Friday, June 14, 2019

Changing the World - By Changing How We Think

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Edward Markey have proposed the Green New Deal to address our CLIMATE CRISIS - and also a broad number of other problems; all of which are interrelated and interdependent.

IF we do not react to the FACTS WE KNOW - and continue to keep coasting along on burning fossil fuels - then we are FUCT.

Of course the world isn't going to end because of catastrophic climate change, but life as we know it very well could end, because of climate changes and all the OTHER damaging things we are doing. Already we are seeing a massive number of extinctions.

We need to do what Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and Sen Edward Markey propose in the Green New Deal as soon as possible, to address our climate crisis.

List of OTHER things we are doing that is causing massive damage:
* Killing life in the soil with artificial fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides - the soil is the basis of most life on the planet, and we are totally dependent on it
* Causing massive soil erosion by laying the soil bare and using chemicals (see above) - this harms its ability to absorb and clean water
* Overusing water and depleting aquifers
* chemical pollution including mercury, dioxins, lead, MBTE
* over-fishing
* factory farming - in addition to soil damage and water overuse, and poisons, and adding GHG - this causes huge health problems, because of processed foods, overuse of sweeteners, loss of many nutrients due to poor soil health. Case in point: tomatoes are grown so they don't get crushed at the bottom of a dump truck - NOT for their flavor and nutrients from fully ripening
* plastic pollution
* clear cutting forests
* plowing under grasslands
* creating super weeds and having chemical-dependent crops
* creating vast monocultures - agriculture, lawns
* indiscriminate use of insecticides - there is at least a 70% drop in flying insects
* injecting poisons into the ground with fracking
* paving over vast areas of land and buildings - reduces the land available for the water cycle, and kills life in that soil

Our use of artificial nitrogen fertilizer (made from natural gas) is not only killing the soil, and poisoning the water, and causing dead zones in the ocean - it ends up as nitrous oxide, which is about 8X stronger a greenhouse gas as methane.

The tundra is melting - at a quicker rate than we thought. This is releasing carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide.

The ocean is warming, so it will start to release the gases it has been absorbing - so most of our carbon dioxide emissions will be released in a very short period of time. It will also release oxygen. It could become a source of hydrogen sulfide.

Methane clathrates that are frozen on the Arctic ocean floor will melt at some point.
We must act to change how we are doing things - by changing HOW WE THINK.