Surely meat eaters have their reasons for choosing to eat animals—most humans do it—but how often do meat-eaters consider the number of animals they’re expected to eat in a lifetime? It’s a startling number: 7,000.

According to the Vegetarian Calculator, an online tool that breaks down your burgers into some visceral stats, those 7,000 animals roughly calculate to 11 cows, 27 pigs, 2,400 chickens, 80 turkeys, 30 sheep, and 4,500 fish—per person. The tool bases meat consumption on USDA data from 2008, which found the average American ate approximately three hamburgers a week.

When we talk about eating animals, we most often refer to them by their ready-to-be-eaten names: filets, steaks, chops, cutlets, nuggets, burgers. While meat eaters defend their actions for any number of reasons—from taste to (perceived) protein—only a small few of them have actually taken to killing and dismembering their dinner.

That act of hunting, killing, and processing an animal before eating it, though, which is still practiced in some tribal communities around the world, connects eater to eaten in important ways we’ve lost in modern culture. There’s respect, for one. The entire animal is used and honored. And a wild-caught animal isn’t forced to live a horrific life surrounded by cement and steel and the echoes of her suffering neighbors. But most cultures, with the exception of tribes like the Inuit, supplement their predominantly plant-based diet with meat, rather than make it the center of their diet. They eat meat when plant sources run dry. They smoke, dry, and cure it for long journeys. They don’t microwave Hot Pockets or round up spare change to buy a .99 cheeseburger.

Eating meat and any animal products for that matter (eggs, dairy, gelatin, etc.), is also a big Debbie Downer for the planet. We apply the same irreverence to the consequences of what we’re eating as to who we’re eating in the first place.  The Vegetarian Calculator tallies up your CO2 as well as the number of animals eaten, and that corresponds to a number of studies that have found raising livestock to be severely problematic in reducing carbon emissions. The impact of climate change directly affects humans — even taking the lives of people like those ravaged by recent hurricanes. The world’s climate crises can be directly linked to livestock production. It’s also predicted to lead to food shortages, nutrient-deficient crops, and the spread of numerous diseases, all which will likely take the lives of countless individuals.

Eating animals an inefficient way of eating when you measure calories in (raising the animal) versus calories out (the steak on your plate), regardless of our feelings about the inherent rights to the animal being eaten; it’s reckless for our friends, family, and future generations.

But that’s the way the vast majority of humans today consume all of their food, especially meat. We merely drop meat into shopping carts or cue up in burger joint lines oblivious or willfully ignorant of where that burger came from, and what consequences it has for others. If that’s not murder, then what exactly does meat-eating amount to?

Of course, it doesn’t have to be that way. Strides in technology from meaty plant-based foods to food tech “growing” meat without the animal attached to it, are poised to solve a lot of problems. From providing healthier and cleaner protein sources that are better for the planet to that gnawing ethical dilemma. Does eating meat make you a murderer? With these advances, it looks like it doesn’t have to.

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When we swapped out the term “global warming” for “climate change,” it was in an effort to be more precise with what exactly was happening with the planet. The same can’t be said for the USDA’s new directive to scrap mention of climate change in favor of “weather extremes.”

This new tendency, uncovered by The Guardian via a series of staff emails at the National Resources Conservation Service, is a clear departure from (correctly) placing blame on humans and the agriculture industry for changes in the world’s climate.

It all began in January, when Jimmy Bramblett, deputy chief for programs at the NRCS, wrote in an email to senior employees, “It has become clear one of the previous administration’s priority is not consistent with that of the incoming administration. Namely, that priority is climate change. Please visit with your staff and make them aware of this shift in perspective within the executive branch.”

Just a few weeks after, in mid-February, Bianca Moebius-Clune, director of soil health, listed several terms to be avoided in an email: not only was “climate change” to be replaced by “weather extremes,” but “climate change adaption” was to be swapped out for “resilience to weather extremes” and “reduce greenhouse gases” changed to “build soil organic matter, increase nutrient use efficiency.”

Not everyone was happy about the change. One NRCS employee wrote in a July 5 email that they would “prefer to keep the language as is” to maintain the “scientific integrity of the work,” and the NRDC, reporting on these changes, noted that the new euphemisms forced scientists to “lose any reference to a changing climate, greenhouse gases, and carbon pollution (and heat, it appears) and substitute them with fuzzy language that doesn’t convey the urgency of a global environmental, health, and social threat, nor agriculture’s role in it.”

Senators were also reasonably upset about the change, including Michigan Senator Debbie Stabelow, ranking Democrat on the Senate Agriculture Committee.

“Censoring the agency’s scientists and natural resource professionals as they try to communicate these risks and help producers adapt to a changing climate does a great disservice to the men and women who grow the food, fuel, and fiber that drive our economy, not to mention the agency’s civil servants themselves,” Stabenow wrote to Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. “This censorship makes the United States less competitive, less food secure, and puts our rural families and their communities at risk.”

Reports of these changes with regard to language concerning climate change drew immediate repudiation from the USDA. Spokesman Tim Murtaugh denied the existence of such a directive, and for now, the NRCS website confirms this, retaining several mentions of climate change.

But this is only the latest way in which governmental talk of climate change has been dumbed down. Mentions of the dangers of climate change have been removed from government websites including those of the White House, the Department of the Interior, and the EPA. The government also announced in June that it would be withdrawing from the Paris agreement, due to the fact that the climate accord, which has been ratified by 159 parties around the world, is a “bad deal” for the United States.

Whatever we call it, climate change is a reality, as a recently leaked federal report drafted by scientists from 13 federal agencies confirms. The report, run by the New York Times earlier this month, places human activity at the center of these environmental issues, noting that the average temperatures in the United States have risen rapidly and drastically over the past 40 years to such an extent that even if changes are made now, the damage is irreversible.

“It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited,” reports the Times.

“It’s a fraught situation,” says Michael Oppenheimer, a professor of geoscience and international affairs at Princeton University who was not involved in the study. “This is the first case in which an analysis of climate change of this scope has come up in the Trump administration, and scientists will be watching very carefully to see how they handle it.”

Of course, to handle it, we need to be able to talk about it. This is the impetus behind the suit of several government agencies, including the EPA, by the Center for Biological Diversity, in order to force them to release information on the “censoring” of climate change verbiage. According to Center open government attorney Meg Townsend, these modifications are tantamount to “active censorship of science” and “appalling and dangerous for America and the greater global community.”

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Danish members of parliament from both the Alternative and Red-Green Alliance parties are on a mission to highlight the environmental issues with livestock production: they’re going vegan for 22 days.

It turns out not all politicians on the world stage are bloated ketchup-on-steak egomaniacs. Some are pragmatic and willing to self-sacrifice in order to make the world a (hopefully) better place. (Not that going vegan is any kind of sacrifice.)

Unlike the climate deniers in office in the U.S., Danish politicians are fully aware of the impact of a warming planet, and the many factors contributing to its condition, namely our aggressive animal production. Around the world, more than 56 billion animals are raised for food every year — not including fish and seafood. That’s nearly ten times the amount of humans on the planet, and most certainly an industry impacting our climate.

“Western food production has an enormous climate footprint,” Uffe Elbæk, Alternative party leader, said in a statement. “Political action is needed, and I find it important that we, as politicians, take the first steps and begin to ‘walk the talk.’”

Denmark isn’t historically known for a plant-based diet – or even for that many plant-based meals in general, save for a few cabbage dishes. It’s got a rich history of eating animals (pork, beef, and liver are some of its signature foods). But as a progressive country working toward clean energy and reduced greenhouse gas emissions, the Danish Council of Ethics has been emphasizing plant-based foods as an easy, effective, and healthy way to curb the country’s impact on the climate.

“We need to take action on both a personal and political level in order to address the serious issues of climate change,” says Red-Green Alliance’s environmental secretary, Maria Gjerding.

“Going vegan for 22 days is not going the save the world in itself, but it’s a great opportunity to put focus on Western consumption of animal products and the environmental and animal welfare problems it causes.”

Neighboring countries Netherlands, Sweden, and Germany all have updated dietary guidelines promoting more plants, and the German Ministry of Environment has banned meat from being served at official state events.

If the 22 days plant-based program sounds familiar, you may remember Beyoncé did a similar challenge (and then went on to fund the 22 Days meal delivery program).

“Ditching animal products is a great way to fight climate change,” says Mercy for Animals’ Joe Loria. “In fact, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, carbon dioxide emissions from raising farmed animals make up about 15 percent of global human-induced emissions, with beef and milk production as the leading culprits.”

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There are more than 65,000 species of trees on Earth, according to the first database in history to catalog all of the world’s trees. But that number is on the decline, with nearly 10,000 species of trees–about 15 percent– facing extinction.

Working with data from 500 botanical organizations around the world, the Botanical Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) in London compiled the comprehensive list. The research appears in the recent issue of the Journal of Sustainable Forestry.

“BGCI’s main reason for publishing the list is to provide a tool for people trying to conserve rare and threatened tree species,” the organization said in a statement.

And the database appears to do just that; the BGCI says that through the data, researchers were able to see the damage to tree species caused primarily by deforestation and global warming. Specifically, 300 species of trees are considered critically endangered, with 50 or fewer trees of each of the species remaining, the report noted.

Karomia gigas, a tree species found in a remote part of Tanzania, is severely close to extinction, notes BBC. “At the end of 2016, a team of scientists found a single population of just six trees.”

The report identified the highest percentage of tree species as occurring in South America, with more than 8,000 different species found in the lush tropical Amazon rainforest region in Brazil. Colombia came in second with more than 5,700 species.

The region with the lowest number of tree species is the Nearctic region, which includes much of North America.

“Getting location information, such as which countries do these trees occur in, gives us key information for conservation purposes,” BGCI secretary general Dr. Paul Smith told the BBC. “That is hugely useful for us in prioritizing which ones we need to do conservation action on and which ones we need to do assessments to find out what their status is.”

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Talking Elmo. Blocks. Puzzles. Another “Frozen” doll…Western kids can’t seem to live without the mountain of cheap toys, and it’s a habit killing millions of people by way of pollution-related deaths every year, says a new study.

According to the study published in the journal Nature earlier this week, nearly 3.5 million people die from air pollution-related illnesses every year, “and about 22% of these deaths are associated with goods and services that were produced in one region for consumption in another,” reports the Guardian. Those other regions are predominantly the U.S. and Western Europe.

The researchers noted that emissions are spreading far beyond the local industrial areas where the cheap toys, clothes, and electronics are produced, often affecting other countries including those thousands of miles away because of global air currents moving the toxic air around the globe.

“About 12% (411,100) of early deaths globally were related to air pollutants emitted in a different region of the world,” notes the Guardian.

The research team looked at 13 regions where factories and other industries dominate their exports, as well as data from 228 countries on air quality and deaths associated with pollution. They noted that fine particulate matter pollution accounted for more than 90 percent of pollution-related deaths, which includes “raising the number of deaths from heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and asthma,” says the Guardian.

“The tiny particles can trigger asthma attacks in the lungs and can cross from the air sacs in the lung into the bloodstream, where they can cause inflammation, alter the way blood clots, and make blood vessels more permeable. Particulates have also been shown to migrate into other tissues, such as the liver, kidneys and brain, although it is less clear what the health consequences are in these organs, and the effects also depend on the chemical makeup of the particulates.”

Not surprising, emissions originating in China, which produces an overwhelming number of toys sold in the U.S., caused twice as many pollution-related deaths than any other industrial region—as many as 64,800 worldwide, with 3,000 of those occurring in the U.S. and western Europe. China’s pollution output is followed by India, and the rest of Asia.

“If the cost of imported products is lower because of less stringent air pollution controls in the regions where they are produced,” the study authors wrote, “then the consumer savings may come at the expense of lives lost elsewhere.”

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Climate change is a major bummer. Already, the warming planet is wreaking havoc around the world in the form of natural disasters, environmental contamination, ocean acidification and, oh yeah, almost zero fresh water for us to drink or bathe in. Plus, the thought of a planet without polar bears, as terrifying as they are, is enough to make anyone with a heart (not you, Donald Trump!) rather melancholy, if not downright weepy.

Even leading climate scientists and experts are struggling with depression over this looming doom, as Grist recently reported. The data alone are staggering enough to make anyone feel hopeless about all the human-inflicted damage to the planet; and the fact that, despite the mounting scientific evidence, there’s still so much resistance and denial about climate change around the world, also takes a pretty hefty toll on researchers and those among us who understand the gravity of the situation.

But the fun doesn’t stop there.

Scientists say our moods are more tied to the environment than we may realize. “We’ve totally misunderstood our connection to the natural world,” Ashlee Cunsolo Willox, a Canada Research Chair at Cape Breton University told The Tyee. Cunsolo is looking at how rising global temperatures affect the mental well-being of Canada’s Inuit: “Very few people are going to be untouched,” she says. Other studies point to the benefits nature has in boosting our moods, and with climate change threatening to wipe out many of our favorite nature spots, it’s no surprise this will have lasting effects on our psyche.

“Our psyches may in fact remain deeply vulnerable to environmental change,” Geoff Dembicki wrote in The Tyee. “After Hurricane Katrina, for instance, Harvard researchers found the rate of ‘serious mental illness’ among survivors to be double that of the general population.”

If a warming planet makes us depressed, and climate scientists become too depressed to do anything about it, this doesn’t bode well for the future of humanity. “Look to Australia, where 25 percent of kids ‘honestly believe [the world] will come to an end before they get older,'” reports Dembicki.

While the world is not likely to come to an end anytime soon, those of us who call it home (including Donald Trump and fierce polar bears), might soon find ourselves reconciling with a stark new set of nature-compromised circumstances. It ain’t gonna be pretty, the experts warn, and the slow build-up means increasing cases of depression along the way to what could be the total collapse of humankind. Pass the Prozac. The good news, however—if there really is any—is that we may be so busy dealing with climate change-inflicted natural disasters that we may not have enough time to lay around on the couch feeling blue. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.

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One of the biggest hindrances to staving off global climate change is getting the world’s biggest emitters to agree to take action. China is the world’s second biggest emitter due to its dependance on dirty coal and the astonishing double digit industrial growth that the nation has experienced in the past three decades. But a new report shows that China’s greenhouse gas emissions may be tapering off much sooner than suspected.

We hardly ever get any good news when it comes to global climate change but a new report from the London School of Economics found that China may be headed in a positive direction. Due to a reduced dependence on coal and increasing use of natural gas and clean energy, China’s greenhouse gas emissions will level off five years earlier than first thought, according to a report.

According to the report:

[C]oal consumption fell in 2014, and fell further in the first quarter of 2015. Analysing trends in the key emitting sectors, we conclude that China’s GHG emissions are unlikely to peak as late as 2030 — the upper limit set by President Xi Jinping in November 2014 — and are much more likely to peak by 2025. They could peak even earlier than that. With a comprehensive approach to reform, they could also fall rapidly post-peak. China’s transformation has profound implications for the global economy, and greatly increases the prospects for keeping global GHG emissions within relatively safe limits.

This means that temperature increases would average 2 degrees globally, which is still within safe limits and avoids the most damaging impacts of global climate change.

“Whether the world can get onto that pathway in the decade or more after 2020 depends in significant part on China’s ability to reduce its emissions at a rapid rate, post-peak,” write Nicholas Stern and Fergus Green, the authors of the new LES report, reported on Grist. Stern was also the author of the U.K.’s landmark “Stern Review” on climate economics.

China’s coal consumption grew by nearly 10 percent a year between 2000 to 2010, but last year it was reduced by 3 percent, which is a major step in the right direction in terms of greenhouse gas emissions. But the news is not all good because while China is filling in some gaps with clean energy, it is also increasingly dependent on natural gas. At the same time, China’s natural gas use will increase by 5-10 percent in the coming years. What’s more, oil consumption in the transportation sector is still on the rise.

Additionally, according to the report, China should take other steps to taper off its emissions including planning more compact, high density cities with more public transportation and reduced use of automobiles as well as phasing out coal-fired power plants completely in the coming years. But nonetheless, this is some good news in the face of a warming planet.

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This month carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere surpassed 400 parts per million globally for the first time since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) started tracking it.

Concentrations are measured at 40 sites globally including two Arctic sites and a site in Hawaii.

“It was only a matter of time that we would average 400 parts per million globally,” Pieter Tans of NOAA’s Global Greenhouse Gas Reference Network said in a news release, reported by IFL Science. “This marks the fact that humans burning fossil fuels have caused global carbon dioxide concentrations to rise more than 120 parts per million since pre-industrial times.” Half of that rise came about after 1980.

The last time carbon dioxide levels were this high, humans had not even evolved yet, so we’re not quite sure what this means for the human race. But it’s no good.

According to IFL Science:

[G]lobal concentrations are expected to stay above 400 ppm through May: While decaying plant matter and soil microbes give off CO2 all year long, a dormant period in plant growth means respiration of CO2 is heightened during these months. Levels drop as plants start to bloom late in the spring and summertime, since CO2 is used during photosynthesis.

Carbon dioxide is emitted mostly by humans, who account for 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Though the gas is naturally present on Earth, human activities are adding carbon to the atmosphere as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels for electricity, transportation, and industrial processes. Prior to the industrial revolution, the carbon cycle was balanced, that means that it was constantly being emitted and absorbed by the atmosphere, but fossil fuel combustion has led to more carbon that can be safely absorbed. That’s why levels are on the rise. It’s a process that’s difficult to turn around, but it can be done.

“Elimination of about 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions would essentially stop the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” says James Butler of NOAA’s Global Monitoring Division. “But concentrations of carbon dioxide would not start decreasing until even further reductions are made and then it would only do so slowly.”

If carbon dioxide levels continue to rise the atmosphere will continue to warm because greenhouse gas emissions block heat in the atmosphere from escaping. Just to give you an idea, humans have increased carbon dioxide concentrations by one-third since the industrial revolution. That’s a huge number. If you’re wondering the easiest way that we as a society can reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are warming our atmosphere, stop the combustion of fossil fuels like crude, coal, and natural gas. Additionally, stop eating the animal products which come from livestock that produce methane. It’s no easy feat, but when you consider the alternative, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced and rapidly.

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Traditional medicinal plants have been used for centuries to treat local communities. From herbal and tribal medicine to the Science of Ayuveda, nearly 80 percent of the world depends on medicinal plants. And even if you think it’s some sort of pseudo science, understand that pharmaceutical drugs use these plants as direct ingredients and you couldn’t have one without the other. At the same time, an undiscovered plant could also hold the key to curing a deadly disease like AIDS or cancer. But just like our rainforests, oceans, and animals are all vulnerable to a changing climate, so too are the medicinal plants that we depend for healthcare.

“Of the 7.2 billion people who live on Earth now, about 5 billion of them don’t go to the local Walgreens to get their prescriptions filled,” Lewis Ziska, a U.S. Department of Agriculture plant physiologist specializing in plants’ response to global warming said to The Daily Climate. “Rising CO2 levels and climate change may have a huge impact on native peoples’ ability to provide for their own healthcare.”

How does global warming impact these medicinal plants? Well, for starters, as the planet warms, many of these so-called weeds start to move north. This means that they don’t grow in the areas that needed them the most. Plus, rising carbon levels may actually change the plant chemistry, making them less effective in the long run, and that could have devastating effects on the communities that rely on them.

One Indian study looked at the impact of climate change on medicinal plants used for Ayurveda. According to the study, the best herbs must be collected from a certain region of the Himalayas, as they are considered the most potent. In fact, Ayurvedic text names 351 Ayurvedic formulations and 175 pharmaceutical drugs that are sourced from one region. These areas are located at high regions in the Himalayas.

According to the study:

Medicinal plants are highly valuable to human livelihood and the medicinal plant wealth of India is well recognised. Studies on possible effects of climate change on medicinal plants are particularly significant due to their value within traditional systems of medicine and as economically useful plants. There is evidence that climate change is causing noticeable effects on life cycles and distribution of the plant species.

Small pockets of vulnerable land may be home to large portions of our medicinal plants and once they disappear, we’re in real trouble. Not to mention, that they may also hold the key to diseases that have yet to be cured. What if a vaccine for a chronic killer is hidden in a region that falls victim to deforestation? Or maybe it ceases to exist because it’s no longer protected by a shield of ice caps or snow. What a shame it would be if we never found that long awaited cure because the plant no longer existed as a result of our warming planet.

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Habitat loss, poaching and global warming are spelling doom for creatures all across the globe.

Imagine telling your children tales of great beasts that once roamed the earth. Big, fantastic looking creatures with incredible features beyond belief. No, you wouldn’t necessarily be talking about dinosaurs. You could be describing elephants, rhinos, hippos and gorillas—large herbivores facing extinction.

“The situation is so dire,” reports the Washington Post, that it threatens an “empty landscape” in some ecosystems “across much of the planet Earth.” According to a new report, 60 percent of these massive creatures are facing extinction.

But unlike the dinosaurs (who most scientists believe were wiped out by a massive meteoroid), large herbivores face demise as a result of something much less random: humans.

“Growing human populations, unsustainable hunting, high densities of livestock, and habitat loss have devastating consequences for large, long-lived, slow-breeding, and, therefore, vulnerable herbivore species,” reads “Collapse of the world’s largest herbivores” in Science Advances, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

We know the culprits, even if we’ve never set foot in Africa, where most of these creatures reside: poaching, habitat loss and environmental degradation. According to the Post, the animals have only about 19 percent of their historical ranges left to roam on, with the elephant, hippopotamus and black rhinoceros “now living on ‘tiny fractions’ of their previous empires.”

“Between 2002 and 2011 alone, the number of forest elephants in central Africa declined by 62 percent. Some 100,000 African elephants were poached between 2010 and 2012. And the western black rhinoceros in Africa was declared extinct in 2011,” reports the Post.

“This slaughter is driven by the high retail price of rhinoceros horn, which exceeds, per unit weight, that of gold, diamonds, or cocaine,” according to the study.

According to the researchers, changes are happening so rapidly that much of the world’s ecological landscape will be virtually unrecognizable in the next several years, “resulting in enormous ecological and social costs.”

And if you think the loss just means a safari visit without elephants or hippos in sight, you’d be wrong. These large herbivores aren’t just wildlife porn, they actually play crucial roles in their ecosystems, according to the Post, “expanding grasslands for plant species, dispersing seeds in manure, and, in the ultimate sacrifice, providing food for predators.”

So, what can you do? The researchers say we’re all tasked with saving these animals, particularly those among us who can afford to allocate funds to the cause: “The world’s wealthier populations will need to provide the resources essential for ensuring the preservation of our global natural heritage of large herbivores. A sense of justice and development is essential to ensure that local populations can benefit fairly from large herbivore protection and thereby have a vested interest in it.”

It’s either that, or we learn to tell our grandchildren the unbelievable tales of gorillas, elephants and other herbivorous creatures that used to call earth home, once upon a time.

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