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[narrator] The Amazon Jungle,
the largest tropical rainforest in the world,
is burning.
The forest contains ten percent of the planet's biodiversity
and plays a crucial role in global climate stability.
Over 20% of the forest has already been lost
and projections show that at this rate,
there won't be much left by the turn of the century.
In 2019, the Amazon experienced
a devastating and unprecedented fire season,
with over 40,000 reported fires
and 3500 square miles of forest lost.
It's estimated that an area the size of a soccer field and a half
is lost every minute.
Our team, led by award-winning filmmaker Michal Siewierski,
decided to embark on an investigative journey
to uncover the real reasons behind
the catastrophic destruction of the Amazon forest.
[light tense music]
[Glenn] We're already seeing consequences
of deforestation and climate change.
In South America, there are almost double the rate
of fires that there were historically.
[Dr. Neal] You know, everybody's aware
that there is environmental damage happening.
People know that the, the Amazon is being lost,
but I don't think that most people really connect it to what's on their fork
[chuckles] at that particular moment, and that's what's got to happen.
People have to realize we've got a choice.
We can choose to save the Amazon
or we can choose to lose it forever.
The choice is right here on our plate.
Many people don't understand that when they eat meat
in Los Angeles, California, or New York,
that meat could have been the result
of deforestation in Brazil.
[Moby] Stop anyone on the street and ask them,
why are the rainforests being cut down?
Some of the slightly more aware people might say palm oil,
but most people would say like, "Oh, because of wood for houses."
And they would have no idea that there's a connection
between animal agriculture and deforestation.
[Dr. Michael] And it's all wrapped up in that burger
and for them to sell it at $2.95 is, is a bargain.
That's our future. That's the, that's the rainforest.
That's our soil, that's the air, that's where your children are going to be growing
their food in the future. That's really what we're eating.
[Matt] The connection from the destruction of the rainforest
to grow soy, to feed animals,
to your burger on the table or your steak on the table, it's not easy to track.
When we talk about soy, people should be clear, we are not talking about tofu.
We're talking about a crop that is grown
primarily for animal feed.
About 70% of soy is grown for animal feed,
as well as other non-direct food uses like biodiesel.
When we say soy, we really are talking about meat.
So, the soy that is grown in the Amazon
primarily goes to the European and American markets.
They ship the soy overseas,
put them in these giant machines called crushers,
and turn them into feed for livestock
and then that's used to produce beef to feed people.
And that's what we buy when, you know, you go to fast food chains.
You're basically, in some ways,
eating soy that was grown in the Amazon
or other parts of South America.
[narrator] Fire has been used by people
for thousands of years as a way
to clear large forested areas.
But why, in this day and age,
are modern farmers still using
this devastating and unsustainable practice?
People are burning the forest to plant soy
because it's the easiest way to do it.
You can go into an area that has been undeveloped,
cut it down, burn it, grow soy and sell it to companies.
Large international corporations
will give you the funds to do it.
So, when a forest in the Amazon is
cut and burned, it puts a lot of nutrients into the soil.
Once the forest is burned down, you can grow soy in it,
you might be able to get a crop or two,
but eventually it's just going to dry out.
Uh, tropical rainforests aren't, uh, made
to continuously grow crops in that way.
They generally will burn the forest,
grow something, and then move on.
When you have an entire economic system
that is based on destroying the rainforest
and selling it to consumers,
it's going to take some real agitation
in order to change that.
[narrator] Global warming is a controversial topic,
but many scientists believe that deforestation
plays an important role in the process.
Fewer forests means more greenhouse gases entering the atmosphere,
which in turn increases the severity of climate change.
In the Amazon in particular,
and, and other rainforests as well,
once you cut down the existing vegetation,
it's not going to grow back into a rainforest,
it's going to turn into a much drier type of ecosystem,
a non-native ecosystem,
and that's going to be extremely prone to fire
as well as the fact that all of that carbon
that had previously been stored in that forest
has now been released into the atmosphere.
[Moby] It seems like climate change,
people are slowly starting to take it seriously
and one of the ways to fight climate change
is through carbon sequestration. Oceans and the rainforests
are the best places for carbon sequestration.
So, rather than the tropical rainforest serving
as a carbon sink that keeps carbon out of the atmosphere
and helps mitigate against global warming,
when you cut it down and burn it,
you're sending all of that carbon out
and you're, you're causing a major emission
of greenhouse gases in a system that should be trapping greenhouse gases.
And that has to do, also, with the amount of emissions that the cattle produce,
mainly in the amount of methane.
What we have noticed with the deforestation,
there was actually a change in the soil microbial community
that also produce methane or consume methane.
And what we found is that actually the,
especially the methane consumers,
is a bacteria that use methane as their source of carbon.
They are actually significantly reduced in the soil.
And so suggesting there is going to be less methane uptake
once the deforestation has happened.
We actually can significantly reduce our overall emissions
by eating less meat or eating no meat whatsoever.
[Glenn] Meat is responsible for more
climate pollution than all the cars, ships, trucks,
and planes in the world, combined.
This is a really big issue,
and it doesn't get enough attention.
Deforestation alone, uh, accounts for something
around 15% of total global warming pollution,
and yet it gets just two percent of the funding to address the climate crisis.
[Moby] I was flying from Argentina to New York,
and we were flying over the rainforest and it was the middle of the night
and I looked at a map,
you know, the little sky map,
and we were flying over the jungle,
and I looked out the window and there were just lights everywhere
and I was trying to figure out what city we were flying over.
I was like, "Are we flying over Brasilia?"
Because there was, like, lights to the horizon,
and I realized they weren't city lights, they were fires.
And it was everywhere I looked,
there were fires just burning and burning and burning,
but in lines, so it was all deforestation.
And just the immensity of that struck me.
[narrator] Deforestation also affects
the over two million people that live in
and depend on the forest for food and shelter.
To this day, indigenous populations in Brazil
and other countries in South America
are still being kicked out of their lands,
even though these are public areas
under federal jurisdiction and protected by law.
In 2018, 135 Indians were murdered in Brazil
and there have been over 1,000 registered cases
of violence, abuse, death threats,
and rape of indigenous people.
The genocide of Indians in Brazil started 500 years ago
when the country was first colonized
and it still occurs to this day.
So, there has been very strong laws in Brazil of late
for the protection of indigenous territory
that's been identified as being the traditional territory
and the occupied territory of indigenous people.
There is a great fear that as of the most recent election,
uh, the president of Brazil has pledged
that he's going to remove that protection.
One of the crazier things we heard
from President Bolsonaro was that he said
he wished that the Brazilian cavalry
had been as effective as the American cavalry
and eliminated more native populations.
The attitude is we want to get native peoples off the land
so we can bring in cattle and soy,
which is what progress is.
I mean, to me, I, I don't see progress
as converting, uh, an ancient ecosystem
that provides life to the whole planet
to a monoculture that just serves big businesses
as a positive or as a sign of civilization.
To the contrary, I mean, this is an abuse that we don't need.
[narrator] Rainforests provide habitat
to over 80% of plants and animals living on land,
but deforestation destroys their habitats
and diminishes biodiversity.
Scientists estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 species
go extinct every year due to deforestation alone.
[Moby] The rainforests are largely
what make this earth habitable for us.
[Matt] Rainforests are one of the most
biologically diverse ecosystems in the world,
which means that there's a lot of animals
that live there and only there in very unique places
and, you know, that-- that's where they live and they can't live anywhere else,
and when you cut the forest down, the animals are gone. They've got nowhere to go.
This might sound sort of like a hippie would say this, but it's actual science,
is our earth is a system, and nothing exists in isolation.
All life relies on other life
and it relies on the sustainability
and health of other ecosystems.
And as humans, we have this pride in the stupidity
that makes us think that we can destroy part of the world
and not affect us, and what we're realizing now is that's not the case.
When you destroy the rainforest, you're destroying yourself.
[narrator] The Amazon rainforest is considered by many
to be the largest natural pharmacy in the world.
It's home to an abundance of plants
renowned for their medical properties
and it's estimated that 25% of all the drugs used today
are derived from rainforest plants.
The protection of these natural elements is fundamental
to maintaining this incredible hot spot of biodiversity.
[narrator] It's recognized that the production of meat
plays a key role in deforestation and climate change.
But in recent years, meat consumption
has also been linked to numerous chronic diseases.
In 2014, the World Health Organization
classified processed meat as a group one carcinogen,
the same category given to cigarettes.
Red meat was assigned to group 2A,
when it comes to cancer risk,
the same group as the pesticide DDT.
Oh, as a physician, I think one of the best things
people can do for their health is reduce
their consumption of meat or eliminate it altogether.
The scientific evidence is becoming overwhelming
that the more animal muscle that we consume,
the higher our risk of clogged arteries and colon cancer
and a host of other diseases.
So, no, I think the less meat we eat,
the healthier we're going to be.
[Dr. Neal] Not only is meat consumption linked to heart disease and to stroke,
but it's also linked to many of the most common forms of cancer.
Probably the big standout is colorectal cancer,
which is a huge killer in the United States
and in many other countries.
It's the meat itself,
but it's also the meat-cooking processes.
As meat is headed up in the oven,
carcinogens form on the meat.
There's a link between meat and Alzheimer's disease
that came as a huge surprise.
Starting in 1993, researchers in Chicago
tracked what people were eating
and they tracked who developed Alzheimer's disease
and who didn't and one of the first things they discovered
was that the fat that is predominant in meat, saturated fat,
could triple your risk of getting Alzheimer's disease.
Now, the good news is, if you're not eating it,
then your risk was cut hugely.
[Dr. Michael] It's estimated that if meat really sold
for what it honestly cost to produce,
if the beef producers had to pay
for all the water that irrigates the alfalfa,
that's government subsidized, that's--
all the water that's polluted from the slaughterhouse,
all the soil that runs off the corn and soy bean fields,
all the pesticides and herbicides that are sprayed on those grains
that wind up causing cancer,
if they had to pay for the therapies
of the farm workers spraying those chemicals.
This is unsustainable,
it's a spectacularly expensive substance,
animal flesh these days.
[narrator] Small family farming operations
are often swimming in debt
while agribusiness conglomerates are thriving.
But despite not generating many jobs,
destroying the Amazon forest, and polluting the environment,
big agribusiness receives billions in tax subsidies,
while small family farmers receive
on average ten times less in incentives.
Those same small farms are responsible
for producing 80% of the food that feeds the planet.
[Moby] Agribusiness only exists because of tax subsidies.
You remove all federal local subsidies
from the production of animal agriculture,
a pound of beef would cost $100.
A gallon of milk would cost $75.
A family of four going to McDonald's without subsidies
would spend $120 on their meal.
So our tax dollars subsidize an industry
that's destroying our health
and destroying the health of the planet
and if we speak up about it,
we risk being thrown in jail and killed.
[narrator] If we produced and consumed
more plant products instead of animal products,
this would mitigate much of
the human generated greenhouse gas emission
and would provide a home once again
for the countless wild species displaced
due to animal agriculture each year,
but reducing the consumption of meat
often times makes people concerned.
Will you get enough nutrients?
And what about protein?
[Dr. Neal] The question often comes up is to how much of a diet change do I need to make,
and my answer is any step you make is a good step.
So, when people reduce meat consumption, that's good.
That said, I have to say that when people get it out of their lives completely,
they really get their diet into high gear
and their, their health improves dramatically,
but any step is a good step.
[narrator] One shocking and little-known fact
is that deforestation increases the prevalence
of diseases all around the world,
including malaria, Zika, dengue fever, SARS,
Ebola, leptospirosis, and many others
because deforestation changes how and where
these animals transmit these diseases.
Once their natural habitat
and ecosystem balance becomes disrupted,
they end up getting closer to small towns surrounding those areas,
increasing the chances of transmitting diseases to humans.
[narrator] Deforestation also affects
the quality of the air.
When tons of harmful and toxic particles
are released into the atmosphere during these fires,
the particles travel by wind currents,
and end up affecting not only the local populations,
but people in the big cities as well.
[narrator] Forests play a key role in local water cycles
by helping to keep a balance between the water on land and the water in the atmosphere.
But when deforestation and degradation occur,
that balance can be thrown off,
resulting in changes in precipitation and river flow,
which affect the climate both locally and on a global scale.
[Glenn] You're seeing that all around the world, the consequence of that
is not only destruction to the ecosystems,
but actually, uh, the entire Amazon basin
is having increasing difficulty supporting agriculture.
It'll be difficult to maintain the kind of agriculture
that we have now in just 25 years.
Um, weirdly, the agribusiness companies
that are financing deforestation are also imperiling
their own ability to operate in the long run.
There just won't be enough water
if you don't have the forest to provide it.
The rainforest has a lot of rain.
It's a very wet ecosystem
and that rain and the water cycles through it.
When you cut the forest down,
you're allowing the sun to penetrate to the ground,
to the vegetation and along the edge it continues to dry out
and the more people move into the forest, cutting away at the edges,
the more that that drying penetrates into the forest.
The result of that has been a real dramatic increase
of forest fires in areas
where there never would have been fire.
They wouldn't have been fire-prone
because of all the moisture in the ecosystem.
[narrator] Because the soil in the deforested areas
is usually poor in nutrients,
many farmers are forced to use more resilient GMO crops
that can withstand harsh conditions
and larger amounts of pesticides,
but these excess pesticides end up in the food chain.
The grain is fed to the cattle,
which are then eaten by humans.
Also, the pesticides run off the fields
to the water beds and rivers,
creating a lot of pollution,
disturbing the ecosystems and causing disease.
[Rose] The overuse of pesticide and fertilizer
is one of the main contaminants for water pollution.
So, not only are these crops causing forest loss and causing climate change,
they're also causing a local water pollution crisis.
They are cutting down the forest,
they're changing the ecosystem,
they're dumping pesticides on the ground,
destroying the ability of that land
to produce food for the people around it.
[narrator] Hundreds of environmental activists
are killed every year all over the world.
With the majority being indigenous people,
the Amazon is one of the areas with the most tension.
Last year, Brazil was once again the deadliest country
for environmentalists and despite efforts
by national environmental agencies, justice is rare.
It's become increasingly dangerous for people
on the ground in a lot of these countries to resist.
It's become increasingly dangerous for people on the ground
to expose what some of these activities are
and I think that we have a relative degree of safety
and freedom here and, and I think that's why it's incumbent on us
to give voice to the people who, um, can't speak for themselves in a lot of these counties.
[Moby] Animal agriculture is a huge industry
and a hugely powerful industry
and a hugely violent and destructive industry.
Not just towards the animals,
not just towards the environment,
but towards activists as well.
I mean, activists have been killed
for standing up to cattle ranchers.
But still like, so many local legislatures
and so many politicians essentially work for agribusiness.
[narrator] Our team went to the state of Bahia
to meet with Ernst Gotsch,
a Swiss farmer and researcher
that moved to Brazil in the 1980s.
For the last 40 years, Ernst has developed techniques
that combine agricultural production
with forest regeneration.
By combining aggressive pruning
and innovative agroforestry techniques,
Ernst showed the world that degraded areas
can be regenerated and that the forest
can be exploited without being destroyed.
The set of principles and techniques he developed
became globally known as syntropic farming.
Its practical applications can be seen
in several large farms around the world
and on his own property where he was able
to regenerate over 1,000 acres of degraded land.
[narrator] On the other side of the country, one of Ernst Gotsch's students
is following in his footsteps
and applying the same principles in his own syntropic farm.
Jua Pereira, a young biologist and farmer,
shared his thoughts on the burning of the Amazon forest.
[Henry] The tragedy of this continued destruction
of the rainforest in Brazil
is that it doesn't need to happen.
That food can be developed in cleared land,
they don't need to destroy more rainforest.
It's just a question of doing what's right.
That might happen because of government policy,
but it also can very well happen
because the public is demanding it,
and the consumer is demanding it as well.
[Glenn] We're talking about very basic practice changes,
like growing crops on previously deforested land
instead of burning down new, uh, rainforest.
Putting cover crops when there's not corn or soy growing.
Um, having buffer zones next to waterways.
These are really basic, affordable things
that often actually make farmers more money in the long term.
[narrator] Some agribusinesses in Brazil
are beginning to transition to intensive farming,
which confines the cattle into smaller areas
and results in less native forest destruction,
but researchers warn that intensive farming
comes with its own set of problems.
[Glenn] I do think that we, as a society,
need to dramatically reduce our consumption of meat.
It's both good for the planet and good for us,
but the big agribusinesses have a role to play as well
and they should be engaging in the basic good practices
to hang on to the forest that we have left
and not to pollute the already damaged waterways.
[narrator] Our journey took us to Tucson, Arizona,
home to Biosphere 2, the largest simulated rainforest
research facility in the world.
Biosphere was perhaps best known
for two missions conducted in the early 1990s,
in which crews were sealed inside the enclosure
to study survivability.
Nowadays, Biosphere 2 is home to several
world-renowned scientists who conduct controlled experiments
in order to study complex environmental questions.
[John] Biosphere 2 is really a remarkable facility.
It offered a really unique opportunity
to look at how these systems respond to changes
like carbon dioxide, like moisture, like temperature,
and so that began the shift for Biosphere 2
moving away from having people live inside,
to moving to one as a large earth environmental science laboratory.
Actually, the largest earth environmental science laboratory.
It is impossible to think that we'll ever recreate nature
as it occurs naturally outside
and all of its intricacies and complexities,
and so Biosphere 2 is a test lab.
We can do things like subject it to a drought,
we predict that the tropics are going to continue to get warmer and drier,
well, what's that mean for those systems?
I think the biggest lesson so far to come out of Biosphere
is how little we truly understand earth systems as a whole,
how those systems are interconnected,
and how those systems are impacted
by the changes that we see coming their way.
We were able to take our rainforest,
run it through different levels of CO2
and look at how its response compared
to those that the model predicted.
And what we found is that our system,
like that predicted for the tropical areas in South America,
it saturated at about the same level.
What happens when we surpass this level?
Well, now it means there's nothing out there
that is absorbing it or taking the place
of those rainforests and now rather than that CO2
going up at a particular pace,
now we've accelerated it significantly.
And so, what we learn here potentially
has real world applications
and regardless of how much we learn
or how much we think we know,
it's extremely important
to continue to maintain
that biological diversity in those systems,
because we just don't understand what the implications
of losing those systems is going to be.
We have an idea, but I don't think we fully comprehend.
And we all have an inherent desire to survive and persist,
and if we're not able to adapt to changes coming our way,
it often times means,
when species can't adapt, you see them go extinct.
[narrator] Despite the global concern about the Amazon forest,
most people interested in helping the cause
feel powerless due to the distance,
complexity, and scale of the problem.
So what can we, as regular citizens, do to help?
I think the challenge that we face
is people may have great concern
about what's happening in the Amazon or elsewhere,
but people don't know what to do to act on this concern.
Look, at the individual level,
uh, I think there's two big things people can do.
One, reduce the amount of meat that people are eating.
Most people in the developed world, uh, eat way too much meat
and it's not good for you and it's not good for the planet.
But the other thing that we can do
to drive change on a systematic level
is for consumers to go talk to the brands
that they patronize about these issues.
Just sending an email to the CEO of a big company
linked to deforestation actually can get heard,
but, you know, what's even more important is if you go on social media,
send them a message, if you talk in person to the manager
of a fast food restaurant or a supermarket chain,
that pretty soon starts to make its way up the food chain
in the corporation and they start to say,
"Hey, we're hearing about this, we're worried that customers are leaving us
because of our connection to climate pollution
and to deforestation and going over to our competitor
who's doing more to deliver sustainable products."
The only way corporations become good corporate citizens
is when they're held accountable by people.
Every corporation in the world, for the most part,
will get away with whatever they can get away with.
You know, their goal is to make their product as cheaply as possible
and sell it for as much as possible, you know,
to keep their shareholders and their board happy.
They will engage in the worst corporate practices
unless we hold them responsible.
[Glenn] I think what we found over and over again
is that when consumers bring urgency around these issues
to companies, they're actually incredibly responsive.
These companies value their brands
over any other asset in their company,
so when that brand is threatened,
when consumers start to think about their brands
not as a wholesome snack or meal,
but rather as a driver of ecological destruction
and human rights abuse on a vast scale,
that's going to threaten the value of their company
and that causes even the most cold-hearted
corporate executive to sit up and pay attention.
We've also found that employees
of these companies have outsized influence.
So, one of the strongest voices for change
even in companies that have done the most damage
is from their own employees.
People increasingly want to work at companies
where they feel like they're doing something good for the world.
Uh, that's true even of the agribusiness giants,
of fast food chains, of mainstream supermarkets.
[narrator] In Brazil, agribusiness is protected
by laws that support the industry's actions,
but how is this possible?
The people in power in South America
are often those with ties to big agribusiness.
Many of the most powerful politicians in Brazil's government
are connected to the meat and dairy industries
and they create laws for their own benefit.
This group of politicians
is called The Ruralista Congressional Block.
[Glenn] We've seen tremendous environmental rollbacks here in our country,
but sadly it doesn't really compare to what's happening in Brazil.
Tragically, Brazil made a huge amount of progress
on reducing deforestation over the last decade.
Um, they cut deforestation by more than 2/3
through both private sector efforts and government action.
They improved environmental enforcement,
they created both new national parks and indigenous areas.
The big soy and cattle companies
actually took significant efforts to reduce deforestation
in the Brazilian Amazon that worked.
Unfortunately, due to issues unrelated to the environment,
Brazil elected a man who, in office,
has set about gutting environmental protections.
[Glenn] I think the biggest threat to the environment
that we've seen from the Bolsonaro era so far
hasn't been any specific policy change,
uh, instead he's given farmers the sense of impunity
that no matter how much they deforest,
no matter much illegal activity they engage in,
no matter how many indigenous people they displace from their land,
the government won't take action and as a result,
we've seen big soy and cattle ranchers deforest
at probably an unprecedented scale.
Just this past month, we saw 1,345 square kilometers
of the Brazilian Amazon go up in smoke.
Uh, that's an area the size of Los Angeles
cleared of native vegetation in just one month.
[Glenn] Uh, one of the things that Bolsonaro has done
is announce environmental inspections before they happen,
so that the people committing crimes can get ready
and try and cover up the damage that they caused.
It's pretty crazy, but it's a way that they are trying
to facilitate deforestation on a mass scale.
What Bolsonaro is doing is terrible,
but I think for people all over the world who are watching this issue,
it's important to understand that he couldn't do it alone.
It's big companies, uh, in the soy and cattle industry
that are directly driving this deforestation.
Industry has an enormous influence on government policy.
[Glenn] Corruption is such a massive problem
and we want the big cattle agribusiness food companies
to stop playing that game.
[narrator] The Amazon problem often starts
far way from the jungle.
Both American and international companies
also play a role in deforestation by creating demand,
influencing local politics,
and even paying farmers to destroy the forest.
[Henry] I believe that industry in the United States
has an enormous impact on policies of other countries.
Uh, some American businesses do play a very active role
in the destruction of the Amazon forest.
One of the major corporations that operates internationally
is Cargill, and Cargill is very active
in destroying the rainforest, uh, to grow different, uh, crops,
soy is one of the main ones, in that rainforest.
[Glenn] If these big companies stopped buying
from producers engaged in deforestation,
regardless of who was in government,
uh, there just wouldn't be the incentive
to engage in these bad practices.
Large international corporations,
they're providing the incentives,
they're providing loans, they're building infrastructure,
and they're providing the ability to access the forest.
The farmers will grow it wherever it will be bought from,
and as long as these companies
continue to pay people to bulldoze the forest,
they're going to continue to do it.
[narrator] Farms in Brazil are very different
from those found in the U.S. and Europe.
Their sheer size is often larger
than big metropolitan areas,
therefore when we hear that a farm area
has been cleared for cattle grazing or growing soy,
the scale of the impact can be devastating.
When we're talking about farms in Brazil and farmers,
I think it's important for people to realize
that this is on a scale very different
from what you normally see in the Unites States.
Uh, here in the United States, you know, 2,000 acres is a large farm,
in Brazil, it's on a totally different scale.
Um, you know, what we found in South America,
we routinely came across single so-called farms
that were 50,000, 100,000 acres in size
and what that means is that you had 50,000, 100,000 acres
of forest or other native habitat for wildlife
just totally cleared within a matter of months.
We have done a series of investigations
into who is driving deforestation in South America,
and we've consistently found it's a relatively small
handful of companies people probably haven't heard of.
Cargill, Bonge, JBS, ADM and a few others,
which are the leading agribusinesses,
but those companies depend on markets
from name brand companies.
McDonald's, Burger King, Stop & Shop,
Giant, Walmart, Mars, Carrefour,
and all the big supermarkets and fast food chains.
We've asked them to shift their purchases
to more responsible companies.
So far, all we get from the big consumer brands
is concern about what's happening to the forests of South America,
concern about climate change, but no discernible action.
[Matt] So we work very closely
with these large consumer companies
that are buying products from companies like Cargill,
and there are a huge number of companies
that we work with, Costco and Walmart and McDonald's,
that have said that they don't want rainforest destruction in their product.
And I think it-- it's time for these companies,
companies like McDonald's, like Whole Foods,
like Costco, like Walmart, like Target,
to stop buying from these companies.
[narrator] Brazil has many laws set in place to protect the environment,
but unfortunately environmental crimes related
to deforestation are almost inconsequential.
Less than five percent of the fines are paid
and the one that get paid are not big enough to discourage farmers
from continuing with these criminal practices.
[Glenn] 95% of the environmental fines that are levied in Brazil
are contested in court and more often than not,
even egregious deforesters
or people who displace indigenous people,
which is illegal, get off scot-free.
[Matt] It's the people who are on the ground in countries like Brazil,
they want to make a living and they want to be able to feed their family.
I am certain that given the option they would rather do that
without having to destroy the rainforest,
but if the only option that these companies
are giving them is to earn their living
through this kind of destruction,
they're going to keep doing it.
They don't have a lot of choices,
and I think that maybe they could be providing
the people in Brazil with a better option
than destroying the land that they live in in order to eat.
[narrator] One way that farmers found to go around the system
is through something called cattle laundering,
which is similar to money laundering.
The cattle are born in an area
responsible for deforestation,
then they're moved to a sustainable farm
where they get branded, fattened,
and sent to a certified slaughterhouse.
From there, they're sold as sustainable eco-friendly meat.
It's almost impossible to be certain
that your meat is not a result of deforestation.
This method of cattle laundering
has become common place in the market.
It's really unlikely that anybody knows
where the meat that they're eating comes from,
uh, particularly if it's ground meat. If it's ground meat,
it's coming from all different kinds of sources,
often just from one company, but they're sourcing different parts of the meat
from different companies, from different countries,
and, uh, mixing it all together
to get the content they're looking for.
[narrator] Brazil is also the home
to great environmental and social initiatives.
It has the largest Meatless Mondays campaign in the world,
and recently the city of Sao Paolo
implemented Meatless Mondays
in all public schools in the region.
[narrator] When it comes to the Amazon forest fires,
one indirect victim is rarely mentioned.
Every year over 50 million farm animals are raised
and killed for meat production in Brazil alone.
A fact that not only results in deforestation,
water pollution, and emission of greenhouse gases,
but also results in the loss of millions of animals' lives.
[narrator] It's not only the Amazon forest that's burning.
Australia, California, Indonesia, Russia, Congo,
and several other parts of the world
are experiencing the most destructive
and devastating fires in decades.
Many of these fires are exacerbated by global warming.
The Amazon fires in particular
are part of a complex problem involving politics,
big business, and prolific corruption.
The political landscape is complicated.
The agro industry is very powerful,
and challenging these dominant forces
can be dangerous and difficult.
There is certainly a great deal of work to be done,
and there are many brave people fighting in the trenches
to change these systems.
But fortunately for you and I,
we have the power to create positive change
for the Amazon forest.
Each of us as individuals
is empowered to protect the Amazon,
and that power lies at the end of our knives and forks,
because we can make choices
when it comes to the food we eat.
By reducing or eliminating
the consumption of meat in our diets,
not only are we helping to prevent climate change,
but we are also protecting the Amazon forest
for present and future generations to come.
It's a frightening time, frankly, uh,
but I think that people can change and when change happens,
it generally happens pretty quickly,
and I think we're reaching a turning point,
and we're really hoping, and we're banking on the fact
that now that things have gotten to this point,
people are going to change their behaviors
and we're going to be able to turn things around.
There's this interesting fallacy in philosophy,
it's called "the is-ought fallacy,"
and what it basically means is to justify something
that you're doing because it's been done is wrong, and we can see that very easily.
Like, so, on one hand, people look at animal agriculture,
and they say, "Well, people have always eaten meat."
And I would say, "Yeah, but,
like, women used to not be allowed to vote."
We can very clearly see how logically, ethically that's completely wrong.
We used to be able to smoke on airplanes.
We keep making progress and progress involves
rejecting a past that we now deem to be unethical and wrong,
and the next thing we have to do
is reject the use of animals for food.
For the animals, for us,
and for this only home that we have.
In our clinic, when people learn to change their diets,
they're replacing the meat with healthier foods,
their health rebounds.
It's amazing to see.
Their lives are changed.
The earth is the same way,
that when we change our eating habits,
globally, the environment can rebound,
the forests can regrow.
We don't have to wait, we can do that now.
I say let's put it to work.
["Mere Anarchy" by Moby]
♪ Caution of the world you said was over ♪
♪ Caution where we were
♪ Oh
♪ Caution of the world you said was over ♪
♪ Caution where we were
♪ Oh
♪ Caution cities
♪ Razed by no one
♪ Caution waits but never find hope ♪
♪ Caution lifts we did this wrong ♪
♪ Caution has the way and I don't feel this anymore ♪
♪ Caution of the world he said was over ♪
♪ Caution where we were
♪ Oh