of what people
eat and it can't scale upbecause there isn't that much
land.
Where are we going to get theland?
(09:12):
If we're all going to have fivecows in our backyard, it will
never be a significantpercentage of the beef that
people eat.
And the reality is that thegrass-fed cows have to live
longer to fatten up to theweight that their overlords want
them to be when they send themoff to slaughter.
So if they're going to livelonger and they belch more
(09:35):
methane on grass than they belchon grain, so they're creating
more methane per day and they'reliving longer, so they're
creating much more methane intheir short lifespan.
They're also using far, far,far more land.
That's really the greatestenvironmental problem that comes
(09:57):
from animal agriculture is howmuch land they use.
So it's the grass-fed cows thatare preventing us from
reforesting the earth andthey're also degrading the soil
as they do it.
Also, on the grass-fedoperations, we have what's
called pasture maintenance fires.
There's an image on the frontcover of my book here.
(10:19):
This is a NASA satellite mapand all the red are the pasture
maintenance fires.
On one day, nobody's measuringhow much carbon dioxide goes
into the atmosphere from thesefires.
What they do is they burneverything that the cows don't
eat, all the vegetation, andthat's how they graze animals.
(10:39):
And we've been doing that for10,000 years.
And when they started doing it10,000 years ago, this area the
Sahara was a forest.
So we created this desert withanimal agriculture, and that's
across all the way to the GobiDesert in China.
That's 6,000 miles of desertthat was created by at least in
(11:00):
part, by animal agricultureChopping down trees, grazing
animals, degrading the soil.
It's what we're doing to theAmazon today.
So in 50 years, look at a mapof South America.
You'll see a big patch of browncalled the Amazonian Desert.
That's what we're doing to theearth, and obviously it's not
sustainable.
It's the greatest crime onearth to destroy forests and
(11:23):
biodiversity so that people canstupidly eat hamburgers and get
heart attacks.
Vai Kumar (11:28):
Well, I hope everyone can derive inspiration and do
the needful for the planet.
What else is coming up, glenn,and anything else you'd like to
share here All?
Glen Merzer (11:39):
right.
Well, I have a website,glenmerzercom.
People can contact me there.
I have another website that Iput up when Own your Health came
out, which isownyourhealthbookcom.
I have a newsletter from eitherwebsite.
People can join.
I try to do a monthlynewsletter on health and I hope
(12:00):
to have a new book out in thenext year with the chef, Tracy
Childs, and I hope to dosomething with this new
PowerPoint that I have aconvenient truth.
Vai Kumar (12:11):
Thank you so much, Glenn, for taking the time today
to talk to us on the show, andsuch a pleasure having you on.
Glen Merzer (12:20):
Thank you Vai.
Vai Kumar (12:21):
And to listeners.
Thanks so much for tuning inweek after week.
Follow me on Instagram at@vaipkumar and for the podcast
at Fresh Leaf Forever forconstant updates.
I will see you back again nextweek with yet another guest and
yet another interesting topic.
Until then, it's Vai saying solong.
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