What You Need To Know About Your Biggest Health Risks Today

and printed thirty thousand of these magazines and passed them out all over long island we drove everyone crazy for the last six months promoting this conference and thank god people have come in a big way and a lot of people say i’m not sure what the purpose of this whole conference is as doesn’t seem very profitable you’re not charging anything what exactly is going on and then on the other end i ask these speakers to come they’re very busy they have other commitments and i ask them to please take time from their life with no benefit to them other than to be here to speak to you and not only that there’s eight of them when one of them could easily explain this easily so what is the reason that i have made such a big deal summoned all of long island summoned everyone nationally and asked eight of the top experts in the world to come and fly here and spend their time and the reason is quite simple this is what’s going on

i would say that the health and environmental situation is as serious as it could possibly be the statistics are startling they are beyond startling the environmental statistics are terrifying this is not a time to say let’s just go meatless on mondays turn the thermostat to 68 and everything will be fine we are in a situation that couldn’t be more urgent the only reason that everyone doesn’t know that is because not everyone’s reading all the statistics if you’re reading the obesity statistics and the diabetes statistics and all the other related health statistics you would understand that things have never been this advanced the problems never so severe the economic implications on our country uh are tremendous so i have asked these people who have spent so much time researching it who are unbiased who have no affiliation except to tell you the truth to come here and once and for all let’s get the clear crystal truth and let’s spread it as fast as possible because this situation is critical um and i guess i would just say you know one more time that if in 90 if everyone could go back in a time machine to 1910 and say to everyone don’t smoke it’s going to be really bad a lot of people a lot of families would have been spared so maybe the point of this is to get people’s attention so they don’t have to suffer the consequences but instead could find out today where we stand

so i’d love to open by saying this is going to be on youtube not every single person will watch every second of our video and this might be the only time that some people who watch this in the future actually see you they might not read your book they might not watch your video and there might not be another opportunity for you to communicate to people all over the world except right now so if each of you would take three minutes and tell people what’s on the top of your mind you’ve been writing books you’ve been lecturing you’ve been doing research for years what is it that you want people we’re all here your fans but around the world on video there’s going to be a lot of people that are seeing you for the first time before we get into specific questions if each of you would take three minutes and tell everyone what it is that you think they need to know in case you don’t have another chance to speak to them just push the button and keep it about six inches from there

i’ll start off and my guess is what i will say will be pretty similar to what other people might say too but i completely agree that this is a time that is unprecedented in terms of the seriousness of what we as a as a planet face uh and in terms of climate change uh 30 years ago we recognized that this was a change but we thought it would be something that would be happening over a course of centuries but we’ve seen a huge acceleration and it’s happening right before our eyes the consequences are happening right before our eyes too and it’s this non-linear phenomena that is really frightening that i’ll tomorrow give a few bits of data but the news this past year has been full of information just something like the greenland ice cap has melted seven times faster in the last decade than it did just two or three decades ago with so it’s really this enormous upswing in ice melting temperatures climbing in a very non-linear way we’re way off track to stay under the two degree centigrade uh limit that the double the united nations ipcc has set as a goal for 2100 uh we’re headed toward at this present double or more increase in temperature unless we make some major major changes uh and again that’s not far off uh that this is the world that our grandchildren are going to inherit it’s not hypothetical it’s real and it’s it’s it’s in our family so i’ve studied and worked on health for all of my career but now i am feeling that in fact this is a more important issue because if we can’t address that issue everything we do with health and everything we do in terms of better diets uh will will fall apart and be irrelevant we have to deal with that situation the the climate change issue in a very urgent way

um at the same time the obesity epidemic is undermining health in a way that uh it has never before uh and again uh it’s this steady increase it’s not just that we have a a a very difficult problematic situation at the moment but uh the projections are that by 2030 uh which is not very far away at all about half of americans will be obese and it’s there’s been now we thought a few years ago there might be a little slow down but no it the numbers keep going up and now we’re seeing that uh in terms of its consequences that in uh people adults under 50 cancers like colon cancer that had been going down for 50 or 60 years have turned around they’re going back up again diabetes is still going up very steadily heart disease rates which had been coming down we had reduced mortality from heart disease about 80 percent among younger adults that’s on its way back up again uh it’s really the the fundamental problem is that that generation that became obese as children has now moved into adulthood when the consequences that we knew would happen are actually happening right before our eyes

so these are really uh very serious phenomena we’re on track for things to get much worse unless we make big changes but i will end with good news there is a possible way out that is a double wind that we can be healthier we can have a healthy planet and it’s healthy diets are a very important part of that solution they’re not the only thing i ride my bicycle but we just got an electric car last week for the first time we have to get uh fossil fuels out of our uh out of our con society as fast as we can so anyway that’s my three minutes thank you

thank you dr willard what i really would like to hear your thoughts on because i can remember when you were at the vatican conference was it about three years ago three was it three years ago you made a profound statement about 30 of the world was plant-based would you can you remember that would you repeat that that was absolutely i think the capstone of what you were saying

well i should remember it i don’t make too many trips in the vatican i must say but that uh i i think we were saying somewhere around 25 30 percent of mortality could be prevented by a healthy diet if the world moved to a healthy diet yes