Environment
About 12,000 years ago, late stone age humans precipitated the neolithic (agricultural) revolution that marked the start of the steady rise to civilization. Coincidentally, this occurred at the same time as the beginning of what is now known as the Holocene Epoch, the geological epoch in which humans still live.
However, since the industrial revolution commencing in about 1750, just 270 years ago, humans have been destroying Earth’s biosphere with such tremendous ferocity that the Earth we inherited at the beginning of the Holocene Epoch is vanishing before our eyes. And life is vanishing with it.
While this catastrophe first gained significant public attention with the publication of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring in 1962, efforts in response to her effort to raise the alarm, credited with inspiring the modern environmental movement, have paled in comparison to the ongoing human effort to silence Spring.
From the VC “masters of the universe” on Sand Hill Road and Y Combinator to the social media FAANG monopolists to the adolescent male libertarian bros with their internet startups — all share the fundamentalist faith in electricity.
Rarely did they question how their burgeoning digital economy disruptions were based largely on fossil and over-age nuclear powered electric utilities. Lately, many are seeing the solution to climate change and the foreseeable future of blackouts as installing solar panels on their buildings.
As Pacific Gas & Electric, reeling in bankruptcy due to fires it caused, prepares for another round of deliberate outages in California’s North Bay17 counties, Southern California Edison is planning more such precautionary blackouts in its service area.
A terrifying series of gestapo-style assaults, petition buying, bribery, mass media manipulation and systematic intimidation has smacked into the attempt of Ohio citizens to repeal a billion-dollar bailout for two dangerously failing atomic reactors on Lake Erie.
The unprecedented assault threatens the referendum process in Ohio and across the nation.
It also threatens to keep on line two very old, dangerously decayed reactors where melt-downs and explosions could forever contaminate the Great Lakes region and more. (For a full explanation, hear this one-hour discussion at:
The story may end Monday, October 21, when signatures are due to qualify an anti-nuclear referendum for the fall 2020 ballot.
The Greta/AOC generation is marching for our place on this planet.
We can all turn off lights, get off plastic, go vegan, ride bikes, sail the Atlantic, demand eco-straws, solarize our homes.
But four gorillas block our way to survival. They demand a next step of mass action far beyond anything we can do as individuals:
ELECTION PROTECTION: Big corporations have stolen our democracy When Jeb Bush ripped Florida 2000 for brother W, the corporate Democrats did nothing but rant at Ralph Nader. But Jeb was ALWAYS going to get George exactly the votes as he needed. Trumputin did it in 2016. In 2020, stripped voter rolls and flipped vote counts could again steal the Electoral College. Our Mother Earth DEMANDS universal hand-counted paper ballots, easy and open registration, fair access to the polls and much more. This year Al Gore should shift his climate organizing to election protection—-and do it with Ralph.
Something is causing the worlds glaciers and mountain ice fields to melt. And, despite your first thought, it is not the ongoing climate catastrophe.
It does not matter where on Earth the glaciers and mountain ice fields are located, they are all melting. Moreover, the projected timeframe for some of them to disappear altogether is ‘imminently’; that is, within years. And for the rest: a few decades (although that projection is being routinely revised downwards, depending on the glacier).
Rainforests are a crucial feature of Earth’s biosphere. Apart from being critical to Earth’s climate and vital carbon sinks, the major player in Earth’s hydrological (water) cycle, a massive producer of oxygen and home to most of the world’s species, rainforests are the home of a large indigenous human population. They are also the source of many vital resources, including medicines, used by humans around the world.
However, the vast range of ecological services that rainforests have provided ongoingly for the 400 million years of their existence, and which have been critical to the survival of homo sapiens since we first walked the Earth 200,000 years ago, are not measured and valued by accountants and economists: Have you ever seen a balance sheet or set of national accounts that includes an entry for ‘Value of ecological services taken from nature and on which life and our entire production of goods and services depend’?
bought, gerrymandered Ohio Legislature has just handed a much-hated $150 million/year public bailout to two dinosaur nuke reactors primed to explode.
It also bails out two filthy 50-year-old coal burners and guts programs for increased efficiency.
But a possible repeal referendum could reverse all that – and have a serious impact on the Trumpsters who pushed it – in the 2020 election.
Here are some basics:
Robert J. Burrowes
I have previously written a summary of the interrelated psychological, sociological, political-economic, military, nuclear, ecological and climate threats to human survival on Earth which threaten human extinction by 2026. See ‘Human Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’.
Rather than reiterate the evidence in the above article, I would like to add to it by focusing attention on three additional threats – geoengineering, medical vaccinations and electromagnetic radiation – that are less well-known (largely because the evidence is officially suppressed and only made available by conscientious investigative activists) and which, either separately or in combination with other threats, significantly increase the prospect of extinction for humans and most (and possibly all) life on Earth by the above date, particularly given the failure to respond strategically to these interrelated threats.
I have previously written many articles describing one or more aspects of the dysfunctional nature of the typical human mind, together with an explanation of how this came about and what we can do about it. See, for example, many of the articles republished in ‘Key Articles’ and the source documents ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.
I have also explained that it is this dysfunctional psychological foundation that generated the behaviors, as well as the political, economic, legal and social institutions (such as capitalism), that are driving the multifaceted and existential crisis in which humanity now finds itself.