By Keith C. Milne
The way we live, the choices we humans have made along the path to now, have taken an enormous toll on the balance and overall health of our beloved planet. We take the Earth’s health and welfare for granted, using it as our personal toilet, landfill, and cesspool for everything we have decided to excrete, produce in a lab, or a factory. It is a common saying amongst those who discharge their waste to the oceans of the world, “the solution to pollution is dilution” and it completely encapsulates our thinking towards our planet up until now. That saying stems from a belief that what ever type or amount of trash, foulness, chemical waste or untreated sewage we dumped into the worlds oceans, that it would eventually be treated by the ocean because it was vast enough that the “normal” amount of waste discharged into it from land and vessels at sea would be easily absorbed and treated by the ocean over time.
Well, the great Pacific Gyre of plastics and other solid waste that is now as big as the center of the USA in size proves that to be a complete myth! In fact, according to Google, the estimated size of the garbage patch is 1,600,000 square kilometres (620,000 sq mi) (about twice the size of Texas or three times the size of France). Hmmmm . . . I guess we were wrong about our former hypothesis just a tad!
When was the last time you took a really hard look at how we Americans and others who live in developed nations live? Specifically, have you ever taken stock of all the sloth, the excess, and the waste all around you? The big cars and trucks that we drive, and all the natural resources that it takes to make all the metal and plastic and synthetic materials and the electronics and metal machine parts that go into making them. The petroleum they guzzle that wars are fought over, The trash still being thrown out of them as they are driven by overweight people who are always in a big hurry and seem ready to mow you down if you get in their way. All the excess of their lives; multiple cars, houses so big that 4 families could live in them, motorcycles, jet skis, gear for every sport imaginable, walk-in closets full of clothes rarely worn, the fertilizer they spread all over their yards to have perfect lawns that runoff and cause algae blooms that kill all of the fish in the water. Devices abound and their lives are largely spent zipping and zooming here and there, endlessly to try and do it all, have it all, and being seen doing the same.
All of this stuff, this material, has to be wrapped and boxed and shipped by multiple methods, and then delivered. After delivery, either to a house or a store, the packaging must now be disposed of as well. This fills landfills, warehouses full of “recyclables,” and the oceans with solid waste. It has now found its way into even the most remote parts of our planet. The chemical leachate that comes from solid waste isn’t pretty or healthy either. Recently, it has now come to light that chemical compounds from plastics known as PFOS and PFAS are in every man, woman, and child in the world. Apparently, these components are permanent and will always be in our environment now. Thanks E.I. Dupont!
If you’ve been in a car either driving or as a passenger, gazing out of the window at the passing landscape, have you noticed how fragile all the power lines are? The power lines, the traditional phone lines, and our precious cable that brings the whole world right into our laps and fills our rooms with music and movies via our precious, coveted internet, all tethered to little dead tree sticks dotting the landscape giving it much of the same appearance in 2022 as it was back in 1962. The more we become dependent on the internet and being connected on networks, the more devastating it will be when inevitable power outages occur. Are you ready for them?
White settlers to the United States ruthlessly and methodically slaughtered nearly all the Bison which numbered in the millions before their unnecessary and brutal demise and, rather than choose to learn from the indigenous people how they had learned to live in balance with the land, the arrogant settlers chose to round them up and continually move them to worthless, barren, and hard to live on land, taking the entirety of the rest without asking, giving the indigenous people only two choices: either relocate or be killed.
We’ve wasted enormous amounts of top soil from the mid-west by careless farming methods only measurable by the number of square miles of Mississippi delta created with the rest finding it’s way into the Gulf of Mexico, and then propping up yields from the lost nutrients that were in that wonderful soil using chemicals that further imbalance the land making it more arid over time.
We’ve clearcut the lion’s share of our old growth forests for profit without planning for the effects from erosion, loss of soil and wild life habitat, and we’ve been careless with how we’ve managed the land, letting the underbrush get way too thick. We’ve also allowed clear cutting and then purposeful erosion using water canons to turn whole mountain sides into mush in the hopes of running all of that runoff through screens just to capture what little Gold or Silver it might hold.
But that’s only part of the problem. The other is our stupid arrogance and sense of entitlement that many of us Americans seem to have so much of that costs everyone more money for their own personal benefit. For example, why do we allow some people to build houses where it’s hard to get to and will mean certain loss if there is a fire event? Why do we allow people to build houses and condos for profit (rent) right on the beach on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, which were created by hurricanes pushing the sand up into a land mass? Why do we allow idiots in California to have half of their house overhanging a cliff with the overhanging part supported by stilts that are set into sedimentary layers of sand and dead diatoms? And when the inevitable earthquake or mudslide happens, we all have to pay higher premiums! Ditto for idiots in Florida who live in neighborhoods (and there are many) sitting right on top of “karst topography” where the ground underlying them looks like Swiss cheese and others in the neighborhood have lost their homes to sinkhole events?!? (Hint: Monetary profit.)
Too many of us spend all of our time toiling away, or figuring out how to rip others off, only to spend all of our money on more material things to play with or we try to impress others with materialism if only to satisfy our sense of accomplishment, of having more than others, and then seeing it as a symbol of our own (self belief of our) superiority.
That behavior is great for the economies that produce all of those things we absolutely feel we cannot do without, like our $5000 chrome latte maker in the kitchen, but a disaster for the planet we all live on with no where else to run to, so perhaps it’s time to take our health, the planets health seriously, and save the only place we have to live before it’s too late.
We’ve all been through an enormous amount of historically stressful events over the last 5 years and feel that we barely have enough energy to do everything already on our plates, let alone add a huge lifestyle change for individuals, and a huge cultural shift towards mass acceptance of a multitude of pretty drastic changes that will be necessary if we are to succeed in our mission to turn around the degradation of the planet we all live, work, love, and die on.
Yes, that is unfortunate, but nevertheless necessary. And, therein lies the problem. Our cultural norm in the USA is individualism. Every man and woman for him or herself, standing on their own two feet able to take life head on and not complain for a second. We Americans have never before in history been more individualistic then we are now, and the only collectivism in sight is our countrymen deciding to let themselves be divided over the most criminal and corrupt individual ever to hold the office of the presidency of the USA. So, how are we ever going to come together enough to work on something collectively as critical as eliminating the causes of climate change in order to reverse it.
I still have hope that mankind can pull it off and not destroy ourselves needlessly or make this planet one horrible place to live on by allowing the earth to be mined to produce goods for short-term use, polluting all the while we make them, ship them, use them, and then add them to our landfills or garbage barges that dump it at sea in the end. Many people who read this will say this is all bullshit written by a liberal and that the whole issue of global warming is bullshit too. Others will argue in favor of SOME change, but slowly, VERY slowly, mainly so they will not have to see their taxes go up.
The people in charge for all of these years, from post WW2, until now, have all collectively kicked the can down the road just to avoid higher taxes. Now those of us still around and working and paying taxes and living the dream are having to shell out massively because ALL OF IT NEEDS REPAIR, REPLACING, UPGRADING, IMPROVING. And I mean ALL OF IT. Our roads and bridges and tunnels, and our electric grid our underground pipes. Thank goodness President Biden was able to work well enough in a bi-partisan way to get the infrastructure act and the inflation reduction act signed into law to finally address all of those items and more about America’s infrastructure.
No one person, body of governance, or local official wants to have to tell people things that they will need to do in order to save themselves and others regarding where we are running fast to, which is unlivable conditions on Earth if we do not drastically change towards a leaner and greener existence. Where is Spock when you need him? Vulcan Logic would be a Godsend right about now. Perhaps Vulcan logic is what we will need to resort to next.
I’ve written before here on my website about the idea of having unbiased logic from computers tell us what to do in order to save ourselves. Of course, in order for something like this to actually work, we would all have to decide to abide by what the advice was and the computer would also tell us just how much NOT doing what it’s telling us to do will impact our survival chances. Seems fair enough. I’d be willing to give it a go. And why not?
I’m willing to go all electric. I’m willing to stop eating animal meat. I’m willing to buy fewer things and borrow more. I’m willing to explore better ways of reducing food waste, resource waste, energy waste, and new creative ways to have our own human waste be treated in order to be useful as a soil amendment. I’m willing to pay more to have a cleaner environment. I’m willing to pay more to see real progress towards restoring the balance of the Earth’s ecosystem. I’m willing to sacrifice some of my creature comforts and even do without if it means leaving the Earth better than when I came into the world. I’m willing to be a part of something better for all of us for a change! How about you?!?
We always think that someone else will take care of it. It being “the problem.” Someone out there will take care of what we see or drive by every day. Everyone thinks that someone else is going to do it, fix it, come to the rescue, save us from the power outage, the hurricane damage, the ice storm and downed power lines. We don’t have to bother ourselves. We say we don’t like this or that, but most of us don’t do a damned thing about what we don’t like or want. Heck, we don’t even take the time to vote!! We just carry on until someone comes along to fix it eventually. Someone will eventually pick that dead raccoon off that pavement, stop the water gushing out of the broken main and fix it, or put the fire out two doors down before it had a chance to reach us. At least for now that’s still largely the case.
Somehow, many of us have picked up this awful habit of thinking that THANK GOODNESS there are enough people out there who care enough to take care of everything that no likes having to deal with! When we get into an accident, we expect someone to help, someone to come and take us to the hospital and receive medical care when we get to the hospital.
Why then, do most people not vote? Voter turn out is always at best 50%-ish, with the last U.S. Presidential election of 2020 clocking in at a near record of 68.7% according to the Pew Research Center, but still trailing other developed countries in overall participation rate. In other words, taking democracy and all that it embodies completely for granted.
When I used to commute to work every morning, I would see car after car, just like me, one person per car by and large, what a waste. Getting off the highway and watching them all stack up like little dominoes at the first red light, leaving all of us individually idling away, with all those greenhouse gasses pouring upward into the air that we breathe, and all the while slowly robbing us from climate normalcy. Most of these cars were BIG too. SUV’s came in at number one vehicle driven, followed by huge trucks, and then large sedans and on down the line. And, here’s the thing, I could see that they all worked at the local university! Can NONE OF THEM CAR POOL THAT WORK TOGETHER AT THE SAME PLACE IN THE SAME DEPARTMENT AT LEAST SOME OF THE TIME!?
The cumulative total consumption of fossil fuels on a daily basis is staggering. So is the noise and friction created by all the cars everywhere all the time zipping and zooming here and there for every little desire and whim. No worries about their contribution to the global degradation of earth’s balance and the consequences thereof, even though, if you’ve been paying attention to what is happening right in front of your face, every year the weather grows more unusual and bizarre, with extremes becoming the norm, with the balance slipping at an exponential rate. This is not sustainable whatsoever.
In the last 24 years that I’ve lived in New England I have watched the climate here change enormously from the old pattern of frigid winters that often extended well into spring and left snow as late as late May some seasons, to a VERY mid-Atlantic climate of fewer overall snowfall events, and heavy, wet snow when it does, rather than the light, dry snow that used to fall more often than not here. Summers have changed from mostly dry with just the right amount of rain, to either extremely wet and rainy and tropical all summer, or extremely dry, becoming a drought, and very humid for the lions share of the summer rather than the former norm of two weeks or so of humidity always in July.
We cannot continue down this path any longer whatsoever. Our current way of acting like no matter what, someone else will figure out solutions to any problems come up and that we have nothing to worry about and we can just carry on buying everything we think we want or need to have, and rejoice in our God given right to continue going to the mall or cruising Amazon and shop with our credit cards, is completely and utterly unsustainable. Top climate scientists recently issued a “code red for humanity,” warning that this is our last chance to implement the transformational changes necessary to keep warming below 1.5 C and avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate chaos.
It’s very frustrating to see all these changes taking place around the world while feeling helpless do much, if anything about it. I get that. But there are MANY little tiny things you personally can do and COLLECTIVELY they will all add up to positive change. I firmly believe that. If you choose to also, and you help me convince others that, indeed, we all COLLECTIVELY can make all kinds of CHOICES towards better ways of living that will create a much healthier, and more sustainable environment.
At the very least you can choose to do less that require you to use fossil fuels. You can recycle. You can eat less animal meat which contributes enormously to greenhouse gas emissions, namely methane. You can borrow and lend things that you, your loved ones, and friends and neighbors all need from time to time, but not everyone has. It is silly that we in America all live so isolated and rarely do this, instead we see our neighbor with a new tool that we like, and we go to the local big-box home retailer and buy one too! You can actually lower your thermostat in the winter and turn it up in the summer. You can recycle clothing and buy used clothing. You can instigate a waiting period before buying anything that you think you want or need. You can be a more responsible citizen and spend the time and do the work to become more informed and then vote for those who you share views with and, finally, you can talk about or start conversations about it to keep people thinking about it as much as you can without being a real pain in the side for someone else.
If you can afford it, switch over to all electric as soon as possible.
To recap, there are concrete things you can do that make a real difference in climate change for the better when paired with similar effort by others.
- Do Less that requires use of fossil fuels.
- Regift, reuse, recycle anything that can be useful to someone else.
- Borrow and Lend more than outright buying things.
- Adjust your thermostat to minimize energy use seasonally as needed.
- Give and use used clothing.
- Instigate a waiting period for buying anything that you think you want or need other than essentials.
- Stay educated and informed about important issues impacting the health and welfare of the planet and anything that might threaten it.
- Vote for candidates that will favor and propose legislation to fight unfavorable climate change.
- Eat less or give up eating animal meat to reduce or eliminate their enormous methane production.
- Start friendly conversations or engage others about this topic more often than not.
- If possible, add solar capability to your home, add a backup battery system, buy an electric car and add a charging station at your home.
- Plant trees, shrubs, where ever possible to CO2 reduction. This is especially true with hemp or cannabis (if it’s legal where you live) as it removes more greenhouse gases per meter than any other plant on earth! Industrial hemp absorbs between 8 and 15 tons of CO2 per hectare of cultivation, whereas in comparison, forests typically capture 2 to 6 tonnes of CO2 per hectare per year depending on the number of years of growth, the climatic region, the type of trees etc.
- Do not be part of the problem and be one of the idiots that fights attempts towards change away from the cultural norms of excess and waste. Rather, embrace that all good things must come to an end, and that what may have seemed “good” once upon a time, is no longer good for anything except the hastening of the Earth’s demise.
Until enough people begin to seriously change towards cleaner and less wasteful living, I fear mankind, at least MOST OF US, will see a serious degradation in our standard of living that will only get worse over time. Until then, Where Is Spock When We Need Him? If We Do Not Use “Vulcan Logic” To Guide Our Decisions And Change Our Ways Regarding Global Warming Now, Mankind’s Extinction Will Arrive Much Faster Than Previously Calculated!
We’ve never before been able to drive or power our businesses and homes with clean energy the way we can and are starting to do now. For the sake of the earth and all of our lives and quality of life, let’s all embrace these miraculous advancements and positive use of these new technologies as fast as possible.
Let’s join together to ensure that we pass the buck to the next generations properly and give them a real start towards a healthier place to live by choosing to live differently than we have been, using more thought than before about how and what and how much we use and consume and throw away.
