Co-writer, co-director, co-editor, co-producer, and cameraman Kip Andersen
COWSPIRACY B+
aka: Cowspiracy: The
Sustainability Secret
USA (90 mi) 2014
‘Scope d: Kip Andersen and Keegan
Kuhn cowspiracy.com/facts
In the end, we will
remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
—Martin Luther King
A curiously provocative film that may leave some scratching
their head from all the statistics flying around, wondering what to make of all
that, but the overall arc of trying to learn about how to live on the planet
and do the least amount of damage to the environment seems like a noble cause,
yet midway through the personal exploration the tone shifts dramatically. We follow along the personal odyssey of one
of the filmmakers, Kip Andersen, who is front and center throughout the film,
initially seen quizzically scrutinizing his computer, where he spends a lot of
time, apparently, exploring various environmental websites. A graduate of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo school
of business while calling San Francisco home for more than a decade, Kip was
initially wowed by a screening of AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006), featuring
former Vice-President Al Gore doing one of his power point slide shows
educating the public and raising international awareness of global warming,
which certainly caught the eye of this young citizen in the making, becoming
extremely conscious at a young age of his own personal role, recycling
regularly, turning out lights in unused rooms, taking shorter showers in
drought-stricken California and turning the faucet off while brushing his teeth,
riding his bike everywhere in lieu of a car, basically conserving his water and
energy consumption, dedicated in his role to help save the planet. What initially catches his eye is a UN
News Centre article and press release (Livestock a major threat to environment) that indicates animal
agriculture is the leading cause of deforestation, water consumption, and
pollution, responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the accumulated
fossil fuel pollution from all modes of transportation combined in the world today. Since most environmental websites overwhelmingly
stress the need to reduce fossil fuel transmissions from automobiles, trucks,
ships, trains, and airplanes, claiming that as the leading cause of air
pollution, he was initially curious that these websites made no mention
whatsoever of animal agriculture. Like a
roving reporter, he decides to meet with some of the environmental agency
representatives, scheduling appointments with Greenpeace, Sierra Club,
Surfrider Foundation, Rainforest Action Network, or Oceana, asking pertinent
questions, finding it startling that they would collectively as a group exclude
the primary offender, with most talking in circles or suggesting it was all a
matter of personal preference to target fossil fuels, but none were willing to
engage with him on the subject of animal agricultural. Granted, there aren’t many cattle ranches in
California, so livestock issues may not be a primary interest, but there is an
ocean, where major polluting agents are animal wastes, antibiotics and
hormones, chemicals from tanneries, fertilizers and the pesticides used to
spray feed crops, causing not only water pollution and dead zones in the ocean,
but the destruction of coral reefs. Surprisingly,
without explanation, Greenpeace refused to meet with him altogether, sending
him regrettable emails but thanking him for his interest. What this film has going for it is the
relentless curiosity of Kip, seen as a good-natured and honest narrator, often
humorous, whose educational quest for the truth seems admirable, prompting
viewers to ask the same kinds of questions, hoping to get underneath the hidden
veil of like-minded language that surrounds climate change, where the public
assumes these organizations have their best interests in mind, yet their own
sustainability in a crowded field may actually be their primary concern. To his credit, Kip opens the door to a
diverse group of industry experts voicing their concerns, ranging from published
authors, professors, climate activists, corporate executives, ranchers,
doctors, and nutritionists, allowing viewers to make up their own minds.
Asking various friends and journalists about this particular
dilemma, most concede activist organizations don’t wish to offend their donors,
as their existence is entirely dependent upon voluntary contributions, so they
don’t wish to antagonize the large population of “meat eaters.” But clearly, there is more to it than that,
as the stonewalling of the truth is not what these organizations stand for, and
Andersen’s friendly persistence in getting to the bottom of it is utterly
fascinating, offering a different side of these normally environmentally
friendly agencies. What stands out in
particular are the invaluable contributions of two men, Will Anderson, Greenpeace
Alaska Founder and former Board of Directors, particularly incensed by the vast
influence of the animal agriculture industry, where there are 50,000 wild
horses in government holding pens, rounded up and taken off their land because
ranchers want to graze their cattle on that land, also resulting in the wanton
killing of wolves and other wild animals to protect rancher’s livestock, and
Howard Lymon, a former Montana cattle rancher, now an animal rights activist
known for promoting vegan nutrition (consuming no animal products at all) and
organic farming, both disgruntled by the limitations of their respective
industries, neither one hesitant in confronting the dominant issue of the
agriculture industry, where livestock production is the leading cause of
human-induced climate change, accounting for 30% of the world’s water
consumption, occupying 45% of the Earth’s land, while responsible for 91% of the
Brazilian Amazon destruction. Rain
forests, according to the film, might be described as the earth’s lungs,
converting healthy, breathable air into the atmosphere, yet rain forest land is
being cleared at the rate of one to two acres per second (the size of a
football field) in order to make way for grazing land for livestock animals,
where over one hundred plant, animal, and insect species are lost everyday due
to this rampant destruction. In the
United States, agriculture is responsible for 80-90% of the nation’s water
consumption, where growing feed for livestock consumes 56% of the water. Using graphs and relevant statistics
onscreen, Andersen makes quick work in convincing viewers that animal
agriculture is the leading cause of environmental destruction, where it takes
660 gallons of water to produce a single McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburger, the
equivalence of two month’s worth of showers.
But this doesn’t explain why all these environmental websites exclude
the most damaging facts. Lyman is an
erudite ex-rancher who became famous by spilling the beans on the beef industry
on the Oprah Winfrey show, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in the
next two years defending himself from lawsuits.
Lyman also added that while everything he revealed on television was
true, if the same thing were said today he would be convicted by the Patriot
Act as being guilty of defaming the Agriculture Industry, deemed an essential
ingredient in the War on Terror by the American government, placing a target on
their backs for the topics being discussed.
Leila Salazar Lopez, director of Amazon Watch, offers even more chilling
testimony, revealing that outspoken defenders of the Brazilian rain forests
have been murdered by the cattle industry, some 1100 activists in the last 20
years, including Sister
Dorothy Stang in 2005, an American nun who became an ardent defender of the
poor and the indigenous. All this
paranoia started swirling around Kip’s investigation, made even more startling
when major sponsors started pulling their funding from his movie, leaving him
feeling particularly exposed and vulnerable to potential lawsuits, unsure
whether or not he wanted to continue.
The film’s final thrust veers away from investigative
reporting, turning instead into personal responsibility, where he questions
whether there is such a thing as sustainable farming, visiting the owners of
the Markegard Family Grass-Fed farm,
a nearby ranch known for raising cows, pigs and sheep on an open prairie, with
no pesticides or chemical fertilizer and no injected synthetic hormones, interacting
with their kids who obviously adore the animals, knowing that within a few
months they will be slaughtered for meat consumption. Despite the care taken to provide the best
quality meat product, continually moving animals to new grazing land, the
amount of land required is substantially more than normal farm operations, so
while it may be sustainable in a smaller market, the model would not hold up if
you were trying to feed the world, as there’s simply not enough land on the
planet. Spokespersons for both the
cattle and dairy industries agree that their industries are not sustainable
using a worldwide model, but their business models target a smaller consumer base. And therein lies the real crux of the matter,
whether or not it is advantageous to internationalize what are presumably local
businesses, often feeding local markets, as most never originated their
operations with a global market in mind.
How does one compare advantages and disadvantages if your “only” criteria
is global sustainability? Most
businesses simply don’t operate under that criteria, where producing
sustainable fish or meat within their own market outreach seems like a laudable
goal. Andersen’s insistence on global
impact kind of changes the game for most people, but he’s all in when it comes
to personal responsibilities. Visiting
urban farms, which offer surprising growth results from small plots of land,
perhaps the most convincing diagram used is the football field model, where the
smallest land usage required would be vegan consumers, where the land required
to feed one person for one year is 1/6th of an acre, three times more for a vegetarian,
and 18 times more for meat consumers that obviously require the lion’s share of
land usage. Another visit to a backyard
farm becomes a hellacious experience, as viewers must watch a farmer take an
axe to a duck, describing how he initially witnessed this at age 5, leaving him
somewhat queasy, but now it’s simply part of any ordinary day. The same could not be said for Kip, who found
the footage objectionable, personally, yet showed it nonetheless. Even more gruesome is footage of the
senseless slaughter of 40,000 African elephants, an action recommended in the
1950’s by Zimbabwe ecologist Allan
Savory, at the time a research officer for the game department, believing
too many animals led to overgrazing of their grassland habitat, a misguided
decision that was later proven wrong, but only after 14 years of relentless
slaughter, a decision Savory now regrets, calling it “the saddest and greatest
blunder of my life.” Savory, by the way,
did a complete turnabout and resurrected his career, learning from his earlier
mistakes, something the filmmaker omits.
Yet it is these horrific images that finally persuaded Kip to take
action, convinced there is an ethical and moral obligation to eliminate this
practice of slaughtering animals.
Accordingly, he makes the transition to becoming a vegan, initially
suspicious about leading a healthy lifestyle, but once he arms himself with the
facts, the film makes the only recommendation it can possibly make, urging
viewers that this leaves the tiniest carbon footprint and is the best possible
means of saving the planet, the only option that leads to a sustainable global option,
with no lingering regrets about the cruelty of having to kill another species. 75% of Americans consider themselves
environmentalists, yet less than 3% are vegan, with suggestions that each day a
person on a vegan diet saves 1,100 gallons of water, 45 pounds of grain, 30 square
feet of forested land, the equivalence of 20 pounds of carbon dioxide, and one
animal’s life. What the film doesn’t
address is the cost of converting to a vegan lifestyle, as it’s an expensive
option not readily available in some parts of the world, particularly
indigenous or tribal cultures, impoverished third world regions, areas of
extreme drought, and polar regions. While
the film is perfectly enjoyable and extremely informative, Kip is an immensely appealing
subject, kind of like a grownup version of the human host on the children’s
television show Blue’s Clues (1996 –
2006), with no one disputing the vegan option would have a substantial global
impact, and some may find this film life-altering, yet it’s also fairly obvious
that despite the clear and insistent message, 7 billion people around the globe
are not going to suddenly become vegans, but it’s a convincing mandate for
those that do.
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