A Report on the State of Planet Earth
by Robert J. Burrowes
There is a significant body of evidence that human
extinction is now imminent; that is, it will occur within the next few years
and possibly this year: 2020. There is also a significant body of evidence that
human extinction is now inevitable; that is, it cannot be prevented no matter
what we do.
There are at least four distinct paths to imminent
(that is, within five years) human extinction: nuclear war (possibly started
regionally), biodiversity collapse (already well advanced and teetering on the
brink), the deployment of 5G (commenced recently) and the climate catastrophe.
Needless to say, each of these four paths might unfold in a variety of ways.
In addition, it should be noted, there are other
possible paths to extinction in the near term, particularly when considered in
conjunction with the four threats just mentioned. These include the cascading
impacts triggered by destruction of the Amazon rainforest (which is now
imminent) particularly given its critical role in the global hydrological
cycle, the rapidly spreading radioactive contamination of Earth, and
geoengineering for military purposes (which has been going on for decades and
continues).
Far worse, however, is the path to extinction that
looms before us when we consider the impact of all seven of these paths in
combination with the vast range of other threats noted below.
These interrelated threats have generated a shocking
series of ‘points of no return’ (‘tipping points’) that we have already
crossed, the mutually reinforcing set of negative feedback loops that we have
already triggered (and which we will continue to trigger) which cannot be
reversed in the short-term, as well as the ongoing synergistic impact of the
various ‘extinction drivers’ (such as ongoing extinctions because dependent
species have lost their resource species) we have set in motion and which
cannot be halted irrespective of any remedial action we might take. Hence,
taking into account all of the above factors, the prospects of averting human
extinction are now remote, at best.
Why has this happened?
Because long-standing dysfunctional human behavior,
which we have not even begun to recognize as the fundamental driver of this
extinction crisis, let alone address, has now trapped us between a rock and a
hard place.
On the one hand, we are trapped by our grotesquely
dysfunctional parenting and education models that mass produce individuals who
are terrified, self-hating and powerless (leaving them submissively obedient
while unable to seek out and consider the evidence for themselves and take
powerful action in response) and who, as a result of being terrorized during
childhood, are now addicted to chronic over-consumption to suppress their
awareness of their deep (and unconscious) emotional pain. See ‘Love
Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ and ‘Do
We Want School or Education?’
with more detailed evidence in ‘Why
Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology:
Principles and Practice’.
On the other hand, also as an outcome of our dysfunctional
parenting and education models (as well as the political and economic systems
these generate), we keep reproducing and remain trapped by the global elite,
and its compliant international organizations (such as the United Nations),
national governments and corporations, including its corporate media. This
global elite is utterly insane (and, hence, devoid of such qualities as
conscience, empathy, compassion and love) and intent on exploiting our desire
to suppress awareness of our emotional pain by over-consuming in order to feed
their insatiable desire for profit, power and privilege no matter the cost to
humanity and Earth’s biosphere. See ‘The
Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
Hence, this article does two things.
First, in the hope of generating greater consideration
of these two issues – imminence and inevitability of human extinction – I have
presented in straightforward language and point form, a reasonable summary of
the nature and extent of our predicament (which clearly indicates that we are
on track for human extinction between now – January 2020 – and 2025), as well
as citing the relevant scientific and/or other evidence that explains each
problem in more detail.
And second, the article outlines a powerful series of
actions and strategies that individuals as well as community groups,
neighborhoods and action groups can take as part of a global effort to fight to
avert human extinction even if, as mentioned above, it is now inevitable. See,
for example, ‘Extinction
Foretold, Extinction Ignored’
in which the ‘McPherson Paradox’, which explains one key reason why we are
doomed to extinction, is explained.
The obvious question, which you might well ask me, is
this: ‘If the overwhelming evidence that human extinction is now imminent and
inevitable is incontrovertible, why are you suggesting that we “fight to avert
human extinction”?’ And my answer is simply this: Because, as I have done for
several decades, I am committed to trying to do this one key thing that feels
worth doing. Moreover, I am also hopeful that a miracle or two might just occur
if we humans commit ourselves fully to the effort. I am only too well
aware that anything less than a full effort, as outlined below, will certainly
fail. And we will virtually certainly fail anyway. But I would rather try, than
give up. And you?
So, in noting the points below, each of which identifies
one key way (or a set of related key ways) in which the Earth and its
inhabitants were subjected to greater violence in 2019, it is painful to
reflect that, as forecast this time last year and based on a clear
understanding of the primary driver of human behavior – fear – that is
generating this multifaceted crisis, 2019 was another year of vital
opportunities lost when so much is at stake.
Because, in essence, whether psychologically,
socially, politically, militarily, economically, financially, ecologically or
in other ways, in 2019 humanity took more giant strides backwards while passing
up endless opportunities to make a positive difference in our world.
Moreover, to highlight the dramatic nature of our
failure, by the end of 2019, a substantial number of countries and regions of
the world – notably including the Amazon basin, Australia, several countries in
Central Africa, many European countries, Indonesia, Siberia and North America –
had each experienced (and/or were still experiencing) a huge series of
wildfires (or fires that were deliberately lit), many of them ‘out of wildfire
season’ and breaking records for their ‘unprecedented’ destructive impact,
demonstrating that the Earth is literally burning up. For just an overview, see
NASA’s ‘Fire
Information for Resource Management System’.
But this very visible symptom of our crisis masks a
vast quantity of evidence, in many domains, that is virtually unknown but far
more damaging.
One acknowledgment of this crisis in Earth’s biosphere
was the fact that the Doomsday Clock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
remains poised at just two minutes to midnight, the closest it has ever been to
‘doomsday’ (and equal to 1953 when the Soviet Union first exploded a
thermonuclear weapon matching the US capacity and raising the spectre of
nuclear war). See ‘It
is now two minutes to midnight’.
This status reflects the perilous state of our world,
particularly given the renewed threat of nuclear war and the ongoing climate
catastrophe. It didn’t even mention the massive and unrelenting assault on the
biosphere (apart from the climate) and the rapidly accelerating biodiversity
crisis nor, of course, the ongoing monumental atrocities against fellow human
beings.
So let me identify, very briefly, some of the more
crucial backward steps humanity took during 2019 and, far too easily,
unfortunately, forecast what will happen in 2020.
Some Key Lowlights of 2019
1. The global elite, using key elite fora such as the
Group of 30, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the World
Economic Forum, and despite much rhetoric to the contrary, continued to plan,
generate and exacerbate the many ongoing wars, deepening exploitation within
the global economy, climate and environmental destruction, and the killing and
exploitation of fellow human beings in a multitude of contexts, in pursuit of
greater elite profit, power and privilege. See, for example, ‘Who
Is Really in Control of US Foreign Policy?’, Giants: The Global Power Elite and ‘The
Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
2. International organizations (such as the United
Nations, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) and national
governments and corporations used military forces, legal systems, police forces
and prison systems – see ‘The
Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’
– around the world to serve the global elite by defending its interests against
the bulk of the human population, including those individuals and organizations
courageous enough to challenge elite profit, power and privilege who are being
killed in record numbers. (See more in point 35 below.)
3. $US1.8 trillion was officially spent
worldwide on military weapons to kill fellow human beings and other lifeforms,
and to destroy the biosphere. This is the highest official (because the figures
are taken from ‘open sources’) annual military expenditure ever recorded and
the second consecutive year in which an increase occurred. Apart from military
spending, weapons transfers worldwide remained high and both the USA and Russia
were ‘on a path of strategic nuclear renewal’. See ‘SIPRI
Yearbook 2019: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security; Summary’.
However, as noted last year, so out-of-control is this
spending that the United States government has now spent $US21trillion on its
military in the past 20 years for which it cannot even account! That’s right,
$US1trillion each year above the official US national budget for killing is
‘lost’. See Army General Fund
Adjustments Not Adequately Documented or Supported, ‘Has Our Government Spent $21
Trillion Of Our Money Without Telling Us?’ and ‘The
Pentagon Can’t Account for $21 Trillion (That’s Not a Typo)’.
There has been no progress reported in accounting for
this ‘lost’ expenditure during the past year.
4. Under the direction of the global elite (as
explained above), the United States government and its NATO allies continued
their perpetual war across the planet wreaking devastation on many countries
and regions, particularly in the Middle East and Africa. See, for example, Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War, Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield and ‘Understanding
NATO, Ending War’.
As a result, whether in the US-sponsored and supplied
Saudi Arabian war against Yemen which the UNHCR characterizes as the worst
humanitarian disaster in the world – see ‘The
Cost of Feeding Yemen as War Rages On’ – the result of the US use of depleted uranium on top of its other
extraordinary military destruction of Iraq over the past 29 years – see ‘Depleted
Uranium and Radioactive Contamination in Iraq: An Overview’ – or the complete dismemberment of Libya as a result
of NATO’s bombing of that country and the subsequent assassination of its
leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 – see ‘Endless
War and Chaos in Libya’ – the
United States and its NATO allies have continued their efforts to destroy
entire countries (also including Afghanistan, among others), at staggering cost
to their populations and environments, not because these countries posed a
threat to security anywhere but in order to maintain geopolitical control and
to facilitate the theft of their resources (mainly oil) at great profit to the
global elite. See, for example, ‘Hillary
Emails Reveal NATO Killed Gaddafi to Stop Libyan Creation of Gold-Backed
Currency’.
Moreover, of course, the perpetually-profitable
perpetual war, by definition, has no end. But it still isn’t quite acceptable
to say, too publicly and loudly, that ‘The global elite has again used the
United States military and its NATO allies to destroy Iraq/Afghanistan/Syria/…
(or, as is now the case, to attack Iran) to make a profit’ so what can be
passed off as an excuse must be manufactured and promulgated by the compliant
corporate media. And, with a gullibly terrified human population disinclined to
question authority, this isn’t a problem. The same unconvincing formula
invariably works each time. For a fuller and insightful explanation of this
point, see Edward Curtin’s article ‘The war
hoax redux’.
Of course, Iran has long been in the crosshairs of the
global elite because of its prodigious (and thus hugely profitable) oil
reserves as well as the clear inclination of its leaders (both before and after
the US-installed Shah) to make decisions in the interests of Iranians, including
foreign policy decisions such as those related to defense and the role of
nuclear weapons. Thus, the global elite ensured that the US Congress, via
removal by the Senate of a provision ‘explicitly not authorizing the Pentagon
to wage war against Iran or assassinate its officials’ – see ‘America
Escalates its “Democratic” Oil War in the Near East’ – in the
recently passed National Defense Authorization Act, effectively encouraged
President Trump’s recent assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, Iran’s head
of the foreign arm – the Quds Force – of the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps
(IRGC), Iran’s elite military force and the key figure in the fight against terrorism
in the Middle East, in clear contempt of international law. See ‘Trump’s
assassination of Soleimani: Five things to know’, ‘With
Suleimani Assassination, Trump Is Doing the Bidding of Washington’s Most Vile
Cabal’, ‘Why
US assassinated General Qassem Soleimani’ and ‘US
killing of Iran’s Qassem Soleimani “an act of war”’.
This assassination, of course, raises a heightened
possibility of war – essentially, from the elite perspective, to achieve
‘regime change’ and capture control of Iran’s oil – in one or more guises
possibly involving, as explained by Professor Michel Chossudovsky, the use of
‘tactical’ nuclear weapons, acts of political destabilization, confiscation of
financial assets, extensive economic sanctions, electromagnetic and climatic
warfare, environmental modification techniques, cyberwarfare as well as
chemical and biological warfare. See ‘A
Major Conventional War Against Iran Is an Impossibility. Crisis within the US
Command Structure’ and ‘America,
An Empire on its Last Leg: To be Kicked Out from the Middle East?’
Hence, much will depend on the Iranian response to the
insanity of those attacking it, which will unfold as this article is being
published. For further thoughtful analyses of this crisis, see ‘War
With Iran’, ‘Iran
vs. US – The Murder of General Qassem Suleimani’ and ‘On
the Brink of War?’
5. Not content with the devastating impact of the
military violence it is inflicting already, during 2019 the global elite
continued to plan how to cause more destruction in future. Key initiatives
included ongoing work to employ advances in autonomous systems and artificial
intelligence technologies that will undermine nuclear deterrence and increase
the likelihood of nuclear escalation – see ‘A
Stable Nuclear Future? The Impact of Autonomous Systems and Artificial
Intelligence’ – and the
decision in the United States to create a Space Force, a sixth branch of the US
military forces, just two manifestations of this. See ‘The
Very Bad Space Force Deal’ and
‘US
Making Outer Space the Next Battle Zone – Karl Grossman’.
In its turn, the Russian government has developed and
just deployed a hypersonic weapon that travels at Mach 27 and which makes the
US missile defense installations in Europe ‘obsolete’. See ‘Avangard
changes everything: What Russia’s hypersonic warhead deployment means for the
global arms race’.
But other initiatives receiving renewed attention –
‘hypervelocity guns, particle beams and laser weapons onboard orbiting battle
platforms with onboard nuclear reactors or “super” plutonium systems providing
the power for the weapons’ – also enhance the threat that ‘Modern society would
go dark’ in the words of Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell. Why? Because ‘any war
in space would be the one and only. By destroying satellites in space massive
amounts of space debris would be created that would cause a cascading effect
and even the billion-dollar International Space Station would likely be broken
into tiny bits. So much space junk would be created... that we’d never be able
to get a rocket off the planet again because of the minefield of debris
orbiting the Earth at 15,000 mph’. See ‘Trump
Signs Measure Enabling Establishment of a U.S. Space Force’.
Of course, technological ‘advances’ in weaponry
reflect retrograde steps in policy with the US Air Force Global Strike Command
(AFGSC) – which includes 20 B-2 stealth bombers, 76 B-52 bombers and 450
Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles together capable of
delivering thousands of nuclear warheads – along with the U.S. Navy’s
submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles, are now ‘capable of
extinguishing essentially all life on Earth within a matter of hours.’ See ‘The
Air Force’s Global Strike Command Is Preparing For A Delivery Of New Nuclear
Weapons’.
6. Following the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) treaty in 2002 and after withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive
Plan of Action (the ‘Iran nuclear deal’) and the Intermediate Nuclear Forces
(INF) Treaty (which limited the deployment of intermediate range nuclear
weapons) in 2018, the US government further and unilaterally signaled its
intention to dismantle the little that remained of attempts during the Cold War
and since that time to contain the threat of nuclear war by further acting in
violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 – see ‘Treaty
on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of
Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies’ and ‘US
Weaponizing Space in Bid to Launch Arms Race’ – as explained in the point above, and demonstrating
its disinterest in extending New START: the sole remaining restraint on
U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals that caps deployed offensive strategic nuclear
weapons to no more than 1,550 each. See ‘Russia
says it’s already too late to replace new START treaty’ and ‘Global
Zero Urges Trump to Accept Putin’s Offer on Nuclear Treaty’.
If you are in any doubt regarding the devastating
consequences of nuclear war, you will find Professor Steven Starr’s thoughts –
see ‘Nuclear
Darkness, Global Climate Change and Nuclear Famine: The Deadly Consequences of
Nuclear War’ – illuminating.
In addition, the description by Lynn Eden in ‘City on
Fire’ (based on her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear
Weapons Devastation) is
compelling.
7. Another substantial proportion of global private
financial wealth – conservatively estimated by the Tax Justice Network in 2010
to already total between $US21 and $US32 trillion – has been invested virtually
tax-free through the world’s still-expanding black hole of more than 80
‘offshore’ tax havens (such as the City of London Corporation, Jersey,
Guernsey, the Isle of Man, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Hong Kong, Nauru, St.
Kitts, Antigua, Tortola, Switzerland, the Channel Islands, Monaco, Cyprus,
Gibraltar and Liechtenstein). This is just financial wealth. Additionally, a
large share of the real estate, yachts, racehorses, gold bricks and many other
assets that count as non-financial wealth are also owned via offshore
structures that make it impossible to identify their owners. See Tax Justice
Network.
Tax havens are locations around the world where
wealthy individuals, criminals and terrorists, as well as governments and
government agencies (such as the CIA), banks, corporations, hedge funds,
international organizations (such as the Vatican) and crime syndicates (such as
the Mafia), can stash their money so that they can avoid laws, regulation and
oversight and, very often, evade tax. See ‘Elite
Banking at Your Expense: How Secretive Tax Havens are Used to Steal Your Money’.
Controlled by the global elite, Wall Street and other
major banks manage this monstrous diversion of wealth under Government
protection. ‘Their business is fraud and grand theft.’ Tax haven locations
offer more than tax avoidance. ‘Almost anything goes on.’ It includes ‘bribery,
illegal gambling, money laundering, human and sex trafficking, arms dealing,
toxic waste dumping, conflict diamonds and endangered species trafficking,
bootlegged software, and endless other lawless practices.’ See ‘Trillions Stashed in
Offshore Tax Havens’.
8. The world’s major corporations continued to inflict
enormous ongoing violence (in a myriad of ways) in their pursuit of endless
profit at the expense of living beings (human and otherwise) and Earth’s
biosphere by producing and marketing a wide range of life-destroying products
ranging from nuclear weapons and nuclear power to fossil fuels, junk food,
pharmaceutical drugs (including health-destroying and sometimes life-destroying
vaccinations: see, for example, ‘Vaxxed-Unvaxxed
– The Science’), synthetic
poisons and genetically mutilated organisms (GMOs).
These corporations include the following: weapons
manufacturers, major banks and their ‘industry groups’ like the International
Monetary Conference, asset management firms, investment companies, financial
services companies, fossil fuel (coal, oil and gas) corporations, technology corporations,
media corporations, major marketing and public relations corporations,
agrochemical (pesticides, seeds, fertilizers) giants, pharmaceutical
corporations (with their handmaidens in the medical and psychiatric industries:
see ‘Defeating
the Violence in Our Food and Medicine’ and ‘Defeating
the Violence of Psychiatry’),
biotechnology (genetic mutilation) corporations, mining corporations, nuclear
power corporations, food multinationals and water corporations. You can see a
list of the major corporations in this article: ‘The
Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.
9. More than two billion people continued to live
under occupation, dictatorship or threat of genocidal assault often with the
global elite sponsoring an oppressive national government or simply a local
elite that exercises power irrespective of the government in office. See, for
example, ‘500
Years is Long Enough! Human Depravity in the Congo’.
10. 36,500,000 human beings (mainly in Africa, Asia
and Central/South America) were starved to death in 2019.
Are we serious about ending these totally unnecessary
deaths? Not even remotely, as thoughtfully explained by Professor George Kent
in his article ‘Are
We Serious About Ending Hunger?’
As Professor Kent notes: currently, around the world,
‘around 800 million people suffer from hunger’ and that ‘global efforts to end
hunger have not been serious’: There has been ‘no substantial commitment of
resources, no management group to control the process, no realistic timeline,
and no means for mid-course corrections on the way to the goal. There [have
been] no contracts with agencies that would work toward achievement of the goal….
hoping for the end of hunger won’t work. Hope is not a strategy.’ Moreover,
‘The UN system offers little more than vague aspirations.’
11. 18,250,000 children were killed by adults in wars,
by starving them to death, by denying them clean drinking water, and in a large
variety of other ways.
12. 8,000,000 children were trafficked into sexual
slavery; executed in sacrificial killings after being kidnapped; bred to be
sold as a ‘cash crop’ for sexual violation, to produce child pornography
(‘kiddie porn’) and ‘snuff’ movies (in which children are killed during the
filming); ritually tortured and murdered as well as raped by dogs trained for
the purpose. See ‘Humanity’s
“Dirty Little Secret”: Starving, Enslaving, Raping, Torturing and Killing our
Children’.
13. Hundreds of thousands of individuals were
kidnapped or tricked into slavery, which now denies 46,000,000 human beings
(more than at any time in human history) the right to live the life of their
choice, condemning many individuals – especially women and children – to lives
of sexual slavery, forced labor or as child soldiers. Needless to say, the
global elite continues to expand this highly profitable business while its
compliant governments do no more than mouth an occasional objection to the
practice while doing nothing effective to actually end it, as was patently
evident following disclosures about high-profile public figures during the
year. See ‘The
Global Slavery Index’. For one
recent account of the life of a modern slave, see ‘My
Family’s Slave’. And for an
account of the involvement of public figures in sex slavery, see ‘Prince
Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein: what you need to know’ and the other articles listed at the end of this one.
14. Well over 100,000 people (particularly Falun Gong
practitioners) in China, where an extensive state-controlled program is
conducted, were subjected to forced organ removal for the trade in human
organs. See Bloody Harvest
and The Slaughter.
15. 15,768,000 people were displaced by war,
persecution or famine. There are now 70,800,000 people, more that half of whom
are children and approximately 10,000,000 of whom are stateless, who have been
forcibly displaced worldwide and remain precariously unsettled, usually in
adverse circumstances. One person in the world is forcibly displaced every two
seconds. See ‘Figures
at a Glance’.
16. Millions of people were made homeless in their own
country as a result of war, persecution, ‘natural’ disasters (many of which,
including hurricanes/cyclones and wildfires, were actually generated by
dysfunctional human behavior rather than nature), internal conflict, poverty or
as a result of elite-driven national economic policies. The last time a global
survey was attempted – by the United Nations back in 2005 – an estimated 100
million people were homeless worldwide. In addition, as many as 1.6 billion
people lack adequate housing (living in slums, for example). See ‘Global
Homelessness Statistics’.
17. Highlighting the unheralded biodiversity crisis on
Earth, as a result of habitat destruction and degradation as well as a
multitude of other threats, 73,000 species of life (plants, birds, animals,
fish, amphibians, insects, reptiles and microbes) on Earth were driven to
extinction with the worldwide loss of many of these species – and certainly
including insects, birds, animals and fish – now at catastrophic levels.
Tragically, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop which
will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in
which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work
once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts.
See the (so far) five-part series ‘Our
Vanishing World’. Have you
seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?
18. Separately from global species extinctions, Earth
continued to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and
extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem
functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization. We describe this as
a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s
ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions
‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population
extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth
mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’ See ‘Biological
annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate
population losses and declines’
and ‘Our
Vanishing World: Wildlife’.
19. Wildlife trafficking, worth up to $20 billion in
2019, is pushing many endangered species to the brink of extinction. Illegal
wildlife products include jewelry, traditional medicine, clothing, furniture,
and souvenirs, as well as some exotic pets, most of which are sold to
unaware/unconcerned consumers in the West although China is heavily implicated
too. See, for example, Stop
Wildlife Trafficking.
20. 16,000,000 acres of pristine rainforest were cut
or burnt down for purposes such as the following: acquiring timbers used in
construction, clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can
eat cheap hamburgers, clearing land to establish palm oil plantations so that
many people can eat processed (including junk) foods based on this oil,
clearing land to establish palm oil and soybean plantations so that some people
can delude themselves that they are using a ‘green biofuel’ in their car (when,
in fact, these fuels generate a far greater carbon footprint than fossil
fuels), mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold,
silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds), and logging to produce
woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper, including cheap toilet
paper. One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are
now threatened with extinction. See ‘Our
Vanishing World: Rainforests’,
‘Measuring
the Daily Destruction of the World’s Rainforests’, ‘Estimating
the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species’ and ‘Half
of Amazon Tree Species Face Extinction’.
Another outcome is that ‘the precious Amazon is
teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we’. How
long do we have? ‘The tipping point is here, it is now.’ Professor Thomas E.
Lovejoy and his fellow researcher Carlos Nobre elaborate this point: ‘Bluntly
put, the Amazon not only cannot withstand further deforestation but also now
requires rebuilding as the underpinning base of the hydrological cycle if the
Amazon is to continue to serve as a flywheel of continental climate for the
planet and an essential part of the global carbon cycle.’ See ‘Amazon Tipping Point:
Last Chance for Action’.
21. Vast quantities of soil were washed away as we
destroyed the rainforests, and enormous quantities of both inorganic
constituents (such as heavy metals like cadmium, chromium, lead, mercury,
nickel and zinc) and organic pollutants (particularly synthetic chemicals in
the form of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides) were dumped into the soil
as well, thus reducing its nutrients and killing the microbes and earthworms
within it. We also contaminated enormous quantities of soil with radioactive
waste. See Soil-net, ‘Glyphosate
effects on soil rhizosphere-associated bacterial communities’ and ‘Disposing
of Nuclear Waste is a Challenge for Humanity’.
To briefly elaborate the evidence in relation to
earthworms: Given ‘recent reports of critical declines of microbes, plants,
insects and other invertebrates, birds and other vertebrates, the situation
pertaining to neglected earthworms’ was evaluated in an extensive investigation
recently undertaken by Robert J. Blakemore. His research demonstrated an
83.3 percent decline in earthworms in agrichemical farms – that is, those
that use pesticides, herbicides and synthetic fertilizers – compared with farms
utilizing organic methods. Why? Because ‘it is impossible to replace or
artificially engineer the myriad beneficial processes and services freely
provided by earthworms’ which includes extensive burrows in pastures enriched
with soil organic matter that allow ingress of air & water and provide
living space for other soil organisms. Moreover, given that ecological services
overall have been given a median value of US$135 trillion per year, which is
almost double the global economic GDP of around $75 trillion – see ‘Changes
in the global value of ecosystem services’ and ‘Valuing
nature and the hidden costs of biodiversity loss’ – Blakemore reaches an obvious conclusion:
‘Persistence with failing chemical agriculture makes neither ecological nor
economic sense.’ See ‘Critical
Decline of Earthworms from Organic Origins under Intensive, Humic SOM-Depleting
Agriculture’.
Given that this multifaceted destruction of the soil
fundamentally threatens the global grain supply, when the ability to grow,
store and distribute grains at scale is a defining element of civilization, as
Professor Guy McPherson eloquently explains it: ‘A significant decline in grain
harvest will surely drive this version of civilization to the abyss and
beyond.’ See ‘Seven
Distinct Paths to Loss of Habitat for Humans’.
22. Despite an extensive and ongoing coverup by the
Japanese government and nuclear corporations, as well as the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), vast amounts of radioactive waste were dumped into
the biosphere from the TEPCO nuclear power plant at Fukushima in Japan including
by discharge into the Pacific Ocean killing an incalculable number of fish and
other marine organisms and indefinitely contaminating expanding areas of that
ocean. See ‘Fukushima:
A Nuclear War without a War: The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear
Radiation’, ‘2019 Annual Report – Fukushima 8th Anniversary’, ‘Eight years after
triple nuclear meltdown, Fukushima No. 1’s water woes show no signs of ebbing’ and ‘Fukushima’s
Three Nuclear Meltdowns Are “Under Control” – That’s a Lie’.
But the challenges to be overcome in safely handling
and, ultimately, safely storing the radiation hazards (such as the three melted
nuclear reactors and the spent fuel rods) and the radioactive waste from the
Fukushima disaster are monumental, as touched on in this article outlining the
40-year plan that the Japanese government hopes will delude us into believing
will deal with the many components of this perpetual radioactive nightmare. See
‘Japan
revises Fukushima cleanup plan, delays key steps’.
In addition, one critical legacy of the US military’s
67 secretive and lethal nuclear weapons tests on the Marshall Islands between
1946 and 1958 is the ‘eternally’ radioactive garbage left behind and now
leaking into the Pacific Ocean. See ‘The
Pentagon’s Disastrous Radioactive Waste Dump in the Drowning Marshall Islands
is Leaking into the Pacific Ocean’.
Is other nuclear waste safely stored? Of course not!
See, for example, ‘NRC
admits San Onofre Holtec nuclear waste canisters are all damaged’, ‘USA’s
Hanford nuclear site could suffer the same fate as Russia’s Mayak – or worse’ and, for a more comprehensive report, ‘The World
Nuclear Waste Report 2019: Focus Europe’.
Of course, the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe in 1986
continues to inflict extensive damage on the biosphere which you can learn more
about from the research by Professor Kate Brown, author of Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the Future – ‘Chernobyl
Radiation Cover-Ups & Deadly Truth’, ‘UN
and Western countries covered up the facts on the huge health toll of Chernobyl
radiation’ and ‘Unreported
Deaths, Child Cancer & Radioactive Meat: The Untold Story of Chernobyl’ – as well as the investigatory work of Alison Katz of
Independent WHO: ‘Chernobyl
Health Cover-Up, Lies by UN/WHO Exposed’.
23. Human use of fossil fuels to power aircraft,
shipping and vehicles as well as for industrial production and to generate
electricity (among other purposes) released 10 billion metric tons (10
gigatons) of carbon dioxide into Earth’s biosphere, a 0.6% increase over 2018,
with China’s monstrous CO2 emissions for 2019 totaling 2.6% greater than the
previous year. See ‘Global
Carbon Budget 2019’.
As one measure of their contempt for the utterly
inadequate goals of the Paris climate agreement, and with government approval,
‘over 400 of the 746 companies on the Global Coal Exit List are still
planning to expand their coal operations’. If built, these projects in 60
countries would add over 579 GW to the global coal plant fleet, an increase of
almost 29%. See ‘Companies
Driving the World’s Coal Expansion Revealed: NGOs Release New Global Coal Exit
List for Finance Industry’ and
‘Proposed
Coal Plants by Country’.
24. 72 billion land animals (mainly chickens, ducks,
pigs, rabbits, geese, turkeys, sheep, goats and beef cattle) were killed for
food. In addition, between 37 and 120 billion fish were killed on commercial
farms with another 2.7 trillion fish caught and killed in the wild. See ‘How
Many Animals Are Killed for Food Every Day?’
Apart from that, more than 100 million animals were
killed for laboratory purposes in the United States alone and there were other
animal deaths in shelters, zoos and in blood sports. See ‘How
Many Animals Are Killed Each Year?’
In addition, according to Humane Society
International, about 100 million animals (particularly mink, foxes, raccoon
dogs and rabbits) were bred and slaughtered in fur farms geared to supplying
the fashion industry. In addition to farming, millions of wild animals were
trapped and killed for fur, as were hundreds of thousands of seals. See ‘How
Many Animals are Killed Each Year?’
25. Farming of animals for human consumption released
7.1 gigatons of CO2-equivalent into Earth’s atmosphere; this represented 14.5
percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. About 44% of livestock
emissions were in the form of methane (which was 44% of anthropogenic CH4
emissions), 29% as Nitrous Oxide (which was 53% of anthropogenic N2O emissions)
and 27% as Carbon Dioxide (which was 5% of anthropogenic CO2 emissions). See ‘GHG
Emissions by Livestock’.
26. Human use of fossil fuels and farming of animals
released more than 3.2 million metric tons of (CO2 equivalent) nitrous oxide
(N2O) into Earth’s atmosphere. See ‘Nitrous
oxide emissions’.
27. Despite largely successful efforts by the
elite-controlled IPCC to delude people into believing that the global mean
temperature has increased by only 1.0 degree celsius, in fact, since the
pre-industrial era (prior to 1750) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have
already caused the global temperature to rise by about 1.73 degrees celsius.
See ‘How
much warmer is it now?’
Among a lengthy list of adverse outcomes, this has
caused the melting of Arctic permafrost and undersea methane ice clathrates resulting
in an incalculable quantity of methane being uncontrollably released into the
atmosphere, including during 2019, with the quantity being released getting
ever closer to ‘exploding’. See ‘Anomalies
of methane in the atmosphere over the East Siberian shelf: Is there any sign of
methane leakage from shallow shelf hydrates?’, ‘7,000
underground gas bubbles poised to “explode” in Arctic’, ‘Release
of Arctic Methane “May Be Apocalyptic,” Study Warns’ and ‘Understanding
the Permafrost-Hydrate System and Associated Methane Releases in the East
Siberian Arctic Shelf’.
In fact, the methane threat is already so extreme that
the forecast El Niño event for 2020 could be the catalyst to trigger huge
methane releases from the Arctic Ocean precipitating human extinction this
year. See ‘Very early
warning signal for El Niño in 2020 with a 4 in 5 likelihood’ and ‘Extinction
in 2020?’
28. Glaciers and mountain ice fields – whether located
in Greenland or other regions of the far north, the Himalaya, at the Equator,
in southern latitudes or Antarctica – are all melting at unprecedented and
accelerating rates, losing billions of tonnes of ice in 2019. For a discussion
of the details and the implications of this, see ‘Our
Vanishing World: Glaciers’.
29. The ongoing destruction of Earth’s oceans continued
unabated and accelerated in key areas.
An incalculable amount of agricultural poisons, fossil
fuels and other wastes was discharged into the ocean, adversely impacting life
at all ocean depths – see ‘Staggering
level of toxic chemicals found in creatures at the bottom of the sea,
scientists say’ – and
generating ocean ‘dead zones’: regions that have too little oxygen to support
marine organisms. See ‘Our
Planet Is Exploding With Marine “Dead Zones”’.
In addition, however, another problem that has been
getting insufficient attention is the result of the expanding impacts of the
rapidly increasing levels of ocean acidification, ocean warming, ocean carbon
flows and ocean plastics. Taken in isolation each of these changes clearly has
negative consequences for the ocean. All these shifts taken together, however,
result in a rapid and serious decline in ocean health and this, in turn,
adversely impacts all species dependent on the ocean including fish, mammals
and seabirds. Moreover, on top of these problems is the issue of oxygen
availability given that oxygen in the air or water is of paramount importance
to most living organisms. As the recently released report ‘Ocean
deoxygenation: Everyone’s problem. Causes, impacts, consequences and solutions’ describes in some detail, oxygen levels are currently
declining across the ocean, not just in ‘dead zones’.
And to elaborate the plastics problem briefly: at
least 8 million metric tons of plastic, of which 236,000 tons were
microplastics, was discharged into the ocean. So severe is the problem that
there are now five massive patches of plastic in the oceans around the world
covering large swaths of the ocean; the plastic patch between California and
Hawaii is the size of the state of Texas. See ‘Plastic
waste inputs from land into the ocean’ and ‘Plastics
in the Ocean’.
30. Earth’s fresh water and ground water was further
depleted and contaminated.
The depletion is a primary outcome of the ongoing
deforestation of the planet and is manifesting in several ways including as
localized droughts, which are becoming increasingly common as a number of
cities and regions around the world can attest. According to the World
Resources Institute, half of the surface water in some countries – mainly in
Central Asia and the Middle East – was depleted between 1984 and 2015, with
agriculture using an average of 70% of the water. 36 countries are ‘extremely
water-stressed’ and water is now a major factor in conflict in at least 45
countries. See ‘7
Graphics Explain the State of the World’s Water’.
Separately from depletion, fresh water was
contaminated by bacteria, viruses and household chemicals from faulty septic
systems; hazardous wastes from abandoned and uncontrolled hazardous waste sites
(of which there are over 20,000 in the USA alone); leaks from landfill items
such as car battery acid, paint and household cleaners; the pesticides, herbicides
and other poisons used on farms and home gardens; radioactive waste from
nuclear tests (some of it stored in glaciers that are now melting); and the
chemical contamination caused by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in search of
shale gas, for which about 750 chemicals and components, some extremely toxic
and carcinogenic like lead and benzene, have been used. See ‘Groundwater
contamination’, ‘Groundwater drunk by
BILLIONS of people may be contaminated by radioactive material spread across
the world by nuclear testing in the 1950s’ and ‘Fracking
chemicals’.
31. The longstanding covert military use of
geoengineering – spraying tens of millions of tons of highly toxic metals
(including aluminium, barium and strontium) and toxic coal fly ash
nanoparticulates (containing arsenic, chromium, thallium, chlorine, bromine,
fluorine, iodine, mercury and radioactive elements) into the atmosphere from
jet aircraft to weaponize the atmosphere and weather – in order to enhance
elite control of human populations, continued unchecked. Geoengineering is
systematically destroying Earth’s ozone layer – which blocks the deadly portion
of solar radiation, UV-C and most UV-B, from reaching Earth’s surface – as well
as adversely altering Earth’s weather patterns and polluting its air, water and
soil at incredible cost to the health and well-being of living organisms and
the biosphere. See ‘Geoengineering Watch’, including ‘Engineered
Climate Cataclysm: Hurricane Harvey’.
For a discussion of the military implications of geoengineering,
see ‘The
Ultimate Weapon of Mass Destruction: “Owning the Weather” for Military Use’.
And for discussions of the research, and implications
of it, by Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt and Dr. Stephenie Seneff (Senior Research
Scientist at MIT), which considers damage to the biosphere and human health
caused by the geoengineering release of a synthesized compound of nanonized
aluminium and the poison glyphosate that creates a ‘supertoxin’ that is
generating ‘a crisis of neurological diseases’, see ‘World-Renowned
Doctor Addresses Climate Engineering Dangers’, Dr
Stephenie Seneff, ‘Autism
Explained: Synergistic Poisoning from Aluminum and Glyphosate’ and ‘Extinction
is Stalking Humanity: The Threats to Human Survival Accumulate’.
32. The incredibly destructive 5G technology, which a
vast number of scientists (currently totaling more than 188,000 individuals and
organizations from 203 nations and territories: see ‘International
Appeal to Stop 5G on Earth and in Space’) are warning will have catastrophic consequences for
life on Earth, is now being rapidly introduced without informed public
consultation and despite ongoing protests around the world.
The following articles and videos will give you a
solid understanding of key issues from the viewpoint of human and planetary
well-being. See ‘5G
Satellites: A Threat to all Life’,
‘5G
Danger: 13 Reasons 5G Wireless Technology Will Be a Catastrophe for Humanity’, ‘5G
Technology is Coming – Linked to Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes, Alzheimer’s,
and Death’, ‘20,000
Satellites for 5G to be Launched Sending Focused Beams of Intense Microwave
Radiation Over Entire Earth’, ‘Will
5G Cell Phone Technology Lead To Dramatic Population Reduction As Large Numbers
Of Men Become Sterile?’, ‘The
5G Revolution: Millions of “Human Guinea Pigs” in Big Telecom’s Global
Experiment’ and ‘5G
Apocalypse – The Extinction Event’.
33. As one outcome of our dysfunctional parenting
model and political systems, fascism continued to rise around the world. See ‘The
Psychology of Fascism’.
34. Despite the belief that we have ‘the right to
privacy’, privacy (in any sense of the word) was ongoingly eroded in 2019 and
is now effectively non-existent, particularly thanks to Alphabet (owner of
Google). Taken together, ‘Uber, Amazon, Facebook, eBay, Tinder, Apple, Lyft,
Foursquare, Airbnb, Spotify, Instagram, Twitter, Angry Birds... have turned our
computers and phones into bugs that are plugged in to a vast corporate-owned
surveillance network. Where we go, what we do, what we talk about, who we talk
to, and who we see – everything is recorded and, at some point, leveraged for
value.’ Moreover, given Google’s integrated relationship with the US
government, the US military, the CIA, and major US weapons manufacturers, there
isn’t really anything you can do that isn’t known by those who want to know it.
In essence, Google is ‘a powerful global corporation with its own political
agenda and a mission to maximise profits for shareholders’ and it partly
achieves this by expanding the surveillance programs of the national security
state at the direction of the global elite. But Google isn’t alone and it isn’t
just happening in the USA. See ‘Everybody’s
Watching You: The Intercept’s 2019 Technology Coverage’, ‘Google’s
Earth: How the Tech Giant Is Helping the State Spy on Us’, the articles by John W. Whitehead on ‘Surveillance’ and the documentary ‘The
Modern Surveillance State’.
35. The right to free speech, accurate information and
conscience-based nonviolent activism was ongoingly eroded in 2019 as efforts,
by governments and corporations particularly, to control speech, information
and political action accelerated. Whether this took the form of censorship,
restrictions on access or violent acts directed against those whose views or
actions were seen as dangerous or wrong, Global Witness, Human Rights Watch and
other organizations documented an endless series of setbacks for free speech
and political activity in a wide variety of countries around the world with
individuals and journalists imprisoned for telling the truth, nonviolent
activists assaulted and killed, critics silenced by defamation laws or
‘disappearance’, and the closure of newspapers, television stations and the
internet to prevent rapid promulgation of information, among other
infringements. See, for example, ‘Free
Speech’, ‘The
supply chain of violence’, ‘Environmental
activist murders double in 15 years’ and ‘Enemies
of the State? How governments and businesses silence land and environmental
defenders’.
36. Believing that we know better than evolution, and
following the birth in 2018 of the first gene-edited babies in China – see ‘Why
we are not ready for genetically designed babies’ and ‘China’s
Golem Babies: There is Another Agenda’ – in 2019, further human gene-editing was done as well as gene-editing
experiments intended to explore possibilities for more complex gene-editing of
humans. Why? According to the authors of one report: ‘To extend the frontier of
genome editing and enable the radical redesign of mammalian genomes’
(emphasis added). This experiment allowed ‘for the simultaneous editing of
>10,000 loci in human cells’. See ‘Enabling
large-scale genome editing by reducing DNA nicking’.
Needless to say, at least some responsible scientists
are well aware of the possibly horrific consequences of this technology in the
hands of those without ethics and are calling for a moratorium of at least five
years on heritable human gene editing to allow time ‘to engage in proactive,
rather than reactive, discussions about the future of such technology’. Of
course, despite the calls for caution, ‘some researchers are forging ahead’.
See ‘NIH
Director on Human Gene Editing: “We Must Never Allow Our Technology to Eclipse
Our Humanity”’.
37. Incalculable amounts of waste of every conceivable
kind – including antibiotic waste, military waste, nuclear waste, nanowaste and
genetically engineered organisms, including ‘gene drives’ (or ‘mutagenic chain
reactions’) – were released into Earth’s biosphere, with an endless series of
adverse consequences for life. See ‘Junk
Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?’
Not content to dump our junk on Earth, an incalculable
amount of junk was also dumped in Space which already contains 100 trillion
items of orbiting junk. See ‘Junk
Planet: Is Earth the Largest Garbage Dump in the Universe?’ and ‘Space Junk:
Tracking & Removing Orbital Debris’.
38. Ongoing ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence against children
– see ‘Why
Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology:
Principles and Practice’ –
ensured that more people will grow up accepting (and quite powerless to
challenge) our dysfunctional and violent world, as described above.
39. The global elite’s corporate media, schooling and
film/television industries continued to distract vast numbers of people from
reality with an endless barrage of propaganda respectively labeled, depending
on the context, ‘news’, ‘education’ and ‘entertainment’ ensuring that most
people remain oblivious to our predicament, devoid of the capacities to investigate,
comprehend and analyze this predicament as well as their own role in it, and to
respond to this predicament powerfully. See, for example, ‘Media’s
Deafening Silence on Latest from WikiLeaks about the Organisation for the
Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fake Douma Report Blaming Syria’, ‘Do
We Want School or Education?’
and ‘The
Most Important Free Press Stories of 2019’.
40. Finally, as a direct outcome of these last two
points but most tragically of all, virtually all of the individuals who
self-identify as ‘activists’ continued to waste their time begging the global
elite (or their agents) to fix one or other of our crises – starkly illustrated
by those thousands of climate ‘activists’ who traveled to Madrid, mostly using
fossil fuels, and then complained when the outcome was, predictably, pitiful:
see the powerless civil society ‘Statement
on COP25’ – despite the
overwhelming evidence that the global elite will not take action to ‘fix’ any
of these crises. See ‘Why
Activists Fail’. And, for more
detail in two key contexts, see ‘The
Global Climate Movement is Failing: Why?’ and ‘The
War to End War 100 Years On: An Evaluation and Reorientation of our Resistance
to War’.
Moreover, even if it was inclined, the elite is now
powerless to avert extinction given that, if we are to have any chance given
the advanced nature of the crisis and the incredibly short timeframe, we must
plan intelligently to mobilize a substantial proportion of the human population
in a strategically-focused effort. Nothing else can work.
Highlights of 2019
But so that the picture is clear and ‘balanced’: were
there any gains made against the onslaught outlined above, particularly given
we were driven inexorably closer to extinction?
Considering the elite and its agents: Zero gains were
made of which I am aware. I have found no record of official efforts during the
year to plan for the development and implementation of a comprehensive, just
and sustainable peace although there was plenty of rhetoric in some quarters,
often by those without any actual power to make a difference.
Separately from this, there have been some minor
activist gains: for example, some western banks and insurance companies are no
longer financially supporting the expansion of the western weapons industry and
the western coal industry, some superannuation (pension) funds have divested
from weapons and fossil fuels, some rainforest groups have managed to save
portions of Earth’s rainforest heritage, and activist groups continue to work
on a variety of issues sometimes making modest gains.
In essence however, as you probably realize, many of
the issues above are not even being tackled and, even when they are, activist
efforts have been hampered by inadequate analysis of the forces driving
conflicts and problems, limited vision (particularly unambitious aims such as
those in relation to ending war and the climate catastrophe), and
unsophisticated strategy (necessary to have profound impact against a deeply
entrenched, highly organized and well-resourced opponent), with the endless
lobbying of elite institutions, such as governments and corporations, despite
this effort simply allowing the absorption and dissipation of our dissent, as
is intended. As Mark Twain once noted: ‘If voting made a difference, they
wouldn’t let us do it.’ Another problem was the failure to make the difficult
decisions to model and promote necessary solutions that are ‘unpopular’.
Fundamentally, these ‘difficult decisions’ include the
vital need to campaign for the human population, particularly in industrialized
countries, to substantially reduce their consumption – by 80% – involving both
energy and resources of every kind, while increasing our individual and
community self-reliance, as the central feature of any strategy to curtail
destruction of the environment and climate, to undermine capitalism and to
eliminate the primary driver of war: violent resource acquisition from Middle
Eastern and developing nations for the production of consumer goods for
consumers in industrialized countries.
So here we stand at the brink
of human extinction (with 200 species of life on Earth being driven to
extinction daily) and most humans utterly oblivious to (or in denial of: see ‘The
Psychology of Denial’) the
desperate nature and timeframe of our plight. And the fundamental reason why
this is the case is simple to identify: unconscious fear is making people,
including activists, incapable of behaving sensibly in the crisis. Instead,
people are doing what they were terrorized into doing as a child: obeying their
parents, teachers, religious figures and, ultimately, the elite. Why? Because
when the choice is between obedience on the one hand and punishment on the
other, obedience almost invariably wins. And so now we obediently ask the
elite, perhaps by lobbying one of their governments, to ‘fix’ things for us –
to save the climate, to end war... – and meekly accept it when they ignore us
or refuse. After all, that is what most parents and teachers do – ignore us or
refuse us – and we have fearfully learned to ‘accept it’. Which is why the idea
of behaving powerfully ourselves never really occurs to most people.
‘But I am not afraid’ you (or
someone else) might say. Aren’t you? Your unconscious mind has had years to
learn the tricks it needed when you were a child to survive the onslaught of
the violent parenting and schooling you suffered – see ‘Why
Violence?’, ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology:
Principles and Practice’ and ‘Do
We Want School or Education?’
– among the many other possibilities of violence, including those of a
structural nature, that you will have also suffered.
But your mind only learned
these ‘tricks’ – such as the trick of suppressing awareness of your fear and
hiding it behind the permitted and encouraged overconsumption: see ‘Love
Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’ – at great cost to your functionality and it now
diverts the attention from reality of most people so effectively that they
cannot even pay attention to the obvious and imminent threats to human
survival.
In any case, there is a simple test of whether or not
you are afraid.
Responding Powerfully
If you feel able to act powerfully in response to this
complex and multifaceted crisis, in a way that will have strategic impact, you
are invited to join (but now using a substantially accelerated timeframe) those
participating in ‘The
Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’, which outlines a simple plan for you to
systematically reduce your consumption, by at least 80%, involving both energy
and resources of every kind – water, household energy, transport fuels, metals,
meat, paper and plastic – while dramatically expanding your individual and
community self-reliance in 16 areas, so that all threats to the biosphere are
effectively addressed.
If you are also interested in conducting or
participating in a campaign to systematically address one of the issues
identified above, you are welcome to consider acting strategically in the way
that Mohandas K. Gandhi did. Whether you are engaged in a peace, climate,
environment or social justice campaign, the 12-point strategic framework and
principles are the same. See Nonviolent
Campaign Strategy. And, for
example, you can see a basic list of the strategic goals necessary to end war
and halt the climate catastrophe in ‘Strategic
Aims’.
If you want to know how to nonviolently defend against
a foreign invading power or a political/military coup, to liberate your country
from a dictatorship or a foreign occupation, or to defeat a genocidal assault,
you will learn how to do so in ‘Nonviolent
Defense/Liberation Strategy’.
If you are interested in nurturing children to live by
their conscience and to gain the courage necessary to resist elite violence
fearlessly, while living sustainably despite the entreaties of capitalism to
over-consume, then you are welcome to make ‘My
Promise to Children’.
To reiterate: capitalism, war and destruction of the
biosphere are, fundamentally, outcomes of our dysfunctional parenting and
education of children which distorts their intellectual and emotional
capacities, destroys their conscience and courage, and actively teaches them to
over-consume as compensation for having vital emotional needs denied. See ‘Love
Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’.
This explains why Gandhi’s example, set more than 100
years ago, to minimize his own possessions and consumption as symbolized by his
wearing of khadi, together with his observation ‘Earth provides enough for
every person’s need, but not for every person’s greed.’ have never had the
widespread impact that was needed to achieve some level of sustainability about
the human presence on Earth. The dysfunctional emotional attachment to
possessions and consumption is overwhelming for most people.
If your own intellectual and/or emotional
functionality is the issue and you have the self-awareness to perceive that,
and wish to access the conscience and courage that would enable you to act
powerfully, try ‘Putting
Feelings First’.
And if you want to be part of the worldwide movement
committed to ending all of the violence identified above, consider signing the
online pledge of ‘The
People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.
In summary: if we do not rapidly, systematically and
substantially reduce our consumption in several key areas and radically alter
our parenting model, while resisting elite violence strategically on several
fronts, Homo sapiens will enter Earth’s fossil record in 2020 or soon after.
Given the fear, self-hatred and powerlessness that paralyses most humans, your
choices in these regards are even more vital than you realize.
Or, if the options above seem
too complicated, consider committing to:
The Earth Pledge
Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures,
and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:
1. I will listen deeply to children (see explanation above)
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown
food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use,
including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not buy rainforest timber
8. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as
bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
9. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension)
funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved
in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
10. I will not accept employment from, or invest in,
any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow
human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
11. I will not get news from the corporate media
(mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
12. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as
food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
13. I will gently encourage my family and friends to
consider signing this pledge.
Conclusion
Very soon now, the overwhelming
evidence is that Homo sapiens will join other species that only exist as part
of the fossil record. For other summaries of our predicament, see ‘Human
Extinction by 2026? A Last Ditch Strategy to Fight for Human Survival’, ‘Doomsday
by 2021?’ and ‘Extinction
in 2020?’
Our chance of escaping this fate is
now remote.
Which is why I am compelled to forecast the following:
As is overwhelmingly demonstrated by any consideration of the historical
evidence in relation to human behavior, fear will prevent the vast bulk of
human beings considering the evidence offered above as well as that cited.
Moreover, even among those who do consider it, few will have the capacity to
act sensibly and powerfully in response, particularly given the comprehensive
range of strategies in so many different contexts that are now necessary.
Hence, absent the intellectual and emotional capacities
necessary to respond strategically to this complex and multifaceted crisis,
human extinction will occur imminently.
Obviously, I hope I am wrong (and I will be doing
everything I can to make it so).
Biodata: Robert J. Burrowes
has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has
done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings
are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why
Violence?’ His email address
is flametree@riseup.net and his website is here.
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