Chris Hedges says that watching the following documentary (below, called “Cowspiracy”) convinced him to become a vegan. Apparently his conern for the fate of mankind (no joke) inspired him to make this change, but he adds, “and it’s good for you too.”

Here’s a brief excerpt from the narration of the documentary:

“In 2009 two advisors from the World Bank released an analysis on human-induced greenhouse gases, finding that animal agriculture was responsible not for 18 percent as the U.N. Stated, but was actually 51 percent of all greenhouse gases. 51 percent. Yet all we hear about is burning fossil fuels. This devastating figure is due to clear-cutting rainforest for grazing. Respiration in all the ways that animals produced this makes animal agriculture the number one contributor to human-caused climate change. But not only that, I found out that raising animals for food consumes a third of all the planet’s fresh water, occupies up to 45 percent of the earth’s land, is responsible for up to 91 percent of Amazon destruction, is a leading cause of species extinction, ocean dead zones and habitat destruction.

“Yet the world’s largest environmental groups that are supposed to be saving our world didn’t mention this anywhere. I had to speak with environmental organizations to find out why they weren’t addressing this issue. I sent off dozens of emails, made call after call, spent hours on hold. Days became weeks and weeks became months. And for some reason, no one wanted to talk to me about this. So bizarre. I supported these organizations for so long and now was met with silence. I was, however, able to connect with a handful of environmental authors and advocates who were willing to address this issue.

“I took my old trusty van, Super Blue, out of retirement and hit the road. So my calculations are that without using any gas or oil or fuel ever again from this day forward that we would still exceed our maximum carbon equivalent greenhouse gas emissions (the 565 gigatons by the year 2030) without the electricity sector even or energy sector even factored in, an equation all simply by eating (raising and eating) livestock. If you reduce the amount of methane emissions, the level in the atmosphere goes down fairly quickly, and within decades.

“As opposed to CO2: If you reduce the emissions to the atmosphere you don’t really see a signal in the atmosphere for 100 years or so. The single largest contributor to every known environmental ill known to humankind, deforestation, land use, water scarcity, the destabilization of communities, world hunger … the list doesn’t stop. … free living animals 10 000 years ago made up 99 of the biomass and human beings only made up one percent of the biomass. Today only 10,000 years later – which is really just a fraction of time we human beings and the animals that we own as property– make up 98 percent of the biomass. And Wild free living animals make up only two percent. We basically completely stole the world, the Earth, from free living animals to use for ourselves in our cows and pigs and chickens and factory farms. Fish and the oceans have been even more devastated. Concerned researchers of the loss of species agree that the primary cause of loss of species on our Earth that we’re witnessing is due to over grazing and habitat loss from livestock production on land, and by overfishing. … We’re in the middle of the largest mass extinction of species in 65 million years.

“The rain forest is being cut down at the rate of an acre per second, and the driving force behind all of this is animal agriculture, cutting down the forests to graze animals, and to grow soybeans, genetically engineered soybeans to feed to the cows and pigs and chickens and factory farm fish. 91 percent of the loss of rainforest in the Amazon area thus far to date – 91 percent – that’s been destroyed is due to raising livestock. The leading cause of environmental destruction is animal agriculture.”

WATCH THE FULL DOCUMENTARY ON YOUTUBE, HERE: