The Naturale Yogi

I recently watched the Netflix Documentary, David Attenborough A Life on Our Planet and it documents how he saw life on earth from when he was a child, through his career as a broadcaster and now at the age of 93. He made the movie as his witness statement on the current destruction of our planet earth, how the wilderness has disappeared and all its negatives effects on a livable planet for humans. The things that he saw when he was a young boy in the 1930’s and the drastic transformation that has happened through the 1990’s and now in 2020 has left him speechless at one point. You could see how devastated he is that the things he once saw as a young man is now gone. He saw first hand the destruction that humans caused to the planet just in his lifetime. The huge increase in population from 2 billion people to a now whopping 7.8 billion and counting contributes to the overall destruction of the planet because the human population now needs to get more precious resource from the limited planet. In contrast to this statement, I also learned from watching two other documentaries that there are a lot of ignorant people who either believe a liar who tells them that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, this guy needs to be in jail to be honest, or think that the Earth is flat! It’s one thing to have your own beliefs about certain things but another to ignore the facts and the science about global warming and all the negative effects of modern human activity in 2020. This is just irresponsible and will lead to the extinction of humans.

At first I felt devastated about these facts and about the prediction that humans would not be able to survive on planet Earth if all these changes were to happen slowly year after year and finally have the earth uninhabitable to humans in the year 2100 which is only one generation from today. Children born during this time when we are fighting a global pandemic would be 80 years old in the year 2100 and to think that those same beings who are able to survive this pandemic would just be extinct because the planet would not be able to sustain that particular specie, the human specie, is horrifying. The good news is that by the end of the movie he offered a glimmer of hope for us, because there is hope that humans will also be able to turn this around. Some of the things that were presented was about how renewable energy would provide 60% of the world’s energy requirement and if we really wanted to it’s possible that renewable energy would be the only source of energy. Another solution was vertical farming and other sustainable farming practices that would allow a sustainable crop plant and harvest cycle that would use less land so that the horizontal landscape would be left alone and allowed to heal naturally. The last solution was sustainable eating by eating a largely plant-based diet that would enable the animals to live as naturally as possible and to lessen all the harmful emissions that commercial animal farming is producing (cows fart and excrete so much methane, a greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere thus trapping the carbon dioxide).

That last idea made so much sense to me because when I started checking my daily macros in April I realized that I don’t have to eat too much of anything. A slice of bread is enough for a meal together with 32 grams of almond butter and 1 piece of banana. I don’t have to eat so many food to be able to survive and be healthy. This is why eating for fat-loss if you’re overweight or eating for maintenance if you’re at your ideal weight can help is restoring the planet to its natural healthy setting. The fast food, buffet, or generally huge Western serving sized meals being eaten by people contribute to over all decline in human health and also causes the decline in the health of the planet. If people just ate enough for day to day survival then there will surely be a decline is global food requirement so food prices would adjust and the truly hungry people would be able to afford proper nutritious food. Farms would also be forced to produce food at a reasonable price that everyone can afford. In a sense being a minimalist when it comes to consumption, even food consumption, can help in preventing the bleak future of the year 2100. If we all consumed mindfully and respect every single resource as the precious jewels that they are we may end up with a happier, greener, and healthier planet where both the wilderness and humans survive and live together in a symbiotic harmonious relationship. Now that’s a good future these COVID-19 babies could look forward to!