Part 6: Quotes that make impact on America and around the world, environmental trends that threaten civilization on Earth
Lester Brown, author of Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization said, “The world has set in motion environmental trends that are threatening civilization itself. We are crossing environmental thresholds and violating deadlines set by nature. Nature is the timekeeper, but we cannot see the clock.” www.EarthPolicy.org
We human beings prove to be the most aberrant species ever evolved on planet Earth. Within 100 years, we transformed this green, ecologically balanced and thriving globe into an environmental nightmare. We created the “Six Extinction Session” whereby 80 to 100 species suffer extinction every single day of the year. We pump our fossil fuel carbon exhaust into the biosphere at such a rate of speed that our pollution acidifies the soils and oceans of the world.
Our poisoning of the biosphere’s air creates acid rain that falls upon forests, lakes and streams—wiping out their PH balance that subsequently kills other creatures, both plant and animal, indiscriminately. Our deadly, filthy injection of 80,000 human-made chemicals into the air, land and water 24/7 unwinds the very foundation of life-based DNA on this planet. Our Genetically Modified Organisms create an insurmountable and growing nightmare for Mother Nature.
As clever as we prove ourselves to be, we cannot imagine the catastrophic trends we set in motion by tinkering with Nature’s internal systems. To think that our actions will not be met with responses—proves the height of narcissistic arrogance for our species.
Already, massive die-off in our oceans as to sharks, whales, reefs and other marine life threaten the delicate balance of life on Earth. Our carbon footprint, www.350.org , usurps our weather patterns to create “Katabatic” hurricanes like Katrina and Sandy.
The ugly as well as deadly 100 million ton floating island of plastic debris the size of Texas out in the Pacific Ocean called the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” sickens the toughest mind. Add the 46,000 pieces of plastic floating on every square mile of our oceans surrounding the planet—provides ample proof that our species fails drastically in its responsibilities to fellow creatures and ultimately to ourselves. Once discovered, we know the full impact of “The Great Pacific Garbage Patch” and its continued existence as it kills millions upon millions of other creatures, but we have done nothing to stop adding to it. In fact, we continue adding billions of pieces of plastic junk month after month.
Journalist Lindsey Hoshaw said, “Light bulbs, bottle caps, toothbrushes, popsicle sticks, soda pop plastic bottles, water bottles and tiny pieces of plastic, each the size of a grain of rice, inhabit the Pacific garbage patch, an area of widely dispersed trash that doubles in size every decade and is now believed to be roughly twice the size of Texas. But one research organization estimates that the garbage now actually pervades the Pacific, though most of it is caught in what oceanographers call a gyre like this one — an area of heavy currents and slack winds that keep the trash swirling in a giant whirlpool.”
In this book, Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization, Lester Brown said, “The thinking that got us into this mess is not likely to get us out. We need a new mindset. Let me paraphrase a comment by environmentalist Paul Hawken, “In recognizing the enormity of the challenge facing us, he said: ‘First we need to decide what needs to be done. Them, we do it. And then we ask if it is possible.’”
Having scuba dived all over the planet in the past 50 years, I can attest that the oceans enjoyed pristine beauty up until 1960 before plastics, but today, our oceans roll in junk, plastic, metal cans, glass and trash from countless military, luxury cruise ships and pleasure crafts tossing their trash without end. Our military forces around the world use the oceans for a final toilet of chemicals. Mustard gas, radioactive wastes and the 80,000 chemicals we have created flow for a final resting place into our oceans.
Brown speaks about the enormous consequences of adding population, “The first trend of concern is population growth. Each year there are 79 million more people at the dinner table. Unfortunately, the overwhelming majority of these individuals are being added in countries where soils are eroding, water tables are falling and irrigation wells are going dry. If we cannot get the brakes on population growth, we may not be able to eradicate hunger.”
That understatement provides the horror of 10 million children and 8 million adults starving to death annually in 2013. Imagine the starvation rates with the projected addition of 3.1 billion people by 2050. As human population explodes, arable land and water diminish. At some point, as Brown describes in his book, our numbers collide with the lack of water and food scarcity.
And yet, with that knowledge, India grows by 11 million, net gain, annually. Even China, with one child per woman mandates, via “population momentum” grows by 8 million annually. The USA third fastest growing country in the world, suffering water, energy and resource exhaustion, via mass immigration, adds 3.1 million annually.
No one wants, seems or cares to understand our predicaments. The science stares directly into our faces. The evidence crushes us with 18 million humans already dying off annually. The extinction rates of other creatures intensifies.
But we continue our prolific fecundity without reason, without comprehension, without thought. We grow beyond carrying capacity, beyond water supplies, beyond food supplies.
As Brown addresses in his book, he makes the point that world militaries spend $1 trillion annually. Why not spend $187 billion on his Plan B 4.0 Saving Civilization?
He said, “The choice is ours—yours and mine. We can stay with business as usual and preside over an economy that continues to destroy its natural support systems until it destroys itself, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generations that changes direction, moving the world onto a path of sustained progress.”
Fellow humans that care about the future; we need to start thinking like a planet. We can stop plastic debris by creating 25 cent deposit-return international laws on all plastic leaving commercial stores. We can stop injecting 80,000 chemicals 24/7 by mandating laws to stop producing them. We can stop human overpopulation by educating for birth control. We can form international conferences to address human population overload and how to stop it. We can change course by using our brains, actions and ideas. Otherwise, Mother Nature bats last and she doesn’t give a crap how many humans she takes out as she romps around the bases.
Frosty Wooldridge is a Population-Immigration-Environmental specialist: speaker at colleges, civic clubs, high schools and conferences. Facebook: Frosty Wooldridge. Facebook Adventure Page: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World. Www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com. www.frostywooldridge.com.
