Chemical planet

Each and every year an avalanche of toxic chemicals, amounting to 250 billion tonnes, drips over Earth, which, over time, will sanitize all life, turning the planet into a massive gooey glob that glistens dazzlingly orange, not vividly blue. Already, scientists categorize Earth as a “toxic planet.” (Source: “Scientists Categorize Earth as a ‘Toxic Planet,” Phys.Org, Feb. 7, 2017)

“Earth, and all life on it, are being saturated with man-made chemicals in an event unlike anything in the planet’s entire history,” says Julian Cribb, author of ‘Surviving the 21st Century’ (Springer International 2017), Ibid.

Nothing is spared. Mercury is found in Arctic polar bears. Honeybees are dropping like flies. Insect abundance is falling off the edge of a cliff, down 75%, which itself is an extinction event. And, drumroll please, Mt Everest’s snow is so polluted it doesn’t even meet EPA drinking water standards, absolutely true. Dangerous levels of arsenic and cadmium have been found in snow samples taken every 1,000 feet up, according to Samantha Langely-Turnbaugh, professor of environmental science, University of Southern Maine.

So, how does this affect the human species?

Well, for starters, man-made chemical emissions are, far and away, the largest human footprint on the planet. And, here’s the strange scary aspect: It’s one of the least understood or regulated. So, even though Earth is turning into a chemically soaked sphere above and beyond the wildest of imagination, according to UN Environment Program, most of those chemicals blanketing the planet have never been screened for health concerns.

According to WWF Global research, only 14% of chemicals used in largest volumes have the minimum amount of data available to make an initial basic safety assessment. Oh, well!

So, not only is the planet saturated dripping wet with chemicals, it is largely being done in the blind. Nobody knows for sure the upshot of the biggest most gigantic of all time chemical spray in all of history as toxic chemicals literally drip off the planet. Witnessed from outer space, aliens must be horrified. No wonder they haven’t landed.

Humanity could be at risk like never before but nobody really knows for sure how or why at the very moment when worldwide capitalism is cranking faster than ever before now that state-run capitalism is so popular and ingrained in Oligarch-Heaven Russia and Red Communist China. The upshot: Considerably more unregulated chemicals at the rate of 2,000 new chemicals released every year. That’s five (5) brand new chemicals soaking the planet every day. As a result, industrial toxins are now found worldwide in newborn babies. When will humans start glowing in the dark?

Meanwhile, medical science is increasingly linking issues such as obesity, cancer, heart disease and brain disorders like autism, ADHD and depression to the massively growing titanic volume of toxic chemicals dripping off the planet.

Notably, only recently, the global threat is coming to surface, for example, a recent landmark study of insects showing a 75% falloff of abundance over 27 years. That in and of itself is an extinction event! (See Caspar A. Hallmann, et al, More Than 75 Percent Decline Over 27 Years in Total Flying Insect Biomass in Protected Areas, PLOS, October 18, 2017)

Problem: People need insects a lot more than insects need people. Without insects 80% of plants will die. The plants are angiosperms, meaning they need pollination. Mass starvation ensues. There’s no way around it.

Now that the UN and the chief scientist of the UK have come out in protests of rampant peacetime chemical warfare lodged against humanity, it is all the more interesting, actually disheartening, to follow America’s leadership role in the wide, wide world of chemicals.

What to do? After all, it’s claimed the world will go hungry without pesticide control. However, according to a UN study, it’s a myth that pesticides are essential to feed a fast-growing population, See:          “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Human Rights Council,” UN General Assembly Thirty-fourth Session, Agenda item 3, Jan. 24, 20170, to wit: “Pesticides cause an array of harms. Runoff from treated crops frequently pollute the surrounding ecosystem and beyond, with unpredictable ecological consequences. Furthermore, reductions in pest populations upset the complex balance between predator and prey species in the food chain, thereby destabilizing the ecosystem. Pesticides can also decrease biodiversity of soils and contribute to nitrogen fixation, which can lead to large declines in crop yields, posing problems for food security… Despite grave human health risks having been well established for numerous pesticides, they remain in use.”

Try organic farming on for size and see if it fits and crop rotation and crop-cover natural farming techniques rather than industrialized chemically grown crops.

This article has been excerpted from: ‘A Dripping Wet Chemical Planet’.

Courtesy: Counterpunch.org