Earth Day April 22: Post-mortem reflections

The “Environmental editor” at the Times in London, England said, “There are two ways to tackle serious problems: evading them by linguistic trickery, or confronting them openly and honestly. One is easy, though it merely postpones the day of reckoning. The other is difficult, but it alone holds out the promise of a solution.”

Last week, Earth Day, April 22, 2016—passed without much fanfare. Most Americans give short shrift to its origins and less concern to its meaninglessness to most humans on the planet. Since its inception 46 years ago, humanity paid no attention whatsoever to the exponentially increasing destruction to this planet’s land, water and air.

At the time, I didn’t understand the implications of a single species destroying the very “host” it devoured. Like cancer cells, humans invaded the planet until they commanded every stretch of land on this marvelous green globe in the ink-black of space.

On their ultimate death march of their own species, humans created 70,000 chemicals that they inject into the air, water and land 24/7. Those chemicals betray and slay Mother Nature’s plant and animal creatures on a sickening scale. They killed around 50 other species daily in 1970, but doubled that to over 100 species sent to extinction daily in 2016. (Source: Norman Myers, “Extinction rates worldwide” Oxford University) Humans’ metal and plastic trash desecrates every corner of the globe and every square mile of Earth’s oceans—both on the surface and below the surface. Humans’ rivers, loaded with endless poisons exhaust into the oceans relentlessly 24/7. Humans’ carbon exhaust usurps the weather patterns daily, causing “catastrophic climate destabilization” that will be the final undoing of our food supplies.

And now, amoral super-stars like Monsanto and ADM poison, alter and destroy the very DNA that drives the natural world.

In 1970, as a college senior, I bicycled along chalk-filled sidewalks of the Red Cedar River on Michigan State University’s campus. Peace signs became the prevalent display of the day. While we marched against the Vietnam War throughout the late sixties, a whole new understanding of man’s “War on Nature” erupted around us.

Red-breasted robins dropped out of trees because of grounds keepers spraying DDT, a deadly poison used to control mosquitoes. Soon, bald eagles fell out of their nests while their eggs disintegrated from the affects of DDT. Bioaccumulation worked its way into streams to kill fish.

Rachel Carson’s book, Silent Spring, exposed pesticides as the most deadly weapons used against Mother Nature and thus, all life on this planet. As can be imagined, chemical companies pulled out all the stops to discredit and humiliate her scientific discoveries. The USDA Agricultural Research Service created a propaganda campaign to defame her as a quack.

In the interim, more scientists supported her findings with their discoveries that DDT and other pesticides created carcinogens that killed birds, bees and other mammals. They corroborated Carson’s findings, which, in time led to the modern-day environmental movement.

Earth Day made its debut across college campuses on April 22, 1970. Coincidentally, during the 60s, Dustin Hoffman starred in a movie: The Graduate. In it, as a college student, one of his mentors told him, “Get into plastics. They are the money-making wave of the future.”

As a young scuba diver, I never forgot that line in the movie. During the sixties, I scuba-dived in pristine Michigan lakes as well as the Gulf of Mexico and John Pennekamp Park in the Florida Keys. Breathing beneath the surface opened a whole new world to my young eyes. I watched in rapped amazement at the incredible wonders of sea life below the surface. Turtles, sharks, manta rays, flounder, reefs, sea horses and every kind of creature dominated my vision. Since that time, I dove in all the oceans of the world.

But something happened with Hoffman’s mentor’s encouragements to “Get into plastics.”

Since 1970, the human race exploded from 3.5 billion to its current 7.3 billion—more than doubling its impact on the natural world.

Today, you read about the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” that floats 100,000,000 (million) tons of plastics in an area the size of Texas between ocean gyres 1,000 miles off the coast of San Francisco. Worse, millions upon millions of tons of plastic sink below the oceans in the form of drift nets, tooth brushes, baby diapers and more—to usurp natural systems into death camps on a scale as large as the seven seas.

When Oprah exposed the magnitude of that “human plastic dump”, I thought the world’s leaders would call a conference and create a 25-cent deposit-return on all plastic. Instead, nothing done! As a scuba diver, I felt sick to my stomach. Millions of marine creatures die in the plastic-net covering our oceans. So, not only do we kill ourselves, we take down tens of thousands of other species with us. It makes me sick to my stomach daily to see what humanity does to Mother Nature’s miracles.

Additionally, the Ganges, Yangtze, Mississippi and most major rivers running into the oceans carry horrifying loads of chemicals, sewage, waste, plastic and other poisons to create 20,000 square mile “dead zones” at their mouths. And nobody will stop it or change it or clean it up. Our oceans face pollution beyond comprehension. If you look at the radio active waste from Japan’s Fukushima Nuclear disaster—how can anyone eat a single marine animal out of the oceans without radiating themselves to some degree?

To add more insult, Monsanto, a bioengineering company, created genetically modified organisms that replaced DNA with artificial strains of cellular disruptions that unload on the natural world. Their “Frankensteinized” plants carry chemicals that disrupt pollinators to the point of massive “bee colony collapses” around the globe. Their fish carry bastardized DNA strands that nature cannot understand.

While we reverently celebrate Earth Day, powerful chemical companies like Monsanto override Mother Nature with insidious poisons that carry no “end date” to their destructive abilities.

We continue our enormous “carbon footprint” on the biosphere with added coal burning, fossil fuel burning and nuclear energy waste. Some misname it “global warming” and scoff at it, but with over 94 million barrels of oil burned every 24 hours, day in and day out, along with billions of tons of coal, natural gas and wood—I can tell you that we won’t get away with this abuse much longer. The 21st century will be the era of reckoning for the human species. If you want to see what’s coming, watch the four videos at: Dr. Jack Alpert, www.SKIL.org

Some of the aspects that fry my mind: we need a 25-cent deposit return law on every plastic, metal and glass container purchased out of every store in the world. Only six states give 5 cents and Michigan gives 10 cents per containers. The remaining states could care less. We need to stop production of all plastic bags. We face the end of oil reserves in this century, but America fails to enact any kind of conservation.

We’re at the end of our water resources in America, but we expect to add another 138,000,000 (million) more people within 34 years—but you won’t hear a word about it in the press. Once that 138 million lands on our shores, we’re toast as to water, energy and resources. Not to mention arable land, viable climate and balanced environment. Take a guess at the air and traffic gridlock with an added 138 million people! Any talk about human overpopulation remains censored by ABC, NBC, CBS, NPR, CNN, FOX NEWS, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund and the rest.

Guilty of censorship: Leslie Stahl, David Muir, Robert Seigal, Matt Lauer, Terry Gross, Steve Inskeep, Charlie Rose, Brit Hume, Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Shepard Smith, Steve Croft, Lester Holt, George Stephanopoulos, Diane Sawyer, Scott Pelley and more and more.

Renewable energy stands as a joke because none of it can or will replace oil, gas and coal. Nonetheless, you hear so many cheerful advertisements telling us that Shell Oil will provide “energy for the future.” It makes me want to vomit.

None of our children will escape what’s coming. We created a Faustian Bargain to give future generations a Hobson’s Choice. It’s already manifested in China, India, Mexico, Indochina, most of Africa and Bangladesh.

Once this human population “perfect storm” hits the United States of America like Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Sandy and another 50 of them combined—no amount of hope, praying or faith will answer any of our pleas for mercy. Which leads me to one single understanding. The human race became the most arrogant, clever and dumbest of all species. But, not to worry; Mother Nature will take care of us brutally and without mercy. Remember this: she always bats last.