"All the World's a Stage We Pass Through" R. Ayana

Showing posts with label ocean acidification. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ocean acidification. Show all posts

Wednesday, 11 February 2015

Project Censored: The Most Censored News Stories of the Past Year


Project Censored
The Most Censored News Stories of the Past Year

  




1. Ocean Acidification Increasing at Unprecedented Rate

 

It’s well known that burning fossil fuels in the form of coal, oil, and natural gas releases carbon dioxide (CO2) into the air. Less understood is that a quarter of this carbon dioxide—about twenty trillion pounds, every year—is absorbed by oceans. Writing for the Seattle Times Craig Welch invited us to “imagine every person on earth tossing a hunk of CO2 as heavy as a bowling ball into the sea. That’s what we do to the oceans every day.” As Welch and others reported, this carbon dioxide is changing the ocean’s chemistry faster than at any time in human history, in ways that have potentially devastating consequences for both ocean life and for humans who depend on the world’s fisheries as vital sources of protein and livelihood.

When CO2 mixes with seawater, it lowers the pH levels of the water, making it more acidic and sour. In turn this erodes some animals’ shells and skeletons and robs the water of ingredients that those animals require for healthy development. Known as ocean acidification, this phenomenon, Welch wrote, “is helping push the seas toward a great unraveling that threatens to scramble marine life on a scale almost too big to fathom, and far faster than first expected.”

The impacts of ocean acidification have been most pronounced in the Arctic and Antarctic, because cold, deep seas absorb more carbon dioxide. Julia Whitty reported for Mother Jones that we’ve enjoyed a free ride so far: “The ocean has swallowed our atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions and slowed global warming during the past few critical decades while we dithered in disbelief.” Now, however, the average acidity of surface ocean waters worldwide is more than 30 percent greater than at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Whitty’s coverage draws on findings from the 2013 Arctic Ocean Acidification Assessment.

The Arctic Ocean is especially vulnerable, she wrote, because short, simple food webs are characteristic of Arctic marine ecosystems. “Energy is channeled in just a few steps from small plants and animals to large predators like seabirds and seals.” As a result, the integrity of the entire system depends heavily on keystone species, including pteropods (also known as sea butterflies) and echinoderms (more commonly known as sea stars and urchins). Although larger creatures like birds and mammals may not be directly affected by ocean acidification, Whitty reported, they will be indirectly affected if their food sources “decline, expand, relocate, or otherwise change in response to ocean acidification.” As ocean acidification impacts the abundance, productivity, and distribution of Arctic marine species, these changes are likely to affect the culture, diet, and livelihoods of indigenous Arctic peoples and other Arctic residents.

The impacts of ocean acidification are not limited to the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, however. As Eli Klintisch reported for Science magazine, researchers have documented impacts to tiny marine snails in the Pacific Ocean along the west coast of North America. Normally pteropods have smooth shells. As Klintisch described, a study led by Nina BednarÅ¡ek of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and her colleagues found that pteropods from thirteen coastal sites between Washington state and southern California had pitted shells. In an article published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, BednarÅ¡ek and her colleagues reported that more than half of the shells they collected showed signs of dissolving, which made the shells look like “cauliflower” or “sandpaper.” These findings were consistent with previous laboratory studies, which showed that, as seawater becomes more acidic, the change disrupts the shell formation process in young pteropods and dissolves already formed shells in mature ones. Previous studies, Klintisch reported, document that shell damage makes it harder for pteropods and other invertebrates to “fight infection, maintain metabolic chemistry, defend (themselves) against predators, and control buoyancy.”

The impacts of the pteropods’ fast dissolving shells are difficult to predict, but they could be profound. On one hand, pteropods are among the most abundant organisms on the earth; on the other hand, like other small creatures at the bottom of the ocean food chain that have not been closely studied, their role in the ecosystem is not completely understood. We do know that the pteropods examined in the Royal Society study are a key food source for pink salmon. Pink salmon, in turn, are crucial to the North Pacific fishery.

Scientists initially believed that fish would not be directly affected by ocean acidification, but recent research indicates otherwise. From clownfish off the coast of Papua New Guinea (remember Nemo?) to walleye pollock (got fish sticks?) scientists have found that exposure to high levels of carbon dioxide scramble fish’s sense of smell, hearing, and sight. Though fish are excellent at altering their blood chemistry to accommodate changing seas, elevated CO2 levels disrupt many fish’s brain signaling. Baby clownfish exposed to high levels of CO2 were five times more likely to die when placed back in the wild.

At first scientists thought clownfish were unusually vulnerable to high levels of CO2, but subsequent research showed that many reef fish are similarly affected. Early results, Craig Welch reported, suggest that walleye pollock experience some of the same behavioral problems as reef fish when exposed to high levels of CO2. That, in turn, raises concerns about the North Pacific’s $1 billion-a-year pollock fishery, which accounts for half the nation’s catch of fish.

As Welch wrote in his “Sea Change” article for the Seattle Times, “The most-studied animals remain those we catch. Little is known about the things they eat.” This points to another problematic dimension of ocean acidification. Despite the potential magnitude of the problem—remember, ocean acidification is changing the chemistry of the world’s oceans faster than ever before, and faster than the world’s leading scientists had predicted—there is little funding for research on ocean acidification and its affects. As Welch reported, “Combined nationwide spending on acidification research for eight federal agencies, including grants to university scientists by the National Science Foundation, totals about $30 million a year—less than the annual budget for the coastal Washington city of Hoquiam, population 10,000.”

Sources:

Julia Whitty, “10 Key Findings From a Rapidly Acidifying Arctic Ocean,” Mother Jones, May 7, 2013, http://www.motherjones.com/blue-marble/2013/05/arctic-ocean-rapidly-getting-more-acidic.
Craig Welch, “Sea Change, The Pacific’s Perilous Turn,” Seattle Times, September 12, 2013, http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview.
Eli Kintisch, “Snails Are Dissolving in Pacific Ocean,” ScienceNOW, May 1, 2014, http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/05/snails-are-dissolving-pacific-ocean.
Student Researcher: Amanda Baxter (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluator: Elaine Wellin (Sonoma State University)


     2. Top Ten US Aid Recipients All Practice Torture   


The top ten nations slated to receive US foreign assistance in fiscal year 2014 all practice torture and are responsible for major human rights abuses, Daniel Wickham has reported. Wickham based this conclusion on a combination of projected foreign assistance figures from a January 2013 report by the Congressional Research Service, and from findings on torture reported independently by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other major human rights organizations.

A Congressional Research Service report, prepared for the members and committees of Congress, indicated the projected fiscal year 2014 budgets for US foreign assistance by country. According to this report, the top ten countries and their expected assistance (in millions of current US dollars) are as follows:

https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2435/3619890622_1a0537ef42.jpg1.    Israel 3,100
2.    Afghanistan 2,200
3.    Egypt 1,600
4.    Pakistan 1,200
5.    Nigeria  693
6.    Jordan  671
7.    Iraq 573
8.    Kenya 564
9.    Tanzania 553
10. Uganda 456


Wickham reported that, according to Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other leading human rights organizations, each of the listed countries is accused of torturing people in the last year, and at least half are reported to be doing so on a massive scale.

For example, Israel, the top recipient of US financial assistance, has been accused of committing major human rights abuses over the last year, including the torture of Palestinian children. A recent report by the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel described how detained children “suspected of minor crimes” have been sexually assaulted by Israeli security forces and kept in outdoor cages during the winter. It found that “74 per cent of Palestinian child detainees experience physical violence during arrest, transfer or interrogation.” A United Nations report indicated that torture is “widespread” in Afghanistan, while Amnesty International documented torture as a “common” practice in Iraq, and an “abysmal” human rights situation in Egypt. Human Rights Watch reported that torture is practiced with “near-total impunity” in Jordan.

As Wickham reported, financial assistance to such governments could violate existing US law, which mandates that little or no funding be granted to a country that “engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights, including torture.” The United States remains a signatory of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified in October 1994. That the top ten recipients of U.S. foreign assistance “all practice torture raises serious questions,” Wickham wrote, “about the Obama administration’s stance on human rights. If the United States wants to be taken seriously on these issues, a serious re-evaluation of its foreign assistance programme is needed.”

Source: Daniel Wickham, “Top 10 US Aid Recipients All Practice Torture,” Left Foot Forward, January 30, 2014, http://www.leftfootforward.org/2014/01/top-ten-us-aid-recipients-all-practice-torture.
Student Researcher: Alyssa Tufaro (Florida Atlantic University)
Faculty Evaluator: James F. Tracy (Florida Atlantic University)


3. WikiLeaks Revelations on Trans-Pacific Partnership Ignored by Corporate Media

 

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On November 13, 2013, WikiLeaks published a section of a trade agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership Treaty, or TPP. On the surface, the treaty is meant to facilitate trade among Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam. However, there are a number of red flags surrounding the agreement.

Eight hundred million people, and one-third of all world trade, stand to be affected by the treaty—and yet only three people from each member nation have access to the entire document. Meanwhile, six hundred “corporate advisors,” representing big oil, pharmaceutical, and entertainment companies, are involved in the writing and negotiations of the treaty.

The influence of these companies is clear, as large sections of the proposal involve corporate law and intellectual property rights, rather than free trade. Corporations could gain the ability to sue governments not only for loss, but prospective loss. At the same time, patents and copyrights would see more protection. This means longer patents, leading to less access to generic drugs, and a lockdown on Internet content. Commenting on the leaked TPP chapter, which details how corporations could seek financial compensation for non-tariff barriers to trade, Arthur Stamoulis of the Citizens Trade Campaign observed, “The Tribunals that adjudicate these cases don’t have the power to literally demand that a government change its policies, but they can award payments worth millions and even billions of dollars, such that if a country doesn’t want additional cases brought against it, it gets the line.”

Furthermore, as James Trimarco wrote in YES! Magazine, observers believe the TPP “could pull the rug out from under national and local governments trying to regulate the sale and import of GMO [genetically modified organism] foods.” Tony Corbo of Food and Water Watch pointed out that because the TPP is being negotiated in secret, it is hard to say whether it would outlaw the labeling or banning of GMO foods. However, the chief US negotiator on agriculture is Islam Siddiqui, a former Monsanto lobbyist, and the US Food and Drug Administration does not currently recognize GMO foods as any different form non-GMO foods, therefore they do not see a reason that products containing GMO ingredients should be specially labeled.

Though the WikiLeaks exposure was followed quickly by an anti-TPP push in Congress, the lack of coverage in corporate US media is disconcerting. Japanese, Australian, and even Russian media discuss the TPP openly, while American news sources remained silent—even as the Obama administration attempts to fast-track it through Congress. The Washington Post was alone among the major establishment press in covering the WikiLeak’s revelations about the TPP. For example, Timothy B. Lee reported that the intellectual property section of the treaty is “a wish list for Hollywood and the pharmaceutical industry” and speculated whether the leak might “derail Obama’s trade agenda.” However, the Post relegated even this relatively superficial and US-focused perspective to its online blog. Other major papers, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal passed on this story of far-reaching global import.

Sources:

Zachary Keck, “Congress May Have Just Killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership,” Diplomat, November 18, 2013, http://thediplomat.com/2013/11/congress-may-have-killed-the-trans-pacific-partnership.
John Robles, “The TPP Is a Corporate Coup D’état—Kristinn Hrafnsson,” Voice of Russia, November 15, 2013, http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_15/The-TPP-is-a-corporate-coup-d-tat-Kristinn-Hrafnsson-5798.
John Robles, “Trans Pacific Partnership is Like SOPA on Steroids—Kristinn Hrafnsson,” Voice of Russia, November 23, 2013, http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_11_23/Trans-Pacific-Partnership-is-like-SOPA-on-steroids-Kristinn-Hrafnsson-1552.
“Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP),” WikiLeaks, November 13, 2013, https://wikileaks.org/tpp.
Shannon Tiezzi, “The TPP’s Not Dead Yet (But It’s Close),” Diplomat, December 7, 2013, http://thediplomat.com/2013/12/the-tpps-not-dead-yet-but-its-close.
James Trimarco, “Will a Secretive International Trade Deal Ban GMO Labeling?,” YES! Magazine, October 18 2013, http://www.yesmagazine.org/planet/will-secretive-international-trade-deal-ban-gmo-labeling-trans-pacific-partnership.
Student Researchers: Dylan Scherpf (Frostburg State University) and Brandon Karns (Sonoma State University)
Faculty and Community Evaluators: Andy Duncan (Frostburg State University) and Thadeus Dean Humphrey (community evaluator)


4. Corporate Internet Providers Threaten Net Neutrality

 

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As Censored 2015 went to press, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had just publicly revealed its proposed new rules for Internet traffic. A 3–2 vote by the FCC opened a four-month window for formal public comments on how strict those rules should be, and galvanized corporate media attention on the issue of net neutrality. By contrast, for months leading up to this development, independent journalists, including Paul Ausick, Cole Stangler and Jennifer Yeh, have been informing the public about the anticipated showdown over net neutrality and the stakes in that battle.

In September of 2013, the federal appeals court of Washington DC began a crucial case brought by Verizon Communications Inc., challenging the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) authority to regulate Internet service providers. Under the FCC’s current Open Internet Order, service providers such as Verizon, cannot charge varying prices or give priority to users that access certain websites or may be able to pay more for faster speeds compared to competitors. Verizon claims the FCC violates their First Amendment right and they should have the ability to manage and promote the content they see fit. The FCC has continually ruled that controlling communications is not in the best interest of the public. If the court decides in favor of Verizon and revokes the Open Internet Order, the FCC will have no way to regulate unbiased data access, changing the future for everyday Internet users in the twenty-first century.

Cole Stangler, a reporter for In These Times, described how many open Internet advocates fear that service providers “could ultimately enable the construction of a multi-tiered Internet landscape resembling something like cable television—where wealthy conglomerates have access to a mass consumer base and other providers, such as independent media, struggle to reach an audience.” Today the Internet is a critical medium for public communication. Amalia Deloney, grassroots policy director at the Center for Media Justice, pointed out that corporate oversight would pose a threat to public discourse and organizing efforts. The consequent trepidation seems to be that service providers could make specific websites impossibly slow to load, successfully regulating communication among would-be activists. It seems Internet service providers would do more to limit free speech than advocate for it.

Verizon v. FCC has been well covered by both corporate and independent media. However, corporate outlets such as the New York Times and Forbes tend to highlight the business aspects of the case, skimming over vital particulars affecting the public and the Internet’s future.


Sources:

Paul Ausick, “Verizon Goes After FCC in Court Monday,” 24/7 Wall St., September 9, 2013, http://247wallst.com/telecom-wireless/2013/09/09/verizon-goes-after-fcc-in-court-monday.
Cole Stangler, “Your Internet’s in Danger,” In These Times, October 2, 2013, http://inthesetimes.com/article/15689/your_internets_in_danger.
Jennifer Yeh, “Legal Gymnastics Ensue in Oral Arguments for Verizon vs. FCC,” Free Press, September 10, 2013, http://www.freepress.net/blog/2013/09/10/legal-gymnastics-ensue-oral-arguments-verizon-vs-fcc.
Student Researcher: Petra Dillman (College of Marin)
Faculty Evaluator Susan Rahman (College of Marin)


5. Bankers Back on Wall Street Despite Major Crimes

 

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A story spanning a decade has come to an unfortunate yet unsurprising end. Three former General Electric bankers—Dominick Carollo, Steven Goldberg, and Peter Grimm—had been convicted in 2012 for rigging auctions of municipal bonds, essentially stealing from projects intended to build public schools, hospitals, libraries, and nursing homes in virtually every US state. However, in November 2013, those convictions were reversed on a technicality: Because it took federal prosecutors so long to build the massive case, the statute of limitations ran out. The three men were released from prison the next day—just in time, as a defense attorney noted, to be home for Thanksgiving dinner.

These men were part of a decade-long scheme that bilked cities and towns of funds for public-works projects by paying kickbacks to brokers and manipulating bids. Between August 1999 and November 2006, Carollo, Goldberg, and Grimm participated in countless rigged bids via telephone. Like mafiosi, they used a secret language and code words to keep their underground business low-key. Prosecutors accumulated over 570,000 recorded phone conversations that directly linked the men to fraudulent activity. Evidence at trial established that they cost municipalities around the country millions of dollars.

This type of white-collar immorality is a major issue because cash-strapped municipalities could have used the stolen money to provide essential services. Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone called this fraud the equivalent of robbing a church fund to pay for lap dances. Taibbi, however, is among a few reporters—including Paul Burton and Jonathan Hemmerdinger of the Bond Buyer—to consistently inform the public on these crimes and to point out the perhaps insurmountable obstacles faced by even an activist US Department of Justice in getting convictions. “It really is hard to put these guys away,” Taibbi wrote. “It’s even harder to keep them there.”

Meanwhile, as Janine Jackson reported for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra!, “While there have been substantive inquiries into the wrongdoing of investment banks and auditors, those calling for jail time are often dismissed as irrational, driven by ‘blood lust’ (Washington Post, 9/12/13), ‘anger’ (Chicago Tribune, 11/30/13) or ‘vengeance’ (Washington Post, 11/18/13).” Various media outlets have explained that, while bad business decisions are not crimes, knowingly selling fraudulent mortgages and other dubious financial products is punishable by jail time. People have pointed to multiple reasons for the lack of prosecutions, such as regulatory agencies stopping key functions and non-deterrent settlements from government watchdogs. Media outlets have also made the case that imprisonment and increased liability would be ineffective, and many press accounts appear to be arguing for the legality of CEO actions. As Jackson reported, “Many press accounts seem more intent on explaining why what CEOs did wasn’t a crime than on asking whether it should be.”

However, outlets acknowledging the human victims of Wall Street wrongdoing have been less dismissive of imprisonment. Calls for jail time can be seen as demands for equal treatment under law. For example, in February 2013, Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone argued against the emerging distinction between “an arrestable class and an unarrestable class.”

Sources:

Max Stendahl, “Former GE Execs Freed from Prison after Convictions Nixed,” Law360, November 27, 2013, http://www.law360.com/articles/492222/former-ge-execs-freed-from-prison-after-convictions-nixed.
Matt Taibbi, “Another Batch of Wall Street Villains Freed on Technicality,” Rolling Stone, December 4, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/another-batch-of-wall-street-villains-freed-on-technicality-20131204.
Janine Jackson, “Why Aren’t Big Bankers in Jail?” Extra! (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), January 1, 2014, http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/why-arent-big-bankers-in-jail.
Matt Taibbi, “Gangster Bankers: Too Big to Jail,” Rolling Stone, February 14, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/gangster-bankers-too-big-to-jail-20130214.
Student Researchers: Markisha Barber (Frostburg State University), and Noah Tenney and Tania Sanchez (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluators: Andy Duncan (Frostburg State University) and Peter Phillips (Sonoma State University)



6. The Deep State: Government “without Reference to the Consent of the Governed”

 

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It is no secret that concerned citizens are condemning the United States government’s lack of transparency, accountability, and honest constituent representation. Reporting for Moyers & Company, Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member for twenty-eight years specializing in national security, addressed the issue of the “deep state” that undemocratically orchestrates unchecked private agendas, while corporate media distract the public’s attention by focusing on traditional Washington partisan politics. Lofgren contended that, although the deep state is “neither omniscient nor invincible,” it is a “relentlessly well entrenched,” “hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed.”

Exploiting the world’s resources and governments with criminal impunity, a wealthy elite—sporting an estimated $32 trillion in tax-exempt offshore havens—are the deep dark secret of plutocratic imperialism, operating behind more visible, privately controlled government representatives. Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), the House Financial Services Committee incoming chairman in 2010, openly flouted constitutional rights when he stated, “My view is that Washington and the regulators are there to serve the banks.”

The establishment news media labels Congress as the most hopelessly deadlocked since the 1850s, the violently rancorous decade preceding the American Civil War. However, corporate media do little to draw attention to the hidden wealthy elites who undemocratically control our government, because these elites own the major media. It is only the deep state’s protectiveness toward its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. The US needs brave, determined, and well-supported leaders to demand implementation of “loophole” proof laws in a restructured system of checks and balances in order to effectively halt the unethical influence of wealthy powers on our democratic representatives.

Source: Mike Lofgren, “Anatomy of the Deep State,” Moyers & Company, February 21, 2014, http://billmoyers.com/2014/02/21/anatomy-of-the-deep-state.
Student Researcher: Alexander P. Ruhe (Burlington College)
Faculty Evaluator: Rob Williams (Burlington College)


7. FBI Dismisses Murder Plot against Occupy Leaders as NSA and Big Business Cracks Down on Dissent

 

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Occupy_London_Tent.jpg


In October 2011, when the Occupy movement arrived in Houston, protesters were subject to local and federal surveillance, infiltration by police provocateurs, and police assault. Months later, Dave Lindorff reported for WhoWhatWhy, a document obtained in December 2012 from the Houston FBI office shows that the agency was aware of a plot to assassinate Occupy movement leaders—and did nothing about it.

The document, obtained as part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Washington DC–based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, reads in part:

“An identified [DELETED] as of October planned to engage in sniper attacks against protestors (sic) in Houston, Texas if deemed necessary. An identified [DELETED] had received intelligence that indicated the protesters in New York and Seattle planned similar protests in Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas. [DELETED] planned to gather intelligence against the leaders of the protest groups and obtain photographs, then formulate a plan to kill the leadership via suppressed sniper rifles.”

As of June 2013, Lindorff reported, the FBI knew the identity of the person(s) who planned the sniper attacks, but had not released any names. The head of the FBI’s media office, Paul Bresson, explained, “The FOIA documents that you reference are redacted in several places pursuant to FOIA and privacy laws that govern the release of such information so therefore I am unable to help fill in the blanks. . . . [I]f the FBI was aware of credible and specific information involving a murder plot, law enforcement would have responded with appropriate action.”

Occupy Houston activists have speculated that the wording “if deemed necessary” might indicate that the unidentified plotter was an organization, such as the police or a private security group. Documents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security identify Occupy as a “terrorist” activity.

The FBI has a record of orchestrating attacks on citizen organizations deemed to be threats. For example, the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s revealed that the FBI orchestrated local police attacks (in Chicago, San Francisco, and New York) on leaders of the Black Panther Party.

Alex Kane of AlterNet reported that Beau Hodai’s SourceWatch report provided “an eye-opening look into how US counter-terrorism agencies monitored the Occupy movement in 2011 and 2012.” Government documents, obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and DBA Press from the National Security Agency and other government offices, revealed “a grim mosaic of ‘counter-terrorism’ operations” and negative attitudes toward activists and other citizens.

For instance, the largest Occupy Phoenix action took place in early December 2011, outside of meetings held there by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). ALEC hired forty-nine active but off-duty Phoenix Police Department (PPD) officers and nine retired PPD officers to act as private security during ALEC’s meetings.

The upshot, Hodai reported, is “the wholesale criminalization of tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of American citizens who have dared to voice opposition to what is increasingly viewed as the undue influence of private corporate/financial interests in the functions of public government.”

Sources:

Dave Lindorff, “FBI Document—‘[DELETED]’ Plots to Kill Occupy Leaders ‘If Deemed Necessary,’” WhoWhatWhy, June 27, 2013, http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/27/fbi-document-deleted-plots-to-kill-occupy-leaders-if-deemed-necessary.
Beau Hodai, “Dissent or Terror: How the Nation’s Counter Terrorism Apparatus, in Partnership with Corporate America, Turned on Occupy Wall Street,” Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch/DBA Press, May 2013, http://www.prwatch.org/files/Dissent or Terror FINAL.pdf.
Alex Kane, “How America’s National Security Apparatus—in Partnership With Big Corporations—Cracked Down on Dissent,” AlterNet, May 21, 2013, http://www.alternet.org/print/news-amp-politics/how-americas-national-security-apparatus-partnership-big-corporations-cracked-down.
Student Researchers: Danielle Davis and Andie Bugajski (Sonoma State University)
Faculty Evaluators: Robert Switky and Melinda Milligan (Sonoma State University)


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Saturday, 22 September 2012

This is What a Desolated Earth Looks Like


This is What a Desolated Earth Looks Like
 
by Dave Pollard

 
There is an old story about the invention of the chessboard, in which the inventor as his reward asks for one grain of wheat on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, and doubling until all 64 squares are full. The seemingly modest request adds up to many times more than all the wheat the world has ever produced. The purpose of the story is to teach about our inability to grasp the impact and unsustainability of accelerating increases in anything, particularly in the final stages. Even when more than half of the squares have been filled the inventor’s request still seems manageable. It is only when it is too late that its impossibility is realized.

I’ve had many people tell me this story doesn’t apply to our current population, production, consumption and pollution curves because they’re not doubling every day, or anything close to it. They miss the point. Our current production and consumption of resources is growing at an annual rate of about 2% — indeed, our globalized economy depends utterly on continued growth, to fund the interest on the staggering debt that enables this growth. Without it, our economy would — will — collapse. Even the liberal media trumpet the necessity and desirability of continued (or resumption of) endless growth (though they’d like its benefits a little more equitably distributed, please).


A bit of mathematics will show that continued growth at a mere 2% per year will result in a doubling of production and consumption every 35 years. For simplicity’s sake let’s call that a “generation” (people are living longer and having children later than they used to). So let’s retell the story a slightly different way.

Imagine that each generation a spokesperson is selected by the human race to meet with Mother Nature and announce what the species needs for the next generation. For the first million years or so of human life on Earth this is a pleasant affair, since the demands in the first 30,000 meetings do not increase at all. Then, about 300 generations ago, the demands begin to increase by about 40% each generation (as human population increases by 1%/year). Mother Nature is not pleased, arguing that humans are taking more than their share, but she allows it to continue, even though it brings about the start of the sixth great extinction of life on Earth, and decimates the larger mammals that were essential players in many of the planet’s ecosystems.

Then, about 11 generations ago, the demands begin to increase by 100% each generation (as new industrial technologies enables human production and consumption to grow by 2% per year). As this industrial era begins, human population is growing by 3% per year, so even with production growing at 2% per year, this ushers in a period of unprecedented poverty and suffering. Even when population slows in the most recent generation to just 1% per year, there are already billions of struggling people demanding that production growth increase by more than population, so they can escape from poverty.

Mother Nature is exasperated. Because most humans now live in cities, disconnected from the natural world, they cannot appreciate why it is unreasonable for their species to consume the resources needed for other creatures and future generations. She shows the human representatives the folly of growth, using the chessboard story and the history of previous civilizations that tried to grow beyond their means, but generation after generation our representatives don’t believe these lessons apply to such an ingenious species as modern humans. As the industrial age advances, humans increasingly fight bloody and Earth-poisoning wars over resources, since the clumsy distribution systems humans have created fail to use these resources effectively or distribute them equitably.

Still, for 11 more generations, each human generation’s representative demands twice as much as the one before. Finally, Mother Nature has had enough. In 2012 she sits the representative down and confesses that there simply aren’t enough resources left to meet the demands for another human generation. In the generation just past, she says, humans have consumed a fourth of all the resources of the planet. Only half of the planet’s resources now remain, and the human representative is essentially asking for all of it. Even if I could give you that, she says, it would leave nothing for other creatures, and nothing for future generations.

The human is unconvinced. Looking around, there are lots of forests to be seen, lots of food growing, still plenty of fresh water in many places. The weather is usually pretty good and stable — no incontrovertible evidence of climate change. Human ingenuity is at work inventing new forms of renewable energy and food, and finding ways to extract energy that had been thought inaccessible. Human population is stabilizing, and within another generation it might even level off. What is the problem?

Mother Nature reminds the representative of the chessboard lesson. Humans propose to use twice as much in the coming generation as in the last. That’s more than all the resources that have been consumed by humans in the million years since they appeared on the planet. She shows the cost of the last generation’s 2% annual growth, and asks the representative to imagine twice this cost over the next generation:

She points to the oceans, once so teeming with life that wild creatures, including humans, needed only to wade into the stream and they could easily catch enough food for a month. Eighty percent of the life in the oceans is gone, and what remains is suffering in the sewage of human wastes. Acidification, and pollution including a sea of discarded plastic large enough to be visible from space, has desolated the oceans. Imagine that twice over a generation from now, she says.

She points to the grasslands, the former home of thousands of now-extinct species. They have been replaced entirely with monoculture farmland, and since the soil is not meant to handle such crops it has been exhausted, blown away, and now must be replaced with massive amounts of fertilizers made from oil, ploughed with machines that run on oil, soaked with pesticides that poison everything, and seeded with GMO crops whose ‘patented’ seeds are sterile and which are infesting what remains of diverse cropland and exposing crops to the same massive monoculture risks that produced the horrific famines of the past. Look at the pictures of dust-bowl farms in 1933, she says, and see what these once-astonishing grasslands will look like in another generation, when there is no cheap oil to spread over the millions of square miles where grain grows today. And in both your farmland and cities today your unquenchable thirst for water, combined with the shrinking of your mountain glaciers, is causing groundwater levels to drop as much as 8 feet per year, so in another generation your wells and reservoirs may all be dry. Imagine that, she says.

She points to the forests, reduced to half their former extent and now threatened by unregulated clear-cutting and large-scale burning, and in temperate zones by insects and viruses moving in from tropical zones thanks to global warming. At current, accelerating rates of depletion, she says, they will all be gone in a generation. Gone! Imagine a world in 2050 where the only trees are those maintained in parks and gardens and tree ‘reserves’, surrounded, thanks to your inability to grow crops without cheap oil, by weeds, brush and desert stretching on for a thousand miles. Can you imagine living in a world without forests, she asks?

She points to the seacoasts, where most humans live and where soil was once richest. Talk to your scientists about sea-level rise, and what will happen in the next generation, she says. What just last year they thought would not happen for two centuries they are now saying could happen in a generation. And every week they get a new surprise — they are learning that while climates may stay unchanged for a millennium, they can change suddenly and dramatically in a decade, and there is no way of predicting the consequences. Imagine a billion people underwater, along with half the world’s infrastructure, in a generation. Imagine cities that once housed millions of people just abandoned, she says; Why couldn’t you learn the lesson of Katrina?

As for your cities, she says, do you have any idea how much of the resources you are asking for go to keeping your cities standing? By themselves, without the import of food and water and oil (and concrete and steel and manufactured goods, most of them made of or with oil), your cities would quickly crumble. Don’t believe me? Look at the pictures (below) of modern, abandoned cities; they are the pictures of your unsustainable cities a generation from now. What will it take for you to understand that your civilization is built on the availability of cheap energy, and there is no more cheap energy. This generation alone will use up a billion years’ accumulated reserves of stored energy, leaving nothing for the generations to follow — except abandoned, unliveable cities, monstrous decaying relics amidst a desolated planet.



Image of Kowloon, a Chinese enclave in Hong Kong, home to 50,000 people before it was condemned and bulldozed. All images from Dark Roasted Blend.

So I cannot give you what you ask, Mother Nature concludes. It is not that I won’t — I cannot, just as the man who promised the chess inventor his grain cannot. I am sure you will try to take it anyway, and that makes me very sad. You are going to learn a hard lesson, one that will probably take several generations to play out. After that, your demands of me will probably be small, and there will once again be time for regeneration, for other forms of life to recover from your excessive demands, for balance, for peace, and I hope, for your species to reconnect with the Earth, so that you need no longer ask me for what I cannot offer.

John Gray, in his book Straw Dogs, concludes that the only way our civilization can continue is by desolating the Earth, at an accelerating rate, until it is exhausted, and that this is precisely what we will do. Although I grieve for what we have done to our planet, and the destruction and suffering we cause and condone every day, I grieve much more for what we will do in the coming generation, in the desperate folly to try to keep it going just a little longer. There will be more destruction, more suffering, more misery, more desolation in the generation to come, I fear, than in all the generations past combined. The worst atrocities always occur when things are most desperate and hopeless.

History and literature are replete with examples and stories that show us that this is our nature. We cannot and will not change until we must, and we won’t realize we must until it is too late to prevent our civilization’s madness from taking its most ghastly, almost unimaginable toll. We will stay in denial until we cannot, believing that somehow we can innovate out our way out of the impossible predicament we have created for ourselves. And distracting ourselves in the meantime — pondering for example the choice between ‘leaders’ who advocate ecocidal publicly-regulated growth and those who advocate ecocidal unregulated, privatized growth — the Tweedledums and Tweedledees of planetary desolation.

I’ve tried to depict this desolated future in Mother Nature’s words, rather than in pictures, because the pictures are too much for me to bear. I could show images of clear-cuts, of massive factory farms, of befouled water and dying fish and birds, of dust-bowls where farms once thrived, of child labour and slave labour, of sandstorms blowing through China’s industrialized, drought-stricken cities, of dry wells and dry cracked earth and lifeless crops, of prison and refugee camps filled with despair, of slums of mind-numbing, impossible poverty. What would that achieve, except perhaps to get you angry or upset, for no useful purpose?

I have come to a ghastly realization about what we have done, and what we are doing, and what lies ahead, and why. I understand that no one is or has been in control of this, and that no one conspired or wanted this to happen, and thus no one is to blame, no one is responsible. And I appreciate that thanks to the complexity of everything, we cannot prevent or even significantly mitigate the dreadful future we are so hopefully embarked upon. I live with this terrible knowledge, and occasionally share it on these pages, and often wonder why I do.

I guess it’s because I can’t just stay silent, can’t just pretend everything is going to be all right. And because sometimes it helps just to know there are others out there who understand, when so many either do not, or do not want to.


From How To Save the World @ http://howtosavetheworld.ca/2012/09/02/this-is-what-a-desolated-earth-looks-like/

For more information about Gaia see http://nexusilluminati.blogspot.com/search/label/gaia


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