Alec Baldwin is an actor and activist. The views expressed here are the author's. View more opinion on CNN.

(CNN) What does your diet have to do with saving the planet? Everything, says a new report by the world's leading scientists and health experts.

Alec Baldwin

Over the last few years, I have become a student of certain global environmental issues. Preparing for the Paris Climate Conference, and since then, I have worked with the United Nations advocating for protecting tropical forests and the rights of indigenous peoples. Through this work, scientists and community leaders from around the world have given me a truly frightening insight into what the international community and those on the front lines of the world's most pressing environmental challenges are up against.

Here is a fact: Human activity is fundamentally altering the planet.

We are causing what scientists call the " sixth great extinction ," erasing countless species from the face of the planet. We are driving biodiversity loss, unraveling the web of life that keeps ecosystems functioning and that make the Earth habitable for humans. We are, without much or not nearly enough introspection it seems, destroying the planet's rainforests at alarming rates. And we are causing global climate change, which, if we do not act, will be our undoing

What is driving this environmental destruction? One leading issue is what experts call extractive industries -- mining, logging, and oil and gas exploitation. However, the single largest driver of land conversion that is putting pressure on the planet is actually much less sinister: food.