It’s very important that we stop only calling it a “Climate” crisis. The deforestation, habitat destruction, and species collapse aspects of the crisis are actually more immediate and dangerous than the climate aspect. It is a climate and extinction crisis and we need to describe it that way. I do so here:
Firstly, thank you for your time and attention in reading my work. I appreciate that, it's hard to get anyone to listen.
I understand what you are saying about species loss. I am a big fan of Elizabeth Kolbert and realize that we are in the midst of "the 6th mass extinction event". I have ranted about that in several of my other articles.
There are so many things going wrong "everywhere, all at once" and they are all massively interconnected. The nano-plastics issue is also a "crisis" that is largely being ignored.
Plastic nano-particulate now covers the world and is in everything. Including you. In recent years, microplastics have been documented in all parts of human body. Including the lungs.
Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy
Microplastics scientist Heather Leslie, formerly of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and colleagues found microplastics in blood samples from 17 of 22 healthy adult volunteers in the Netherlands. The finding, published last year in Environment International, confirms what many scientists have long suspected: These tiny bits can get absorbed into the human bloodstream.
So, by letting plastics “just happen” we may have poisoned the entire planetary ecosystem.
Other examples are easy to find. How about chemicals?
Globally, more than 350,000 chemical compounds (including mixtures of chemicals) have been registered for production and use. Their manufacture and sale is incredibly profitable for the people who engage in it and we all benefit from it.
At least right now.
There are currently about 100,000 chemicals in use in the US. Of those the EPA has only taken action:
- to reduce the risk of around 3,600 chemicals.
- to ban or limit the production or use of only 5.
It has NOT regulated a single chemical in the United States since the mid-1980s. Not one.
In 2016 the Obama administration managed to force an update to the Toxic Substances Control Act. The new law requires EPA to test tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals currently on the market, and the roughly 2,000 new chemicals that go on the market each each year.
This was great. But, the Republicans crippled the update and protected the chemical industry. They forced an agreement that industry would pay for studies conducted by the EPA but capping the number of chemicals the EPA can test.
The EPA will be able to assess only 20 chemicals at a time, and each study has a seven-year deadline. Industry may then have five years to comply after a new rule is made.
At that pace the agency will never be to review all of the chemicals in our environment. We will always be in a state of uncertainty about being poisoned by the food we eat, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the items in our homes, and our environment.
Our entire world is now saturated in chemicals. Even women who live in “pristine” indigenous environments have detectable levels of dioxins and other “forever chemicals” in their breast milk. All of us now carry our personal “chemical lifetime load” that we start acquiring in infancy.
This shit needs to stop.
Male Fertility rates globally are crashing. It might have nothing to do with environmental pollution like this. Or again we may have poisoned ourselves out of short sighted greed and stupidity.
Any one of these would be a 'crisis', together they form what many are now calling a "POLYCRISIS".
You are focusing on the biological component. I am originally an engineer, I think in terms of systems and triage. Right now, the climate situation is the most critical in my mind. That's just me.
We are not at odds, we fundamentally agree. Our work compliments each other.
It’s very important that we stop only calling it a “Climate” crisis. The deforestation, habitat destruction, and species collapse aspects of the crisis are actually more immediate and dangerous than the climate aspect. It is a climate and extinction crisis and we need to describe it that way. I do so here:
https://ericbrooks.substack.com/p/nature-is-giving-humanity-our-final
Firstly, thank you for your time and attention in reading my work. I appreciate that, it's hard to get anyone to listen.
I understand what you are saying about species loss. I am a big fan of Elizabeth Kolbert and realize that we are in the midst of "the 6th mass extinction event". I have ranted about that in several of my other articles.
There are so many things going wrong "everywhere, all at once" and they are all massively interconnected. The nano-plastics issue is also a "crisis" that is largely being ignored.
Plastic nano-particulate now covers the world and is in everything. Including you. In recent years, microplastics have been documented in all parts of human body. Including the lungs.
Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969722020009?via%3Dihub
In breast milk.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9269371/
Raman Microspectroscopy Detection and Characterisation of Microplastics in Human Breastmilk
In maternal and fetal placental tissue.
Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412020322297
In peoples blood.
Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160412022001258
Microplastics scientist Heather Leslie, formerly of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, and colleagues found microplastics in blood samples from 17 of 22 healthy adult volunteers in the Netherlands. The finding, published last year in Environment International, confirms what many scientists have long suspected: These tiny bits can get absorbed into the human bloodstream.
So, by letting plastics “just happen” we may have poisoned the entire planetary ecosystem.
Other examples are easy to find. How about chemicals?
Globally, more than 350,000 chemical compounds (including mixtures of chemicals) have been registered for production and use. Their manufacture and sale is incredibly profitable for the people who engage in it and we all benefit from it.
At least right now.
There are currently about 100,000 chemicals in use in the US. Of those the EPA has only taken action:
- to reduce the risk of around 3,600 chemicals.
- to ban or limit the production or use of only 5.
It has NOT regulated a single chemical in the United States since the mid-1980s. Not one.
In 2016 the Obama administration managed to force an update to the Toxic Substances Control Act. The new law requires EPA to test tens of thousands of unregulated chemicals currently on the market, and the roughly 2,000 new chemicals that go on the market each each year.
https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whoweare/about/index.html
This was great. But, the Republicans crippled the update and protected the chemical industry. They forced an agreement that industry would pay for studies conducted by the EPA but capping the number of chemicals the EPA can test.
The EPA will be able to assess only 20 chemicals at a time, and each study has a seven-year deadline. Industry may then have five years to comply after a new rule is made.
At that pace the agency will never be to review all of the chemicals in our environment. We will always be in a state of uncertainty about being poisoned by the food we eat, the water we drink, the clothes we wear, the items in our homes, and our environment.
Our entire world is now saturated in chemicals. Even women who live in “pristine” indigenous environments have detectable levels of dioxins and other “forever chemicals” in their breast milk. All of us now carry our personal “chemical lifetime load” that we start acquiring in infancy.
This shit needs to stop.
Male Fertility rates globally are crashing. It might have nothing to do with environmental pollution like this. Or again we may have poisoned ourselves out of short sighted greed and stupidity.
Any one of these would be a 'crisis', together they form what many are now calling a "POLYCRISIS".
You are focusing on the biological component. I am originally an engineer, I think in terms of systems and triage. Right now, the climate situation is the most critical in my mind. That's just me.
We are not at odds, we fundamentally agree. Our work compliments each other.