ONE MEAL A DAY FOR THE PLANET GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKE STATEMENT OF VALUES AND ACTION

(SEPTEMBER 20, 2019) –– Suzy Amis Cameron’s plant-based initiative, One Meal a Day for the Planet (OMD), enthusiastically joins with millions around the world for the Global Climate Strike on September 20th and 27th. With more than 300 partner organizations worldwide, the week of direct action includes strikes and walkouts designed to pressure world governments to act during the United Nations’ Climate Action Summit in NYC.

“Food––as it’s currently produced by corporate agriculture–– is one of the biggest stressors on our beautiful, imperiled planet. Producing beef, for example, creates 20 times more greenhouse gas emissions and uses nine times more fossil fuels compared to the protein equivalent of beans. Globally, industrial meat and dairy are leading drivers of extinction, water and air pollution and deforestation. It’s time for MAJOR disruption, ” Suzy Amis Cameron says, encouraging climate-friendly food production and consumption.

OMD’s commitment to our living Earth and the Global Climate Strike:

• We dedicate ourselves to supporting people to improve their relationship to food, their bodies and the planet by providing information, how-to’s, community and inspiration about plant-based eating.
• We promise to continue working to expand access to climate-friendly, healthy food for school children across the U.S., with schools, food directors, educators and parents.
• We recommit to our mission of working at the intersection of the environment and food, working towards a regenerative, life-sustaining food system and away from toxic, ruinous, unjust food systems.
• We commit to elevating the issues of food justice and environmental justice, through sharing stories of food heroes, the farmers, chefs and changemakers, scientists and doctors.
• We pledge to seek out and elevate the most credible, sourced and peer-reviewed science and news.
• We pledge to collaborate and elevate partner organizations, conscious businesses, food service professionals and movement leaders.

The Climate Strike, organized by youth leaders, reflects a groundswell of youth and adults around the world beseeching decision makers to take swift action as the climate crisis escalates. Aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, the strike seeks to hold world leaders accountable to their shared vision. An escalating sense of urgency is palpable, after a summer of record heat waves, fires in the Arctic, Central African forests and the Brazilian Amazon, displacing people and killing wildlife, and hurricanes, such as Dorian which devastated the Bahamas.

Meat reduction has multiple environmental benefits, including the power to cut your carbon “foodprint” in half and save water. For example, if everyone in the U.S. ate one plant-based meal a day for a year, it’s the equivalent of taking 27 million cars off the road and saving the same amount of water as ⅙ of a Great Lake.

Join a local Climate Strike near you, and follow @omd4theplanet on September 20th as we cover the event in real time on the ground.

About One Meal a Day for the Planet
OMD is a book and movement to make plant-based eating mainstream as a solution to climate change through encouraging individuals to eat more climate-friendly, plant-based diets. OMD is also about system change and expanding access to plant-based foods at schools, businesses, restaurants and in communities. For more information, visit: omdfortheplanet.com.