Dismantle Civilisation

By Chris Hedges, reprinted from truthdig.com

Our most potent political weapon is food. If we take back our agriculture, if we buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of corporations that control a food system as fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse as our financial system. If we continue to allow corporations to determine what we eat, as well as how food is harvested and distributed, then we will become captive to rising prices and shortages and increasingly dependent on cheap, mass-produced food filled with sugar and fat. Food, along with energy, will be the most pressing issue of our age. And if we do not build alternative food networks soon, the social and political ramifications of shortages and hunger will be devastating.

The effects of climate change, especially with widespread droughts in Australia, Africa, California and the Midwest, coupled with the rising cost of fossil fuels, have already blighted the environments of millions. The poor can often no longer afford a balanced diet. Global food prices increased an average of 43 percent since 2007, according to the International Monetary Fund. These increases have been horrific for the approximately 1 billion people—one-sixth of the world’s population—who subsist on less than $1 per day. And 162 million of these people survive on less than 50 cents per day. The global poor spend as much as 60 percent of their income on food, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

There have been food riots in many parts of the world, including Austria, Hungary, Mexico, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan. Russia and Pakistan have introduced food rationing. Pakistani troops guard imported wheat. India has banned the export of rice, except for high-end basmati. And the shortages and price increases are being felt in the industrialized world as we continue to shed hundreds of thousands of jobs and food prices climb. There are 33.2 million Americans, or one in nine, who depend on food stamps. And in 20 states as many as one in eight are on the food stamp program, according to the Food Research Center. The average monthly benefit was $113.87 per person, leaving many, even with government assistance, without adequate food. The USDA says 36.2 million Americans, or 11 percent of households, struggle to get enough food, and one-third of them have to sometimes skip or cut back on meals. Congress allocated some $54 billion for food stamps this fiscal year, up from $39 billion last year. In the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, costs will be $60 billion, according to estimates.

Food shortages have been tinder for social upheaval throughout history. But this time around, because we have lost the skills to feed and clothe ourselves, it will be much harder for most of us to become self-sustaining. The large agro-businesses have largely wiped out small farmers. They have poisoned our soil with pesticides and contaminated animals in filthy and overcrowded stockyards with high doses of antibiotics and steroids. They have pumped nutrients and phosphorus into water systems, causing algae bloom and fish die-off in our rivers and streams. Crop yields, under the onslaught of changing weather patterns and chemical pollution, are declining in the Northeast, where a blight has nearly wiped out the tomato crop. The draconian Food Modernization Safety Act, another gift from our governing elite to corporations, means small farms will only continue to dwindle in number. Sites such as La Via Campesina do a good job of tracking these disturbing global trends.

“The entire economy built around food is unsafe and unethical,” activist Henry Harris of the Food Security Roundtable told me. The group builds distribution systems between independent farmers and city residents.

“Food is the greatest place for communities to start taking back power,” he said. “The national food system is collapsing by degrees. More than 50 percent of what we eat comes from the Central Valley of California. What happens when gasoline becomes $5 a gallon or drought sweeps across the cropland? The monolithic system of food production is highly unstable. It has to be replaced very soon with small, diverse sources that provide greater food security.”

Cornell University recently did a study to determine whether New York state could feed itself. The research is described in two articles published in 2006 and 2008 by the journal Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems. If all agricultural land were in use, and food distribution were optimized to minimize the total distance that food travels, New York state could, the researchers found, have 34 percent of its food needs met from within its boundaries. This is not encouraging news to those who live in New York City. New York once relied on New Jersey, still known as the Garden State, instead of having food shipped from across the country. But New Jersey farms have largely given way to soulless housing developments. Farming communities upstate, their downtowns boarded up and desolate, have been gutted by industrial farming.

The ties most Americans had to rural communities during the Great Depression kept many alive. A barter economy replaced the formal economy. Families could grow food or had relatives to feed them. But in a world where we do not know where our food comes from, or how to produce it, we have become vulnerable. And many will be forced, as food prices continue to rise, to shift to a diet of cheap, fatty, mass-produced foods, already a staple of the nation’s poor. Junk food, a major factor in obesity, diabetes and heart disease, is often the only food those in the inner city can buy because supermarkets and nutritious food are geographically and financially beyond reach. As the economy continues to deteriorate, the middle class will soon join them.

“It is clear to anyone who looks carefully at any crowd that we are wasting our bodies exactly as we are wasting our land,” Wendell Berry observed in “The Unsettling of America.” “Our bodies are fat, weak, joyless, sickly, ugly, the virtual prey of the manufacturers of medicine and cosmetics. Our bodies have become marginal; they are growing useless like our ‘marginal land’ because we have less and less use for them. After the games and idle flourishes of modern youth, we use them only as shipping cartons to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.”

Berry, who lives on a farm in Kentucky where his family has farmed for generations, argues that local farming is fundamental to sustaining communities. Industrial farming, he says, has estranged us from the land. It has rendered us powerless to provide for ourselves. It has left us complicit in the corporate destruction of the ecosystem. Its moral cost, Berry argues, has been as devastating as its physical cost.

“The people will eat what the corporations decide for them to eat,” writes Berry. “They will be detached and remote from the sources of their life, joined to them only by corporate tolerance. They will have become consumers purely—consumptive machines—which is to say, the slaves of producers. What … model farms very powerfully suggest, then, is that the concept of total control may be impossible to confine within the boundaries of the specialist enterprise—that it is impossible to mechanize production without mechanizing consumption, impossible to make machines of soil, plants, and animals without making machines also of people.”

The nascent effort by communities to reclaim local food production is the first step toward reclaiming lives severed and fragmented by corporate culture. It is more than a return to local food production. It is a return to community. It brings us back to the values that sustain community. It is a return to the recognition of the fragility, interconnectedness and sacredness of all living systems and our dependence on each other. It turns back to an ethic that can save us.

“[The commercial] revolution … , ” writes Berry, “did not stop with the subjugation of the Indians, but went on to impose substantially the same catastrophe upon the small farms and the farm communities, upon the shops of small local tradesmen of all sorts, upon the workshops of independent craftsmen, and upon the households of citizens. It is a revolution that is still going on. The economy is still substantially that of the fur trade, still based on the same general kinds of commercial items: technology, weapons, ornaments, novelties, and drugs. The one great difference is that by now the revolution has deprived the mass of consumers of any independent access to the staples of life: clothing, shelter, food, even water. Air remains the only necessity that the average user can still get for himself, and the revolution has imposed a heavy tax on that by way of pollution. Commercial conquest is far more thorough and final than military defeat.

“The inevitable result of such an economy,” Berry adds, “is that no farm or any other usable property can safely be regarded by anyone as a home, no home is ultimately worthy of our loyalty, nothing is ultimately worth doing, and no place or task or person is worth a lifetime’s devotion. ‘Waste,’ in such an economy, must eventually include several categories of humans—the unborn, the old, ‘disinvested’ farmers, the unemployed, the ‘unemployable.’ Indeed, once our homeland, our source, is regarded as a resource, we are all sliding downward toward the ash heap or the dump.”

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Social change comes down to communication. Great efforts have resulted in fine books, stories for films and books, and there have been some wonderful speeches. But it must really start and end with the conversation wherein the top topic is the issues of the day approached honestly and without fear.

When people talk about a problem openly, then there is a chance of solving it. There may be no solution, but the attempt to converse about it may have other beneficial effects and lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

by Jan Lundberg at culture change

With species extinction now at the highest rate since the disappearance of the dinosaurs, one might assume this crisis is on everyone’s mind and discussed widely. One would be wrong. No one knows if it’s 100 species a day, many of which have not been named. Massive species loss has been known for many years, but it is “old news” or “boring.”

Neither are other critical topics discussed enough to match their import: melting of the ice caps and glaciers, nuclear weapons and nuclear waste, out of control arms sales, ongoing starvation or malnourishment of hundreds of millions of people, overpopulation, the greed of financiers openly stripping nations of wealth, etc.

In reality, they are all related. It comes down to compassion and taking action wisely. When people manage to discuss the most pressing issues, they can see past the immediate crisis possessing the power to distract. Then a whole-systems approach can serve to unite people into one movement.

In the 1960s there was “The Movement.” People had many definitions for it, and some members were more interested in stopping the bombing over Indochina than securing all rights for the Afro-American population, for example. But The Movement included those concentrating on expanded consciousness, back-to-the-land agrarianism, communalism, armed revolution, women’s liberation, environmental protection. It could all be seen as a whole: challenging “plastic society” and the false materialistic values of the flag-waving pro-war older generation.

We can blame the end of The Movement on its splintering into separate movements, or on the end of the Vietnam War draft, or the commercialization and corporatization of popular music, or assassinations of leaders in the 1960s — or all of them combined. The biggest mistake was to stop having the conversation about society in general. Instead people began to take the easy way out and earn more money and stay out of trouble, Those who did not cease the conversation became known as activists, and it was no longer “the youth” or “the students” or “The Movement.” Instead activists were on the fringes and mocked by “being stuck back in the 1960s.” The federal COINTELPRO operations against organizations and leaders took a toll, and there were pleasant distractions such as disco music or take your pick.

Social change comes down to communication. Great efforts have resulted in fine books, stories for films and books, and there have been some wonderful speeches. But it must really start and end with the conversation wherein the top topic is the issues of the day approached honestly and without fear.

When people talk about a problem openly, then there is a chance of solving it. There may be no solution, but the attempt to converse about it may have other beneficial effects and lead to unexpected breakthroughs.

When people avoid talking about serious matters, much harm can be done by others who are intent on opportunism or worse. Distracting people with other issues is therefore the prime tool for those trying to maintain an advantage in the status quo. It can also be said that the main tool is enslavement through economic dominance — a giant distraction from realizing a liberated life style. Many robotic or sheep-like people today have no concept of liberation except personal enrichment.

Talking about food security

We would not know it from the corporate media or our politicians, but we should be worrying big time that food supply will fail untold millions of people. All one has to do is look at energy, topsoil, pressures of the market (such as rising demand for food), and mix in some catastrophic weather that is assured, and we have a huge disaster ahead. It is just a matter of time.

There is a movement to appreciate local food, slow food, organic food. But it has not reduced the average number of miles a piece of food travels via petroleum in the U.S.: 1,500. To produce industrial food — probably 95% of what is eaten in the U.S. — ten caloric units of fossil-fuels produce one caloric unit of food. Farm workers are among the lowest paid in the nation, which is strange when everyone wants to eat. Time in the hot sun, subjected to pesticides and possible immigration raids, make the profession all the less attractive. There is no longer a designation for farmer in the U.S. census when so few people live on their own farms anymore. It was no wonder that when Max Yasgur, who hosted the Woodstock Festival in 1969, began his welcome with “Now I’m a farmer…” at that he was drowned out by cheers and applause. That was The Movement expressing itself for nature. Get the record album and hear it.

Today I picked three pint-sized baskets of three kinds of berries. It took me about an hour, even when the season is just right. I still had to pay eight dollars for the fruit. It is not designated as organic, which would allow for a higher price, but it was unsprayed. If the value of my time is $20 an hour, my overall cost was $28. I spent no money on transportation because I bicycled. There’s a problem we don’t have a name for: a labor problem? We are not producing our own food locally because we “cannot afford to.” Rather, we subsidize the food in unsustainable ways while upper classes of consumers can afford to pay others to grow, gather, process, truck and prepare the food. This system only works for a few people in a division-of-labor society geared toward surpluses for the elite: i.e., Western Civilization.

In the berry patch a father said bitterly to his daughter, “You guys dragged me here and I don’t have time for all this work.” She replied “It’s fun!” I’m glad to report that he had no further retort. Perhaps he should have a conversation with his family and friends about what he thinks he can do with his time, what he is allowed to do, and how he may provide for his family as well as raise a child directly.

Inane conversation or prattling

More alarming than empty talk and avoiding critical issues is no talking at all, when some modern humans live in a computer-game world, or they communicate mostly in isolation using a cell phone or email. Of these, many don’t have much in the way of friendships, and family is something to occasionally visit. Meanwhile, conversation is still key, especially if it can be elevated beyond the personal need to connect to another human being (even to just discuss clothes or beer). The art of conversation is getting harder to encounter. People don’t seem to have time.

Before we can work toward starting the conversation on our survival, what is going on all around us that passes for discussion? My observation is that the quality of conversation is almost always and everywhere inane. Wars being fought in the name of the United States of America, in Iraq and Afganistan, are not prime topics of discussion or debate at any given time by “the average person.” After all, there’s endless celebrity news, the latest unemployment statistics, the latest iPhone technology, a fire in southern California, President Obama’s latest pronouncement on medical care, and a lost doggy found in another city after a heart-rending odyssey.

Admittedly, there is also news in the background on climate change, assassinations, bankruptcies of iconic corporations, and other serious stories. But there’s never a common thread in the corporate news media or in a politician’s speech. On the street you’re more likely to hear something real: “the system sucks.” If it does, what do we do about it?

It should be no wonder that the quality of conversation — whether in the living room of “the average person,” in the employee lunch room, or at a bar or party — is usually inane. Sports news or a review of a television show are favorites, along with gossip or tales of a weekend adventure. When the subjects of politics or ecology come up, these are treated with argument, jokes and derision as often are statements of concern. Rare is a vow of “I will bicycle to work and get rid of my television.” As for everyday banter with meaning, there can be comparisons of home gardening techniques.

Reviving the economy back to growth is the hottest topic in the serious realm, with climate change ranking at bottom. The latter is denied by some, or is too scary to tackle. The tendency is to let “the experts” or public officials deal with it — as they’re dealing with the economy and everything else.

They’re not bringing us peace. They’re not stopping species extinction. They’re not redistributing the wealth or jailing the white collar criminals (Madoff is an exception, a sop). If the rulers should not rule, shouldn’t this be a major topic of conversation?

What we need is the conversation that’s not happening. In the 1960s and into the 1970s the politically minded street threater group The Yippies (Youth International Party) took matters into their own hands to bring attention to the issues. One method was disruption of business as usual. Stunts included burning dollar bills, sewing the American flag on to one’s pants, or kissing during college lectures. A book by one of the main instigators, Jerry Rubin, was titled Do It. (The author became a stockbroker, a fate probably from losing his hippie support system.)

Who is “doing it” today? Bloggers? Internet activists? Artists? Obama? There’s some good journalism and activism, but the masses of people are somehow left out of the conversation. They want to be left out, when they avoid discussing serious issues relating to their survival on an imperiled planet. The question is, can they be made to discuss it before things are totally out of control, when rational discussion may be impossible? No end of secret government subversion can overcome a big enough conversation.

We Are Many, They Are Few – Really?

If all the able-bodied homeless people in the greater New York City area decided to converge on Wall Street and seize some wealth or demand housing, they could do it. If the millions of minorities discriminated against by ruthless corporate employers staged sit ins and used economic boycotts, such action could earn large concessions. But instead, masses are herded like sheep by a small number of agents of the elite. The corporate state does have effective tools such as the military, prisons, police — the “stick” — to go with bribes and perks and promises of mild reform — the “carrot.” Yet, numerically, if enough people wanted to bring about a truly equitable society, or in particular end the unpopular wars, this could be done with little or no violence in a short amount of time.

The reason it does not happen is that the right conversations are not taking place except by the very few. Even with the huge and growing number of people on mood-control and psychiatric drugs, that sad population unwittingly enriching pharmaceutical companies rather than actually healing is in good enough condition to talk sensibly and stimulate some community action.

The greatest crowd control of all time may be happening right now when a popular U.S. president can give the idea that he is pursuing meaningful change. The sleight of hand includes the idea that he can make substantial change. Obama knows his limitations, as every top politician comes to know. In addition to promising improvements and the impossible return to a growth economy — and the trickle-down prosperity that never really worked — Obama and his allies have some key issues dear to many hearts. Unfortunately, they are bogus: the technological fix for climate mitigation, cleaner energy upon peak oil, and better cars. Obama is such a nice and eloquent guy that most people want to believe he will bring about more jobs, higher wages, peace, and an end to terrorism, the threat to polar bears, etc.

Smooth propaganda — hard for most people to pick apart:
President Barack Obama: “These are some of the challenges that our generation has been called to meet. And yet, there are those who would have us try what has already failed; who would defend the status quo. They argue that our health care system is fine the way it is and that a clean energy economy can wait. They say we are trying to do too much, that we are moving too quickly, and that we all ought to just take a deep breath and scale back our goals. These naysayers have short memories. They forget that we, as a people, did not get here by standing pat in a time of change. We did not get here by doing what was easy. That is not how a cluster of 13 colonies became the United States of America.” – Fourth of July Statement, 2009
Obama is a perfect maestro for keeping people from dealing directly with the global mix of crises. Above all, we should regard Obama as personifying the hierarchy which is seldom questioned. The hierarchy certainly sets the tone at all possible times. Obama is the current “one,” and everyone else is many, but because of laws and convention he is given the right to be master and Pied Piper for a time. Then, in 2012, and only then, he can be re-elected or replaced by a Republicrat or Demopublican. Who the next president might be is NOT the conversation that needs to take place.

The fact that the U.S. can feel it has cleansed itself of racism by electing Obama is a perfect distraction from more serious issues of extinction. For if we consume enough plastic, are exposed to enough radiation, and cling to a lifestyle divorced from nature and health, our species can indeed go extinct — even without the extinction of the Earth’s climate as we know it. Our best hope to avoid waiting for the worst may well be collapse of the economic system. This may usher in a sustainable culture. Maybe people will talk about it and take action in anticipation.

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By Tara Lohan, AlterNet

Vandana Shiva says industrial agriculture has left Indian farmers indebted and destitute, and explains how to stem the tide of suicides.

Last month, the world got a glimpse of an epidemic that has hit India in the last decade when news reports alerted readers to the suicides of 1,500 farmers in the Indian state of Chattisgarh.

But this has been only a fraction of the suicides committed by farmers since 1997, says Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., a physicist, environmentalist, feminist, science policy advocate and director of Navdanya and the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology.

While initial news reports blamed the recent suicides on falling water levels, Shiva explains that the suicide epidemic in India is a lot more complicated and far-reaching.

“Rapid increase in indebtedness is at the root of farmers’ taking their lives,” she wrote recently. “Debt is a reflection of a negative economy. Two factors have transformed agriculture from a positive economy into a negative economy for peasants: the rising of costs of production and the falling prices of farm commodities. Both these factors are rooted in the policies of trade liberalization and corporate globalization.”

At the heart of this is a circle of indebtedness that has resulted from the so-called Green Revolution, which exported industrial agricultural practices to places like India and in doing so, made seeds, a once-renewable resource for farmers, into something that had be bought from corporations.

“In 1998, the World Bank’s structural-adjustment policies forced India to open up its seed sector to global corporations like Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta,” Shiva wrote. “The global corporations changed the input economy overnight. Farm-saved seeds were replaced by corporate seeds, which need fertilizers and pesticides and cannot be saved. … The shift from saved seed to corporate monopoly of the seed supply also represents a shift from biodiversity to monoculture in agriculture.”

In an interview with AlterNet, Shiva explained how Monsanto’s Bt cotton has exemplified what can go wrong with industrial agriculture; what happens to farming communities when traditional farming methods are replaced by corporate sponsored mono-cropping; and how to stem the tide of farmer suicides.

Tara Lohan: Farmer suicides in India recently made the news when stories broke last month about 1,500 farmers taking their own lives, what do you attribute these deaths to?

Vandana Shiva: Over the last decade, 200,000 farmers have committed suicide. The 1,500 figure is for the state of Chattisgarh. In Vidharbha, 4,000 are committing suicide annually. This is the region where 4 million acres of cotton have been grown with Monsanto’s Bt cotton. The suicides are a direct result of a debt trap created by ever-increasing costs of seeds and chemicals and constantly falling prices of agricultural produce.

When Monsanto’s Bt cotton was introduced, the seed costs jumped from 7 rupees per kilo to 17,000 rupees per kilo. Our survey shows a thirteenfold increase in pesticide use in cotton in Vidharbha. Meantime, the $4 billion subsidy given to U.S. agribusiness for cotton has led to dumping and depression of international prices.

Squeezed between high costs and negative incomes, farmers commit suicide when their land is being appropriated by the money lenders who are the agents of the agrichemical and seed corporations. The suicides are thus a direct result of industrial globalized agriculture and corporate monopoly on seeds.

TL: Suicides of Indian farmers unfortunately is not news — how long has this been a problem, how serious is the problem, what are the underlying causes?

VS: The first suicide that we studied took place in Warrangal in Andhra Pradesh in 1997. This region is a rain-fed dry region and used to grow dry land crops such as millets, pigeon pea etc. In 1997, the seed corporations converted the region from biodiverse agriculture to monocultures of cotton hybrid. The farmers were not told they would need irrigation. They were not told that they would need fertilizers and pesticides. They were not told they could not save the seeds. The cotton seeds were sold as “White Gold,” with a false promise that farmers would become millionaires. Instead, the farmers landed in severe unpayable debt. This is how the suicides began.

TL: You said that 200,000 farmers have ended their lives since 1997 — where does that statistic come from? Are there numbers to compare suicide rates for farmers pre-Green Revolution with the numbers we are seeing today?

VS: The statistics on farmers suicides are kept by the National Crime Bureau. Since there were no large-scale suicides prior to 1997, the statistics was not maintained before that. The combination of the spread of nonrenewable seeds and globalized trade has triggered the epidemic of suicides.

TL: What role does water and water management play in the problems Indian farmers are facing?

VS: India is a land of varied climates, from rainforests to deserts. Seventy percent of Indian farming is rain-fed (dependent on rain not irrigation). Introducing inappropriate crops and cropping patterns has aggravated the water crisis and precipitated more frequent crop failure. Ecological agriculture needs 10 times less water than chemical farming. Green Revolution varieties, hybrids and GM crops are all bred for irrigation. On the one hand, this puts pressure on farmers in low-rainfall zones to drill tube wells, which fail — on the other hand, it leads to more frequent crop failure.

TL: How has the Green Revolution changed things for farmers? Is the most significant change in the ownership of seeds by corporations?

VS: The Green Revolution was the name given to the introduction of chemical/industrial farming in India in 1965-66 under the pressure of the U.S. government and World Bank. The Green Revolution was based on seeds bred for responding to chemical inputs. Companies made money from sale of agrichemicals, the seeds were in the public domain.

Genetic engineering is often called the second Green Revolution. Now, the seeds are owned by corporations through intellectual property rights. This leads to a very drastic change in how farming is done and who controls decisions in agriculture.

TL: How have companies like Monsanto, Cargill and others created what you call a “suicide economy” for farmers?

VS: Monsanto’s contribution to the suicide economy is by extracting super profits from farmers in the form of royalties and by intentionally transforming seeds from a renewable resource that farmers can save to a nonrenewable resource that they must buy in the market every year. Monsanto had a big role in shaping the TRIPs agreement [on intellectual property] of WTO.

Cargill’s contribution to the suicide economy is as the biggest controller of agricultural trade. Cargill was responsible for the Agreement on Agriculture, which has promoted dumping and denying farmers of the Third World their right to fair prices.

TL: Is there a particular area of the country that has been hardest hit? Which are the worst off and what are they growing? Are other areas more successful and if so, why?

VS: The worst-hit suicide areas of the country are Vidharbha, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Karnataka. These are also the cotton-growing areas, and these are the areas where Monsanto has established a monopoly on seed supply through Bt cotton. Areas where farmers have their own seed, where they are growing diversity of food crops and are practicing organic farming are areas free of debt and farmers suicides.

Navdanya has started a seeds-of-hope program in the suicide belt of Vidharbha. Creating seed banks, training farmers in organic agriculture and helping farmers with fair trade has helped farmers increase their incomes tenfold compared to farmers growing Bt cotton.

TL: What should the government of India be doing, and what can the world community do?

VS: The government of India should be playing a major role in public seed supply. Before Monsanto’s entry, 80 percent of the seed used to come from farmers’ own fields, and 20 percent came from government seed farms. Under privatization, government seed breeding has been wiped out. Seed is a public and common good, and hence seeds should stay in the hands of farming communities and public-sector institutions.

The government should also impose a moratorium on GMO seeds such as Bt cotton until full independent assessment of its performance in small farmers’ fields has been completed. The government should also promote organic farming, since from the perspective of farmers this is the only way to get out of the debt and suicide trap.

At the international level, the world community needs to defend seed as a common good and build a strong movement against seed patents and seed monopolies. People can also contribute to Navdanya’s Seeds of Hope Campaign.

To learn more, you can also read Shiva’s most recent article on the subject.

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29 really scary things, that we as a species need to act upon, now – article from IntelDaily.

Time is running out and using denial to escape these harsh realities is no longer an option.

1. According to a Washington Post article in 1998, a poll was conducted by the New York Museum of Natural History which found that seven out of ten scientists from the American Institute of Biological Sciences are convinced that a mass extinction is underway and that within 30 years, one fifth of all living species could become extinct (Warrick, 1998). In 2005, respected scientist Professor Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, stated that, unless humankind changes behaviors, as many as two-thirds of world species could be extinct by 2100 (Collins, 2005).
2. According to World Wildlife Fund Director-General, James Leape, we would need a total of five planets to sustain the world’s population if everyone on the planet had the same consumption rate as America. This finding was reported in the 2006 Living Planet Report which is the outcome of an annual study that has been conducted since 1998 to determine the rate of change in global biodiversity and the pressure on the biosphere which manifests from the human consumption of natural resources (World Wildlife Federation, 2006a). The 2006 Report also noted that in 2003, the world exceeded biocapacity by 25%. This means that with a global population of 6.6 billion people, the world is currently consuming at a rate of 25% more than what the earth is capable of regenerating. What will that rate be when the world has 10 billion people?
3. The world’s population in 1600 was at 500 million (Leakey & Lewin, 1995). Two hundred years later in the year 1800, it had doubled to one billion. By 1940, another 140 years, the global population tripled to 3 billion. From 1940 to present day, 66 years later, the world’s population has more than doubled to 6.6 billion. It is projected to be around ten billion by 2050.
4. Global greenhouse gases due to anthropogenic causes have increased 70% between 1970 and 2004 with carbon dioxide, the most significant greenhouse gas, having increased 80% between the same 34 year period. Two other green house gases, methane and nitrous oxide, have also increased substantially and rank high in terms of a negative affect on the environment. If global average temperature exceeds 3.5 degrees Celsius, it is projected that between 40-70% of species will be at risk for extinction. Eleven of the past twelve years (1995-2006) have been the warmest years of record for global surface temperature since 1850 (IPCC, 2007, p. 1). Global warming is creating changes in the migratory patterns of animals, altering the timing of plant flowerings, causing changes in the flow of the Gulfstream, and creating changes in the ocean and the atmosphere which increase the occurrence of natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes. The primary causes are fossil fuel use (gasoline to power cars, boats, etc.) and agricultural and land use changes (deforestation, multinational farming methods, soil erosion, etc.).
5. The IPCC report says that, by 2080, 1.1 to 3.2 billion people will experience water scarcity, 200-600 million will be starving, and 2 to 7 million people each year will experience coastal flooding (cited in Vidal, 2007). As many as one billion people, or 17% of the world’s population, may be forced to abandon their homes over the next 50 years and migrate to another more habitable geographical area. Most of these people will be from poor and undeveloped countries. A combination of social, civil and military conflicts, large-scale development projects, and global environmental decline will make life inhabitable for hundreds of millions of people, mostly from Africa, south Asia, and the Middle East where, ironically, the least amount of consumption takes place.
6. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a leading science-based non-profit organization working for a healthier environment, reports that America has 5% of the world’s population, but emits 25% of the world’s carbon dioxide (UCS, 2006). The Union of Concerned Scientists’ web site also exposes the efforts of ExxonMobil which spent $16 million between 1998 and 2005 hiring advocacy organizations that intentionally discredit the overwhelming evidence pointing to global warming (UCS, 2006).
7. When oil and gas senior executives speak to lawmakers and the public, they report smaller profit margins (around 8 to 10 percent) than when they speak to Wall Street analysts and shareholders (Slocum, 2006).
8. On a global scale, there was an average species decline between 1970 and 2000 of 40% with species in rivers, lakes and marshlands having declined by 50% during the same period (Global Biodiversity Outlook 2, 2006). Research points to declines in amphibians, African mammals, birds in agricultural lands, corals, and common fish species. The World Conservation Union, or IUCN, Red List of Threatened Species is recognized as the most reliable evaluation of the world’s species. According to the 2007 Red List, life on earth is disappearing fast and the extinction process will continue unless urgent action is taken. There is a total of 41,415 species on the Red list (IUCN, 2007). Last year, 16,118 were facing extinction and now 16,306 are threatened. The aggregate number of extinct species is 785. The Red List reports that 25% of mammals, 13% of all birds, 33% of all amphibians, and 70% of the world’s assessed plants are now threatened with extinction. One of the most disturbing statistics is that of the vertebrate family which includes mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes. The entire vertebrate family saw an increase in threatened species jump from 3,314 in 1996 to 5,742 in 2007. Life in the ocean is in peril. According to the 2007 IUCN Red List, there are some 41, 415 species of marine life listed and, out of that, 30% are at risk for extinction. Some other vertebrates facing extinction are the tigers in India which are now thought to total no more than 1,500. In 2002, there were 3,642. Of particular concern is the rapid loss of plant species. From 1996 to 2007, the number of critically endangered plant species jumped from 909 to 1,569 and the number of endangered during the same period rose from 1,197 to 2, 278. The number of vulnerable plants during that period rose from 3,222 to 4,600. Altogether, the number of plant species that are threatened jumped from 5,328 in 1996 to 8,447 in 2007. Twenty percent (20%) of the earth’s reefs have been destroyed over the past thirty years and another 50% are endangered by human activity.
9. According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, electric power plants caused 67% of the total sulfur dioxide, more than 25% of the nitrogen oxides, 33% of the mercury, and 40% of the carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 1998 (Natural Defense Resources Council, 2003). Approximately 120 million Americans live in areas with unhealthy air.
10. The use of toxins, pesticides, and chemicals over the past sixty years has posed a substantial problem for wildlife and humans. Between 1930 and 2000, the global production of man-made chemicals skyrocketed from 1 million to 400 million tons per year (World Wildlife Federation, 2006b). Since the middle of the 20th century, the amount of pesticides sprayed on crops has increased by 26%. Because these pesticides seep into the soil, the crops that are grown absorb it. Humans eat the crops which are absorbed in the body.
11. Factory farms in the United States produce 500 million tons of manure each year which is three times the amount of human sanitary waste (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003). This poses serious threats to the water we drink and the oceans, rivers, lakes, and streams. Large multimillion dollar corporations own many of the farms that generate pollution in the large lagoons that collect the urine and manure from the animals. Because lagoons have broken, failed, or overflowed, these leakages cause fish to be killed and the people living near the lagoons to report higher incidences of illnesses (Marks, 2001). Gases such as ammonia, hydrogen sulfide, and methane are emitted from the lagoons and the irrigation pivots. These gases are toxic, consume oxygen, and are even potentially explosive. People residing near the lagoons have reported a host of physical ailments including headaches, excessive coughing, respiration problems, nausea, diarrhea, dizziness, depression, and fatigue. Also hazardous are the pathogenic microbes in the animal waste that can infect humans. The amount of meat production in 2006 hit a record 276 million tons which results in greater amounts of sludge from these farms. According to the Center for Food Safety, a non-profit public interest and environmental advocacy organization, millions of tons of potentially toxic sewage sludge has been used as crop fertilizer to millions of acres of farmland in America (Center for Food Safety, n.d.). Municipal governments sell sewage sludge to farmers as a way to dispose of unwanted byproducts from the municipal wastewater treatment plants. Sewage sludge contains anything that is flushed in a toilet or put down a kitchen sink. Many people have become ill from the heavy metals, industrial compounds, viruses, bacteria, drug residues, and radioactive materials which are found within the sewage sludge which is, as mentioned, put on the crops. Government monitoring of this hazardous waste is lax.
12. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans discarded 246 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2005 and businesses threw away 7.6 billion tons of industrial waste in the same year (EPA, 2007). This is an increase of 60% since 1980. Municipal residential waste includes items such as paper, yard trimmings, food scraps, plastics, metals, rubber, leather, wood, glass, sofas, computers, and refrigerators. It excludes industrial and hazardous waste. About 11% of landfills are made of plastic waste, a total of 26.7 million tons. Thirty five percent (35%) is made of paper, a total of 83 million tons. The amount of plastic thrown away increased from less than 1% in 1960 to 11.3% in 2003. The amount of paper discarded increased three fold between 1960 and 2003. The majority of municipal solid waste is comprised of containers and packaging followed by nondurable goods such as clothing, shoes, and other textiles. Globally, humans use 1.5 million tons of petroleum-based plastic to make bottles on an annual basis. It takes one million years for glass bottles to decompose. For aluminum cans, it takes 80 to 100 years while tin cans take 50 to 100 years. It takes a plastic coated milk carton five years to decompose and cigarette butts take anywhere from one to 12 years to degrade. It is a 25 to 40 year decomposition process for leather shoes and a 30 to 40 year process for nylon fabric. Environmentalists say that it will take 50 years for all the oil from the Exxon Valdez spill to finally degrade.
13. The World Wildlife Federation (2007) reports that the use of toxic man-made chemicals has increased from 1 million to 400 million tons between 1930 and 2000. They are seeping into the soil and into the food chain of all animals which, ultimately, ends up in the human body.
14. The tropical rainforest is a rich biosystem and contains the greatest diversity of species of biomes on earth which is why there is so much attention given to its preservation. This system is a home for 50-90% of all living organisms and to 90% of primates. It provides home and sanctuary to 50 million creatures that are unable to survive anywhere other than in the tropical rainforest. Serious threats from deforestation, road construction, clearing the land for agricultural purposes, and climate change are decimating it and its flora of animal wildlife. The logging industry needs the wood from forests to provide products such as paper, wood for home and commercial construction, packaging, and a host of others. McDonald’s needs 800 square miles of trees to make the amount of paper that they need solely for their packaging of products. As more and more people eat hamburgers and steaks, factory farms are necessary to grow the livestock. In the South American Amazon region, there are 100,000 beef ranchers. Norman Myers, the Oxford University environmentalist and expert on biodiversity, was the first to bring widespread attention to deforestation when he wrote The Sinking Ark in 1979 in which he estimated that more than 80,000 square miles per year of forests are being felled. This amounts to one acre per second being cut down. In the Amazon, there is an average of 1,500 acres of forest cut down each day.
15. Today, 50% of the forests that originally covered 48% of the earth are gone (NRDC, 2004). Americans use 27% of the worldwide consumption of commercially harvested wood yet only 5% of the world’ population is in the United States. The United States is the largest consumer and producer of industrial wood and the world’s largest importer of wood (Shugart, Sedjo, & Sohngen, 2003). In the construction industry, approximately 1/6 of the wood that is delivered is never used. It is predicted that, by the year 2050, global wood consumption will increase by 50%. In the U.S., more than 50% of the coastal temperate rainforests that once covered areas from California to Alaska have been destroyed. Mexico is losing an estimated 600,000 to 2.5 million acres of forests each year. Most of the mahogany exported from Peru is illegally logged by corporations, a major threat to forests all over the world. Canada provides 80% of their forest products to U.S. consumers. Only 8% of Canada’s valuable boreal forest is sufficiently protected.
16. The United States has lost over 50% of the wetlands in the lower 48 states. The rate of loss is predicted at 60,000 acres per year. Louisiana has lost 500,000 acres of wetlands since the 1950s (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003).
17. Humans have wiped out 90% of the ocean’s large fish (World Wildlife Federation, 2006) and exploited 52% of the world’s fish populations. Of the remaining fish population, 24% are overexploited, depleted or making a recovery from collapse. The world now has only 17% of the ocean fish that it had 100 years ago. In 2004, 156 million tons of seafood was consumed, three times the average amount of per person seafood eaten in 1950 (Worldwatch Institute, 2007). During the 1980s and early 1990s, scientists estimated that 25% of the fish that were caught (60 billion pounds each year) were discarded (Pew Oceans Commission, 2003). It is clear that the 19th century biologist, Thomas Huxley, was mistaken when he made the statement that all the sea fisheries were inexhaustible. The global industrialized fishing fleet is currently 2.5 times larger than what the ocean can sustain. What that means is that humans are consuming 2.5 times more than what the oceans can regenerate.
18. Invasive species is largely a man-made act in which one species is purposely moved from its natural environment and transported to another environment resulting in the extinction of species. Few people are aware that invasive species is one of the most serious global environmental challenges that we face today. Hundreds of extinctions have resulted from invasive species. The impact of alien invasive species is immediate and, in most cases, irreversible. Some species relocate unintentionally, but it is still through man-made intervention such as when a species attaches itself to the bottom of ships and is transported to another area. When foreign species are imported into the U.S., it does generate billions of dollars for the economy, but it also poses threats to agriculture and the environment (Schmitz & Simberloff, 2005). Global trade is a direct contributor to this threat to nature.
19. CEOs are now earning $10,000 to $12,000 per hour while the average salary increase for the average American worker is less than two percent (Democracy Now, 2007). If we pause briefly to compare work hours and wages between the average CEO and the average American worker, we see an egregious disparity. Ninety percent (90%) of Americans earn less than $100,000 per year, thus, the year of labor that it takes 90% of Americans to earn $100,000, it only takes the average CEO a total of 10 hours to earn. Sixty six percent (66%) of Americans earn less than $50,000 per year, thus, the year of labor it takes 66% of Americans to earn $50,000, it only takes the average CEO a total of five hours to earn. Fifty percent (50%) of Americans make less than 30,000 per year, so the average CEO makes that in less than three hours. The CEO does not even have labor for an entire day. According to the Drum Major Institute (2006), a non-partisan, non-profit think tank, their 2006 Injustice Index finds that the ratio of the average U.S. CEO annual pay to minimum wage worker’s is 821:1 whereas twenty years ago the ratio was 40:1. According to Kevin Murphy of the University of Southern California, the average U.S. CEO pay rose 369 times that of the average worker in 2005 while it was 191 times in 1993 and 36 times in 1976 (Krugman, 2002). Compare the 1993 ratio of U.S. CEO pay to the average American worker of 191:1 to the same ratio in Germany which was 23:1 and Japan which was 17:1 (Clinton, 1992). In 2006, the top 20 CEOs of U.S. companies made three times more than the top 20 CEOs of European companies that had higher sales profits than their U.S. counterparts (Sahadi, 2007). In August 2007, the Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy published their joint study on the wage gap between average American workers versus CEOs, private equity managers and hedge fund managers. Private equity and hedge fund managers’ pay averaged $657.5 million in 2006 which is 16,000 times more than the average full-time worker and it is 61 times larger than the average CEO pay (Sahadi, 2007).
20. Paul Krugman (2002), an economist at MIT and regular columnist for The New York Times, reports that in a 29 year period between 1970 and 1999, the average annual salary in America rose ten percent (10%) whereas, during the same period, according to Fortune magazine, the average real annual compensation of the top CEOs in America rose more than 1,000 times the pay of ordinary American workers and, according to a 2001 Congressional Budget Office study, between 1979 and 1997, the after-tax incomes of the top 1 percent of American families rose 157 percent (157%). Krugman (2005) reports that the average income of the top one percent (1%) of Americans has doubled since 1973 and the income of the top 0.1% has tripled. According to the United Nations Development Report (United Nations, 1999), the net wealth of the ten wealthiest billionaires is $133,000,000,000 (133 billion dollars), more than 1.5 times the total national income of the least developed countries. Doug Henwood (1998), in Wall Street: How It Works and for Whom, writes that the richest 5% of Americans own 95% of all stock shares and the top 1% of the population owns 25% of the productive capital and future profits of corporate America. In Henwood’s (2003) After the New Economy, he exposes that the richest 10% of Americans possess over ¾ of all the wealth in America and the bottom 50% has almost none of the wealth, but notes that they do have substantial debt. In a government study, the group which had the largest growth in total income between 2000 and 2005 was the top 0.001% individuals who make $1 million or more and which grew by more than 26% during these five years (Johnston, 2007). In the recent government report of the top 0.001% who make $1 million+, that group not only walked away with almost 47% of the total income gains in 2005 compared to 2000, but, according to Citizens for Tax Justice, they captured 62% of the savings from the reduced tax rates on long-term capital gains and dividends for the wealthy that President Bush signed into law in 2003 (Johnston, 2007). If the richest 5% of Americans own 95% of all stock shares and the top 1% of the population owns 25% of the productive capital and future profits of corporate America, it does not take a math genius to deduce that President Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy have overwhelmingly benefited 5% of Americans and have resulted in vastly deteriorated economic outlooks for the other 95%. The Citizens for Tax Justice reports that out of 134 million American taxpayers, those who make $10 million or more-a total of 11,433 taxpayers—saved almost $1.9 million each and reaped 28% of the investment tax cut savings. As an aggregate, these 11,433 Americans saved $21.7 billion in taxes on their investments as a direct result of President Bush’s tax cuts for the top wealthiest in America while the other 90% of American who make less than $100,000 a year saved an average of $318 on each investment.
21. One investment bank has commented that the current period for corporations is “the golden era of profitability” (Greenhouse & Leonhardt, 2006, p. A.1) with corporate profits climbing to the highest amount since the 1960s. Even though productivity levels have risen by double digits in the past decade, American workers’ pay increases have risen by less than 2%. As Herbert (2007) describes it this way: “If your productivity increases by 18% and your pay goes up 1%, you’ve been dealt a hand full of jokers in which jokers aren’t wild” (p. A.19). Most productivity gains have gone straight into the pockets of corporate executives. The savings rate for middle and poor class is now negative and more Americans are filing for bankruptcy than they are for divorce (Herbert, 2007). Moreover, 30 million Americans, or 25% of the U.S. workforce, make less than $9.00 per hour, or just $17,280 per year and, according to 2004 U.S. Census Bureau statistics, 37 million Americans now live in poverty (Hartmann, 2006).
22. Multinational corporations own animal patents to clone animals. The first animal patent that was issued was in 1988 for the “Oncomouse,” a genetically manipulated mouse to develop cancers that mirror human diseases. The research was conducted at Harvard University, but it was DuPont that was awarded the European Patent 169672 on the mouse in 1992. More than 660 animal patents have been issued in the United States since 1988. This means corporations have power over the DNA structure if cloning is not banned. If there is no ethical and moral line to be drawn with cloning of animals, how long will it take until humans are cloned? What happens if another Hitler or Stalin assume power?
23. More than 75 percent of workers in most of the industrial nations are performing work that is primarily simple and repetitive (Rifkin, 2004). In the United States, out of 124 million workers, more than 90 million jobs are at risk for replacement by machines. Currently, 3.6 billion out of 5.4 billion people in the world lack adequate cash or credit to purchase goods and services (Barnet & Cavanagh, 1994). Human androids are being made that will, one day, be indiscernible to a real human being (Whitehouse, 2005). Will they have a conscience? Not only will these androids take over work because of their slavish, blind obedience to authority and the wealthy capitalists, how will billions of unemployed real human beings survive and how will a real human being know if they are marrying a human being or an android? Will androids have legal and political rights? If so, without a conscience, how will they vote and what will they demand? If they become leaders, what will become of the world?
24. Corporations and individuals now own patents on 20 human pathogens (Crichton, 2007). This allows the owner of the patents to halt research, prevent medical testing, and to withhold vital information from a patient or doctor. A corporation can charge any amount for tests related to that disease. The owner of the genome for Hepatitis C is paid millions of dollars by researchers to study the disease. Not surprisingly, researchers turn to studying other less expensive diseases. When SARS was spreading around the world, medical researchers were reticent to study it because of the patent concerns behind it. The inhibition of innovation and research makes the patenting of human genes particularly insidious. Corporations literally have the power to prevent the finding of cures for disease. Perhaps the most disturbing patent is that of U.S. patent 5,476,995 on Tracey the sheep. Tracey had human genes injected into her mammary glands to produce a certain protein. The alteration of her genetic make-up allows the two companies which own her, Pharmaceutical Proteins Ltd. and Bayer, to describe her as a human invention. This takes the concept of Orwellian doublespeak and turns it into the more accurate phrase: diabolical deception.
25. Millions of birds, cats, dogs, farm animals, fish, mice, monkeys, rats, rabbits and a host of other domestic and wild animals are subjected to animal testing by psychologists, biologists, biochemists, physiologists, and geneticists. In a 2005 study, it was reported that the United States used 1.14 million animals (excluding rats, mice, birds and cold-blooded species), and an estimated 100 million mice for research (PETA, 2006a). Of these, it is known that 84, 662 animals suffered pain without pain relief. In the same study, it was found that Canada used 2.32 million animals for research and 167,000 animals were subjected to experiments that cause severe pain. In Great Britain, a total of 2.45 million animal experiments were conducted.
26. The military testing of weapons in which they use animals as subjects is a particularly horrible practice, but the public remains largely uninformed about it. According to PETA (2006b), the U.S. military uses AK-47 rifles, biological and chemical weapons, and nuclear blasts to test on animals. In 2001, the Department of Defense (DOD) reported that more than 330,000 dogs, cats, guinea pigs, hamsters, rabbits, nonhuman primates, rats, mice, dolphins, fish, and other animals had been subjects in their military tests. This excludes the experiments conducted by nongovernmental organizations in which sheep, goats, and pigs are shot in wound experiments, so the aggregate number of military tests in which animals are used is likely underreported.
27. President George W. Bush has backed out of important treaties since gaining power. He backed out of the Kyoto Treaty after assuming office in 2001 which meant he refused to honor commitments to work with over 100 other countries who had signed the treaty in addressing global warming. That was troubling enough. Then in December 2001 Bush announced that the United States would no longer honor the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that the U.S. signed with Russia in which there was a sort of balance of powers established. This withdrawal marked the first formal unilateral withdrawal of a major power from a nuclear arms treaty and it also triggered Russia to withdraw from its commitments under the START II arms reduction treaty. If that wasn’t alarming enough, in 2002, the Department of Defense presented the Nuclear Posture Review to Congress which expanded the range of situations in which the U.S. could use nuclear weapons allowing the option of using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear nations. This was another withdrawal from an agreement the U.S. had made in 1995 when it said it would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapon parties unless they attacked the U.S. while allied with another nuclear-weapon country. The Nuclear Posture Review to Congress also allowed pre-emptive attacks and permitted the development of nuclear warheads. In November 2006, Bush posted plans on a public website stating intentions to build nuclear weapons. Immediately following, six Arab nations made formal announcements that they were launching nuclear programs of their own. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) announced that Saudia Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab of Emirates, and Egypt had revealed their nuclear ambitions the prior month and were giving formal notice of those plans. Arms experts called this announcement a “stunning reversal of policy” in the Arab world because of a long past of commitments to a nuclear free Middle East. While the six countries told the IAEA that their intention was the pursuit of nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, it is clear that nuclear energy technology can be turned into weaponry. Then in mid 2007, Bush announced he was going to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe. Vladimir Putin responded by notifying NATO governments that Russia would suspend its obligations under the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, a cold war treaty that limited arms proliferation. Putin said that the bullying of President Bush was forcing Russia to make this move particularly with two major moves: the combination of the U.S. backing away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and its intention to rearm Eastern Europe.
28. There are currently (as of April 2008) nine countries that have nuclear weapons: United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, North Korea, China, India, Pakistan and Israel.
29. Following the bombing of Japan, a group of American atomic scientists published an article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (BAS) establishing the Doomsday Clock and set it at 7 minutes before the close of midnight. It was intended to be a stark symbol of how close the world was approaching total obliteration. In 2006, the BAS directors and affiliated scientists met to reassess what the most grievous threats to life on the planet are today. The decision was made that global warming is second only to nuclear annihilation and so the Doomsday clock was moved up by two minutes. It is now set at five minutes before midnight.

The informed, compassionate, and active are tasked with daunting and overwhelming challenges. It is imperative for us to build bridges and remain connected during these profoundly troubling times. Let us persevere, stay informed, remain sober and realistic, and act with moral conscience on the scientific information that is available to us. And let us keep hope alive.

Lists such as this, and there are many additions that could be made to this list relating to the damage we are doing to the planetary ecosystem, and the suffering that we inflict on each other and other life, illustrates just how evil this system/culture that we call civilisation truly is. Although economic collapse is undoubtedly causing lots of hardship and suffering, it is unlikely to come close to the hardship and suffering that modern industrial capitalist civilisation causes, or the increased devastation it will cause if it continues.
It will be better for most of us if the system collapses fast, and we can then get on with the job of rebuilding local communities, helping nature wherever we can to recreate her wildernesses, and learning how to live hand in hand with her.

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In America, there’s a lot of hoopla going on right now about the upcoming election. American citizens are given several choices for a presidential leader, and must choose the one that they feel represents them the most. Then a new dude gets elected and we’re all happy and get on with the next four years of our lives.

Democracy is one of the biggest delusions we have been taught to believe. You want to know why? First of all, the elections are controlled by the people already in power. The people who have the most access to campaign resources (and the most money to buy them) will obviously have the most successful campaign.  Second, we are given two choices for a leader. Two. Yes, I know there are a whole list of independent candidates on each ballot, but election propaganda sets up political freedom as an either/or choice; You pick this guy because you hate that guy. And since the majority of Americans vote for one of the two main candidates, even if you do support a minority party, your vote pretty much doesn’t count and usually ends up working against you in the end.

And the more subtle fallacy at work? A president is not elected based on popular vote. It’s electoral votes that count. So it’s easy for the people in power to do their research and figure out how they can manipulate the votes in certain areas and get a chosen candidate elected. And if that doesn’t work, then they can just “lose” or “misplace” a few thousand votes and call it good.

Of course, there is still a bunch of red tape rigamaroll invented to trick people into thinking their votes are very important. Voters must be registered. All votes are anonymous. Voters must go to the proper precinct to vote. All of this crap, and the president isn’t even chosen by us! Not to mention that the current voting process makes it impossible for low-income individuals to vote. How do they know where to get their registration forms if they don’t have a phone or internet access? How do they pick one up if they don’t have a car? How do they vote if they have to work a 10-hour shift that day, and don’t have the postage to send in an absentee ballot?

But I digress. I’ll lay my cards on the table and admit that I’m planning on voting on November 4th, and I’m really excited about the idea of having Barack Obama as a leader. But on the other hand, I know that nothing I think or say or do matters when the same old boys club is going to be reigning in the White House until the end of time. And I wish everyone else could see that too. Some do, but they still allow elections to divide them and break them down. Can’t we start believing in something other than the republic? How about ourselves? Or our communities? Or anything else that hasn’t already become corrupted by out-of-control, unbridled power?

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By Kari Lydersen, article on alternet.

From the mining of raw materials to energy production to the manufacturing process itself, industry guzzles tons of water.

…..The rampant waste of freshwater for general public use — lawn watering, the creation of suburban fake lakes, excessive bathing and household washing — has been well documented, as has the politically charged use of water in US agriculture. But the use and abuse of water in various parts of the global industrial economy is often overlooked. From the mining of raw materials for manufacturing to energy production, to the manufacturing process itself, the US industrial economy uses a significant amount of water every year.

Exact numbers for the amount of water used outside of agriculture or home consumption are difficult to come by. The US Geological Survey (USGS) estimates that industry uses about five percent of all the water in the US, but does not include mining or electricity generation in that figure. A report from Dow Chemical puts the figure much higher, at around 20 percent. And perhaps more importantly, neither number takes into account the volume of water pollution that occurs in the course of industrial processes. At the very least, it’s clear that every year, billions of gallons of water are used — not to grow food or to meet physical human needs — but to quench our society’s thirst for the modern conveniences and technological devices we have come to rely on.

Water Equals Power

Nothing gets manufactured without electricity — and manufacturing electricity often requires water. Power generation is the thirstiest sector of the industrial economy, slurping up 195 billion gallons per day, according to the USGS. While about a third of this is saline (either ocean water or brackish groundwater), the rest is freshwater from lakes and rivers.

About 70 percent of US electricity comes from coal and nuclear plants, each of which produce power by heating water to make steam, which spins a turbine. Typical coal-burning or nuclear power plants have “open” or “closed” cooling systems. Closed systems reuse the same water multiple times and therefore require much less water. An open system runs water just once through the plant and then returns it to the source. In plants that use “once-through” water systems, the water is returned to the lake, ocean, or river it came from about 30 degrees warmer.

This increase in water temperature can cause fish kills, algae blooms, or otherwise greatly alter the natural biological makeup of the water body. Meanwhile, the intake pipes for such open cooling systems can be lethal for fish and aquatic microorganisms; electricity plants must sometimes be shut down when the pipes are clogged by fish, debris, or ice. Nuclear energy is an especially water-intensive technology.

A 1,400-megawatt nuclear reactor requires enough water to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools per year, according to a 2006 Australian study. The study, commissioned by the Queensland government, warns that the country’s severe drought could be exacerbated by building more nuclear power plants, which use about 25 percent more water than coal plants. The Union of Concerned Scientists calls nuclear power plants’ need for water “insatiable.”

The mining of the coal and uranium needed to feed these electricity stations is also highly destructive to local water sources. Until it was shut down by a lawsuit in 2005, the infamous Peabody Western Coal Company used precious groundwater from the dry Navajo and Hopi Nations to mix with pulverized coal and piped the slurry all the way from its Black Mesa mine in Arizona 275 miles to the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada. In Appalachia, many residents are no longer able to drink from their wells because blasting for coal has fractured their water tables and left their wells dangerously contaminated.

In 2003, Maria Gunnoe, a West Virginia mother who gained national attention for her activism against coal strip-mining, found her well contaminated from runoff from two nearby containing ponds storing waste from coal processing — waste that included selenium, lime, arsenic, and other toxins. “I had a 55-gallon fish tank, and I changed the water and this albino catfish I had had for eight years died instantly,” she said. “The water was all green. This happened overnight. When I turned on the shower, the smell was so awful I couldn’t take it. My kids and I all got skin reactions.”

Gunnoe started buying bottled water for all their household needs, to the tune of $250 a month. To add insult to injury, the road to her house was so damaged from blasting at the mine that she had to walk long distances to carry the heavy store-bought water home. And once-lovely Appalachian river valleys have been “in-filled” with waste from mountaintop removal mining. That is, the rivers essentially have been filled up with jumbled earth and ore sliced off to get at the lucrative coal seams. Regional activists have been fighting a loophole in the Clean Water Act that currently allows this destruction to occur.

Uranium mining poses similar environmental risks. Record-high prices for uranium in the past year mean that companies are hoping once again to mine uranium in the American Southwest, home to a thriving uranium industry from the 1940s to the 1980s. Much of the mining was done on or near Navajo land, and many of the miners were Navajos. The government is still processing compensation claims for miners suffering from lung cancer and other diseases caused by uranium exposure. Navajo Larry King remembers seeing his cows’ coats turn yellowish and their hooves brittle, and even seeing them keel over and die after drinking from uranium-contaminated wells on his land.

“Before, even people drank water from the windmill,” says King, referring to the well that is pumped by wind power. “We bathed in it and everything. Then they told us it wasn’t good for humans, so we had to start hauling water from Gallup. But some families still let their livestock drink there. They’re drinking uranium.” King remembers the day in 1979 when the Rio Puerco River, which runs by his land, was inundated with 90 million gallons of radioactive uranium-laden liquid from a waste pond after a barricade burst.

“Cattle drank from the wash, and they just started dropping dead for a few years,” he says. “Even now I find bones there.” This time around, companies want to use a method called “in situ recovery.” Instead of hauling the uranium-laced ore out of the ground, they would inject water into uranium-laced aquifers, mobilizing the uranium so it can be pumped out along with the water. Companies aiming to use this process say they will use reverse osmosis to clean the water to its original baseline condition. But critics are doubtful.

Eric Jantz, a lawyer challenging the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s decision to allow in situ mining in New Mexico’s Navajo country, says there is a “100 percent chance” the aquifer will be radioactively contaminated from in situ mining. Like coal and uranium mining, oil extraction can also require vast amounts of water. With the current oil crunch, companies are taking extreme measures to squeeze every last drop of oil from sources that previously would have been considered unprofitable or inefficient. In older oil fields, water is often injected into the wells to help pry the last sticky remnants out of the ground.

One of the most water-intensive petroleum extraction methods occurs in the gooey tar sands of Alberta, where it takes three to six barrels of water to harvest each barrel of oil, a process that sucks Canadian rivers and aquifers dry. Low river levels have already been attributed to tar sand excavation, and the industry is only in its nascent stages. As the Canadian organization Global Research put it in a December 2007 article: “While Canada has more water than any other country — it is the Saudi Arabia of water — polluting the planet’s largest supply of freshwater for a short-term burst of energy production is one of the most insane behaviors imaginable.”

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by Alister Doyle, reprinted from commondreams.org

A quarter of the world’s mammals are threatened with extinction, an international survey showed on Monday, and the destruction of habitats and hunting are the major causes.

The Caspian Seal (Pusa caspica) moved from vulnerable to endangered. Its population has declined by 90% in the last 100 years due to unsustainable hunting and habitat degradation and is still decreasing Photograph: Simon Goodman/IUCN

The report, the most comprehensive to date by 1,700 researchers, showed populations of half of all 5,487 species of mammals were in decline. Mammals range in size from blue whales to Thailand’s insect-sized bumblebee bat.

“Mammals are declining faster than we thought — one in four species is threatened with extinction worldwide,” Jan Schipper, who led the team, told Reuters of the report issued in Barcelona as part of a “Red List” of threatened species.

He said threats were worst for land mammals in Asia, where creatures such as orang utans are suffering from deforestation. Almost 80 percent of primates in the region were under threat.

Of the 4,651 mammals for which scientists have data, 1,139 species were under threat of extinction. Schipper said the data was far broader than the previous review of mammals in 1996.

Threats to species including the Tasmanian Devil, an Australian marsupial, the Caspian seal or the fishing cat, found in Asia, were among those to have worsened. At least 76 mammals have gone extinct since 1500.

“Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions,” said Julia Marton-Lefevre, director general of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which compiles the Red List and is meeting in Spain.

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Julia Whitty writes on Alternet about the disappearing sea ice of Antarctica, and the impact this is having on penguins.

Hiking back into radio range, we hear from Ron Naveen, counting southern giant petrel nests on the other side of the island. It’s terrible here, he reports, just awful. At first I picture him befouled by stomach-oil spit from the bellies of the huge albatrosslike birds the whalers called stinkers. But his concern is that he’s found only 75 nests in a colony that once housed more than 600. Worse, it appears all the petrels are sitting on eggs, far too late in the season for the chicks to survive. The whole island is a bust.

Breeding success in Antarctica is highly variable. Local events — rain, heat, snowfall — can crash an entire season. In East Antarctica, southern giant petrels have been found dead on their nests, a single egg nestled in the brood patch, the birds having succumbed to enormous, burying snows. Yet what’s happening now is indicative of a larger meteorological reality. The western Antarctic Peninsula is warming faster than any place on Earth. Wintertime temperatures have risen a staggering 9 degrees Fahrenheit in 50 years. What was once a cold, dry place has become a warm, wet place. The wildlife is reeling from the chaos, some finding opportunity, others catastrophe. On Penguin Island, Adélie populations have plummeted 75 percent since 1980.

This website graphically shows the disappearing ice in both northern and southern hemispheres, including movies and 30 year comparisons.

While the media concerns itself with the economic impact of peak oil and the so-called ‘credit crunch’, the ecological impact of (in particular) 100 years of cheap fuel, and (in general) 10,000 years of empire or so-called civilisation, barely gets a mention. The planet is warming, and the weather is destabilising, and still the majority are ignorant of the impact their lifestyles are having. Forests are still being cut, seas stripmined, the planet is being raped and pillaged, and people are worried about the ‘value’ of their house, or how they can continue to get to work with the rising price of petrol.

Sometimes it seems that things just keep on getting worse – is there any point to continue posting here? Is anyone really listening? Or thinking about how their lives impact upon nature? Or working towards a local, equitable, harmonious world? Sometimes growing our own food, and finding contentedness in one place we call home doesnt feel like enough. The impulse (human nature or conditioning?) is to try to do something BIG, but we know that big ideas, big projects, ego and empire, are some of the causes that got us all into this mess. No one can ‘save the world’, but we can all reduce our involvement in killing the world.

We’d love to hear from more of you, some of your stories about your actions to escape the empire, some of your reports about what works for you on your land base. Perhaps we could grant user accounts to a few people with different perspectives, and different areas? Interested? Let us know.

Human activities under the yoke of civilisation is messing up our life support systems, and we’d really like to report some inspirational stuff.

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The floods in Iowa have spurred James Howard Kunstler to talk about ‘Katrina in slow motion’.

Iowa in 2008 will be an even slower-motion disaster than Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Beyond the troubles of 25,000 people who have lost all their material possessions is a world whose grain reserves stand at record lows. The crop losses in Iowa will aggravate what is already a pretty dire situation. So far, the US Public has experienced the world grain situation mainly in higher supermarket prices. Cheap corn is behind the magic of the American processed food industry — all those pizza pockets and juicy-juice boxes that frantic Americans resort to because they have no time between two jobs and family-chauffeur duties to actually cook (note: reheating is not cooking).
Behind that magic is an agribusiness model of farming cranked up on the steroids of cheap oil and cheap natural-gas-based fertilizer. Both of these “inputs” have recently entered the realm of the non-cheap. Oil-and-gas-based farming had already reached a crisis stage before the flood of Iowa. Diesel fuel is a dollar-a-gallon higher than gasoline. Natural gas prices have doubled over the past year, sending fertilizer prices way up. American farmers are poorly positioned to reform their practices. All that cheap fossil fuel masks a tremendous decay of skill in husbandry. The farming of the decades ahead will be a lot more complicated than just buying x-amount of “inputs” (on credit) to be dumped on a sterile soil growth medium and spread around with giant diesel-powered machines.

The discovery of cheap abundant fuel in the form of oil was a dire mistake, that has enabled humans to crank up the rate of destruction – destruction that is inherent in the system that we call civilisation, but is more like a culture of empire. The natural worl has been assaulted at an unimaginable rate, along with our communities, skills, food diversity. We have been conned by huge agribusiness to do things their way – bigger, faster, more uniform, better (perhaps not!).

Like a lot of other activities in American life these days, agribusiness is unreformable along its current lines. It will take a convulsion to change it, and in that convulsion it will be dragged kicking-and-screaming into a new reality. As that occurs, the US public will have to contend with more than just higher taco chip prices. We’re heading into the Vale of Malthus — Thomas Robert Malthus, the British economist-philosopher who introduced the notion that eventually world population would overtake world food production capacity. Malthus has been scorned and ridiculed in recent decades, as fossil fuel-cranked farming allowed the global population to go vertical. Techno-triumphalist observers who should have known better attributed this to the “green revolution” of bio-engineering. Malthus is back now, along with his outriders: famine, pestilence, and war.

For many of the world’s peoples, the expansion of empire and the impact of global economics, has brought famine, pestilence and war. More than a few people will be glad to see ‘the rich’ suffer, as the oil based economy crashes, and reduces the ability of the rich to impoverish and steal from the poor (thinly diguised as trade and economic development).

Perhaps more ominous is the discontent on the trucking scene. Truckers are going broke in droves, unable to carry on their business while getting paid $2000 for loads that cost them $3000 to deliver. In Europe last week, enraged truckers paralyzed the food distribution networks of Spain and Portugal. The passivity of US truckers so far has been a striking feature of the general zombification of American life. They might continue to just crawl off one-by-one and die. But it’s also possible that, at some point, they’ll mount a Night-of-the-Living-Dead offensive and take their vengeance out on “the system” that has brought them to ruin. America has only about a three-day supply of food in any of its supermarkets.
The yet-more-ominous thing here is that shortages of food and oil are two fiascos that are pretty clearly predictable for the second half of the year. That’s bad enough without figuring in the “unknowns” that could kick up American hardship a few more notches.The hurricane season just got underway — obscured for the moment by the bigger weather story in Iowa. The fate of the banks is a train wreck still waiting to happen. As it occurs — also heading into the high political and hurricane seasons — we could find ourselves not only a nation wet, hungry, and out-of-gas, but also completely broke.

And because we have used oil to devastate the natural environment, things are likely to get worse than most can imagine. In pre-oil times ‘poor’ people had forests, rivers, oceans from which to glean a basic living. If you had no money you could forage for wild foods or go fishing. People also knew what they could eat, where to find it. land was held in common, for the benefit of the community. All these things have gone. Lost to the endless march of ‘progress’, that wasn’t progress at all, but simply ‘the rich’ stripmining the world, and hobbling us, tying us into the system that was created for us with their vision of one world economy.

The longer we subscribe to this corporate and heirarchical worldview, the worse things will be for us and other creatures as it crashes. The sooner we say ‘enough’ and walk away, and start seeking food and energy independence in local communities that value and cherish their local land bases, the softer will be the inevitable end of all things ‘civilised’.

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How U.S. farming policy leads to ‘dead zones,’ huge marine areas where nothing can grow, by Kent Garber.

Each spring, the cycle of death begins anew. Nitrogen and phosphorus, leached from fertilizer, pass from farmland into streams, from streams into rivers—the Mississippi, the Potomac, the Susquehanna—and then, finally, into some of the country’s great bodies of water: the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay. There the chemicals collect each summer, spawning the growth of algae, which deplete the water of oxygen and lead to ghostly aquatic wastelands. Marine life, if mobile enough, will swim away; the rest will suffocate and die.

Scientists have monitored the growth of these so-called dead zones since the late 1970s. They have tried to promote policies to reduce their size, without much success. Last summer, the dead zone along the Gulf of Mexico coast spanned nearly 8,000 square miles— its third-largest occurrence on record and roughly the size of Massachusetts.

Farmers are effectively killing the ocean, by spraying poisons on the land. And the problem is getting worse thanks to biofuels.

Spurred by recent ethanol mandates and, to a lesser extent, high commodity prices, U.S. farmers are planting record-size crops. From 2006 to 2007, corn acres rose by about 15 million, mostly in the Mississippi River basin. Mid-Atlantic farmers are expected to plant 500,000 more acres of corn, soybeans, and wheat this year than they did in 2006, a 7 percent jump.

To grow more crops, particularly corn, farmers usually have to use more fertilizer. Fertilizer runoff is the primary contributor to dead zone formation, the source of three quarters of the nitrogen and more than half of the phosphorous in the water. In a recent study, researchers at the University of British Columbia and the University of Wisconsin found that the U.S. government’s goal to produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, with a maximum of 15 billion from corn, would most likely increase the nitrogen flow to the Gulf by 10 to 20 percent.

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