controversy here about it. american rivers was engaged in that issue through our staff based here in colorado to make sure that the process going through the federal energy regulatory commission was not circumvented. to make sure that the proper reviews took place. it derstanding is that -- was clearly more than just one person who was opposed to this project. >> thank you. >> my point is there are plenty of ways to use the rivers that don't denigrate them at all. on the colombian river in washington where they built a series of dams, i think 30 ars ago, they were looking forward to selling electricity to the western grid, but dams are being taken out as i

understand it. is that right in the columbia river are they taking dams out? >> funny you should bring that up because i cut my teeth as larbgworging on whoops litigation and it actually involved the construction of five nuclear plants in the columbia river basin. the dams were built during the depression in the 1930's. while they certainly have done an amazing job in bringing cheap and abundant electricity to the northwest and been a real engine for economic development there, they've also done tremendous damage to the salmon runs which are pretty important in that part of the world, too. so nobody is proposing taking out all of the dams but there certainly has been a lot of discussion about taking out the four lower snake river dams which is particularly damaging to salmon that go up into idaho. >> we're getting these messages. thank you very much to both of you. thank you for your questions. i think that we saw this from

local issues to global issues, water certainly is top of the agenda. thank you very much. thank you. [ applause] >> another discussion from the american renewable energy summit focuses on the environmental impacts of large scale farming. from aspen, colorado this is half an hour. >> hi everybody. i'm -- actually we have decided to shift and not do a panel. we don't have enough time in 30 minutes for discussions so i'll make a little bit of a presentation. let me see if i can get this here. yep. there we go. i'm going to give a bit of a presentation on how do we -- how can we transform our food system to one that can truly nourish 9 billion people by 2050 while mitigating and adapting to climate change and restoring the world's ecosystem. and that's going to be the focus of my presentation.

and then these two folks that are here with me, we have kate mcbride, who has a local farm here. she is going to speak to us a little bit about the beneficial role of live stock in providing nutrition for local communities. and we also have brook le van here from sustainable settings to talk about some of the exciting things happening here on the farms. out with a presentation and then we'll shift. we would like to discuss with you all these issues a lot more especially this role of live stock in sustainability. i think we saw in that trailer some of the major problems that we're dealing with and then a lot of people see live stock as part of the solution to climate change. that is a really healthy discussion. we'd like to invite you all to have it with us over lunch. we're not going to get into the debate too much during this panel. we're not going to have a panel. so can we transform our food system? can we solve for this food, water, and climate nexus with

these intersecting issues? i believe we can but we have to talk about something that makes us all very uncomfortable. that is meat. so we're in a consumption crisis right? i don't want to villainize the animals themselves and say they're inherently evil as many maybe who advocate for plant based diets might share that perspective. they certainly play an integrated role in lots of farming systems that have been really critical to development of our agriculture over time. but we are in a consumption crisis at this point where live stock are a core driver of climate change, deforestation, fresh water and ocean water pollution, biodiversity laws causing water stress and a real threat to food security. to put this in perspective we are raising 70 billion land based animals a year that have a tremendous environmental cost. while we hear a lot about cattle which are a high carbon emitter i'd like to just point

out this scale of chicken, pig, and poultry production because those animals are eating an enormous amount of grain. they take and enormous amount of land and produce an enormous amount of waste. about 70 billion animals a year that we're raising and slaughtering are -- the demand is actually skyrocketing. by 2050 we're trying to figure out right now how to produce twice the number of animals for consumption. this is actually driven by population growth but more by rising affluence. so we wouldn't have a problem with feeding 9 billion people if everybody ate a little bit less meat and less resource intense i ever food. but because the desire of all of these countries that are onderfully joining us with rising affluence, they're wanting to have the same choices that we have to eat luxurious, high resource intensive food. so if we want to provide that, right now, the assumption is everyone should have the right to eat these resource intensive foods. everyone should have choice.

and so we're ramping up animal food production to give people those choices. the problem is live stock already dominates human land use globally. about 30% of the ice free surface of this earth is covered with live stock or for food we're growing for live stock. they occupy 75% of our agricultural land. we've got about 842 million people that are suffering from hunger and a large percentage of the calories we're growing on the land that could be fed to humans are fed to animals. we heard just about water just to put this in perspective actually got this from the oceanographic institute over here. this is all the water on the earth. that is ocean water, ice water, everything. this is the fresh water available to us and the available drinking water. 70% of the middle dot here is used by agriculture.

and animal foods are way more water intense i ever than plant based foods. 32 times more fresh water to produce one calorie of beef than water. sometimes people say it's six months of six-minute showers is the water it takes to produce one hamburger. that's a lot. i'll get a little more -- there is enormous variability there and i'll get into that a little more in the presentation. but basically already 2.5 billion people already live in areas that are subject to water stress and by 2025 it's going to be half of humanity. it's just really how -- is this really how we want to use our while we're depleting the world's water we're also are theg it. livestock largest polluteers. 404 ocean dead zones that shows the flows of all the nutrients down into the s

ocean. the rate of dead zones have been doubling. it's hard to tell. there are 15,000 feed lots in the u.s. and some of them have animals in them. this is an affluent pool draining the waste. this is in texas near amarillo is from.mother basically the pool is surrounded cow farm. okay kwa forng the it's polluting that's formally forest inow gross sew brazil. this is tend to think

directly caused by cows a lot of grain will feed pigs and chickens from china. are also a major feed.em when it comes to when you have an acre of that land in the rain forest it might have 3,000 or more species living on it and it gets cattle or feed. 30% -- it's not clicking through. diversity. that's not the case and it is the leading cause of climate and e but a major cause

unregulated and ot modeling itering our ecosystems. hear a lot about climate change and it's always a joke actually the process includes sheeps and goats and animals with multiple stomach that's digest the grass emeet this 14.5 number 40% comes from that digestive process. we need to understand the whole system and the story behind this. of tarts with the clearing land of forest and grasslands to roduce the land to graze the animals and the land to grow the field and then there's the production of the treusoxide and the my of the tpurt liesers and the waste left on the grasses of the globally.and all the way through the

transportation. if you see the post farm only 3%.ation is so as much as we talk about want reduce our emissions and eat ocally this is a rolely small percentage of the whole greenhouse gas pie that is from ocal foods or from livestock, sorry. to put this in perspective 14.5% is equivalent to the direct emissions from all of ransportation in the world combined, all boats, trains, planes, cars. that's a lot of emissions, but actually the leading source co2 emissions. nitrousoxide and methane are the leading cause. of it reduces consumption animal source foods. reduce non-co2 emissions

we don't hit our targets. the only way to hit our targets non-co2 both co2 and emissions. an incredible economically efficient opportunity. study here showed that what about took a look at what able to increase roductivity and bio gas and kp cherred those phaeutsdz thaeupb emissions and the only scenario hat enables to read our target cuts is by swapping out a significant amount of our animal ased calories with plant based calories and they modeled the tearian diet.

untouchable and we all have our nutritional ideology es and these that's are divisive. what we need to do is set our ideologies and our aside so that we can actually about this honestly problem. i think we pic that could talk about quite a bit. grass fed beef produces

phaeutsdz thaeupb per gram of world which is why the is ramming and to produce a lot farmed meat. the scale of the production is really scary. emissions this is aqua culture and this some is of the ask meats and see foods then you see how much ignificantly less plant based foods emit. but water is an important issue greenhouse gases and the pigs don't come out so per gram of protein that's 1.5 billion pigs a this is considered a success story. this is called sustainable intense indication. pigs will produce half a

pounds of urine and day.s every don't of the space -- if we're interested in feeding all the people who are joining us on planet we did not feed them all grass fed meat. it's not an option. when he lock at mitigation opportunities and agriculture this is a new report came out in january which modeled all the different po tensions and what came out is number one is shifting

dietary trends. f we can shift our eating patterns it's the greatest potential available to us to agriculture and forestry. witching to a plant based diet half.it in meeting our goals is a huge challenge but there is a lot of for reduced consumption while getting calories to people it. the benefit is to individuals and society in reducing animal sourced foods going to move quickly

through these. but there's problems -- there because of es to it all the enormous subsidies, all dollars and ur tax pock tote keep this machine going and keep meat so cheap we away.lly throw it we throw away a third of the calories that we produce which that happens at the stage.ption it's enormous opportunity and probably one of the biggest in the e that's we have 21st century. and not just about individual diet. here's a whole spectrum of sew sew sitel level.

ill gates lunched future of foods. so there is an enormous opportunity. food is ripe for disruption so. this isn't omething left outside the ndustry and something we can invite industry into. and reducing meat consumption globally is an untapped pportunity for climate mitigation and choosing to eat mostly plants is an enormous way for individuals to make a difference. friends be devoted to who are doing integratable sustainable stems. very, very s important very, but we

need to look at solutions on a global scale. that's a little i wantede context that to set and now i'd like to shift with someone share who has a video to share with us as some of the solutions that e's enacting right here in our local community. applause] the time keeper? planet animals on the for a reason. we just don't know how to use

work with them very well nd we lost touch with who they are and who we are and how they work in the system. is meat bad? are cows bad? bad? gs look what we do with them. efore 1945 or so the world was organic. covered with as small scale farms but istributed network of roduction and distribution and consumption. as soon as we started shipping things all over the planet from cheapest source, we started to mess with the knew trent cycle that keeps us alive. video.a little

slides. going to show my can you cue up that little short. minute.out a we've been -- we got a little here. t 35 miles from you can hear me okay? this go longer? bent.ck is being we've got about a little gem, 240 acres south of here obviously and outside and it's really only 90 irrigated. nd about 150 wild which is an important part of it too. working at we have a

and and a learning center we are building soil and we are we are grass and in ting an island of health tocks sins. we're doing isgs trying to listen to the animals to the microkroebs to the plants and opening up oregon of as an an eption and create environment or an arena for them do best.t they need to

so, let's run this video it's only a minute. nozzlehead by the way. i'm spraying. if you drive by our place, we're spraying. we're spraying this stuff. compost and this is at 1800 magnification. the are the farmers, cultivator cultivators. these are what we need to protect. i don't have the long scientific names for these things like she i'll find out what they are and i'll make t-shirts for them and they're going to become whale or anda and to fall inse we need

love with. there is life waiting for us to encourage to do the right thing again in a small cale local system of production, distribution and feed the n, we can world. at those. they look like sharks cruising around. you run it again? them.e to see ooking at the whole situation system systemically, there isn't just one issue. gricultural isn't just stainsable. sperplt ,000-year-old but at 7 billion we're stuck with it. so we need to do the do with it. maybe

we need a good pandemic. to talk about that. problem.rt of the pigs and my cows and chickens and mike kroebs and i love all of you and can do it. thanks. applause] >> you can guys all hear me? >> yeah. > i'm kate mcbride and i come different a situation with a different hat. last year i spoke at our day and and ke about my raw dairy why i got into my raw dairy. the reason was my daughter. have a special needs doubt here has lung disease and no life system and suddenly

became all about pro biotics and anti-biotics and enzyme properties and oxygen and now my my heros that 'm humbling sitting on the opposite side of the podium and and ng all of his works various people like courtney white who wrote a book that upon me greatly, hope, and now d changed.is it's all about oxygen, yes, the raw dairy, but also to add to factor carbon. d i'm oxygen and carbon in xide and i find myself the right place i hope. think oh my gosh what should do i. ut then again maybe i should

be. dairyising -- i run a raw lambs.se pigs and ornery bull ve an he becomes part of the meat. to change t can i do the carbon situation? what can i personally do? sell all my cows. that's not going do any good because maybe they'll be they'll die and go back in the ground or they'll be somewhere else. so i started thinking about it. hat seems important to me is it's not carbon is bad, it's where is your carbon. that's how i look at it. grand i'm just a mom that tried to daughter and i found farm, raw dairy dairy farm which is doing my culous things to

daughter. she's no longer in the hospital and not on house arrest. clean food.se well, going back to the cows if seemsll just because that to be a more common scenario, i started thinking about well, am i ind of nutrition giving my daughter. first of all, i had to be clean organically raised animals and i cannot give them my chemicals because daughter can't handle it same with the pigs and sheep. cow.arted looking at beef it gives you about a thousand pounds of meat. you 300,000 ives ounds of my protein in their lifetime. and i think there's two ituations here. one if you look at the big farm, industrial a ms, that's what is causing lot of your statements that come, say, oh, we should reduce in our diet. because most people don't have the opportunity to raise small and have small farms.

of, hey, if you put hay on the field and it's eaten by a cow and comes out methane gas that's going to be producing the eaten by t as if it's a rabbit as if it's left in the rot.d to i feel that the best process is these farms to small ranches because the small do is they t they cow to viable for the survive and then the milk or the et cetera it's all very clean. of the on't take care animal you can't return the cycle full saoeurbgl. again. start if you don't take care of what the animal is eating that brings us down to the grass. don't take care of the rass, then we're all going to

find ourselves with emissions that are produced by cards. into hing -- it just goes the atmosphere. so if we look at other ways to from the air bon back in the soil, one of the you can come ngs or rabbit eats grasses this is a root shoot ratio. they eat a grass the root, is shorter. all the carbons that comes from they take the carbon ioxide and turn it into liquid carbon and then an animal eats of nd knocks off their part their roots and becomes in the my kroebs and the you return carbon to the soil. deeper into the

ground you sequester it for long carbon storage. but the first way to get there, memory, you can't remember something long term if te-term t go into short memo memory. into the short cycle of of getting carbon back into the soil and get it further then we're starting to help the picture. to i'm being told i need my take home message is i strongly feel if we to other farmers that have done the same thing, not meat, oviding the mete farms you ng small m distribute their poop or manure