Environment

A reader of my recent post, “Bernie Sanders got much right about our current situation….” commented: “Thank you Mark for validating what we know to be true with real data. Now what do we do about it?” My perspective on our situation has shifted because I have come to recognize that American life has been transformed over the past 50 years. The Trump era, following 2016, marks the culmination of a long campaign by the —>> read more –>>

Over several decades, there has been increasing discussion of the role of ultra-processed foods in our health. Globally, surging levels of diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and other chronic illnesses. Developing scientific levels of proof of the connection between the increasing consumption of industrial foods and these illnesses has not been easy.9 Today, various analyses claim that between 50% and 69% of the calories in the American diet come from ultra-processed industrial foods. This is a non-trivial —>> read more –>>

Our species is facing the interconnected global crises of global warming, mass species extinction, and exhaustion of the earth. Global warming is evident and needs no further proof that it is real. If you are in doubt, you can easily find all sorts of science-based descriptions of this crisis. Widespread species extinctions are also reported around the world. Global capitalism is exhausting the agricultural resources of the planet. Extracting the petrochemicals and minerals required to —>> read more –>>

In the past, I have ended the year with a post titled “My Year End Siege of Angers”.12 You might think that the oncoming onslaught of the Trump Presidency and government by his billionaire supporters would bring another round of angers. But, this year, I find myself very afraid for the future of our species and the planet as a whole. Therefore, the new title. Global warming is here. 2024 is the hottest year on —>> read more –>>

The tsunami of billionaires that has washed across the planet over the last decade or so is troubling in the extreme. Now, we have the fattest one setting policy in Washington in the most direct way imaginable. Billionaires already own the US political system, and they are on the very shortest of lists in the new White House come January 20th. In 2000, Bloomberg’s list of billionaires included 322. By 2024, Bloomberg had stopped keeping —>> read more –>>

Much is made here and elsewhere of the extreme concentration of wealth in the top 1% of the world’s population (63 million people) and perhaps most excessively in the top 0.1%. Now, we must also recognize that these very same people, the world’s multi-millionaires and billionaires, contribute in similar excessive proportions to CO2 emissions. Oxfam’s 10.28.2024 report, “Carbon Inequality Kills: Why curbing the excessive emissions of an elite few can create a sustainable planet for —>> read more –>>

The December 2023 issue of Scientific American contains three articles and an editorial about our nuclear weapons production, plans to spend tons of money “modernizing it”, and the environmental consequences. BOOM TIMES: The new costs—and long shadow—of living in a nuclear nation. by Abe Streep SIDE THE PIT FACTORY: For the first time in decades the U.S. is ramping up production of plutonium cores for nuclear weapons. by Sarah Scoles SACRIFICE ZONES: What happens if —>> read more –>>

Several years ago, I came on the news that deep-sea mining for nodules of nickel, cobalt, and other rare minerals was about to commence. I found a video from MIT discussing the issues surrounding this practice, Mining the Deep Sea, (link opens YouTube video) The ocean’s deep-sea bed is scattered with ancient, potato-sized rocks called “polymetallic nodules” that contain nickel and cobalt — minerals that are in high demand for the manufacturing of batteries, such as —>> read more –>>

Yesterday as I was taking a walk up and down Warren St. here in Hudson I realized that I had become actively angry about the state of the US and the world. I walked past hotels where a single room would set you back $400 for a night or you could go for the suite that is a mere $1300. This in a country where 32% of the people can’t pay an unexpected $400 bill.24 —>> read more –>>

Back in the early and mid ‘70s both Karen and I worked in various machine shops and other industrial locations. Trichloroethylene (TCE) was used on a daily basis to clean metals parts and other materials. I remember a large tank of slowly roiling hot TCE at Stevens Arnold, Inc. in South Boston. I would use it several times a day to clean parts. Every week or so I would be detailed to drain the tank, —>> read more –>>

Over 90% of plastic materials in consumer items and packaging end up in landfill dumps. Time for industry to take responsibility for their waste.

The New Yorker published “Value Meal: Impossible Foods wants to save the world by inventing a better burger” by Tad Friend in the 9/30/2019 issue. During the introductory paragraphs the following statistic was cited: Every four pounds of beef you eat contributes to as much global warming as flying from New York to London—and the average American eats that much each month.

Friday 9/6/2019 Over the last several months I have been working on a restatement of the fundamental characteristics of the capitalist system. In doing this I have been thinking afresh about the current crisis of global warming and the surrounding environmental disasters of species extinction and the general defacement of the earth. I will complete this restatement shortly. Meanwhile I have rearranged the section of the website devoted to the environment to a more prominent —>> read more –>>

The earth is burdened by the tsunami of plastic refuse that will never degrade. Government needs to protect us from capitalist enterprises delight in externalizing costs to our detriment and their short-term benefit.

The National Geographic has a running list of the Trump regime’s efforts to save the environment for capitalism. A Running List of How Trump Is Changing the Environment –  “The Trump administration has promised vast changes to U.S. science and environmental policy—and we’re tracking them here as they happen.”

The now publicly visible campaign by the Koch brothers and many others to make their decade’s long campaign to deny climate change bear new fruit in public policy. More evidence that the plutocrats are now so secure in their control over our politics and the government that they can come out of the shadows and rule directly through Trump.

Every company seeks to get someone else to pay for as many of its costs of doing business as possible. The laws of capitalism require this. If all of Stickles’ competitors are similarly avoiding the costs of disposing of their waste concrete they must do likewise. Otherwise their cost of doing business would be higher. In the short term their profits will be lower. In the longer term they will be forced out of business —>> read more –>>

This 2015 movie by Chinese director Liang Zhao is filled with great cinematography and sounds. It trades back and forth between scenes of enormous horizon gulping coal mines, under ground mines, iron making, and ends with scenes of a ghost city filled with enormous apartment blocks in a newly developed but vacant city West of Beijing. But, the most arresting part of the movie is its focus on the workers, men and women, in this —>> read more –>>

an essay from the original markorton.com website: Greenland and Global Warming When I looked down into the Grand Canyon for the first time, I paused only for a moment at its immensity and moved right onto a more self-centered thought, “How tiny human history is in all of this, and even further, how much less significant my own life must be by extension.” It is clear that human beings will not outlast Nature. An article —>> read more –>>