20 Things Wrong With The World  (March 2016)

As the human race wakes up to the mistakes it has made over the last 100 years of consumption and easy-energy fueled growth, it’s time to take a look at the world man has created and the mistakes that have been made.  Understanding the cost of the human condition will ultimately save the planet but it requires an awaking of common sense. 

The list below is by no means exhaustive but evidences the point that our unrestrained and unenlightened human race is systematically destroying:

1. Ocean warming and acidification:

Ocean warming and rising acidification results in the destruction of the reef and coral ecology essential for fish life.  Irrevocably spoiling the oceans’ fish supply could be devastating for the whole of earth’s food-chain.  Therefore what happens to our oceans affects all life on the planet.

2. Fish depletion and potential species extinction from over fishing:

Overfishing by commercial super-trawler practices can devastate the ocean ecology.  Super-trawlers don’t just threaten whole fish species they destroy a phenomenal amount of other marine life as they go.

3. Ocean pollution:

Ocean pollution from plastics, pesticides, industrial effluents and sewerage result in contaminated sea-food, which is an essential source of omega 3 fatty acids and is vital for general health.  The irony is that at some point in the future people may have to choose between being poisoned and the detrimental effects of not getting enough dietary Omega-3.

4. Atmospheric pollution:

Atmospheric pollutions include petrochemicals, exhaust particulates and industrial dust.  The detailed list of deadly pollutants in the air is lengthy.  The effects are well understood and well documented but the consequence is a shorter life span from an increase in environmental diseases like emphysema, cancer, silicosis and other autoimmune maladies triggered by inflammation.

5. Soil pollution:

Soil pollution from lead, mercury and diesel dust may eventually end up in our food.  What’s in the air eventually settles in the ground or is absorbed by plant life.  Even a generation after the banning of leaded fuels for cars, lead is still a major source of environment poison.  The measured concentrations of this neurotoxin accumulated in the soft tissue and bones of children is still considerable.  While the air may be cleaner the ground harbors pollutants created decades earlier. 

6. Radioactive pollutants from atomic bomb testing:

Everyone on earth is radioactive thanks to fall out from nuclear testing.  The amount of contamination isn’t considered harmful but it is a perfect example of how short term government thinking can have an enduring effect on the world.  It seems unlikely anyone would have willingly voted to become permanently irradiated with strontium 90 or Cesium 137.

7. Food contamination:

Commercially sold (non-organic) vegetables contain measurable levels of pesticides and herbicides.  Clearly perfect, blemish free, colour rich and long shelf life raw produce is only possible with a lot of chemical intervention.  The benefits of this contamination however are often just aesthetic.

8. Breast milk contamination:

Modern human breast milk contains toxic organic chemicals like pesticides, herbicides and fire retardants from outgassing of furniture, carpets, plastics and even clothes.  These substances, ingested from diet and air, concentrate in the liver and adipose tissue of the breast.  This raises the question, should we breast feed or give our infants ‘formula’?

9. Commercial over-farming:

High yield commercial farming destroys the land when soil is not given sufficient time to recover the macro-nutrients and biome needed to grow crops.  Land eventually becomes barren and must be abandoned.  Industrial fertilizers can only do so much to restore the soil.  The complex micro-biome developed over decades, on which plants roots depends, cannot be recovered. Over-farming could additionally result in reduced levels of micro-nutrients.  Endemic magnesium deficiency may be exacerbated by modern farming and food processing methods.

10. Hybridization of agriculture:

Hybridization and GMO practices can create unsustainable food solutions that threaten agricultural diversity.  If only one species of a particular food is produced the threat from failure of those crops due to pestilence or climate change becomes more significant, cf. the Great (Irish) Famine.  The unwitting cross pollination of GMO crops with “organic” and standard crops further ruins diversity.  Additionally as the adverse effects of natural lectins in grains are being discovered, genetic manipulation of gluten yield or enhancement of the proteomic processes in plants that repel insects seem unlikely to be beneficial to human health.  If the insects can’t eat something then it seems reasonable to question why humans should.

11. Pesticides killing bees and pollinating insects:

Recently it was discovered that nicotinamides used to coat seeds to make plants more insect resistant, also kill bees and other pollinators.  Without pollinating insects crops don’t fruit and food production declines rapidly.  A proposal to ban nicotinamides was recently tabled in the EU.  The problem of declining bee populations is so serious that healthy bees from countries like Australia are now exported all over the world to assist with crop and orchid pollination. 

12. Global warming:

Climate change, warming, results in rising ocean levels, flooding and erratic weather.  The science of what causes global warming is hotly debated.  However just looking at atmospheric CO₂ concentrations over the last 100 years, there is a scientific correlation between human activity (energy consumption) and the increase in atmospheric gases that trigger global warming.  Industrial pollution in general has been a growing problem for hundreds of years, the ozone depleting effects of CFC’s for example was taken seriously by governments and industries across the globe resulting in coordinated, corrective action.  No such consensus seems possible with any of the other pollutants the world produces today.

13. Declining clean water from drought and contamination:

Drinking water is, like a lot of things, taken for granted.  Like every natural process on earth the fresh water cycle is subject to environmental pressure.  The overuse of water for agriculture and urban growth means that natural underground reservoirs are being emptied faster than they are replenished.

14. Dietary disease:

The sugar and grain industry promises a future of obesity, diabetes and kidney disease from consumption of foods high in simple sugars and carbohydrates.  Recent studies would suggest that people don’t eat enough saturated and omega-3 fatty acids.  The end result maybe that people are starving for this vital nutrient, so much so that they naturally crave more food.  Since the recommended foods on offer are low in fat and full of sugars and grain starch, the cycle is repeated potentially leading to overeating.  This may explain why the prevalence of obesity is increasing in the ‘West’.  The adverse effects of sugar on blood and liver chemistry, mouth and intestinal biota is widely accepted.  The economic cost to society as a result of increasing diet-related disease could bankrupt public healthcare systems within the next twenty years.

15. Resource and mineral depletion:

As minerals and commodities are depleted, more and more risky or environmentally “dirty” mining practices are employed to meet production targets.  Two hundred years ago copper and gold nuggets could be found above-ground near freshwater streams on uncharted lands.  Today miners must tunnel 1000’s of metres into the ground to find new veins of these precious metals.  The amount of energy required to dig those tunnels sometimes costs more than the value of gold extracted.  The same declining cost to benefit puts pressure on producers of all mined minerals and ores.  Even crude oil is becoming harder and harder to extract to the point where it now takes almost as much fuel extracted from a barrel of oil to mine a barrel of oil.  This is certainly true of tar-sands and fracking operations.  When the cost matches or exceeds the return these mining operations will slow or fail resulting in a commodity shortage and high commodity prices.  Even solar cells and batteries start life as unmined commodities of silver, silica, lead and copper that require phenomenal amounts of energy to be refined (and often result in toxic byproducts which contribute to environmental destruction). 

16. Animal species extinction:

The number of species of animals wiped from the face of the Earth every year is staggering.  One in four mammals and one in eight birds face extinction in the near future.  Since 1996 the number of threatened species has increased from 5205 to 8462.  Extinction effects biodiversity.  Certain trees rely on certain animals to proliferate, the inter connectedness of disparate species is only now being understood by biologists.  By destroying species the human race is dooming the organisms and the symbiotic processes that rely on them; processes responsible for feeding our fish, pollinating our crops, sustaining wildlife, detoxifying our environment and so on. 

17. Uncontrolled population growth:

The carrying capacity of the planet is estimated to be 9,000,000,000.  That assumes existing levels of water and arable land availability.  Clearly fresh water and land quality is in decline in some areas.  The ability of the food industry to feed the population assumes they can supplement the food supply with laboratory solutions like GMO and artificial in-vitro meat or with new techniques like vertical farming.  However, all these solutions assume an abundance of fresh water and energy that will last forever.

18. Additives in food and cosmetics:

If our food isn’t tainted by pesticides it’s full of preservatives to the point where it becomes increasingly difficult to source whole produce free of additives; additives which are sometimes banned after they are found to be harmful.  Household cleaners and cosmetics have also become complex concoctions of questionable peripheral substances designed to improve smell, thickness, lather, consistency or.  Cosmetics and cleaners are the new snake oils of the 21^st century but the danger of additives is well known.  The human race may be slowly cleaning and grooming itself to death.

19. Negative or Zero interest rate policy (ZIRP or NIRP):

ZIRP and NIRP destroy the point of saving money.  It will not, as the professors of economics at the central banks proclaim, force savers to empty their bank accounts into the stock market or invest in their businesses and start new commercial ventures.  It does however encourage the super-rich to borrow and buy up property which drives up housing prices and rents for the average middle-class whose salary is stagnating.   NIRP additionally inspires companies to buy back their own stocks, artificially raising PE values which the BLS then use to claim a thriving economy.  Growth and prosperity are functions of economic confidence not financial repression, however while investors may rely on central bank intervention for assurances now, once the central bank coffers empty that confidence will evaporate, potentially crashing markets. 

20. The Rise of Extreme Politics

As confidence wanes in mainstream politics, alternative parties, usually with extreme agendas are beginning to appear.  This happened many years ago before the second-world-war and yielded Hitler’s Germany. Today, disgruntled voters have lost confidence in major parties and commercial media.  As a consequence, they are turning to alternative experts spouting rhetoric on social media where truths cannot be held accountable to anything or anyone.

Unsustainable Population Numbers May be the Root Cause.

It is not possible to change the instincts and emotional imperatives that drive the human species to consume and covet too-much of everything in the name of prosperity but it may be possible for people to learn the value of balance, modesty and therefore sustainability.  That requires a shift in cultural values and acceptance of the importance of controlling population numbers. 

A more sustainable population size means a world able to cope with the quantities of effluents and pollutants being produced.  It means an ecosystem large enough to recycle the waste naturally.  It means the world’s plant and animal life, the very ecology we need to sustain our own health, has sufficient space and resource to prosper alongside mankind.  It means enough water and food during periods of drought.  It means enough jobs, wealth (resources) and opportunity for everyone.  It means enough energy for everything.  Clearly sustainability starts with matching population size to the resources and resilience of the ecology it lives in.