Human Extinction?

Below is my latest email (slightly edited) to a few friends and family.

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If anyone has the time or interest, & it takes very little time, read the Conclusion (starting on pg 86) of this 2016 scholarly Thesis.  https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/54848306.pdf

It provides evidence of how neoliberalism essentially has (over decades) squashed the environmental movement relative to protection of our habitat.  

That has been accomplished via 3 avenues:  legislation (interpreted to include Free Trade Agreements enforced by private "courts" via the WTO), assimilation (corporations partnering with NGOs & gov'ts, corps determining policy, etc.), and financial coercion (through debt via mega banks, the IMF, & the World Bank).   It has been an assault on not only the enviro movement, but also on any social movement which opposes neoliberal policies.  Those policies include worldwide privatization, deregulation, liberalization of Finance (without adequate oversight), austerity for commoners, and mega corporate hegemony in general.

This is one of several scholarly papers which tend to support my contention that neoliberals now rule society with the aid of their political puppets... regardless of Party.

Most of the "Green" talk by the Establishment in DC today is all in the framework of neoliberal philosophy & neoliberal economics.  It's an oxymoron. It's window dressing.  It's tinkering around the edges of the Crisis.

When the political Establishment talks about "following the science", they mean the medical science.  They don't pay much attention at all to the science of ecology.  That lack on their part might be the 1st step on the path to eventual human extinction.  That's entirely within the realm of possibility.  To avoid it, we need a paradigm shift in ethics & our worldview.

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Not only my opinion.

Be Well

Land Use RE: Energy and Mining Resource Extraction Footprints

 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921001646?dgcid=raven_sd_via_email

In case the link doesn't work---

From the journal, Ecological Economics, Volume 187 -

"Energy matters: Mitigating the impacts of future land expansion will require managing energy and extractive footprints".

High Tech (& Tech in general) gobbles up such a large amount of natural minerals, and all of us gobble up such a large amount of fossil fuel energy, that those two categories have an ecological footprint almost as large as agriculture when it comes to the disruption of natural habitats.  This is one of the main reasons that biodiversity is rapidly plunging.

The authors of the above article propose mitigation actions for the future.

The human land use dilemma is growing, and overconsumption plays a major role.  Here's only one example:  no one really needs a new cell phone every year or two.  The production of just ONE phone uses up about 500 pounds of natural resources, and that requires more & more extraction from the land.

As to energy, nearly all of us in highly developed countries use too much of that.  The situation must undergo a paradigm shift if the world is to achieve sustainability.

The entire downhill slide we're on as a species is driven by the rat race of unlimited growth and too much consumption.  From what I've seen, too many people seem to believe we can continue on with both of those if we just convert to a Green Economy.  That's erroneous thinking.  Many studies have shown it to be so.  Links to some of them have been posted on this venue for the past year-plus.  "Going Green" and continuing on with the growth & consumption of the past decades simply are not compatible.

Ecological economics and the concept of a Steady State Economy have been around for years and years.  They've been marginalized and denigrated by the "growth" Establishment, particularly by the Plutocrats (both private and public).

If we are to survive and thrive, it's time for a major change.  To overcome the Establishment propaganda, education - formal & informal - and activism are key.

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Not only my opinion.  Be Well

A Paradigm Shift in Ethics is Needed for the Journey to Sustainability

Preface

Philosophy is the study of knowledge, being, and reality.  One of its branches is Ethics, the study of values and behavior.  Ethics is concerned with "right" and "wrong", and in particular, with what is "good" for individuals and society.  Its three primary principles are:  respect for persons, beneficence, and justice.  A simple definition would be:  a code of conduct for human good.  Socrates was the Father of Ethics in the western world.
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The Ethical Problem in Relation to the Cessation of Environmental Damage

As detailed to a degree in previous posts here, the Powers-That-Be in most countries around the world have opted (for decades) to implement neoliberal economics in their lands... resulting in severe, worldwide environmental damage.  Despite efforts to mitigate that damage, it continues to this day.  Most ecologists agree that's because, rather than Aldo Leopold's "Land Ethic" (or something similar), countries have chosen to follow the neoliberal path of unlimited growth and overconsumption.

Even in countries that are attempting to "go green", the prevailing ethic is "growthism" not sustainability.  More and more perpetual growth apparently is mistakenly viewed as "good" for society.  History disagrees with that assessment.

Despite the shrinking of nonrenewable natural resources and the overharvesting of renewable natural resources, human populations (in general) have been indoctrinated to accept without question the idea that economic growth must continually expand for the good of individuals and society.  "Going green" supposedly will solve the problems of ecological/environmental damage.  That most likely will help a bit, but only a bit.  Much more is needed.  Here's why.

1.  The Law of Conservation of Energy states that energy cannot be created or destroyed; it only can be transformed from one type to another.
2.  Because of entropy, every time energy is transformed some of it is lost as dispersed heat.  "Lost" means it's no longer available to do "work" because it's too dispersed.
3.  As a result, because of entropy nothing can be 100% recycled.  So, nonrenewable mineral resources (e.g., rare earth minerals which are gobbled up by high tech industries) will continue to shrink.
4.  Although solar energy is renewable, it obviously has to be captured.  If the rate of consumption of solar power exceeds the rate of the in-flow and capture of solar energy, then sooner or later, consumption has to be limited.
5.  While the stock of solar energy (the sun) is super-abundant, the in-flow and capture of it are limited.
6.  Whether "green" or not, all material economic growth consumes resources and produces wastes.  That's even true of service industries such as health care, education, taxi service, tourism, and others.
7.  Ever-increasing growth results in an ever-increasing flow of "throughput":
resources from Earth's ecosystems to the economic subsystem, and then back to ecosystems as wastes.  Sooner or later, throughput will exceed Earth's resource regeneration and waste assimilation capacities.
8.  Renewable resources, such as ocean fish and trees, are being overharvested already.  More and more economic growth will exacerbate the problem.

All the above means sustainability is nowhere in sight.  It also means that, first and foremost, we have a massive ethical problem.  Without a paradigm shift in the cultural and ethical thinking & behavior of humans, serious ecological damage on Earth will continue.  Why?  Because the Powers-That-Be are firmly locked onto the path of unlimited growth and overconsumption.  The only way to change that is from the ground up, not the top down... and, in my opinion, that won't happen until a majority of us (or at least a significantly large number of us) adopt what ecologists call "eco-ethics" (or ecoethics).  Only then will people gravitate to demanding the implementation of ecological economics.
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Here's a declaration by which to live---
https://www.int-res.com/articles/esep/2002/E21.pdf
[It will warm your heart.]

It's a short read.  Have a look, and, as best you can, try to live by it.  Thanks.  Younger generations thank you as well.
[NOTE--- At the above page, the print can be enlarged by moving your cursor to the lower right-hand side.]
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Not only my opinion.  Stay Well