What’s the most destructive industry facing our planet today?

You can be forgiven for thinking it’s fossil fuel production and consumption, with all of its attendant pollution and GHG emissions, along with its destructive extraction processes and the all-too-frequent oil spills in our oceans and waterways, because most environmental organizations focus on that.

However, according to a new documentary, the industry that’s most responsible for global warming, water scarcity, species extinction and habitat loss, deforestation, and marine pollution and “dead zones”, is the animal agriculture industry.

So why aren’t more environmental advocacy organizations and nonprofits talking about this issue and working toward a more sustainable solution?

If you can believe the team behind Cowspiracy, it’s because those who profit from this industry are able to out-spend, out-lawyer, and out-propaganda everyone, and those organizations who should be addressing the issue are instead more concerned about retaining their members and their funding.

“This is the film that environmental organizations don’t want you to see. “COWSPIRACY: The Sustainability Secret” is a groundbreaking feature-length environmental documentary following an intrepid filmmaker as he uncovers the most destructive industry facing the planet today – and investigates why the world’s leading environmental organizations are too afraid to talk about it.”

Cowspiracy, which was successfully funded on Indiegogo earlier this year, was produced by Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn of AUM Films and Media, and is now available for viewing at select theaters, and will be released for digital download and DVD sales in November.

“This shocking yet humorous documentary is as eye-opening as “Blackfish” and as inspiring as “An Inconvenient Truth”.”

What’s the big deal with livestock and animal production?

The appetites for food and water of the world’s 7 billion humans (requiring some 5.2 billion gallons of water per day, and 21 billion pounds of food) pales in comparison to that of the world’s 70 billion livestock animals, which require quite a bit more food and water every day, along with generating massive amounts of methane and contributing to groundwater and surface water pollution.

With each hamburger requiring over 660 gallons of water to produce, eating them regularly is not exactly sustainable, not by any stretch of the imagination, and no amount of shorter showers or waterwise landscaping will mitigate a diet that centers around animal products.

The ‘lungs of the planet’, the rain forests, are being cleared at a rate of 1 acre per second, for the sole purpose of grazing animals and growing crops to feed those animals, which also has the effect of bringing an estimated 100 species of plants, animals, and insects to the brink of extinction every single day.

Find out more about this seminal environmental documentary at Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, including a fact check for the figures used in the film.