#155: Sailesh Rao - A Grandfather’s Pinky Promise to Heal the World
To read more about Sailesh’s promise to his granddaughter, click here
Imagine a world where we can all come together to heal…heal ourselves, heal each other, and heal the planet. I know, it sounds virtually impossible, but it isn’t, and that time is now with the leadership of Sailesh Rao, founder of Climate Healers.
Sailesh Rao is one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and passionate people on the planet.
Dr. Rao is actually one of the brains behind the high-speed internet and high-def communication we enjoy today. But, in 2006, after hearing Al Gore speak of our climate crisis, he switched careers and became deeply immersed, full-time, in solving the environmental crises affecting humanity.
Through his organization, Climate Healers, he invites us all to become V.E.G.A.N. – that is, Vitally Engaged Guardians of Animals and Nature.
Rip with Dr. Sailesh Rao at Plant-Stock
And, here’s something that parents and grandparents can relate to. In 2010, Sailesh made a pinky promise to his granddaughter to do whatever he could to put an end to animal cruelty and to heal the climate – by 2026. But, he can’t do it alone.
He invites all of us to come together and help spread the message that all life is ONE family, and like a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon as a gorgeous butterfly, it’s time for us to also emerge and evolve into something as beautiful – for the sake of our planet.
Episode Resources
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Episode Timestamps
00:00 Rip welcomes Sailesh and he shares his background in tech and how he took on Al Gore
13:45 Why he founded Climate Healers
14:10 The Pinky Promise is Born
26:06 The Four Philosophies of Climate Healers - #1 All Life is One Family
27:17 #2 We don’t hurt members of our family - Non-violence should be routine
30:55 #3 We are built into a game of money
36:02 The False Axiom of Consumerism which says that happiness comes from consuming more and more
37:11 The False Axiom of Supremacism
39:00 #4 It’s time to transform our culture and create a new money game
40:50 A new definition of VEGAN - Vitally Engaged Guardians of Animals and Nature
43:30 Can Sailesh keep his Pinky Promise by 2026?
49:30 We’re in our cocoon moment - the creation of Food Healer Day - November 19th
55:15 The six questions we should ask ourselves to help heal the planet
59:10 Rip takes the Ubuntu pledge
Rip Esselstyn:
Hey, folks, Rip here. Before we get started, I'd love to read a recent review from a podcast listener. The title is Great Plant Food. It's a five-star rating, and the author is Paula E. "I appreciate there's a place that I can buy foods I can trust without question. I feel this is not always possible in today's world. I'm in about my eighth plant-based month, and I'm trying to manage feeding myself as simply and as easily as possible. I trust the Esselstyn family and was so relieved to see Rip offering the food I want. As of this time, I'm buying the big bowl cereals, the broths, the stews, the popcorn, and the pizza crust kits so I can always have something ready, dependable, and safe. Thank you."
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, thank you, Paula and huge continued success on your plant-based journey. To stock up on the best-tasting, nutritious, convenient 100% plant strong foods, be sure to visit plantstrongfoods.com. Now, let's get right to it with Sailesh.
Sailesh Rao:
And I said, "Well, I mean, as engineers, we work on solutions to problems which reverse the problem. We have to address it holistically." So Climate Healers was started to address climate change holistically. How do you reverse climate change? How do you heal the climate? It's a little bit like maintaining your body with Metformin when you have diabetes as opposed to reversing the diabetes.
Rip Esselstyn:
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and welcome to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. The mission at PLANTSTRONG is to further the advancement of all things within the plant-based movement. We advocate for the scientifically proven benefits of plant-based living and envision a world that universally understands, promotes, and prescribes plants as a solution to empowering your health, enhancing your performance, restoring the environment, and becoming better guardians to the animals we share this planet with. We welcome you wherever you are on your plantstrong journey, and I hope that you enjoy the show.
Rip Esselstyn:
I want you to imagine a world where we can all come together to heal. Heal ourselves, heal collectively, and heal the planet. I know it sounds virtually impossible, but it isn't. My friends, that time is now. My guest today, Sailesh Rao, is one of the most intelligent, compassionate, and passionate people on the planet. He is actually one of the brains behind the high speed internet and high def communication that we so enjoy today. But in 2006, he switched careers and became deeply immersed full time in solving the environmental crises affecting humanity. Through his organization, Climate Healers, he invites us to all become the V-E-G-A-N, that is vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature.
Rip Esselstyn:
Now here's something that I know all of you parents and grandparents can relate to. In 2010, Sailesh made a pinky promise to his granddaughter to do whatever he could to put an end to animal cruelty and to heal the climate by 2026. Now, that's fastly approaching, and he can't do it alone. Sailesh invites all of us to come together and help spread the message that all life is one family, and like a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon as a gorgeous butterfly, it's time for us to also emerge and evolve into something as beautiful for the sake of our planet. Please welcome Sailesh Rao, founder of climatehealers.org.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sailesh Rao, I want to welcome you to the PLANTSTRONG podcast. Thank you so much for all of your fantastic work with Climate Healers. I want to talk today about your personal journey and then how it is that you started Climate Healer and what you would like all of us to do in order for you to fulfill your pinky promise to your granddaughter, right, which is absolutely of the most imperative importance. For starters, tell me a little bit about yourself. Were you born in the States, in India, and how did that happen?
Sailesh Rao:
Well, I was born in India, and then I did my undergraduate in India, so I was there until I was 21 years old. And then I came to the US for my graduate studies. I came to Long Island for my master's, and then I did my PhD at Stanford. I was a electrical systems engineer, and so I went through the Information Systems Laboratory at Stanford. I joined be labs, and then I started working on something called the internet at that time. It was always there, it's just that we made it available to the public. So I was working on making it robust. That was the first 20 years after graduation, that's what I was doing.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, you co-founded your... Was it your first company? Silicon Design Experts...
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
In what? 1991.
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
And then that got acquired by Level One in 1996.
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
And then Level One got acquired by Intel in what? 1999 for what? Two billion or something crazy like that?
Sailesh Rao:
$2.2 billion, yeah. It's the largest acquisition that Intel had ever made.
Rip Esselstyn:
Wow. Wow. Were you still a part of Level One or had you said goodbye after that?
Sailesh Rao:
No, no, no, I was part of Level One. Level One bought my company to get capable internet on the motherboard. Okay, that's what they really wanted. And then Level One got bought by Intel because Intel wanted to put it on the motherboard and they wanted to put it on their microprocessors as well.
Rip Esselstyn:
Got it.
Sailesh Rao:
So that was Craig Barrett's vision at that time. He was going to integrate everything into the chip, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
Intel got it on the motherboard in 2003, and it was on every PC, every laptop that went out. It was the right framing, okay, for me to come home one day and watch Al Gore's presentation, because I was disillusioned with what was going on in my technical world. Because it had become very political. It was all about money at that point. And so, anyway, I was disillusioned and I came home one day and I turned on the TV and there was Al Gore talking about climate change. I was so shocked. I told my wife, "If half of what he's saying is true, why the heck am I wasting my time here?"
Rip Esselstyn:
So you already have all the money you need, so now it's like yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Gotcha.
Sailesh Rao:
And she said, "If you think it's that important the problem, why don't you study it? Why don't you work on that?" Because she knew that I was disillusioned in the technical world. Anyway, I quit, and I basically started working on it full time within three months. Because I realized it's far bigger than what Al Gore was saying. Because he was only dealing with the energy as the issue, and in reality, it isn't just energy, it's our entire way of life that needs to change. I wrote to Mr. Gore and I said, "How can I help you?" He sent a letter to me asking me to come and get trained by him. So I got trained by him in November of 2006. I was in the second batch that he trained.
Rip Esselstyn:
Well, let me stop you for a sec. You got to meet Al and get trained by maybe him or some of his people, what was your opinion of Al Gore having met him and all that?
Sailesh Rao:
Well, I mean, I thought he was doing a service to humanity to bring this to our attention. But then during the training, I asked him this question about animal agriculture, and so I asked him... Because we know that there is three times as much CO2 stored on land than in the atmosphere. So the atmosphere has 30% more CO2 than it did 200 years ago. So we are saying that's causing all these problems. And I said, "So then all you have to do is increase the CO2 on land by 10%, and that would bring down the CO2 in the atmosphere and climate change will be solved, right?" So I said, "Can we not do that? I mean, there's so much land that we are using for animal agriculture." That was the gist of my question during his training. He turned to Roy Neil, his chief of staff, and he said, "How did this guy get in here?"
Rip Esselstyn:
What?
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah. I realized that he didn't want to talk about it and that I had to then make a stronger case for my position. So I did that in 2009, I got like 70 of my colleagues to co-sign a letter with me saying that unless we talk about animal agriculture, we are not being true to ourselves. We are not really telling the whole story, because we are going around giving this presentation to people. He has sent back a reply basically saying, "It's not as bad as you think, but I do understand that. I am figuring out how to deal with it, et cetera, et cetera." He wrote a letter. I think the letter is also Glen Merzer's book, Food is Climate."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
Both the letters, the letter that I sent, I mean, with my colleagues, and the letter that he replied, his reply. So then I said, "Okay, maybe he's right and I need to study some more." And I did. Because at that time, Goodland and Anhang had come up with a report saying that animal agriculture is responsible for at least 51% of greenhouse gas emissions.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and that was in 2009, right?
Sailesh Rao:
2009.
Rip Esselstyn:
Was that part of the Livestock's Long Shadow?
Sailesh Rao:
No, it is a Worlwatch Institute had published it.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's right. That's right. Yep.
Sailesh Rao:
So there was a debate between Goodland and Anhang and the UN Food and agriculture Organization scientists. That debate happened in the Animal Feed Science and Technology Journal in 2011 and 2012. At first, the UNFAO scientists argued that Goodland and Anhang were measuring things that were not correct, et cetera. So they had a few points that they brought up. Goodland and Anhang wrote a reply basically refuting line by line everything that the FAO scientist had said and reiterating their numbers. And then the editor asked the FAO scientists, "Would you like to respond to this? Would you like to continue the debate?" They declined to continue the debate. They declined to continue the debate and then they repeated their mistakes in the next report, and they actually cut it down a little bit.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Is that where they cut it back down to 14.5%?
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. That is egregious.
Sailesh Rao:
It's egregious. At that point, I got very upset and I said, "I mean, this is science, right. You can't be manipulating the science." Because as engineers, we are taught to be true to the science, because if you're not true to the science, then whatever you're building is not going to work. You'll be wasting everybody's time by working on things that you know is not going to work.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
I wrote a second letter to Mr. Gore at that point in August of 2012 basically saying, "Look, the debate already happened, which means that animal agriculture is responsible for at least 51% of greenhouse gas emissions, which means that we have to be talking about this. Otherwise, we are wasting everybody's time." This time he didn't even reply to me.
Sailesh Rao:
So I basically walked out of the Climate Reality Project soon after. By that time I had already started Climate Healers in 2007 because I realized that the way Al Gore was presenting it, he was presenting it as a problem. His solutions were all based on preventing the problem from getting much worse. And I said, "I mean, as engineers, we work on solutions to problems which reverse the problem. We have to address it holistically." So Climate Healers was started to address climate change holistically. How do you reverse climate change? How do you heal the climate? It's a little bit like maintaining your body with Metformin when you have diabetes as opposed to reversing the diabetes.
Rip Esselstyn:
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. What year did the pinky promise start with your granddaughter?
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah, what happened was when I went vegan in 2008, I realized that I had been lied to as a child. As a child in my textbooks, they were telling me that you have to eat meat to get protein or dairy. Some animal product you have to eat to get protein, and calcium comes from milk and all that. I realized I'd been lied to. And so, when my granddaughter was born in 2010, I began to see her as my teacher. I wanted her to help me decondition myself, so I resolved that I was going to do whatever she wanted and help her become my teacher.
Sailesh Rao:
Basically, I was not going to tell her anything that would change the way she does things. I would just follow her along. And of course, if she does something that's going to hurt her, I'm going to stop that. That's the only condition I have. Other than that, I was going to do whatever she wanted. And that became a huge learning experience for me, learning from a little child, because I was seeing things through her eyes. And I was seeing all the conditioning that had happened in my life.
Rip Esselstyn:
Can you give me an example of a couple things you learned from her or some of the conditioning?
Sailesh Rao:
Right. For instance, I was reading her a story that's an epic in India. It's a Hindu epic called Ramayana. I had been read that story when I was a child, and so on and so forth. I think my parents were read that when they were children and so on. I was just going through the first chapter and she stopped me and she said, "What's wrong with King Dasaratha?" who's the main character in the epic. I said, "What do you mean what's wrong with him?" She said, "Why is he shooting the deer with an arrow? What's wrong with him? That deer was just drinking water from the river, and he shoots the deer?" I knew that story, and for me, it was normal that a king would shoot a deer with an arrow. And for her it was like absolutely astounding that anyone would even do that. And then she said to me, "Don't ever read stories like this to me." I realized that even our epics have to be changed in a vegan world. Because she has been brought up a vegan pretty much, so for her it was unthinkable that people would do that normally, that they would go around shooting animals with bow and arrow.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. So you made the transition in 2008 to going vegan. Before that, were you vegetarian?
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Were you still eating some meat or no?
Sailesh Rao:
No, no, I was vegetarian. I was brought up a vegetarian, I was raised vegetarian. I did eat meat for a few years when I was in university here in the US, but then I stopped once once I saw how much it was hurting my parents.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Okay, and so your children, they obviously followed your lead and they went vegan as well?
Sailesh Rao:
They did. Yeah, they did in 2014, I think, after watching Conspiracy.
Rip Esselstyn:
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. But then your granddaughter, was she influenced to go vegan by her parents or by you, or a combination of the whole family?
Sailesh Rao:
Combination of the whole family. I would say that her parents basically went along and said, "Okay, let's do that with her because we don't want her to go through this and then reverse it." They were supportive. And of course, she was staying with us for two to three days a week. When she was here, she was obviously vegan. My wife went vegan when Kimaya was born, when our granddaughter was born. In that sense, she has really changed our lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, indeed. Okay, so when did the infamous pinky promise, when was that? What year?
Sailesh Rao:
That was 2016. The way it happened was in 2014, the World Wildlife Fund had issued a Living Planet Report that said that between 1970 and 2010 we wiped out 52% of all wild vertebrates in terms of total weight. 52%. I did a calculation at that point saying if we continue wiping out wild vertebrates at the same rate, and assuming that the rate at which we are killing them is proportional to the size of our economy, okay, that was an assumption I made, and then if you extrapolate that out, it turned out that by 2026 we were on track to hit 100%.
Rip Esselstyn:
So at current rates of decline, by 2026, 100% of wild vertebrates will basically die off.
Sailesh Rao:
Be gone, be gone, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay.
Sailesh Rao:
So it's a functional extinction. I mean, you could keep one or two tigers alive and pretend they're not extinct for another 70 years because the tigers live for 70 years or whatever, but we are just kidding ourselves, right? So functionally we'd be completely extinct by 2026, right, all wild vertebrates. So that was the calculation I made in 2014. I was really shocked. I thought, "My God, if this is really true, why isn't everybody screaming about this? Why isn't it out there?" I thought that maybe my calculations are wrong because I'm basing it on the assumption that it's proportional to the size of the economy. What if that wasn't true, right?
Sailesh Rao:
Now, again, looking back I feel ashamed that I did, that I said I was going to wait till the next report, because that's what I did. Because if you find out that 52% of something is gone, wouldn't you take action right away? I should have taken action right away. Anyway, I waited for two years until the next report came out, because this World Wildlife Fund Living Planet Report comes out every two years. The one in 2016 said that between 1970 and 2012 we wiped out 58% of wild vertebrates. So we are on track. If we just do a linear extrapolation, we are on track to hit 100% by 2026. I had just read that report and I basically confirmed my worst fears. That evening, I was reading a story to Kimaya in bed. It was a Ruby Roth's story, That's Why We Don't Eat Animals.
Sailesh Rao:
Now, one of the things I had promised Kimaya is that I'll never, ever lie to her. And that's based on my discovery that I had been lied to as a child in my textbooks. So I said, "I want Kimaya to have at least one source that will never lie to her no matter what. So if she has any doubts, she can ask me, and I will tell her the truth." After the story, she asked me, "Grandpa, who were the first human beings?" To me, it's a very profound question, who were the first human beings? So I told her, "I'm going to explain to you how evolution works. So imagine that you're standing on the street and you're holding your mother by your hand, and you ask your mother to bring her mother to stand by her side, and so on. So you create a long line of mothers on this side of the street. And on the other side of the street, you ask a chimpanzee to do the same thing with her mother and her grandmother, and so on. By the time these two lines go from Phoenix to Tucson, they would merge because both lines are going to say, "Hey, that's my mama too."
Sailesh Rao:
Immediately she just sat up in bed and she said, "What? Are you telling me that animals are my family?" I had never put it together like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. Right. Right.
Sailesh Rao:
I just knew the theory of evolution. It never occurred to me to put it together like that. So I said, "Now that you put it that way, yeah, they are your family." She said, "Then why are people eating my family. Grandpa, make them stop, they're eating my family." She started bawling. So here's this five-year-old bawling away, and I realized I had created a world full of monsters for her by explaining to her the theory of revolution. I was trying to console her. I told her, "Look, it's my job to make them stop. Please stop crying. It's my job to make them stop." As soon as I said that, she stopped crying, she looked at me wide eyed, she said, "This is your job? This is your job? You know you haven't done your job? So do your job. When will you do your job?"
Sailesh Rao:
She was shaking her finger in my face, and I said, "I better do it by 2026, otherwise, we are all in big trouble." And she said, "Will you promise me that?" I said, "Okay, I'll promise you that." She said, "Will you give me a pinky promise?" I said, "Sure, I'll give you a pinky promise." And I had no idea what it meant, okay? She said, "Hold out your pinky," and then she locked her pinky in mind and she said, "You can never, ever break a pinky promise." And then she went to sleep. Put her head on my shoulders and went to sleep right away.
Sailesh Rao:
I couldn't sleep because I realized I'd made a very serious promise to a young girl, and I better figure out how to keep it. I thought at first, "Who am I to make this promise on behalf of all humanity?" But then I finally dozed off and I remember waking up the next morning with the thought in my head that, "You are a systems engineer, dammit, this is what you're supposed to do. Figure out the systems that need to change. Figure out the system transformation that needs to happen to create a VEGAN world by 2026 because we have no choice if we want to live in the world."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah, no, you're right, we really don't. I would encourage everybody that's listening to go to climatehealers.org and look at the incredible website that you and your team have put together. It really is remarkable. But you talk about how we need to reset and we need to transform and we need to go from being a predator species to a caretaker species, which is a very, very powerful way of phrasing that. And then you list four things as your philosophy at Climate Healers. And if you don't mind, I'd like to read each one and then maybe you want to comment on them. This first one really links back to the story you were just telling with the fathers holding each other's hands and the mothers and how we meet and we're one big family, but you say, "All life is one family. Our family includes all humans, animals, birds, fishes, and insects."
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Right. It's basically the philosophy of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam in Hinduism. We say that, we say all life is one family, the whole universe is one family. To me, I had known that, I had been taught that, but it wasn't visceral for me until my granddaughter pointed it out to me. It became visceral for her. She felt it within her. And so, it is now doing what we say.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
So do we really mean it? So it's that.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, number two is, "We don't hurt members of our family, but we treat them with kindness and compassion." So very much an extension of one.
Sailesh Rao:
Right, yeah. It's about creating a compassionate civilization in which we can live in harmony with all life, right? We don't have to go and deforest 30 million acres every year, which is what we do now. We can give them space, we can give them respect, and treat them with kindness, all life. It's basically implementing nonviolence as routine...
Rip Esselstyn:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Sailesh Rao:
... in our civilization.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. And speaking of nonviolence, in reading up on you, it sounds like Mahatma Gandhi was very much, as he was for so many people, just really, I think, affected you in his whole nonviolence truth force way of employing a technique to rally the people.
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah, he did such a great job of employing nonviolence and [foreign language 00:29:25], the truth force and bringing it to the masses so everybody could understand it. They could participate in this, into making truth a daily part of our lives.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. He did it back in what? 1926 with the... Is it pronounced [foreign language 00:29:46]?
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. And then you've taken that and you've extrapolated it. You're saying that it is our duty to induce people by any honest means necessary to go vegan. Why the word honest? Is that a pretty important part of it, honest?
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah, it's a very important part of it because it's about making sure that the ends do not justify the means. So you don't use dishonest means to get people to go vegan. You have to basically appeal to them. Because change that is lasting happens from within people. Okay? External manipulation only works temporarily, it doesn't work permanently. And so, it's about inspiring people, telling them a different story, a story of belonging in nature. So then people say, "Oh, I do belong too exactly as I am.
Rip Esselstyn:
That seems to be really the crux of what you are trying to do at Climate Healers, what I'm trying to do at PLANTSTRONG, what so many of us activists are trying to do is, how do we get people to hear that voice within them that speaks that, "This lifestyle, oh my gosh, this is the truth. This makes so much sense." Because there's so much noise and there's so many distractions and so many mixed messages right now that I think are very confusing for people.
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
I think that then leads to pillar number three that you have, which is, speciesism, colonialism, racism, ableism, and patriarchy are built into the money game that we are playing. The game promotes selfishness, greed, and apathy, the three main environmental problems identified by Gus Speth.
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Right. They're built into the game of money. We are a species that coordinates our actions among millions and even billions of us by playing common games and telling common stories. Like the story of United States, that's a story. Story of nations, it's a story. I mean, the other animals are looking at us saying, "What the heck is this boundary?" Right?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
We made it up, right? So we all made it up. Somebody went and sat and actually drew a line on a map and then became a boundary of a nation. So we made up all these divisions among ourselves and these are stories we tell. And then money is a game we are playing. We have bought into the rules of the game, and we are sort of born into that game because the game has been going on for thousands of years. So we are born into that game. In the game, a few people are special. They're the ones who can create money.
Sailesh Rao:
They're called banks, right? So they're the owners of the banks. They're the ones who can create money. And then the banks can create money as a loan. So this is the fractional reserve currency system that we have created, FIAT currency system. The banks can create money as a loan, and ordinary people can go and borrow money from the bank if they have a project that the bank would fund. And then the bank will ask you to return the money along with the return interest on the money. Now, suppose you have a flood in your home and you cannot return the money and you go to the bank and you say, "Sorry, I cannot return the money. Forgive my debt," they're not going to forgive you that. In fact, the state apparatus is set up to go and grab all the rest of your assets and give it to the bank. So basically, in any dispute between the individual and the bank, the state comes on the side of the bank.
Sailesh Rao:
This is how wealth is funneled from the bottom to the top. That's the system we have. I found out, for instance, when I buy a pound of rice for $2 in the supermarket, if I go trace it back to the person who grew that rice, she only got 5 cents a pound. So she got 5 cents a pound for growing the rise, and so the rest was funneled off and siphoned off her wealth by middle men and by the store, Jeff Bezos in this case because it was at Whole Foods. So she really literally got ripped off in the game.
Sailesh Rao:
And then, she lives in a village. By the time she has to buy something that's a necessity for her, say for instance clothes that she doesn't make on her own, she has to pay beyond retail prices. It's not $5 for a shirt, it's $50 for a shirt, because by the time the shirt comes to the village, everybody has marked it up. So she's getting ripped off on the rice she grew and she's getting ripped off on the other end. This is why she and her family are going hungry. So I said, "Everything is built into the game." The game of money builds in and says, "If you take profit on the way up, we celebrate you. We build statues for you." So basically we promote that as profit taking.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
Whereas, on the way down, let's say if I donate $1 or $2 in charity and only 5 cents gets to the person who I donated the money to, I get really mad. I throw the person in jail for stealing. So we know we can do this except we don't do it. We know we can transfer resources from one end to the other without too much waste, but we don't do it on the way up.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Okay. Yeah, go ahead.
Sailesh Rao:
That's the game of money. That's the game of money which has all these things built in. The rules of the game are set up to create this advantage. I say that we have a system that's based on two foundational axioms. First is the axiom of consumerism, which says that happiness comes from consuming more and more and more. The more you consume, the happier you are. This is what I call the false axiom of consumerism. Because I was looking at these systems models for civilization, like the MIT World3 systems model, or the Stockholm Resilience Institute's Earth3 systems model. In all those models, the assumption is that every human being is trying to consume an infinite amount of stuff, so it's never-ending, everyone wants infinite amount.
Sailesh Rao:
And then you say, "Okay, the planet is going to die." And we are calculating, when is the planet going to die if you do that? And so the foundational assumption is wrong. The false axiom of consumerism is wrong, because that says that the pursuit of happiness is best accomplished by stoking and satisfying a never-ending series of desires in human beings, which is what I call the greed is good rule.
Sailesh Rao:
The greed is good rule is the foundation of our civilization, and the second foundation of our civilization, the second false axiom is the false axiom of supremacism, which is that life is a competitive gain in which those who have gained an advantage may possess, enslave, and exploit animals, nature, and the disadvantaged for their pursuit of happiness. This is why if you're born into an advantage, you are entitled to keep it. Or if you gain an advantage somehow, you're entitled to keep it. These two false axioms create a civilization that we have built so far.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. How do you think that those axioms would resonate in India?
Sailesh Rao:
Well, India is... First of all, culturally, these two axioms would be the exact opposite of what we say we are doing, right? Because in all our epics, both the epics of... Specifically I have to speak about Hindu epics, right? The Hindus are 80% of India's population, they're not 100%. India does have lots of other religions built in, but the culture of India is about pointing out that happiness does not come from satisfying desires. It's foundational to our culture because the story of Ramayana is about that, because the bad guy in Ramayana has 10 heads, and every time we cut off a head, a new head is born. So he represents desires.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Yes. Never fulfilled.
Sailesh Rao:
Never fulfilled.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Let me read your number four pillar here in your philosophy, and that is, "We cannot heal our world and achieve true equality with inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all members of our family without transforming," and you just spoke to this, "our money game into a more serious one that has equality built in by design and promotes selflessness, generosity, and activism."
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
How? I mean, let's do that. Let's make it happen.
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Yeah. It's a new money game. Basically, you have to create a different set of rules for the new money game. Okay. And it's a game just like the current money game is a game. Somebody has got lots of zeros next to their account, other people don't have so that many zeros, right. It's a game we are playing. And I say, "Okay, we need to transition to another game in which the currency flows from the bottom up as opposed to top down." When it flows from the bottom up, then everyone feels like they belong on earth. Everyone feels like they are part of the family of life. And what is that game telling you? What is the impact of this money? It just says that other people are going to do things for you. So feel secure, feel secure. You don't have to feel insecure, right?
Rip Esselstyn:
You claim that you are a VEGAN, and I want to say what VEGAN stands for because I think this is really powerful. It changes to me the way people should look at the word VEGAN, the acronym is vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature. Who doesn't want to be a vitally engaged guardian of animals in nature? Everyone should be totally.
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Yeah. That I feel is our role as a species. We thought we were here just to amuse ourselves. If you look at our current civilization, that's what it seems like. Who is getting the most resources? Those who can amuse us the most. But then once climate change happened, we realized that we are here for a serious purpose. Because as soon as you admit that you change the climate of the planet, that we have the power to change the climate of the planet, we have automatically assumed responsibility for stabilizing it and for maintaining it forever. Whether we like it or not, we own the climate of the planet as a species. Because if we can change it and we can make it really hard or make it really cold, then we have to keep it steady. We are the Goldilocks. We are the ones who have the responsibility to create a Goldilock planet.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah, and I think that is something that I don't think that most people, and I could be wrong here, but most people realize what's going on right now with this climate pollution and the warming of the planet. This is on us. This is on us. We are the ones that take responsibility for this. I think that needs to be one of the primary steps in order for us to fulfill your granddaughter's pinky promise. The vegan movement is literally the fastest growing social justice movement in the world right now. Would you agree?
Sailesh Rao:
Absolutely. Yeah, it is the fastest growing, and it's worldwide. That's the beauty of it. It's like people throughout the world are waking up and saying, "We don't want to do this anymore to the animals."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. Very much so. I mean, that gives me so much hope, but I'm wondering, you've been at this a while now since you founded Climate Healers. Did you say it was in 2007?
Sailesh Rao:
2007.
Rip Esselstyn:
2007. I'm wondering, do you feel like you're going to be able to keep that pinky promise in 2026?
Sailesh Rao:
We are working on a paper now, a white paper on the theory of change, how change happens. Because history to me is a chronicle of all the non-linear transformations that happened in human history. Before that, it was different. After that, it's different. You see this boundary, and we chronicle those boundaries. We don't chronicle things that stayed the same. So if you look at every event in history, it was a non-linear shift that happened. And so, how do you create this non-linear shift in current world? How do we get people to play the new game? How do we get people to transform? That's the theory of change, how this has happen.
Sailesh Rao:
We've been working on a model that would help us do that. The model starts by saying, okay, we are currently in this infinite consumption model. Everyone is trying to consume more and more and more. And then it's really a Ponzi scheme we are running, and Ponzi schemes always collapse when they don't grow. So how do you stop it from growing so that it collapses and people shift to something new? Well, you have to build the new. If you don't build the new, people are going to stay with the old, because it's something they're familiar with. They can play that game, so they stay with the old. So you have to build a new and get enough people to start playing it. When the sum of the two GDPs then stops growing, the old collapses and everyone gets and jumps onto the new one, saying, "I'd rather play that game than this game."
Sailesh Rao:
The onus is on the vegan community to build a new game in which no one has to hurt animals and everyone feels like they belong. Everyone feels like they belong no matter when they join. So it shouldn't be a function of, "Oh, I am vegan 50 years, and therefore, I deserve more. I've been vegan 40 years, I deserve more." You deserve more respect, you started this off. But ultimately, everyone should feel like they're treated fairly in the game, then people will want to come and join the game. So it's that fairness and equality has to be built into the game. So how do you create a new set of rules in a new game like that? Well, we have done this before, it's not like it's something new. I think before Monopoly game was invented, there was a version of Monopoly that was all about how do you collaborate? Every engineering project that I've been on has been a collaboration of people. You couldn't have built these things without just one person sitting around doing it now. There had teams of hundreds of people who had to work on it to make that happen, you know?
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. You talk about how we should regenerate and live lightly. You encourage us to put on our Chrysalis avatar and leave the caterpillar cast behind. I know you wrote a book, one of your first books was about Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies. You talk about how the caterpillar in the cocoon faces a stark binary choice, evolve or die. And so, would you say that's where we are right now, we're in that cocoon? And this is kind of a moment of do or die, isn't it?
Sailesh Rao:
Literally. I say COVID-19 is mother nature sending us to our rooms, is the cocoon, saying, "Think about what you've done and figure out what you want to become when you get out." And so far we've been coming out and saying, "I want to be a caterpillar again."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes, you're right.
Sailesh Rao:
I'm saying, "No, folks, there is no future there. There's no future there." We really have to think about what are we going to do in the cocoon? Are we going to go back to trying to be a caterpillar and therefore die? Or are we going to evolve out of this? I think we are going to evolve. We are working on creating an event, just like Gandhi did, the Salt March in 1930 that woke people of India up and said, "Hey, we can take power back. We can actually do this ourselves." That was the idea behind the Salt March. Because the Salt March happened because the British imposed a tax on salt, and Gandhi said, "I'm not paying any tax on salt. I just can just go to the ocean and make my own salt." And that's what he did. And then they threw him in jail for doing that, of course.
Sailesh Rao:
But now I'm saying that let us go feed every human being on the planet a healthy vegan meal on one day. Can we not do that on one day, feed everybody a healthy vegan meal? What is healthy vegan meal? Well, you know that, I mean, we know that, it's whole food plant-based and it's satisfying. You know what it should be.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes. Yeah. Very much so.
Sailesh Rao:
So let's feed everyone on the planet a healthy vegan meal on one day and overcome world hunger on one day. Because we have been constantly told that world hunger is a tough problem, it's a wicked problem that cannot be solved. I'm saying, "Bull, no, that's not true."
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Bull cow.
Sailesh Rao:
That's not true. World hunger is not a wicked problem. It's a wicked problem if you want money for your food. If food is given away for free, it's not a wicked problem.
Rip Esselstyn:
So what day are we going to have it be VEGAN World Day?
Sailesh Rao:
World Food Healers Day is November 19th of 2022.
Rip Esselstyn:
November 19th, you said.
Sailesh Rao:
19, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay, I can't wait to rally everybody and make that happen. So you said Food Healer, so Food Healers, that's another organization that you launched and that is because of something that happened to you and your family during COVID, right, where you decided that you would help a family in need, correct?
Sailesh Rao:
Right. So we were just helping a family in need because they didn't have a job, they ran out of money. They went to a food bank and they were getting really bad food. So they appealed to us. They couldn't speak English either. Anyway, we started feeding them. Basically, I would cook for 10, so I would cook 10 meals together and take it and give it to them. I realized if I just look at the ingredient cost or what I was cooking, there was about $5 for the total.
Rip Esselstyn:
$5 for 10 meals.
Sailesh Rao:
Right. I said, what?
Rip Esselstyn:
That's 50 cents...
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
That's 50 cents a meal. That's really nice, yeah.
Sailesh Rao:
That was during the COVID days, but I'm sure prices have gone up now. But still, it wasn't much. I said, "Is that all it takes to feed people, healthy meals?" That's all it takes, folks, and so why can't we do that? The idea behind Food Healers is to make sure that healthy food, healthy vegan meals are easily available to everybody. We do that every week here in Phoenix. We are doing it once a month in Santa Monica, California. And we are appealing to everyone to do it in your neighborhood. Basically, just whatever you can afford. We cook about 100 meals in Phoenix every Wednesday, and we go to the Tent City. It's right there in front of the government offices in Phoenix. There's Tent City with thousands of people, And we give it away. It disappears within an hour. And people like our food because they say it makes them feel good.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. On the website, you have the recipe for unity stew that for $2.50 cents you can make a meal that serves five. So we'll be sure to put that in our show notes if anybody wants to go see that recipe that you can make for... Back when you made this, it was for 50 cents-
Sailesh Rao:
Right, yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
... a meal. I think you got most of the ingredients at Costco if I'm not mistaken.
Sailesh Rao:
Right. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. We haven't mentioned this at all, but I know that you did a global sensitivity study a couple years back and you actually found that the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from animal agriculture was not 51%, it wasn't 18 or 14.5, it was 87%.
Sailesh Rao:
Right.
Rip Esselstyn:
I mean, that is alarming.
Sailesh Rao:
It's huge because if you think about it, as I pointed out that the CO2 on land is three times the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. And on land, we are using 43% of the land to grow food for our animals. Most of that land is grazing land on which we deliberately chop down trees and we burn things, burn any vegetation that wasn't eaten by our animals. It's called pasture maintenance fires. And they're not even counting that. The FAO doesn't count any of that, pasture maintenance fires, anything like that.
Rip Esselstyn:
What does FAO stand for?
Sailesh Rao:
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. Okay. So the Food and Animal Organization-
Sailesh Rao:
Agriculture.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sorry, Agriculture Organization, they don't count burning down forests as in their calculations?
Sailesh Rao:
They don't count burning down the pastures, pasture maintenance fires, they don't count that. The forest also, they only count the net of the deforestation and the aforestation. So they're actually taking credit for all of nature's healing. Basically, it's like taking credit for what someone else did, taking credit for this industry.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Yeah. You say that there's much for us to do and time is running out and that there's, I think, it's six questions that need to be asked. Five of them are easily answerable. The first one is, who should attend? And the answer is all of us, right? The second question is, what is it? And the answer is a system of normalized nonviolence. Where is this going to occur? Well, it's right here, Planet Earth, this wonderful marble that we're all on. When? By 2026. Why? To prevent year zero. So those are all answerable, right, the one that is not is how? What is your message to everybody that's out there that's listening to this as to how they can help make this happen?
Sailesh Rao:
Join us. There is a movement happening. We started this quarterly convergence of the peoples. It's called the VEGAN Convergence of the Peoples, and VEGAN stands for the vitally engaged guardians of animals and nature. VEGAN Convergence of the Peoples. We meet every quarter, and it is called V-COP, as opposed to the UN-COP, just the conference of the parties. The UN-COP meets once a year, and we are saying we want to meet every quarter. We talk about how do we go about doing this. So we talk about the different aspects of the transformation. For the next two V-COPs, we are going to be focusing on World Food Healers Day, which is, how do we get every human being on the planet fed a healthy vegan meal on that day?
Rip Esselstyn:
When's going to be the date of your next V-COP.
Sailesh Rao:
Next V-COP is August 6th and 7th, that V-COP.
Rip Esselstyn:
Okay. You just had one Saturday April 30th to Sunday May 1st.
Sailesh Rao:
Correct. Yeah, that was the V-COP9, so V-COP10 is August 6th and 7th, and V-COP11 will be November 5th and 6th, because November 7th through 18th is the UN-COP27 that's going to be held in Egypt. And so now the 19th is World Food Healers Day. It's the day after COP27 ends.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yes.
Sailesh Rao:
And it happens to be Kimaya's birthday. It's her 12th birthday.
Rip Esselstyn:
Nice. Nice.
Sailesh Rao:
And so, I have a deadline that's her 16th birthday, which is November 19, 2026. She wants a VEGAN world by then. So this is like a reminder for us of how do we go about doing it. Let's feed everybody on one day. I think that'll empower us. As a species, it'll empower us, saying, "Hey, we can solve these problems ourselves, we don't have to wait for them. We don't have to wait for governments to solve. We can help solve this ourselves." I don't mind governments joining us, but we have to feed everyone a healthy vegan meal on one day.
Rip Esselstyn:
Right. So I would encourage everybody, go to climatehealers.org, look at all the great resources and activism that is going on there and share with people you know. What I would love to do right now with you is... Let me pull this up here, if I can. Because I want to take the Ubuntu pledge. Am I pronouncing it correctly?
Sailesh Rao:
Yeah. Ubuntu.
Rip Esselstyn:
Ubuntu. What does Ubuntu stand for?
Sailesh Rao:
Ubuntu is we are one family. Again, it's the same idea. It's an African version of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, we are one family, yeah. Yeah.
Rip Esselstyn:
So I'm going to take this pledge right here right now, and I would encourage all of you to go to climatehealers.org after you listen to this and take the pledge as well, and it's this: "I pledge to honor and protect all the animals, people, and the planet herself by following an infinitely sustainable, cruelty-free vegan lifestyle that heals the climate and restores right relationships in the true spirit of Ubuntu." I loved seeing you say those same words with your granddaughter right behind you. It was really beautiful.
Rip Esselstyn:
Sailesh, I can't tell you how much I appreciate everything that you are doing by 2026. Heal this planet. The fact that you have taken on this responsibility is massive. And you have lots of people that want to join you in making this a reality so that that pinky promise lives on...
Sailesh Rao:
Thank you so much.
Rip Esselstyn:
... literally and figuratively. Any last words that you'd like to say to our listeners?
Sailesh Rao:
Thank you one and all for being here, and thank you for being part of this movement. Each and every one of us has a role to play in this movement. So thank you for being here.
Rip Esselstyn:
Yeah. Thank you. You are a beautiful man through and through. Thank you, Sailesh.
Rip Esselstyn:
Thank you so much for listening today. The vegan movement is the fastest growing social justice movement, and I hope that you are inspired to take action, just like Sailesh. For information on everything that we discussed today, including his V-COP conferences, Food Healers, and his beautiful pinky promise, visit climatehealers.org. There are a wealth of resources and education to help you take the next steps both personally and in your community. Thanks for listening, and always, keep it plantstrong.
Rip Esselstyn:
The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, Ami Mackey, Patrick Gavin and Wade Clark. This season is dedicated to all of those courageous true seekers who weren't afraid to look through the lens with clear vision and hold firm to a higher truth, most notably, my parents, Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks for listening.
