10s Movie Review - Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret

Director: Kip Andersen, Keegan Kuhn
Genre: Documentary
Runtime: 90 minutes
Year: 2014
Starring: Kip Andersen

Description: Follow the shocking, yet humorous, journey of an aspiring environmentalist, as he daringly seeks to find the real solution to the most pressing environmental issues and true path to sustainability.

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2020 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 31: A DOCUMENTARY

Review: The biggest ‘problem’ with this kind of documentary is that you often don’t know how reliable the data shown is. The makers of “Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret” will have recognized that reliability problem, because on Cowspiracy.com you can research all the statements they make yourself. And the only conclusion is that we can only save this planet if we almost drastically reduce our meat consumption. But what makes this a very well-made documentary is, that it tries to find out why big environmental organizations like Greenpeace, Oceana and others don’t mention the number one cause of this environmental breakdown.
Well set up and very personal we follow Kip Anderson, one of the two directors, in his quest how he can arrange his life in such a way that he puts the least burden on the earth from an environmental point of view. Once heavily impressed by “An Inconvenient Truth” by Al Gore, Andersen started to shorten his showers, separated all his waste, travelled by bicycle, etcetera. After a while, however, he began to wonder whether it was useful at all, and after some research he soon discovered that the UN already reported in 2006 that the meat industry alone produces far more greenhouse gases than al the car, train, air and freight traffic in the world put together. Immediately he wondered why Gore didn’t mention this in his documentary, and that’s the start of a journey along a lot of large environmental organizations, in which Greenpeace in particular stands out for their unwillingness to respond to the request why they never talk about the meat industry in their fight. But fortunately Andersen and his co-director Keegan Kuhn didn’t let this stop him and he was resourceful to dig deeper. And what they discover then, will make you feel terrible, to use an understatement. Luckily the documentary isn’t a downer, since it did end with offering some hope.
The fact that over a thousand environmental activist have been murdered in Brazil in the past 20 years is a fact that you don’t really want to believe. And the fact that eating one hamburger in terms of water consumption equals about four hours of showering. Or that a Big Mac might only cost four dollars, but if you include the externalized costs (for health care, pollution), citizens should actually pay eleven dollars for it. Facts that are almost paralyzing when you start thinking about the fact that you only control your own life, while there are about seven billion other people on this planet. Not to mention the horror scenario that you can imagine when you think what will happen if those nearly three billion Chinese and Indians also eat about 90 to 100 kilograms of meat per year (as we do in the West), where they now only eat about 35 kilograms a year.
The list of interviewees for this documentary is really long. From names like Howard Lyman, who was once heavily criticized for talking a little too honestly about the meat industry on the Oprah Winfrey show. To representatives of Sea Shepherd, Oceana, Sierra Club and the Surfrider Foundation. Greenpeace was largely absent, but like some of the above representatives (Sea Shepherd excluded), they did not dare to talk about the meat industry. It's strange to see that Andersen manages to speak to someone from the Animal Agriculture Alliance (the life stock lobby), but Greenpeace kept declining a meeting. Has one of the largest powerful lobbies ensured that the world’s largest environmental organization does not dare to name the number one cause? By the way, the PR lady of the Animal Agriculture Alliance does keep quiet when the questions become to confronting and critical. And when Andersen started coming closer to the truth, his financiers for the documentary suddenly withdrew from the project.
I should mention that I am a vegetarian. And I’m pretty sure that meat-eaters will probably not watch this documentary, since they might find it too ‘preachy’. But if they do, I would not understand if they kept eating meat. Especially when you know that someone who eats meat needs eighteen times more land for his food than someone who eats vegan. I’m not full-on vegan, but I am very aware of what I eat and drink and replace as much animal-based products, such as dairy, for plant-based products as I possibly can. And I’m not saying that everyone should stop eating meat and dairy, but people should definitely decrease their consumption drastically. Because it’s not that hard to save the planet, it really does start with you. And it’s pretty simple. Because if we continue like this, we will probably end up in the history books as the most failed species ever.

Rating: 4,5 / 5