The Anthropocene Has Created A New Disease: Plasticosis

A recently published study appearing in the journal PLOS ONE has found since 2005 a rapid increase in plastic particles in the oceans of the world. The data was collected from 11,777 surface water sampling stations. The research covers the period from 1995 to 2019 and estimates that between 1.1 and 4.9 million tons of […]

Examining Alaska’s Biggest Oil Drilling Project in Decades

Breaking down the recent decision to approve the Willow oil project in Alaska, which also requires new habitat safeguards for the North Slope This week, the Biden Administration approved a scaled-back version of a major oil project on Alaska’s North Slope. The decision to greenlight the ConocoPhillips Willow project was announced on Monday, following many […]

EU agrees to push for worldwide phaseout of fossil fuels

European Union countries have agreed to push for the global phaseout of fossil fuels at COP28. It is part of the bloc’s promise to support and accelerate the energy transition ahead of the climate summit in Dubai this November. Faced with climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and the fallout of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the […]

Beware a climate ‘doom loop,’ where crisis is harder to solve

The devastating effects of climate change on Earth could become so overwhelming that they undermine humanity’s capacity to tackle climate change’s root causes, researchers warned Wednesday. They are calling it a “doom loop.” The self-reinforcing dynamic, outlined in a report jointly published Wednesday by two British think tanks, warns of a spiral effect: Governments risk expending […]

Gaia’s Way Out

“Gaia is no dummy. She is in the process of shifting from supporting humanity to killing it off. “       I’ve never completed writing a book without offering a positive solution. Granted, those are sometimes long shots. Some may even be futile. But we don’t know unless we try and if we don’t […]

No, the World Is Not Heading Toward ‘Mass Extinction’

Have you heard? The world is about to end! 60 Minutes recently featured Paul Ehrlich, author of the bestseller, The Population Bomb. “Humanity is not sustainable,” he said. Why would 60 Minutes interview Ehrlich? For years, Ehrlich said, “We are very close to a famine” and, “In the next 15 years, the end will come.” […]

Liquid asset: why we won’t solve the climate crisis without fixing water

Water is an impact multiplier for sustainability and inextricably linked to climate change and the degradation of ecosystems. Ninety per cent of natural disasters are water-related – whether flood, drought, or super-storm – causing millions in damages annually. With each passing year, there are more record-setting wet and dry seasons, affecting livelihoods, creating supply chain […]

Ehrlich To 60 Minutes: ‘Next Few Decades Will Be End Of The Kind Of Civilization We’re Used To’

90-year-old biologist and Ecoscience author Paul Ehrlich fearmongered about global warming during a recent appearance on CBS‘s “60 Minutes.” Ehrlich, a known eugenicist who incorrectly predicted millions of deaths from famine by the 1980s, warned “humanity is not sustainable” and that “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re […]

It’s the elephant in the room: can we grow the economy without destroying nature?

There’s a silence at the heart of our economic statistics. Every quarter, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) publishes a number that shows how much economic activity has taken place in Australia recently. We’ve all been conditioned to think it’s a good thing if that number goes up a little each time. But what was the environmental cost of that […]

Eight billion people means ‘all of the above’ energy strategy

World population recently reached the eight billion milestone, according to estimates from the United Nations. That’s up from about 2.5 billion people in 1950, with a gain of a billion since 2010. However, population growth rates are falling, and the total will likely peak at around 10.4 billion in the 2080s. The United States remains […]

Can we prevent the extinction of species?

ASK any class of schoolchildren who are steeped in knowledge and experience of the natural world, who have been on many field trips to the forests and the sea, and have seen numerous documentaries on wildlife and the challenges and harm being done to our planet, what they want to do or be when they […]

Forecast: Perfect Storm in Egypt, Part I

“They need to loosen regulations, they need to release all those permits sitting on someone’s desk for drilling on federal lands, and they need to allow the Keystone XL pipeline to come down to deliver the Canadian oil sands to American consumers,” said Darlene Wallace, a board member of the Oklahoma Energy Producers Alliance. “And […]

Global Warming is Energy Surplus in a World Primarily in Deficit

Where demand-pull inflation describes an imbalance in aggregate supply versus aggregate demand. Where the average inflation rate for July for the G7 countries was 8.4%. Where Europe and the Asia-Pacific economies face an escalating energy crisis, global warming should be an economist’s dream. It is a global surplus of heat energy chasing too few ways […]

Solar radiation will increase 2300 times: this is what science tells us about the future of our star

The development that astrophysics has experienced during the last century has been spectacular. The human being has always felt an enormous fascination for the objects that he could observe in the sky, so much so that we know for sure that Socrates and Plato reflected on them and their nature. nearly two and a half […]

Let’s stop scaring the children

How long will it be before someone writes a book about all the “C”s currently crowding our collective consciousnesses? Cost of living; climate change; COP26; cryptocurrency and coercion towards control. Maybe even corruption or conspiracy theories? We mustn’t forget Covid! The fear is once again palpable. But there’s nothing new here! In 1982 in my […]

Where We’ll End Up Living as the Planet Burns

While nations rally to reduce their carbon emissions, and try to adapt at-risk places to hotter conditions, there is an elephant in the room: for large portions of the world, local conditions are becoming too extreme and there is no way to adapt. People will have to move to survive. Over the next fifty years, hotter […]

The planet is approaching 8 billion people. We’re not ready

Last month, the United Nations Population Division issued its World Population Prospects 2022 report, which forecast that the human population will reach and surpass 8 billion on Nov. 15. In a carefully worded statement on the report, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres declared 2022 a “milestone” year. He had good reason to choose his words […]

How Well Do We Know Climate Change?

I have been following the developments on this critical global issue ever since my first paper on Global Warming at the Hamburg International Conference in early 1990s.  Although a few thoughts have been penned here and there, its complexity seems to be getting more challenging as we progress year after year. It is also not […]

The Great Rehash, Part Two: The Future’s Cold Eyes

Two weeks ago, as regular readers will recall, we discussed The Great Reset by Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, the rest of the really rather dreary literature of planetary preaching in which that volume fills an overfamiliar role, and the usually disastrous consequences that follow when the clueless rich set out to tell the rest […]

Leaked Data Show China’s Population Is Shrinking Fast

Even though everyone knows that China’s official demographic figures are systematically overestimated, the authorities have consistently cracked down on anyone who questions the data. For example, my book “Big Country with an Empty Nest” was quickly banned when it appeared in 2007, because it voiced concerns about China’s one-child policy and predicted that the Chinese […]

Earth ‘Overshoot Day’: human consumption exceeds what planet can produce in a year

Mankind marks a dubious milestone Thursday, the day by which humanity has consumed all earth can sustainably produce for this year, with NGOS warning the rest of 2022 will be lived in resource deficit. The date – dubbed “Earth Overshoot Day” – marks a tipping point when people have used up “all that ecosystems can […]

Is China’s Population About to Start Shrinking?

The Chinese population is projected to shrink this year for the first time since the Great Famine that took place between 1959 and 1961. China is currently the world’s most populous country, with a population of more than 1.4 billion people – more than one sixth of the entire world’s population. However, according to China’s […]

World Population To Hit 8 Bn This Year

The world’s population is expected to reach eight billion on November 15, the UN forecast Monday in a report that said India will surpass China as the most populous country on earth in 2023. That overall population milestone “is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect […]

The Benefits of World Hunger

We sometimes talk about hunger in the world as if it were a scourge that all of us want to see abolished, viewing it as comparable with the plague or aids. But that naïve view prevents us from coming to grips with what causes and sustains hunger. Hunger has great positive value to many people. […]

Biochar from Bamboo

“How fast can the climate of earlier centuries be restored?“   In an Hawaiian origin legend, the Polynesian creator god Kāne brought forth light from endless blackness while Lono created sound and Kü created substance. The first man was molded in clay by the three deities in the image of Kāne. Aloha, the traditional greeting, […]

‘Warning of Easter Island’ is one that humanity must not ignore amid our population explosion

Nervous youths waited for the cue to throw themselves headlong into the ocean. In those next few moments, they would risk drowning, shark attacks, or falling to their deaths. Before them were small, near-inaccessible islets teeming with seabirds returning to nest. Somewhere out there, more than a mile across treacherous seas, was the prize – […]

Amplification Loops on Fault Lines

“We have paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology — E.O. Wilson”     Last week I began untangling a string about how we as a species have evolved in the past two centuries into behaviors that run counter to our own survival. I described how modern public relations magicians had been able to capture […]

Limits to Growth: Where We Stand Today

Sometime in the 1960’s a group of prominent businessmen in Europe decided it was time to face up to the contra di ction that l ies at the heart of mode rn capitalism: it is a system based on infinite growth in a world with finite limits to growth: in input (resources, including food), throughput (population), output (pollution), and a likely collapse if any […]

Flying insect numbers have plunged by 60% since 2004, GB survey finds

The number of flying insects in Great Britain has plunged by almost 60% since 2004, according to a survey that counted splats on car registration plates. The scientists behind the survey said the drop was “terrifying”, as life on Earth depends on insects. The results from many thousands of journeys by members of the public […]

Ocean animals face a mass extinction

Not since an asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs — along with at least half of all other beings on Earth — has life in the ocean been so at risk. Warming waters are cooking creatures in their own habitats. Many species are slowly suffocating as oxygen leaches out of the seas. Even populations that have […]

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LATEST NEWS HEADLINES

• Last Energy Signs Deals Worth $19 Billion for Nuclear Plants
• Russia-China ties enter ‘new era’ as Xi meets Putin in Moscow
• Gasoline Is About To Get More Expensive
• A Run on the Planet
• The Anthropocene Has Created A New Disease: Plasticosis

• Analyst Looks at Oil, Gas Damage of Recent Earthquakes
• Half the world to dump U.S. dollars in future, causing ‘tsunami of inflation’  
• When Will Oil Demand Peak?
• Heinberg: A realistic ‘energy transition’ is to get better at using less of it
• Gaia’s Way Out
• China’s Oil Giants Want More Russian Crude