Ecology and Economics: The Constant Shell Game?

As for the world of environment, I have been afflicted as of late, by the great number of atrocities occurring around the world, but especially those within our reach.  On the top of my list is dear old Canada and its tar sands nightmare.  There have been a number of times when I thought that my head would explode listening to Alberta Premier, Alison Redford, speak about how “Alberta has managed to balance economic growth with the environment” when speaking about the tar sands.  Who the hell are her scientific advisors, Suncor Inc.?  The ramblings were completely PR and 100% nonsensical.  She even had the audacity to say that British Columbia Premier, Christy Clark, was out of line by saying that B.C.’s pristine coast line is very important to her citizens.  According to this lunatic (Redford), “they are Canada’s coasts… export is important” implying that Alberta has just as much right to B.C.’s coast as B.C. itself and, indeed, by this logic, the rest of Canada.  Seriously? Redford, you are a lunatic!

Second on my radar is the proposed transportation of Alberta’s raw bitumen through Ontario ANCIENT pipelines, called Line 9. The goal of the Line 9 proposed project is to get our toxic crap to the east coast and ship it overseas from there.

Let me put this into perspective.  TransCanada’s XL pipeline number 1 was NEWLY constructed and sprung something like 9 leaks in the first year.  For my readers, I will explain that raw bitumen is completely different from regular oil.  First, there are components (fractions) that sink when in water and cannot be cleaned by surface skimmers or booms.  Second, raw bitumen is significantly more corrosive than standard oil and would easily make waste to non-specialized pipelines (indeed, specialized pipelines seem susceptible to the corrosively if XL1 is any example).  Third,  to push raw bitumen through a pipeline, it needs to first be mixed with other toxic compounds to make it less viscous enough for it to actually flow and then they add a great deal of pressure to encourage it to move forward.

About a month ago I was having dinner with my illustrious thesis supervisor, Dr. Lynda McCarthy, when she grasped my wrist and looked at her entire graduate team to say, “I need each and every one of you to go out there and educate people.  Talk to everyone and anyone.  It is the only way to make progress, to bring this home.”  I probably respect no one more than Lynda, not only because she’s probably the most intelligent person I’ve ever met, but also because of her passion and how inspiring even just an email is.  You should hear her deliver a lecture.  In my four years of working with her, I have seen her take on government officials, other scientists, business people and anti-environmental commentators in stride with professionalism, logic and integrity.  This is something towards which I can only strive.  She is also big on producing scientifically sound, defensible work and is constantly scanning the world for “bad science” and bringing the example to our attention.

This did reinforce my need to keep up my blog and other updates as EcoManDan.  It also inspired me to ask myself what more could I do?  In what else should I be involved?  How can I reach people?  But the goal sometimes feels very defeatist because it legitimately feels like there is a handful of us against 7 billion others.  In a calculus limits problem, it is sort of like taking 100 away from infinity; it effectively still equals infinity.

Two weeks ago I was also fortunate to hear Dr. David Suzuki and former Chief Economists and Chief Strategist for CIBC bank, Jeff Rubin speak.  The points that were made were essentially: (1) we are all animals, even if you don’t want to hear that we are, too bad, we are; (2) the words ecology and economy have the same root (ecos), meaning “house” but the disconnect seems deliberate and extreme but not incompatible; (3) the whole concept and function of economy is a human invention and there is nothing stopping us from redesigning it to actually work with people and the environment; and (4) we may very well have past the point of no return, but we still have our children and grandchildren to think about.

I was at a documentary screening last night as part of the NDP Toronto-Danforth Cinema Politica (http://www.cinemapolitica.org/danforth) where MP Craig Scott reminded me of the concept that humans are hardwire to respond poorly to slow-moving problems, like climate change, we have a tendency to put such “slow moving” topics to the back burner and focus on immediate issues like what’s for dinner, can I make rent, pay for school, etc.  The cynic in me would also add to this list “what’s on tv tonight, what is Jersey Shore up to, what will the Kardasians, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, Snooki, Paris Hilteon, Nicole Ritchie, Tom Cruise, Audrina Patridge, Lauren Conrad, <<insert last craze>>, do next? Who will win American Idol, X-Factor? The Super Bowl, World Cup, Roger’s Cup, or whatever other mass distraction.  I think this is sick and unhealthy.  It places values in valueless things.

I spend a great deal of time thinking about how much work environmental awareness is and about the constant uphill battle environmental scientists and, indeed, scientists in general, must face.  We are in an era of human history where education is a disadvantage and where science is at odds with economics and this ever increasing religious presence.  I am about 60% certain that we will have another dark age in the next 100 years.  This is disheartening and frustrating but that is the magic of networking with like-minded people, we keep each other going.

But hope must prevail.

So, over the past month I have been exceptionally busy.  I am still researching and writing my thesis, I am trying to get on the panel responsible for the development of Ontario School curriculum.  I joined the freshly minted Toronto350.org (subsidiary of Bill McKibben’s www.350.org).  I also now sit on the Toronto East End Sustainability Network.  The happiest news is that I have been approached by EcoSuperior (www.ecosuperior.org) to be a volunteer scientific advisor, to which I enthusiastically agreed.

In the midst of this all, I have become an official registered company with the Ontario and Federal government.  That’s right, EcoManDan is now a registered, trademarked name.   For this, I am in the process of developing a business plan while coming to realize that committing to a weekly blog is actually quite a tall order.  But I will truck on and keep everyone updated.

Also note that I am trying to post as many eco-events on my calendar as possible, please make an effort to attend as many as you can, as will I.  Of particular note, a couple weeks ago was the Green Jobs Forum at the Toronto Metro Convention Centre, there were a number of interesting and inspirational talks and a number of duds.  I give it 4 stars nonetheless as it was well organized but tuckered me out with its non-stop 50 minute lectures after which you must rush to the next.  Next week also begins the 13^th Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival at the Tiff Light Box (www.planetinfocus.org).  I recommend a number of the documentaries.

Until I post next, Be Green!

Where are all the Planeteers?

Growing up, I had this wonderful sense of euphoria that the world was on the verge of something wonderful.  When I was five year old, I remember waking up well past my bedtime and sneaking into the living where I found my dad watching some documentary about global warming and how dangerous it would be if we went down this path.  All I remember was that as greenhouse gases go up so does our ocean levels.  I also remember how optimistic the narrator was and how, now that we knew this was a problem, it could be easily avoidable.

This was 1984.

Still, from the news I caught (and vaguely understood as a young child) it seemed that we were on the precipice of true planet-wide enlightenment.  Before I even understood these concepts, I had the impression that we were finally respecting the natural environment, that we were uniting as one species instead of disparate races and religions and that everyone would be entitled to equal opportunities to succeed as decreed by various United Nations initiatives.  I was so inspired by humanity.

My summer holidays from school were spent getting into mischief with my brother, collecting Popsicle Pete points for crappy mail-order merchandise, fashioning fishing rods from dried, broken sticks and fishing line and hooks we stole from my dad, and bicycling around the neighbourhood building forts wherever enough material was available.

Of course, the highlight of the summer was our camping holiday where my parents stocked up our tent trailer with two weeks of provisions (including  Flip-a-Top soda pop crates filled with root beer, cream soda and grape pop), piled into the back of my dad’s 1980 Black Ford pick-up several coolers, the Barbeque, portable table and my dad’s 15 foot silver and black aluminum boat.  We were set for two solid weeks at Kab Lake.  Two solid weeks of my brother and I barrelling through the woods, exploring.  Two whole weeks of swimming by day, collecting drinking water from the freshwater spring by afternoon and ghost stories and marsh mellows by the camp fire by night.  It was pure heaven.

As I made my way through elementary school, we began environmental studies classes which focused on watersheds, habitats, boreal forest animals, ecosystems, renewable energy and how important it was for us human animals to be close to nature.  This was pure candy!  When I was in Grade Five continental drift, the ozone layer, acid rain, and the concept of endangered species were introduced to me.  I had to write a report on the whopping crane and then learned about the extinct dodo bird. “Whoa, animals could be gone forever?”. 

Then in 1989, the Montreal Protocol (on the substances that deplete the ozone layer) passed which added to my impressionable enthusiasm.  We were really getting things done!  I remember thinking to myself, “Thank God we understand what we did and can now take action to avoid it happening again.  Wow, humans are so progressive!” 

A little later in that same school year we had a whole week dedicated to environmental studies where the whole school was involved, everyone from Kindergarten to Grade Eight.  Every student had to sign up for activity periods in which they were interested.  All I remember choosing was geology and recycling (where we actually made crude paper from used paper).  In the geology portion I was in awe as I greedily ate up information on rock types and how many millions and billions of years old various strata were.  I became an expert at identifying igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks.  I learned what basalt, marble, ore, granite and the Canadian Shield were.  It was so fascinating.  So complex.

It was around this time that I discovered the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s (CBC) television show, Danger Bay, which followed a marine biologist and his family who tackled water polluters, wildlife endangerment, forestry and more.  Then came OWL Television which was heavily themed with environmentalism, and the Edison Twins who explored the world of science in general.

In Grade seven I discovered Captain Planet and I was determined to be one of his Planeteers.  I knew, of course, that this was a fictional cartoon, but I was determined nonetheless.  A few years later I was overjoyed to hear that there was going to be an Earth Summit in some place called Rio and that we were going to solve this global warming that I heard about 8 years ago (wait, didn’t we already know how to stop global warming)?  Serendipitously, the television shows Earth 2 and Sea Quest also debuted a few years later, also having a strong environmental message.

Then something happened.  Earth 2 was cancelled after one season followed by Captain Planet and Sea Quest the following year in 1996.  The green momentum seemed to halt abruptly.  There was a bit of excited flurry with the announcement of the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but I was old enough then to see that the delayed and voluntary agreement was too little, too late.  I was, however, still naïve to the ways of big business.

I suddenly felt cut off and uninspired.

At the end of high school I didn’t know what I wanted to do, I was lost.  Then, mid-summer I decided to look at university programs.  I sent late applications to four schools: Lakehead University, Laurentian, Guelph and Toronto (and was accepted to all) but in the end I chose Lakehead University and its Biology and Environmental Science program.  It was familiar and close to home.

It was in this program, four years later, that I found purpose and hope again.  I also rediscovered just how much I loved learning!  I wasn’t a fan of exams, but just loved being fed knowledge during lectures and having an actual text books from which I could pull even more information.   I often refer to this period of time as my renaissance period.   My rebirth.  Suddenly everything was shiny and new.

This period of self-discovery (which also coincided with a phenomenal 140 pound weight loss though change of diet and exercise as I had gotten quite big in the mean while) came up with my own constitution, if you will.  A question to ask before every action I take:

“Are my actions (or inactions) negatively affecting those or the natural environment around me?” If so, then this is wrong.  If not, then proceed.”

It is perhaps a personal precautionary principle which is a wonderful concept that should be adopted by all.  Unfortunately, we live in an increasingly regressive society where the concept is immediately shattered by the testosterone-driven human desire to take risks and to dominate others either by religious belief, shear force, greed, pride, strength (especially in the cases of gender equality and war waging), and any number of those wonderfully similar human tendencies.

Author Daniel Quinn once proposed in his enlightening novel “Ishmael” that humans are fundamentally flawed specifically because of this self-destructive, primal nature.  No matter how far we have come as a species and as a society, we are hard-wired to be our own downfall.  To f*ck things up, if you will.  While it is sad, it isn’t necessarily without a silver-lining as there is a small group of people whose light bulb has come on and who can see their way around this pitfall, we just have to be smarter, louder and stronger.

The most immediate perplexity that comes to my mind with respect to self-destruction is our love affair with money and possession.  It is another facet of domination, a more tangible one for men and women who may not have fared so well by the laws of nature, who could not have otherwise contributed meaningfully to society and who would have otherwise had to rely heavily on the kindness or shared resources of others for meager survival.

We are animals after all.  Kingdom: Animalia, Phylum: Chordata, Class: Mammalia, Order: Primates, Family: Hominidae, Genus: Homo, Species: sapiens.

It is now 2012 (28 years after first learning about the imminent threat of global warming and 20 years after the Earth Summit) and economics and capitalism is the Holy Grail, something that unites people more than any religion ever has.  In fact, I would go as far as saying it is the new world religion, after all, it is not too different from the time of kings and emperors, bishops and popes who strongly influence laws and twist public perceptions to benefit bank accounts.  They polarize the public into left and right without any question of right and wrong.

This new religion trumps everything and even acts against humanity, the collective species AND the compassion we were meant to feel for others.

It is dangerous.

I ask now, to what degree are environmental studies incorporated in our current education system (or civics, but that is another discussion)?  Where are the environmentally-inspiring children’s programming.  Where are the Danger Bays and other mentally stimulating programming now?  Where are Captain Planet and the Planeteers now?

Our greatest need now is to work together now, outside the deafening noise of our human lives, to educate everyone, to bring back rigorous education (not just in environment, but certainly the most important component), to get back to nature.  We are further away from being part of or involved in the natural environment than any other period in human history and to what end?

We walk a dangerous line.

Environmentalists: The Next Generation

I have spent most of this week trying to solicit interest in this new online persona (EcoManDan) and I am pleased with the response from my friends and acquaintances. It is always terrifying putting yourself out there for criticism or controversy. However, being a scientist and having spent a great deal of my time analyzing and writing reports (not to mention theses) it certainly does help when it comes to presenting hypotheses supported by actual data.
As an environmentalist, I find that there is a fine line between being classified a tree-hugging hippie (or ‘radicals’ as Canadian Prime Minister calls us) and actually presenting yourself as a credible environmental scientist (not excluding a blend of both). And it is all about presentation. I even have a hard time getting my live-in significant other on-board with my green agenda. Our once weekly trips to the Carrot Common and the local stores along the Danforth have been replaced with Loblaw trips and natural body and bath products have slowly been replaced with paraben-containing synthetic cleansers designed to strip your skin rather than work with your natural properties, gently.

And this may all sound fluffy to the ignorant by-stander until the science is explained. My resistance to using petro-chemically produced beauty products has less to do with being one with nature (although, it is something towards which I strive) and more to do with how these products are developed, produced, distributed and ultimately disposed of.

Things to consider:

1. Most pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are based on patents registered 20-40 years ago before a use was determined. This essentially means that companies are interested in exploiting chemical formulas before their patents expire at whatever cost.

   Take Bisphenol-A for example, this is a chemical compounded developed as an estrogen hormone replacement but was later found to be better at creating transparent, hard plastic bottles (Nalgene and similar). The result: estrogen replacement leaching into your tasty beverage. Opps!)

2. The vast majority of toxicological studies on humans and ecotoxicological (in non-humans) look at the effects of singular (some studies will look at 2 or 3) on human and non-human animals. However, it is HIGHLY UNLIKELY that we and the non-human environment are EVER exposed to one, singular compound.

   Thus, these studies are expert at telling us how a compound behaves independently but this is and never will be the case. All chemicals have the ability to interact with each other in antagonistic or protagonistic means. I would not say that these studies are meaningless, but they do omit essential considerations.

3. Pharmaceutical doses are derived based on estimated bioavailability (i.e. the portion of the compound that survives destruction (by the liver) and actually makes its way to the target site). Destroyed compounds are generally metabolized (broken down) into daughter compounds which have properties and side effects of their own. Excess compound and its metabolites (daughter compounds) are then eliminated from the body when we use the toilet. This in turn makes its way into the natural environment.

   There are endless examples of where this has become a problem: Birth control (estradiol) causing feminization of fish; analgesics (pain killers) causes slow evasive responses in aquatic species (not a good survival trait); triclosan (an antibacterial agent) affecting growth and hormone regulation in bull frogs. And, of course, antibiotic resistance due to over-prescription has been on the radar of scientists for more than a decade now.

These were just examples of where products we directly use pass through us (or off of us) and into our precious, finite freshwater supply.

As an ecotoxicologist, I am interested in what happens AFTER these products are used and make their way into the sewage treatment system then the natural environment. Chemical compounds can either be hydrophobic (afraid of water) or hydrophilic (loves water). This chemical property can help us predict where chemicals of interest will end up.

Hydrophobic compounds, in a sewage treatment system, will tend to bind to organic solids which are removed and theoretically treated (although there is a trend in Canada and other places to take these “biosolids” and apply them to agricultural fields – after all, they are a great source of nutrients). This practice may lead to agricultural runoff which can then find their way to a water body.

However, it is also possible for the organic solids to become saturated. In this case hydrophobic compounds are forced to remain in the water column and into the water body into which all sewage treatment plants discharge. Once in the open water, these compounds tend to bind to floating organics and/or settle on the bottom (sediment/substrate) and coming exposed to benthic organisms.
More directly, hydrophilic compounds remain in the water column during treatment and are now bioavailable to water column organisms.

Oh, how ecosystems are complex.

Compounds can then breakdown via photolytic degradation (the sun’s ultraviolet radiation breaks it down) or can be biologically degraded by bacteria into daughter (or more daughter) compounds. In the case of triclosan, there is a high degree of possibility that it can be transformed into an array of dioxins (some of the most toxic compounds known to humankind).

Through biological accumulation processes (AKA bioaccumulation or bioconcentration), compounds can then be stored in the body of aquatic organisms (i.e. fatty tissues). To illustrate, triclosan is eaten/absorbed by several of the water flea, Hyalella azteca. A minnow eats a dozen of these fleas (12x more concentrated now). A large fish then eats a dozen of these minnows, suddenly there is 144x more concentrated. Some fisherman now comes along and catches his legal limit of fish (say 6) and he and his family eats them (864x concentrated). Now let’s say that his diet is largely based on fish and he and his family eats this a 2 or 3 nights a week.

Let me put numbers in: Hyalella azteca (0.05 ug/g) > Minnow (0.6 ug/g) > Trout (7.2 ug/g) > human (43.2 ug/g). Yikes!!

In the excellent documentary entitled “The Disappearing Male” produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) DocZone, a reporter took to having her blood analyzed. They found DDT, mercury, lead and 100 other compounds that really shouldn’t be in our blood, or at least in our blood at the levels recorded.

The story then asks “what is this doing to us?”

The reporter first speaks to a young couple who have been unable to conceive after a couple years trying. It turned out that the man’s sperm count was abnormally low. At a sperm bank, a medical doctor explains that infertility has been increasing and, in fact, they had to lower the sperm count limit just so that the number of people who were classified as having low fertility wouldn’t panic people.

Second, the reporter visits a family where a male child was born with triorchidism (having undescended testicles) and had to undergo surgery to lower the testicle into his scrotum. Men who suffer from this emasculating condition tend to develop testicular cancer and have fertility issues later in life. Curious as to why her son suffered from this condition, she discovered that it may have been the chemical compounds with which she interacted.

This entire blog entry spoke briefly to pharmaceutical and personal care products. Imagine the whole picture!

So, now back to the original discussion. Can I, as an environmentalist, be considered a hippie for choosing to buy organic, natural products? To purchase food not treated with pesticides or artificial fertilizer (both derived from fossil fuel AKA oil)? To choose to walk, bike or take public transit merely to avoid not only CO2 emissions which contribute to Climate Change, but that release an array of gaseous toxins into our ever so precious air?

We are a lot more than that now.

We are the new and improved environmentalist, Environmentalists: The Next Generation, and this time we are armed with more than just a desire to be closer to and protect the Earth. We come bearing a difficult and bad message but it is up to us to present it in a way that doesn’t turn people off of wanting to do the right thing. We should be inspiring people to do what right!

So, hold your head up high. Don’t be embarrassed to call yourself an environmentalist. Educate yourself. Prepare for discussion or debate. Find or create tools. We need to be clever, unified and networked.

Planned Obsolescence and the 7 Billion People Problem

So, in 2008 I bought a Linksys Wireless-N PCI adaptor for my desktop computer.  It worked brilliantly on my Windows Vista machine until the moment that Windows Updater updated the driver.  Then it did not work.  I wound up having to restore my computer to a previous point because Linksys was insanely unhelpful. 

At that time, they claimed to have no knowledge of a compatibility issue between the new driver and the actual device.  After all, would it not make sense that the new driver be made to work with the device?  It may be a long shot, but I am also assuming that they have a specific device in mind when writing the new drivers and it is not a scatter shot approach?!? If you are in the tech business, feel free to correct me if I am incorrect here.

I am not sure where this memory went in the 4 years that have since passed; however, after last Monday’s latest Roger’s Telecommunications debacle that essentially rendered my desktop, printer and my shared network drive inoperable, I decided to reinstall this wireless adaptor so that I could at least connect my desktop to the internet.  It worked for a whole 6 days until Windows suggested that I update the driver.  I agreed.  BAM! No more network connectivity.

I suddenly remembered that I had indeed encountered this problem in the past and that I was never truly satisfied with the customer service “provided” to me by Linksys/Cisco.  After 20 minutes of waiting to talk to a customer service agent they, of course, informed me that my warranty was out of date but that I could easily purchase additional service for either $29.99 or $39.99 depending on my perceived future need. Future need? I was also given the option to purchase this year’s model to replace the old but barely used and still completely functional. 

My question: why does your product not just work?  This seems rather an intuitive end-point to any business model.

At this point my memory of 4 years ago came rushing back to my head.  Aside from the fact that this technical glitch should just not happen PERIOD, I really did not have the confidence that Linksys technical support would be helpful a second time around.

This brings me to the topic of planned obsolescence. Trusty Wiki has this to say about planned obsolescence: “[the] built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete, that is, unfashionable or no longer functional after a certain period of time.” 

The argument for the use and acceptance of this is, of course, economically-based rather than environmentally-based as “[p]lanned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.” In essence, it assures that the precious economy continues to go ‘round.

Before I continue, I should clarify that the economic incentive here is not for the end-user, that is, it is not intended to help out the costumer.  That’s you!  Instead, it is meant to ensure that manufacturing persists and that sales are made, the shipping industry ticks on, the accountants, corporate lawyers and tax collectors have numbers over which to debate and crunch, as they say.  If it breaks, well then the repairman is sent to repair the broken device or it is shipped (again) to a factory where someone is paid to affect repairs.  And, finally, if it is unrepairable, it is easily replaced by a swipe of your credit card with the newest, latest product that was also designed, built, shipped, debated over, sold and repaired.  Voila!

Sounds like a reasonable, well-oiled machine.  Only, like most things we do, it is unsustainable.  This is something that you will hear a lot about if you continue to follow my blog.  In a world that just breached 7 billion people, every textbook agrees that there are already not enough resources on the planet to sustain this population.  We are far, far beyond our K-value, or carrying capacity.

In a world of 7 billion people where currently only half (if that) are involved in this cycle of planned obsolescence, what will happen when this number increases?  There is much talk over the coming “resource wars” which is very likely if wholesale negotiation for the sale and shipment of material rights on the international trade scene fails.  China and the U.S. are already buying Canada’s oil, raw bitumen and natural gas.  Water is already transported all over the world from every country with access to potable drinking water.  Minerals are exacted for use in agriculture and the auto sector.  The trade system, however, will not likely survive the demand of another billion people, another 2 billion, another 3 billion.

What is the answer?  Well, I am obviously not a supporter of mass genocide but I am and will always be a supporter of education, coordination and cooperation.  To teach people about the need to have less children and maybe even alleviate that effed component of our psyche that constantly whispers “Look at what the Jones’ have now.  And, go forth and multiply. And, More is more, why limit yourself?”

I know that this is a hard discussion and that humanity is not currently at a place to have this discussion because we are still getting over the fact that we are animals that are part of a planetary ecosystem that is slowly collapsing around us. We are caught somewhere between “knowing” we are life’s ultimate, divine achievement and understanding that the world is becoming “hot, flat and crowded” to borrow from Thomas Friedman.

So, while we are arguing over international trade, how to sustain our failing fictional economic system and clinging like dear life to our fastly depleting industrial age energy resources (which are actually causing the problem), the real discussion is not being had.

In a world run by corporations and their political puppets and by archaic religious dogma, I am deeply worried that this conversation just will not happen and that cliff I spoke of in my first post it just heartbeats away.

In a nutshell

I’ve had websites and blogs in the past, but never one as important as this one.  Every generation can claim that the world has or is fundamentally changing, but I honestly think that this is far more than a technology- or fashion-based phenomenon.  Instead, it is left versus right, secular versus religious, 99% versus 1%, economy versus the environment.

The triviality in which the human species seems to be predominately engrossed is a baffling to me.  For the business folk, it is from where they can squeeze more blood from the stone.  For the politicians, it is how they can please corporations without overtly pissing off the voter base.  Marketers are trying to find untapped niches for exploitation.  Hollywood producers are trying to find the next greatest dumbed-down script and hire today’s hottest celebrities to fill the cast.  And, for us common folk, it is largely (and agonizingly tragic) what has Snooki gone and done this week?

And while this all goes on in a sickening spiral downwards, we are on a high-speed train towards either a 10,000 metre cliff or rock solid wall.  I haven’t decided, but the distinction between the two is quite different.  Either our world will suddenly become smaller than we have not seen since before the industrial age, or we simply cease to exist.

This dire prediction is, of course, related to climate change.  We now have every credible climate scientist supporting agreeing that humans are indeed drastically changing our climate with our actions and that the climate is changing at a rate that exceeds initial model predictions. This is related to ancillary activities like the cutting down of our forests (releasing CO2 and preventing the absorption of CO2) and the thawing of permafrost which is releasing methane at a rate completely unexpected.  The 411 on methane is that it is a greenhouse gas that is 20 more effective at absorbing heat than CO2.  I should also note that warmer, drier conditions lead to more frequent forest fire events (as well as changes in biogeography and diseases).

Next, we have our oceans attempting to passively absorb the surplus CO2 in the atmosphere.  The clincher, like the acid rain effect using sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides (SOx and NOx), CO2 also disassociates in water to form a weak acid.  The effect then is the acidification of our oceans.  The oceans are so large we did not think it possible, however, great portions of the Great Barrier Reef off the Australian coast have died and coral reefs world-wide are following suit.  This is, of course, in addition to the warmer waters that are causing coral bleaching which also leads to death.  Also, the warmer the water, the less oxygen it can hold (more death).  Warmer water also spurs growth of algae with uses up precious oxygen when it dies and decomposes.

So, immediately noticeable is the reduction in the biodiversity of marine animals due to unstable food sources, unnatural fluctuations in predators and more temperature tolerant species, and increases in marine pathogens.

And you thought the markets were intricate?  Lesson here, don’t mess with what you don’t understand.

You may say, “Who cares?!?, I don’t eat seafood anyways!”

Here is something to consider then: algae and plants living on coral reefs produce approximately 71% of the oxygen on the planet.  71 PERCENT! The rest? Well, the rest comes from the forests that we are cutting down.  With what shall we breathe?

We are insane.