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This is the presentation I gave to the meeting for the 50th anniversary of the Club of Rome on Oct 18th in Rome. The gist of the idea is that the fall of ancient civilizations, such as the Roman Empire, can be described with the same models developed in the 1970 to describe the future of our civilization. States, empires, and entire civilizations tend to fall under the combined effect of resource depletion and growing pollution. In the end, they are destroyed by what I call the Seneca Effect.

You can find the paper I mention in the talk at this link.

The Perils of Plastic Pollution

September 28, 2018

The Perils of Plastic Pollution

Plastics are found in the products we use every day: the toys we give our children, the clothing we wear, the disposable cups we drink from, the automobiles we make, the straws we use, the list goes on. Cheap and easy to make, plastic goods and plastic production have exploded in recent years. Yet the junked cars, the used straws and cups, they all end up somewhere, perhaps in a landfill, or perhaps drifting in the wind. 91% of plastic goods are not recycled. Most have found their way to rivers, lakes, and oceans, and over time break down into tiny microscopic particles of plastic. Microplastics are everywhere, even in the deepest sea floor sediments and in the Arctic. They can originate in small form from toothpaste or makeup, or can be derived from larger pieces of plastic, which over time break down into small particles.

Not very long ago (Sept. 8, 2018), a giant 2,000 foot long tube was launched from San Francisco to be towed to a suitable site. The brainchild of a young 24-year-old Dutchman named Boyan Slat, it is intended to trap some of the ever-increasing tons of plastic polluting our oceans. To be sure California lends a more sympathetic ear to pollution problems than does Washington or the federal government these days.

Researchers have sought to determine the extent of plastic pollution and tested water samples from cities and towns on five continents. The results: microscopic plastic particles were present in 83%. Ironically samples that tested positive included the US Capitol building and the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC, as well as the Trump Grill in New York. Researchers say these plastic particles are also likely in foods prepared with water, such as pasta and bread.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Plastic Pollution: The Age of Unsolvable Problems

September 17, 2018

Plastic Pollution: The Age of Unsolvable Problems

Suddenly, we discovered that plastic pollution is a problem, a big one. What to do about it? As usual, it is a question of governance: the problem in itself is not so terribly bad that it couldn’t be controlled. But, over the years, we develop such effective technologies of anti-governance that we have entered the age of unsolvable problem.

How bad is the situation with plastic pollution? Rather bad, by all means. Citing from a recent paper by Geyer et al., more than 8 billion tons of plastic have been produced since the 1950s. Of this plastic, 9% percent was recycled, 12% was incinerated, the rest is in part still in use, in part dispersed in the ecosystem. It is this mass of plastics, billions of tons, which form the pollution we see today. It is almost one ton of plastic waste for every human being living today. Imagine if it were magically to appear in your living room: one ton for every member of your family.

Still following Geyer et al., in 2015 the world produced 380 million tons of plastics from fossil hydrocarbons. To get some idea of how polluting this mass is, we can compare it to the total carbon emissions produced by hydrocarbon combustion, which today can be estimated to be around 9 billion tons of carbon per year. Plastic is mainly carbon, but we should take into account that the process of creating it cannot be 100% efficient. Anyway, we are interested here only in an order of magnitude comparison so we can say that about 4% of the fossil hydrocarbons we extract become plastics.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Supercharged by Pollution, Florida’s Toxic Algae Crisis Continues Unabated

August 19, 2018

Supercharged by Pollution, Florida’s Toxic Algae Crisis Continues Unabated

“I think it is better if kids see what we are doing to the planet,” Womble told me. “Maybe seeing the dead turtle will make them pay attention to the environment.” Her 9-year-old sister Ellie agreed, adding that “covering the turtle won’t stop other turtles from dying.”

Earlier that day the sisters had been on a charter fishing boat 10 miles off Sanibel Island’s coast, where they saw lots of dead fish, large and small, and another dead sea turtle floating on the Gulf of Mexico’s surface. Though they caught some fish, their father, an avid fisherman, had his daughters throw them back. He explained to them that it may be years before marine life can recover from the impacts of the ongoing explosion of toxic algae that already has killed hundreds of tons of fish and other sea life washing up on Florida’s southwest coast.

Dead tarpon fish on Sanibel Island's beach in Florida
Dead tarpon on Sanibel Island’s beach.

Womble sisters and a dead loggerhead sea turtle on Sanibel Island.

The mass mortality of aquatic life — which some have called “unprecedented” — along 150 miles of Florida’s Gulf Coast, stretching from Naples in the south to Sarasota in the north, is the result of harmful algal blooms, which have been supercharged by pollution.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Capitalism Killing Us?

August 18, 2018

Is Capitalism Killing Us?

Ecological economists, such as Herman E. Daly, stress that as the external costs of pollution and resource exhaustion are not included in Gross Domestic Product, we do not know whether an increase in GDP is a gain or a loss.

External costs are huge and growing larger. Historically, manufacturing and industrial corporations, corporate farming, city sewer systems, and other culprits have passed the costs of their activities onto the environment and third parties. Recently, there has been a spate of reports with many centering on Monsanto’s Roundup, whose principle ingredient, glyphosate, is believed to be a carcinogen.

A public health organization, the Environmental Working Group, recently reported that its tests found glyphosate in all but 2 of 45 children’s breakfast foods including granola, oats and snack bars made by Quaker, Kellogg and General Mills. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/16/weedkiller-cereal-monsanto-roundup-childrens-food

In Brazil tests have discovered that 83% of mothers’ breast milk contains glyphosate. https://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Brazil-Poisonous-Agrotoxin-Found-Over-80-of-Breast-Milk-Samples-in-Urucui-20180809-0008.html

The Munich Environmental Institute reported that 14 of the most widely selling German beers contain glyphosate. https://sustainablepulse.com/2016/02/25/german-beer-industry-in-shock-over-probable-carcinogen-glyphosate-contamination/#.W3XKtC-ZOGQ

Glyphosate has been found in Mexican farmers’ urine and in Mexican ground water. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5486281/

Scientific American has reported that even Roundup’s “inert ingredients can kill human cells, particularly embryonic, placental and umbilical cord cells.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/weed-whacking-herbicide-p/

A German toxicologist has accused the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and the European Food Safety Authority of scientific fraud for accepting a Monsanto-led glyphosate Task Force conclusion that glyphosate is not a carcinogen. https://gmwatch.org/en/news/latest-news/17307-german-toxicologist-accuses-eu-authorities-of-scientific-fraud-over-glyphosate-link-with-cancer

Controversy about these findings comes from the fact that industry-funded scientists report no link between glyphosate and cancer, whereas independent scientists do. This is hardly surprising as an industry-funded scientist has no independence and is unlikely to conclude the opposite of what he is hired to conclude.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Fueled by Pollution and Unsound Policies, Toxic Algae Overtakes Florida Beaches and Waterways

August 4, 2018

Fueled by Pollution and Unsound Policies, Toxic Algae Overtakes Florida Beaches and Waterways

Sunset over a canal in Cape Coral, Florida, filled with blue green algae.

Parts of South Florida are being inundated by harmful algal blooms, which affect both public health and marine life, including red tide (caused by the alga Karenia brevis) and blue-green algae (more precisely known as cyanobacteria, or Microcystis, which are technically bacteria but commonly referred to as algae).

While both types of toxin-producing algae are normal parts of their environments, the crisis is not. Water pollution and climate change are fueling this supersized toxic algae mess.

Cyanobacteria, or blue-green algae, in a canal near the Cape Coral Yacht Club in Florida.

Fish kill on a beach in Boca Grande, Florida.

The state’s water quality standards, friendly toward agriculture and real estate development, result in the release of an abundance of nutrients including phosphorus and nitrogen into the water. This influx of growth-inducing nutrients causes marine and freshwater algae populations to explode in what’s called a “bloom.” These blooms can use up much of the oxygen in the water, causing aquatic life to die, in addition to the potentially fatal toxins these algae release.

Storm run-off from agricultural and urban landscapes, laden with fertilizers and animal manure, and badly maintained septic systems contribute to the current crisis. On top of this, massive releases of polluted freshwater, laden with cyanobacteria, from Lake Okeechobee are ending up on both of the state’s coasts. And when the freshwater cyanobacteria hit the saltwater, they die, creating even more nutrients that feed the red tide.

Photographer’s sneakers on a concrete seawall on the side of a toxic algae-filled canal in Cape Coral, Florida.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Making It To The 4th Second

June 4, 2018

Prince Ea

Making It To The 4th Second

A hard-hitting delivery of the predicament humanity faces

Our work here at PeakProsperity.com focuses on raising awareness of the serious challenges facing humanity as we continue to live well beyond our economic, energetic and ecological means.

Through the Three Es framework presented in The Crash Course, we’ve engaged millions of critical thinkers around the world. And we’ve inspired many of them to invest in a more resilient lifestyle, for their sake as well as the planet’s.

But at this point, we’re still only talking to a small minority of the people in the world. And we’re always looking for new channels, new approaches, and new partners that can help get this message out to a wider audience: If humanity wants a future worth inheriting, we need to become agents of regeneration, not destruction.

We especially keep an eye out for effective vehicles that resonante with a younger demographic. The millennials and the generations behind them are the ones who need this information most, as they’re the ones who will experience the full brunt of the Three Es during their lifetimes and on whose shoulders the responsibility of finding solutions will rest.

But as older guys in our forties and fifties, Chris and I realize that we’re probably not the most compelling messengers to this segment. So we’re constantly looking for others who can be.

In that vein, this short video below from Prince Ea recently caught my attention. It delivers a hard-hitting emotional call-to-action for sustainability and resilience using much of the same data we frequently cite here at Peak Prosperity:

If there are people in your life, especially younger ones, whom you think would benefit from watching this video and contemplating the existential question it poses (Will we adapt our behavior in time to make it to the 4th Second?), please share it with them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“Bunker,” the Fuel for the Giant Engines in Large Cargo Ships

June 4, 2018

“Bunker,” the Fuel for the Giant Engines in Large Cargo Ships

The world grapples with the emissions.

When pricing a container shipment, we are sometimes told rates have gone up because “bunker oil” has increased in price or that the delivery will take a few extra days because shipowners ordered their skippers to slow down to save “bunker oil.”

But what is this “bunker oil”?

The term “bunker oil” defines all types of fuel used by the shipping industry and generally speaking can be split in two categories: distillates and residuals.

Distillates are produced during fractional distillation of crude oil and generally are very close in density to diesel #2, the mainstay fuel in trucking and agriculture, but slighter denser.

Residuals are produced from the thick sludge left over at the bottom of the refinery’s fractionating column and are only a step or two removed from bitumen, the stuff used to pave roads: the most widespread types of residual bunker available have densities ranging from 500 to 700cSt at room temperature. For comparison, the densest types of diesel fuel have a density of under 35cSt at room temperature. This means that this type of bunker has to be pre-heated before it can be pumped into the fuel system.

There are also several blends of distillates and residuals, or of various residuals, whose density ranges from 300 to 400 cSt, which are sold to provide a cheap alternative to straight diesel fuel while at the same time helping to meet environmental legislation.

Pollution by maritime vessels is regulated worldwide by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (MARPOL), first ratified in 1973, and regularly amended over the years, the last time in 2013.

The MARPOL protocol legislates all aspects of ship-related pollution, from emission levels to how waste from the ship latrines should be processed and disposed of (not a joke when modern cruise ships are involved).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Conflict Over the Future of the Planet

April 23, 2018

Conflict Over the Future of the Planet

On this Earth Day, it is difficult to look at the state of the planet and the current political leadership and see much hope. In “Junk Planet”, Robert Burrowes writes a comprehensive description of the degradation of the atmosphere, oceans, waterways, groundwater, and soil as well as the modern pollution of antibiotic waste, genetic engineering, nanowaste, space junk, military waste and nuclear, a description of a planet degraded by pollution impacting our bodies and health as well as the planet’s future.

Burrowes includes another form of waste, junk information, that denies reality, e.g. climate change, the dangers of extreme energy extraction and food polluted by genetic engineering, pesticides, and depleted soils. This false reporting results in policies that create a risk of ecosystem collapse.

Political and economic elites want people to believe these problems do not exist. Those in power seek to protect profits from dirty energy rather than transition to 100 percent clean energy. They seek to protect agribusiness food, pesticides, and genetically modified foods rather than transform food to organic, locally grown foods using regenerative agriculture. They deny the reality of environmental racism rather than correct decades of racism and provide reparations. They seek to put profits ahead of the health and necessities of people as well as ahead of protecting and restoring the planet.

Despite this, a growing portion of the public understands these realities and is taking action to challenge the system. People know, for example, as activist Steven Norris writes, that they should be concerned about the impact of carbon infrastructure on their communities and the planet.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

April 18, 2018

If you can’t see it, it can kill you. Propaganda, for instance.

If you never took this test before, spend two minutes on it before reading the text below.

The “selective attention” test you see above was developed in 1999 by Christopher Chablis and Daniel Simons. It shows how people have difficulties in perceiving the most obvious things when they are focused on something that engages their attention. Often, it has been seen as just a sort of psychological parlor game, but it has a deep significance.

This selective attention phenomenon may well describe the current world’s situation. Our aging leaders seem to be so fixated on their manhood – and unsure about it – that they try to reassure themselves by firing missiles around. And, in doing that, they neglect everything else. But it is not just a question of aging leaders, the whole Western world shows evident signs of senility at the societal level. Most of us in our daily life are fixated on details of no relevance and miss the important issues that threaten our very existence.

So, we are missing the gorilla which is climate change, as well as other gorillas which go under different names: ecosystem collapse, resource depletion, overpopulation, widespread pollution, and more. Some of these gorillas are recognized and described by the scientific community, but the public and the leaders alike fail to hear the advice they receive.

Even more worrisome is the possibility that there exist gorillas which not even scientists can detect. As an example, we are daily being exposed to a cocktail or toxic metals resulting from industrial activity. We know that each single metal, alone, doesn’t (normally) reach concentrations in our bodies so high to be deemed as dangerous. But we don’t really know what happens when people have several low concentration metals inside their body – which is the case for most of us.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

9 Mindful Ways to Start Breaking Up With Plastic – For Good!

April 3, 2018

9 Mindful Ways to Start Breaking Up With Plastic – For Good!

One of the big problems with our prepackaged, modern, consumer spending-based economies is that everything is mass-produced in plastic with little or no regard for the future problems it creates. To date, 14 billion pounds of garbage are dumped into the ocean every year – most of it being plastic.

The book “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair basically was the blueprint that propelled the FDA into action against big industry and how detrimental it can be to the individual. Time, however, is the factor that erodes both conscience and consciousness, in that order.

Each generation faces new challenges from a system designed to follow profit-potential rather than the welfare of the people confined within it. No exceptions are to be found in the food and beverage industries: most of their products are either unhealthy or outright poisonous due to dyes, preservatives or additives. No less the containers and packaging they are in.

Recently several articles surfaced that categorized these problems. Rather than “rehash” the information, in a nutshell, I will summarize it. BPA’s (Bisphenol A’s) are chemicals used in plastic bottles, containers, and on the interior liners that are found in many food cans. This chemical has been in use for more than fifty years and is found to be linked to male infertility, low sperm counts, and prostate cancer, as well as, breast cancer in women.

How This Will Affect Your Body

BPA lodges in the body’s fat cells and disrupts endocrine function…this is your body’s hormonal system. Here are two articles you can read to reference these problems:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We know how food production needs to change if crisis is to be avoided – so why isn’t this happening?

March 29, 2018

We know how food production needs to change if crisis is to be avoided – so why isn’t this happening?

As the world races toward a projected 9 billion inhabitants, the failings of dominant food systems are impossible to deny. Current food production methods are severely polluting. They are the cause of malnutrition. They are also inequitable, and unjustifiably wasteful. And they are concentrated in the hands of few corporations. Entangled in the multiple crises humanity is facing, establishing global food security is considered a key challenge of our time.

Against the backdrop of climate change, resource shortages and urbanisation, the question of how to ensure adequate food supply for everyone looms rather large. The usual responseemphasises intensifying the output of agriculture through the common model of petrochemical, large-scale, one-crop, intensive farming.

But business as usual is no longer an option for food and agriculture. The global agriculture system will have to be radically transformed to avoid further environmental and social problems, as was concluded by a three-year study commissioned by the UN and the World Bank involving more than 400 scientists. This report, as well as subsequent international studies by the UN Conference on Trade and Development and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, have convincingly demonstrated that agroecology – farming that imitates natural ecosystems – is the most promising pathway to sustainable food systems on all continents.

Industrial soybean farming in Brazil. Alf Ribeiro / Shutterstock.com

Agroecology

Agroecology is based on the idea that farms should mimic the structure and functioning of natural ecosystems. In ecosystems, there is no “waste”: nutrients are recycled indefinitely. Agroecology aims to close nutrient loops – returning all nutrients that come out of the soil, back to the soil. In the case of vegetable farming, for example, this could be achieved through composting of vegetable scraps, human and farmyard manure.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Pollution, Invasive Aliens, & Mass Extinction: 20,000 Scientists ‘Warn Humanity’ The End Is Nigh

March 10, 2018

Pollution, Invasive Aliens, & Mass Extinction: 20,000 Scientists ‘Warn Humanity’ The End Is Nigh

A wave of nationalist/populist/anti-globalization, record high debt, nuclear doomsday clock at its highs, soaring financial leverage, and now trade wars.

If the world did not have enough to worry about, 20,000 scientists have a few more reasons to believe ‘the end is nigh’…and President Trump is not to blame for any of it (yet).

A dire warning to the world about its future, predicting catastrophe for humanity, continues to gain momentum, becoming one of the most discussed pieces of scientific research ever.

As The Independent reports, the new letter was actually an update to an original warning sent from the Union of Concerned Scientists that was backed by 1,700 signatures 25 years ago. It said that the world had changed dramatically since that warning was issued – and almost entirely for the worse.

Mankind is still facing the existential threat of runaway consumption of limited resources by a rapidly growing population, they warn; and “scientists, media influencers and lay citizens” aren’t doing enough to fight against it.

If the world doesn’t act soon, there will be catastrophic biodiversity loss and untold amounts of human misery, they wrote.

The lead author of the warning letter and new response paper, ecology Professor William Ripple, from Oregon State University, said: “Our scientists’ warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public.”

* * *

World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice

The “second notice” clearly charts the environmental degradation in the past quarter-century and notes that only one out of nine areas assessed, the ozone layer, has improved.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Globalization’s Deadly Footprint

February 26, 2018

Globalization’s Deadly Footprint

That pollution is bad for our health will come as a surprise to no one. That pollution kills at least 9 million people every year might. This is 16 percent of all deaths worldwide – 3 times more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 15 times more than all wars and other forms of violence. Air pollution alone is responsible for 6.5 million of these 9 million deaths. Nearly 92 percent of pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. All this is according to the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health, a recent report by dozens of public health and medical experts from around the world. This important report is sounding the alarm about a too-often neglected and ignored ‘silent emergency’ – or as author Rob Nixon calls it, ‘slow violence.’

In one media article about the report, the Lancet’s editor-in-chief and executive editor points to the structural economic forces of “industrialisation, urbanisation, and globalisation” as “drivers of pollution.” Unfortunately, however, the report itself doesn’t elaborate upon this crucial observation about root causes – in fact, when it moves from documentation of the pollution-health crisis to social-economic analysis, some of the report’s conclusions go seriously awry, espousing debunked ‘ecological modernization theory’ and reinforcing a tired Eurocentric framing that paints the industrialized West in familiar ‘enlightened’ colors, while the ‘developing’ countries are portrayed as ‘backward’.

For example, one of the Commission’s co-chairs and lead authors Dr. Philip Landrigan (for whom I have the greatest respect for his pioneering work in environmental health), points outthat since the US Clean Air Act was introduced in 1970, levels of six major pollutants in the US have fallen by 70 percent even as GDP has risen by 250 percent. According to fellow author Richard Fuller, this sort of trend proves that countries can have “consistent economic growth with low pollution”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?

February 26, 2018

Junk Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?

Is Earth the largest garbage dump in the Universe? I don’t know. But it’s a safe bet that Earth would be a contender were such a competition to be held. Let me explain why.

To start, just listing the types of rubbish generated by humans or the locations into which each of these is dumped is a staggering task beyond the scope of one article. Nevertheless, I will give you a reasonably comprehensive summary of the types of garbage being generated (focusing particularly on those that are less well known), the locations into which the garbage is being dumped and some indication of what is being done about it and what you can do too.

But before doing so, it is worth highlighting just why this is such a problem, prompting the United Nations Environment Programme to publish this recent report: ‘Towards a pollution-free planet’.

As noted by Baher Kamal in his commentary on this study: ‘Though some forms of pollution have been reduced as technologies and management strategies have advanced, approximately 19 million premature deaths are estimated to occur annually as a result of the way societies use natural resources and impact the environment to support production and consumption.’ See ‘Desperate Need to Halt “World’s Largest Killer” – Pollution’ and ‘Once Upon a Time a Planet… First part. Pollution, the world’s largest killer’.

And that is just the cost in human lives.

So what are the main types of pollution and where do they end up?

Atmospheric Pollution

The garbage, otherwise labelled ‘pollution’, that we dump into our atmosphere obviously includes the waste products from our burning of fossil fuels and our farming of animals. Primarily this means carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide generated by driving motor vehicles and burning coal, oil and gas to generate electricity, and agriculture based on the exploitation of animals.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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