Editor’s note: A new report that microplastics pollution is hampering photosynthesis in plants, and that the result is the loss of some 10% of the world’s primary productivity, including food crops. We are now risking to blot out the planetary photosynthesis machine, just because we think that stopping the growth of the plastics industry is a subversive idea. But the report gets something in reverse: it is not that these effects “extend from food security into planetary health.” It is the opposite .But that changes little in a situation in which nothing changes, except for the desperate attempt of solving problems by killing the messenger, that is, “driving a dagger into the climate change religion”
We got rid of acid rain. Now something scarier is falling from the sky. Here’s why you should never, ever drink the rain. A number of studies have documented microplastics in rain falling all over the world — even in remote, unpopulated regions. Plastic particles have infiltrated the entire planet, from the summit of Mount Everest to the deepest oceans. Also, the microscopic shards of plastic found in every corner of the planet may be exacerbating antibiotic resistance, a new study has found.
Plastic Pollution: So Much Bigger Than Straws
by Jackie Nuñez, The Revelator
March 14, 2025
Over the past couple of weeks we’ve seen the current U.S. administration grasping at straws, mocking restrictions on single-use plastics, and trying to distract from the real issue: Plastic poisons people and the planet, and the industries that produce it need to stop making so much of it.
When I started “The Last Plastic Straw” movement in 2011, the sole purpose was to bring attention to a simple, tangible issue and raise awareness about the absurdity of single-use plastic items and engage people to take action.
So what are the real problems with plastic? Plastics don’t break down, they break up: Unlike natural materials that decompose, they fragment into smaller and smaller pieces, never benignly degrading but remaining forever plastic. All plastic items shed plastic particles called microplastics and even smaller nanoplastics, which we inhale, ingest, and absorb into our bodies. Plastics, depending on their manufacturing composition, contain a mixture of more than 16,000 chemicals, at least 4,200 of which are knownhazards to human health. When we use plastic straws, cups, plates, utensils, and food packaging, we are literally swallowing those toxic plastic particles and chemicals.
Plastic particles have also been found in placenta and breast milk, so children today are being born plasticized. This is a toxic burden that today’s youth should not have to bear.
🧠 A new study found the amount of microplastics & nanoplastics in human brains increased by 50% between 1997 to 2024. Researchers found that in people with dementia, plastic particles were six times more numerous than in people without dementia. It was also found that plastic particles in human livers are increasing over time.
🔬75% of the plastics found in human tissue samples were one of the most common types of plastics: polyethylene. Polyethylene (PET) is used in everyday items like food packaging, bottles, bags, toys, and more.
📈 With microplastics and nanoplastics building up in our bodies it’s time to put plastic-free solutions in place, for people and the planet.
Source: The Journal of Nature Medicine
It goes without saying that plastic’s harms to our health come at an enormous cost to us, who must suffer through the heartbreaking and painful diseases it causes. It’s estimated that every 30 seconds, someone dies from plastic pollution in the Global South, an area overburdened by mountains of plastic pollution that is shipped away from the Global North under the guise of “recycling” only to be dumped and often burned, releasing additional toxic pollution. Financially too, plastics are expensive: The chemicals in plastic alone cost the U.S. healthcare system $250 billion in just one year.
We can’t recycle our way out of this. Plastic was never made to be recycled and is still not made to be recycled.
Our leaders who support continued or even increased plastic production seem ignorant of the facts about plastic pollution. Let us enlighten them: All plastic pollutes, and single-use plastic items like straws are not only hazardous to our health, they’re especially wasteful.
We could all save money if our government prioritized building up plastic-free reuse and refill systems, where we hold on to our stuff rather than continuously buy it and throw it away. Such reuse and refill systems were the reality before single-use plastic was mass-produced and marketed. And they worked. Most U.S. voters support reducing plastic production, along with national policies that reduce single-use plastic, increasing use of reusable packaging and foodware, and protecting people who live in neighborhoods harmed by plastic production facilities.
To change this nightmare scenario, our leaders need to support policies that reduce plastic production, not grow it. This means curbing wasteful plastic production and supporting plastic- and toxic-free, regenerative materials and systems of reuse and refill.
As the advocacy and engagement manager at Plastic Pollution Coalition, my work continues to support the solutions to this massive global crisis — strong policies that focus on plastic pollution prevention, better business practices, and a culture shift. We work together with our allied coalition organizations, businesses, scientists, notables and individual members every single day to make these solutions a reality — no matter how much the U.S. administration or other leaders try to undermine, belittle, or dismiss efforts to minimize the use of straws and other quickly disposed plastic products that poison our planet and our bodies.
Plastic never was and never will be disposable, and neither are people.
This article first appeared on The Revelator and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Banner Credit: Taklamacuwv Lamia on Wikimedia Commons
Editor’s note: “I think hope is really harmful for several reasons. False hopes bind us to unlivable situations, and they blind us to real possibilities. Does anybody really think that Weyerhaeuser is going to stop deforesting because we ask nicely? Does anybody really think that if a democrat would have gotten into the White House that things would be ok? Does anybody think that vivisectors will stop torturing animals just because we stand outside with a sign?
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t stand out there with that sign. What it means is, do we really believe that they will stop because we do that? And if you don’t believe that, what does that mean? The book I have just recently completed is really centered around this question. Do you believe that the culture will undergo a voluntary transformation to obtain a sustainable way of living? If you don’t, what does that mean for our strategy and for our tactics? We don’t know. The reason we don’t know is that we don’t ask that question. The reason we don’t ask that question is that we’re so busy pretending that we have hope.” – Derrick Jensen December 1st, 2004
Why is it that so many people are always busy claiming that we need hope? One recent article I saw discusses “active hope” as if that is any different from regular “hope.” Hope is hopium, be it active hope, regular hope, passive hope, or resigned hope. Put almost any word you want (except “false”) in front of the word hope, and you will cause me to assume that you are selling something. Something that smells like bullshit.
Before I go into detail regarding hope along with more analysis that I am frequently doing, I came across this article courtesy of Jan Andrew Bloxham and Steve Pyke, which more or less succinctly wraps up exactly what I’ve been saying for the last decade. Short quotes really don’t do it justice as one really needs to read the entire article, but I’ll provide a snippet here:
“Biosphere Collapse: We Are in a Terminal Phase
The Sixth Mass Extinction is not a future risk—it is happening now, and human activity is the sole cause.
Extinction Rates: Current rates are 100–1,000 times higher than the “background” rate of the Cenozoic era. While the oft-cited “250–300 species per day” figure is debated (due to undercounting invertebrates and microbes), conservative estimates still suggest ~150 species lost daily. For context, the Permian-Triassic extinction (“The Great Dying”) wiped out 90% of species over 60,000 years. We’re matching that pace in decades.
Food Web Collapse: Phytoplankton (the base of marine food chains) have declined 40% since 1950. Insect biomass is dropping 2.5% annually, threatening pollination and soil health.
Conclusion: The biosphere is unravelling faster than evolution can adapt. Humans are not exempt—we are apex predators in a collapsing food web.”
Derrick Jensen told us about hope almost two decades ago and explained that the reason people think we need hope is through cultural conditioning, and this is how he describes hope, quote:
“Hope is, in fact, a curse, a bane. I say this not only because of the lovely Buddhist saying “Hope and fear chase each other’s tails,” not only because hope leads us away from the present, away from who and where we are right now and toward some imaginary future state. I say this because of what hope is.
More or less all of us yammer on more or less endlessly about hope. You wouldn’t believe — or maybe you would — how many magazine editors have asked me to write about the apocalypse, then enjoined me to leave readers with a sense of hope. But what, precisely, is hope? At a talk I gave last spring, someone asked me to define it. I turned the question back on the audience, and here’s the definition we all came up with: hope is a longing for a future condition over which you have no agency; it means you are essentially powerless.”
Going back to my first article here, the first thing one should determine is whether the situation being looked at is a problem or a predicament. A problem, by definition, has an answer or a solution. A predicament is often called different names such as dilemma, but Wikipedia calls it a “wicked problem.” Under the word dilemma is a less complex definition, where we once again see the word predicament under the “See Also” section. Here is the entry for dilemma on Wikipedia.
Something that is a problem one has agency over, meaning that there is a solution which is both attainable and feasible. Therefore, hope actually prevents one from attaining that goal, quote:
“When you give up on hope, you turn away from fear.“
So, in reality, for almost any problem, what we need is not hope, but COURAGE!
Of course, much has changed over the last 19 years since that article was written in terms of how the predicaments we face have become far worse. Still, nothing has really changed about society making any real efforts to abandon technology use and civilization. When I say things like that, I often get criticized for what is assumed that I want “to live like a cave man” or that I am “Malthusian” or that I just want to “give up.” I wrote The Cycle of Life specifically for those folks.
Now, for the bad news: predicaments don’t have solutions, they only have outcomes. Yes, my regular readers are most likely very tired of reading that same message over and over and over again. But here’s the catch – courage is great for predicaments too! An article by Frank Moone gives us details on what to do. In it, he says that: “Hiding out, giving up, or doing nothing is not an acceptable response.“
Of course, unfortunately, there are people who will do just that.Simply telling people what an acceptable response is won’t necessarily get them to comply. There are literally hundreds of books out there that describe the exact same things, but again, only people who want to do that will actually follow through. It really is absolutely not one bit different to people who read my articles versus people who couldn’t be less interested. No interest = no compliance, not that any readers will comply either (of course, I haven’t actually ever asked anybody to do anything – I’ve only made general recommendations). There are literally millions of people who simply do not care. Is it because of ignorance? Doubtful – as they’ve been told; they choose not to believe. Of course, belief is irrelevant to how the system works. It will continue to work the same way whether one believes in it or not, which is the great thing about facts. Not believing in them doesn’t change them.
The most important part about Frank’s article about “active acceptance” is what it doesn’t tell you. Sadly, the article is based partly on fear. Notice how it talks about survival? Here’s the part I disagree with, quote: “Leave a legacy of wisdom and care for future generations.“
Articles on “how to survive” are literally everywhere. Prepping handbooks, food preparation and storage, books about weapons, bunker building books, Earthships, Transition Towns, The Venus Project, and every other type of preparation manual, book, concept, and living arrangement are available at your nearest library or bookstore or online. I’ve written about countless ideas all based on the same premise. Fear of death. But what if survival is highly over-rated? What if there ARE NO future generations? What if the generation being born today is the last one? Needless to say, not everyone is going to be interested in accomplishing something they see no need for because they see it as a waste of time when they could be doing something they are actually passionate about. Focusing on surviving isn’t Living Now. Focusing on surviving is more or less similar to focusing on Dying Now. One must choose how he or she wants to live – do you want to run towards life or away from death?
Frank’s article is good – don’t get me wrong. But it repeats the same message that so many articles promoting survival do – let’s deny reality and promote false hope. One can fear death and choose to focus on attempting to evade it, but this is really the definition of insanity because humans have a natural instinct for survival to begin with (so one doesn’t have to really spend all their time remembering to survive) AND you still won’t escape it. Now, if one really wants to spend their time doing that, then no harm, no foul. If, on the other hand, one isn’t afraid of death and has no interest in such endeavors, then they shouldn’t be shamed for something they see no motivation for or satisfaction in.
Just because I’m passionate about reducing the amount of energy and resources I use doesn’t mean that I think it is OK to try to shame others into doing this as well in a misguided effort to reduce the planetary ecological footprint. It’s just not going to happen. The billionaires certainly couldn’t give two craps about what I’m doing one way or the other and they certainly aren’t going to change their lifestyles to accommodate what I think is important. My message is for people to accept our predicaments for what they are, discover what they are truly passionate about, and work towards that end, at the same time enjoying life and nature and being grateful for what still exists today.
To understand this just a bit deeper, one must understand personal values versus personal traits and the psychology behind them. Nate Hagens goes into detail on both the dark triad and the dark tetrad personality traits. One can claim specific values but have personality traits which oppose those values, which instantly points to the person being a liar (and potentially a pathological liar, which narcissists tend to be). Either way, traits will outcompete values in almost all circumstances. Most people’s traits and values are much closer in alignment to each other, but we all know people who fit into the dark triad and tetrad patterns.
I understand what many people in the overshoot community would like to see with regards to developing a sustainable community. I would very much like that myself. I actually seriously considered embarking on building one myself (following in the footsteps of many other individuals who have done this). But then I read countless stories of struggles from others, and enterprises that turned into something far less grand than had been anticipated. Many of these projects failed and even the ones which have succeeded haven’t truly met up with the original expectations. The MPP works just as prevalently in this regard as it does in mainstream society. I also knew about places in my own state which had originally been developed as utopian societies, such as the Kristeen Community, New Harmony, and Padanaram Settlement, which all failed as they were originally set up. The Padanaram Settlement is still in operation, but not like it was for many years. Like most places whose originator/founder has passed away, changes within the community have made it more like a regular town now.
I have attempted to point out many times that attachment to outcome is often associated with goal-setting and is generally ill-advised in the future that we will experience because of the fact that many if not most goals/outcomes will become impossible to meet. Some goals will be far more attainable than others, especially shorter-term ones versus long-term goals. Part of my advice comes from my own experiences. I have always been a rather goal-oriented person. Understanding overshoot means coming to terms with the reality that quite literally everything around us is changing and goals which once may have been attainable now no longer are, simply due to energy and resource decline and climate change, among many other symptom predicaments. This has been difficult to accept.
This is most certainly NOT to say to give up on any goals that one is passionate about, but to recommend being flexible about goals. Be aware of the strong possibility that your life may come apart at the seams when you least expect it. Why you ask? Because of the Technate of North America. Everything you thought you knew is about to change if it hasn’t already under the surface (or even on the surface). I don’t agree with everything in the article (it does appear to be overshoot blind), but the systems surrounding us here in the U.S. are being taken apart, one by one. It is true that collapse doesn’t generally happen in a controlled fashion because it isn’t under the control of any single person or entity. I agree wholeheartedly with that assessment.
Meanwhile, a new study shows that peak carbon sequestration was in 2008, and since then the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by plants has declined by an average of 0.25% a year. Another paper demonstrates that in 2023, the CO2 growth rate was 3.37 ± 0.11 ppm at Mauna Loa, which was 86% above that of the previous year and hit a record high since observations began in 1958, while global fossil fuel CO2 emissions only increased by 0.6% ± 0.5%. This implies an unprecedented weakening of land and ocean sinks, and raises the question of where and why this reduction happened. The rate at which climate change is proceeding is increasing dramatically. This was accurately predicted many years ago but is now happening. See also Carbon Sinks Are Becoming Carbon Sources.
Of course, something else that has been slowing for quite some time could easily bring an end to agriculture to parts of Europe. Here’s the quote that brings relevance to everything above in today’s article:
“A lot of discussion is, how should agriculture prepare for this,” he said. But a collapse of the heat-transporting circulation is a going-out-of-business scenario for European agriculture, he added. “You cannot adapt to this. There’s some studies of what happens to agriculture in Great Britain, and it becomes like trying to grow potatoes in Northern Norway.”
THAT is the overwhelming theme I have been attempting to explain for the last four years here. You cannot adapt to this. We’re not talking just about Great Britain, Europe, or anywhere specific. Leon Simons says this regarding the rate of warming globally:
“As far as we can determine, this is the fastest rate of warming in the history of our planet!“
The rate of change will overtake the rate of evolution whereby evolution cannot keep up with the changes. Rather than fall into denial of reality, utilize optimism bias, and attempt to bargain to maintain civilization, one must comprehend that there is no escaping this and that we lack agency (who exactly is “we”?), despite unsubstantiated claims to the contrary by those who are busy trying to sell you a fantasy that is not to be. Don’t fall into the hope trap – seek courage instead.
A new study on birds points out yet another symptom predicament I have repeatedly mentioned, especially recently – pollution loading. Here’s the poignant part of the article, quote:
“Ideally, you do not want these substances in your body, but in practice, it is virtually impossible for humans and many other living organisms to avoid them.
Recent research and a new method for detecting PFAS bring both bad and good news. The bad news is that we are finding PFAS in places we have not previously found them. The good news is that this means we have become better at detecting these substances.
“The biggest increase is in the livers of wading birds. We found up to 180 times more PFAS than previously,” said Zhang.“
Perhaps pollution loading is the reason HPAI H5N1 bird flu has been so deadly to birds and now mammals, which signals potential reasons why humans are becoming so much more disease-ridden as these chemicals, compounds, and toxins add up in our bodies. This is of huge concern because of the implications it has regarding those who think regenerative agriculture or permaculture will build resilience and rebuild the soil. Rebuilding the soil is a lovely idea, and it seems relatively easy to add nutrients to it through mulching and other soil amendments. But how does one rid the soil of microplastics, PFAS, PFOS, dioxins, salts, and a thousand other chemicals/chemical compounds? All of these pollutants are steadily increasing and doing so rather rapidly now due to increased wildfires, winds, extreme weather events, and extreme rain/flooding events.
To end this article, I present yet another excellent article from Dave Pollard summarizing the backdrop and leadup to the fiascoes unfolding currently in the U.S. but also many other nations as well. The bottom line is that reality is a cruel master, and many of the illusions we chose to believe in didn’t actually exist in the first place. Still, just like the monkeys fighting in the power station in Sri Lanka causing a nation-wide blackout, the same scenario is unfolding in the U.S., quote:
“And for all of that, these massive, staggeringly complex, bureaucratic systems are so easy to break! All it takes is a few monkeys!
Maybe, as we watch our exhausted, fraudulent, incompetently-‘led’ civilization falling apart all around us, we can finally open our eyes and see that it never has been what we believed it was, with all our smarmy talk of “freedom” and “democracy”. It’s been a sham from the start, but we believed the nonsense we’ve been told about it because we wanted to believe it. Take away everything we have, but you’ll never take away our belief in our human superiority, our manifest destiny, the myth of perpetual progress as we spread across the universe, and, most of all, our certainty that we will be saved.
So we have DOGE, perhaps the most blatantly, overtly incompetent gang of monkeys the world has ever seen, let loose in the ‘power factory’ by the Child King, the most incompetent business person in the history of civilization, wreaking havoc on every essential public service in the US.
And we have the incompetent, miseducated, sci-fi dreamer technophiles, with their wild untested ideas for Marvel Comics-style rescues of our ecosystems, let loose to play at geoengineering, sucking up billions from the dregs of the world’s fast-failing treasuries to play at making fusion energy, and carbon capture, and AI everything, and quantum everything, and starships to anywhere-but-this-fucked-planet, and carbon (and now water) cap-and-trade offset exchanges (for those that flunked science). Gotta be some salvation in there somewhere! It’s ordained!”
Watching this unfold is quite sickening, only buffered by the fact that most of us in the overshoot community knew that collapse would come sooner or later. I just think that most of us had wished that we might eke out a few more years first.
Thank goodness for some beautiful pictures at Manistee, Michigan to distract one away from all of this for a bit!
Editor’s note: “Energy is, of course, fundamental to both human existence and the functioning of capitalism. It is central to production, as well as the heating and lighting systems that most people take for granted, and the energy sector is by far the single largest producer of greenhouse emissions.” A transition to 100% electrical energy will never happen. The percentage of electrical energy is 20%, of which 3% are “renewable”. Those figures have never been higher in well over 50 years. Also everywhere in the world, the development of “renewables” has and remains propped up by government support.
From a distance, the Ivanpah solar plant looks like a shimmering lake in the Mojave Desert(a death trap for migratory). Up close, it’s a vast alien-like installation of hundreds of thousand of mirrors pointed at three towers, each taller than the Statue of Liberty. When this plant opened near the California-Nevada border in early 2014, it was pitched as the future of solar power. Just over a decade later, it’s closing. Ivanpah now stands as a huge, shiny monument to wasted tax dollars and environmental damage — campaign groups long criticized the plant for its impact on desert wildlife.
“It was a monstrosity combining huge costs, huge subsidies, huge environmental damage, and justifications hugely spurious. It never achieved its advertised electricity production goals even remotely, even as the excuses flowed like wine, as did the taxpayer bailouts.
And now, despite all the subventions, it is shutting down about 15 years early as a monument to green fantasies financed with Other People’s Money, inflicted upon electricity ratepayers in California denied options to escape the madness engendered by climate fundamentalism.”
Instead of forcing coal and oil into obsolescence, we’re merely adding more energy to the system — filling the gap with “renewables” while still burning record amounts of fossil fuels. This is the real danger of the “energy abundance” mindset: it assumes that a limitless supply of “clean” energy will eventually render fossil fuels obsolete. In reality, “renewable” energies are not replacing fossil fuels, but supplementing them, contributing to a continued pattern of broad energy consumption.
Historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz: ‘Forget the energy transition: there never was one and there never will be one’
At first glance, no one is waiting for a historian to play down the idea of an energy transition. Certainly not at a time of environmental headwinds. But above all, Fressoz wants to correct historical falsehoods and reveal uncomfortable truths. ‘Despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased. The world now burns more wood and coal than ever before.’
In his latest book, More and more and more, the historian of science, technology and environment explains why there has never been an energy transition, and instead describes the modern world in all its voracious reality. The term “transition” that has come into circulation has little to do with the rapid, radical upheaval of the fossil economy needed to meet climate targets.
In France, Jean-Baptiste Fressoz has been provoking the energy and climate debate for some time. He denounces the obsession with technological solutions to climate change and advocates a reduction in the use of materials and energy.
The cover of the French edition of your book says ‘the energy transition is not going to happen’. Why do you so strongly oppose this narrative?
We are reducing the carbon intensity of the economy, but that is not a transition. You hear very often that we just need to organise ‘a new industrial revolution’, most recently by US climate envoy John Kerry. You cannot take this kind of historical analogy seriously, this is really stupid.
The idea of an energy transition is actually a very bizarre form of future thinking, as if we would transform from one energy system to another over a 30-year period and stop emitting CO2. If it were to come across as credible, it is because we do not understand the history of energy.
But don’t we have historic precedents? Didn’t we transform from a rural economy that ran on wood to an industrial society with coal as the big driver?
This is an example of the many misconceptions of the history of energy. In the 19th century, Britain used more wood annually just to shore up the shafts of coal mines than the British economy consumed as fuel during the 18th century.
Of course it is true that coal was very important for the new industrial economy in 1900, but you cannot imagine that as if one energy source replaced the other. Without wood, there would be no coal, and therefore no steel and no railways either. So different energy sources, materials and technologies are highly interdependent and everything expands together.
So I guess you won’t agree either with the claim that oil replaced coal in the last century?
Again, oil became very important, but this is not a transition. Because what do you use oil for? To drive a car. Look at Ford’s first car of the 1930s. While it ran on fuel, it was made of steel, requiring 7 tonnes of coal. That’s more than the car would consume in oil over its lifetime! Today it is no different: if you buy a car from China, it still requires about three tonnes of coal.
You should also take into account the infrastructure of highways and bridges, the world’s biggest consumers of steel and cement, and that is just as dependent on coal. Oil drilling rigs and pipelines also use large amounts of steel. So behind the technology of a car is both oil and a lot of coal.
You suggest looking at energy and the climate problem without the idea of ‘transition’. How?
Focus on material flows. Then you see that despite all the technological innovation of the 20th century, the use of all raw materials has increased (excluding wool and asbestos). So modernisation is not about ‘the new’ replacing ‘the old’, or competition between energy sources, but about continuous growth and interconnection. I call it ‘symbiotic expansion’.
How do you apply this idea of symbiotic expansion of all materials to the current debate about the energy transition?
The energy transition is a slogan but no scientific concept. It derives its legitimacy from a false representation of history. Industrial revolutions are certainly not energy transitions, they are a massive expansion of all kinds of raw materials and energy sources.
Moreover, the word energy transition has its main origins in political debates in the 1970s following the oil crisis. But in these, it was not about the environment or climate, but only about energy autonomy or independence from other countries.
Scientifically, it is a scandal to then apply this concept to the much more complex climate problem. So when we seek solutions to the climate crisis and want to reduce CO2 emissions, it is better not to talk about a transition. It is better to look at the development of raw materials in absolute terms and to understand their intertwinedness. This will also restrain us from overestimating the importance of technology and innovation .
Didn’t technological innovation bring about major changes?
Numerous new technologies did appear and sometimes they rendered the previous ones obsolete, but that is not linked to the evolution of raw materials. Take lighting, for example. Petroleum lamps were in mass use around 1900, before being replaced by electric light bulbs. Yet today we use far more oil for artificial lighting than we did then: to light the headlights of the many millions of cars.
So despite impressive technological advances, the central issue for ecological problems remains: raw materials, which never became obsolete. We speak frivolously about technological solutions to climate problems, and you can see this in the reports of the IPCC’s Working Group 3.
Don’t you trust the IPCC as the highest scientific authority on climate?
Let me be clear, I certainly trust the climate scientists of groups 1 and 2 of the IPCC, but I am highly critical of the third working group that assesses options for the mitigation of the climate crisis. They are obsessed with technology. There are also good elements in their work, but in their latest report they constantly refer to new technologies that do not yet exist or are overvalued, such as hydrogen, CCS and bioenergy (BECCS).
The influence of the fossil industry is also striking. All this is problematic and goes back to the history of this institution. The US has been pushing to ‘play the technology card’ from the beginning in 1992. Essentially, this is a delaying tactic that keeps attention away from issues like decreasing energy use, which is not in the interest of big emitters like the US.
What mitigation scenarios do exist that do not rely excessively on technology?
As late as 2022, the IPCC’s Working Group 3 report wrote about ‘sufficiency’, the simple concept of reducing emissions by consuming less. I’m astonished that there is so little research on this. Yet it is one of the central questions we should be asking, rather than hoping for some distant technology that will solve everything in the future.
Economists tell what is acceptable to power because it is the only way to be heard and to be influential, it is as simple as that. That is why the debate in the mainstream media is limited to: ‘the energy transition is happening, but it must be speeded up’.
The transition narrative is the ideology of 21st century capitalism. It suits big companies and investors very well. It makes them part of the solution and even a beacon of hope, even though they are in part responsible for the climate crisis. Yet it is remarkable that experts and scientists go along with this greenwashing.
Do you take hope from the lawsuits against fossil giants like Shell and Exxon?
Of course Exxon has a huge responsibility and they have been clearly dishonest, but I think it is too simplistic to look at them as the only bad guys. Those companies simultaneously satisfy a demand from a lot of other industries that are dependent on oil, like the meat industry or aviation. More or less the whole economy depends on fossil fuels, but we don’t talk as much about them.
That’s why it is inevitable to become serious about an absolute reduction in material and energy use, and that is only possible with degrowth and a circular economy. That is a logical conclusion of my story, without being an expert on this topic.
Degrowth is not an easy political message. How can it become more accepted?
I do not offer ‘solutions’ in my book since I don’t believe in green utopias. It is clear that many areas of the economy won’t be fully decarbonized before 2050, such as cement, steel, plastics and also agriculture. We have to recognise this and it means that we simply won’t meet the climate targets.
Once you realise this, the main issue becomes: what to do with the CO2 that we are still going to emit? Which emissions are really necessary and what is their social utility? As soon as economists do a lot more research into this, we can have this debate and make political choices. Yet another skyscraper in New York or a water supply network in a city in the Global South?
Once upon a timeless . . . the non-human Light-Beings of the Sun cast their rays like life-giving nets upon the waters and the lands of the Earth . . . and all beings stirred awake to do the day’s work (and play) . . . until the nighttimeless when all beings rested and then the stars would guide their dreams . . .
(“Buddha Resisting The Demons Of Mara”)
In the actual living-experience, there is no “happily ever after” because there is constant work and maintenance to do. While work and maintenance can sometimes be enjoyable, they aren’t end-of-rainbow-pot-of-gold ideal. Yet many people cling to the idea of such gold, of ‘making it big.’ And many cling to infantile delusions of a constant comfort zone.
Zen saying: Before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water; after enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.
In general, i’ve noticed that many people have an aversion to talking about or dealing with extremely difficult situations of which for this essay i’ll call such extremities, The Monster. The difficulty is understandable because The Monster is unpleasant and pokes at one’s trauma buttons.
The Merchants of Veneer refers to those who go to extremes to cover-up The Monster. The Monster is genocide, ecocide, deliberately induced fear and terror, violence and greed, all of which i consider as horrid manifestations of what Steven Newcomb refers to as “the domination system,” and what many know of as colonialism, predatory capitalism, totalitarianism, fascism, ad nauseam.
MONSTER: from Latin monstrum — inauspicious portent or sign, abnormal shape, “a derivative of monere ‘to remind, bring to (one’s) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach.’”
Teachers and elders “advise, warn, instruct” peers and younger generations with ways to avoid monsters; forewarned is forearmed, and weaponry is not a necessity.
Also, one can figure out stuff on one’s own because typically there are signs or warnings before The Monster does dastardly deeds. I think of those signs and warnings as a pattern of mercy built into the universe.
When not heeded, however, and instead allowed to run amok, monstrums (abnormal shapes and signs) can take on a form — anything from falling down and hurting one’s self, to an addiction, to a river-polluting corporation, a brainwashing media, a flagrantly offensive military force, so-called green/renewables saving the world, AI, genocide, ecocide, and more.
Many of the modern monsters appear as the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. Whether a fancy-car-driving televangelist, a clown pedophile, or a corporation that holds charity events with one hand while destroying natural habitats and cultures with the other — the concept is the same.
Many signs in the world continue to go unheeded, and so: many monsters need to be dealt with.
The deeper root of “monster” is men- “to think, mind, spirit, memory, sage, seer,” indicating that, as mentioned above, one has the ability to ward off monsters, to think ahead, to care for the mind and spirit of all beings.
But our Mother Earth knows that The Monster is running amok and, as Leonard Cohen sang, “Everybody knows that the boat is leaking / Everybody knows that the captain lied… / And everybody knows that it’s now or never” . . . Yet the big question then is: Why do so many choose to ignore?
Enter the Merchants of Veneer and their willing and ignorant minions. Those Merchants are masters of the slick surface level, from the looks real faux wooden cabinet to the media spectacle previews condoning and cheering on the War on Iraq and the Global War Of Terror, while conversely, not tainting the shine by not showing the genocide in Gaza. The Merchants of Veneer shine the shit-show to delusory perfection, and so slickly that masses of people go along with the bumpy ride by ordering an environmentally friendly seat belt rather than finding ways of smoothing the rode.
The Merchants of Veneer are the Public Relations division for The Monster. The PR includes the corporate media, global banking systems, consumerism, enforced religions, revisionist history and cherry-picked educational systems, and governments in bed with corporations aka fascism.
When telling people some tidbit i know, some of the history of America and Turtle Island, i’ve often heard people say to the effect, ‘It’s terrible what was done to the Natives.’ Yes, but then when i add that it’s still going on and cite a specific issue, they may shake their head in disgust, but don’t seem to find it as terrible NOW. ‘Why?’ I’ve asked the air, ‘Why do they avoid and turn away?’
And the answer i get is the impetus for this essay . . . Not wanting to face The Monster, not wanting to make sacrifices with one’s comfort zone which is actually a comfort zone built on the discomforts of others, those who do the work and maintenance with no chance of a pot of gold rather lucky if they get a next meal.
“Every program of exploitation has an ideology bolted on to legitimate it to the world — but also to those benefitting: very few people want to look in the mirror and see a monster staring back.”
~ Matt Kennard, from his book The Racket: A Rogue Reporter Vs The American Empire.
Wake-up Call
The Buddha’s typical subtly serene smile is not one of “happily ever after. My interpretation from experience is that, in part, that serene smile has to do with maintaining one’s inner state of consciousness whether during good times or when facing The Monster.
Many years ago i had a transformative meditation experience, but the details escape me so i’ll attempt to convey the gist: One time meditating i began to see horrible, scary stuff, like scenes of a war. At first i thought: Is this my mind? What i have done? But then i realized i was simply supposed to watch, to witness, be brave enough to witness without flinching or running away, maintain my composure – subtly serene Buddha smile optional – and to allow space for whatever feelings that arose. This inner experience helped me learn to face The Monster, rather than turn a blind eye.
As the story of Siddhartha Gautama the Buddha tells:
Before becoming a Buddha, he saw Four Sights or Signs: aging, disease, death, and devotion to finding the cause of suffering, devotion to participating in the world rather than escaping from it.
And after he became enlightened he began to do the work of dealing with monstrums: “to remind, bring to (one’s) recollection, tell (of); admonish, advise, warn, instruct, teach” in an effort to help others to avoid or deal with The Monster.
(“his hands in the dharmachakra mudra gesture of teaching”)
As the story goes, before Siddhartha Gautama became the Buddha, the demon Mara tried to seduce him with beautiful women, then attacked him with monsters, then questioned the validity of his enlightenment.
“Then Siddhartha reached out his right hand to touch the earth, and the earth itself spoke: ‘I bear you witness!’ Mara disappeared. And as the morning star rose in the sky, Siddhartha Gautama realized enlightenment and became a Buddha.”
Each of us has the ability to touch Earth, not only with hands, but with the feet and heart and mind, and actions.
Each of us has the ability to be touched — how much better a mood i have when my day begins with seeing and hearing geese flying overhead.
Since the word “Buddha” means “awakened, to awaken to the natural law,” the Buddha-nature is not of any one individual rather a way of seeing, of being, of living in accord with Sun and Stars and all sentient beings here with Mother Earth. This Buddha-nature is beyond any box of religion and beyond any specific label of spirituality.
We as a species, as well as all species, are faced with a dual dilemma: stopping The Monster that is already in action, already running amok yet pretending with a slick veneer that everything is under control and things will get better soon. And warding off The Monster that is clamoring to get in on the destructive, sucking the life out of life action.
Instead of overreacting to The Monster and counteracting with violence, fear or greed, the experience of witnessing allows for the possibility of one’s inner nature and/or Earth guiding the next step.
Mankh (Walter E. Harris III) is a writer and small press publisher; he travels a holistic mystic Kaballah-rooted pathway staying in touch with Turtle Island. Mankh meditates, gardens, enjoys music and good humor.
Growing up in a Pakistani village in the 2000s, sustainability was embedded throughout my daily life. My family has always been cautious of wasting energy, gas or water because these resources are expensive. We grew most of our own vegetables and reared poultry for eggs. By just buying a few essential groceries from the nearby market, we produced very little household waste. Food scraps were fed to our cattle, and we’d save any plastic bags to reuse.
The United Nations defines sustainability as “meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”. But so much complicated jargon makes it difficult to distinguish between environmentally ethical practices and mere feelgood marketing.
Some major brands and big corporations promote and package their products as more eco-friendly than they actually are. In 1986, American environmentalist Jay Westerveld coined the term “greenwash” to describe hotels that were promoting towel reuse as an environmentally conscious initiative, when it was really a cost-cutting measure.
Today, greenwashing encompasses a wide range of deceptive marketing tactics, but as consumers, we have the right to know the true environmental impact of our choices. Here are four ways to avoid being duped by greenwashing:
1. Look for marketing buzzwords
Look out for feelgood marketing and buzzwords such as “natural”, “eco-friendly”, “sustainable” and “green”. These labels can be open-ended, without a technical definition or any legal requirements. For example, the term “compostable” differs from “home compostable” – it requires industrial processing with high temperatures, even though it may sound eco-friendly.
There’s no legal time limit for calling something degradable – everything breaks up eventually, even plastic bags.
There is no such thing as a totally carbon-free product. Every process, every product, every supply chain has carbon emissions associated with it. So any marketing language should mirror the impact of that particular product or brand.
Some brands use cute-looking emojis and caricatures with buzzwords that look similar to some certifications, but in reality, they are meaningless. To address this, the European Commission recently proposed a directive, requiring companies to back up green claims with evidence, focusing on life-cycle and environmental footprint methods, setting minimum requirements for sustainability labels and logos.
2. Verify any claims
Pause before you purchase anything and demand evidence to back up any claims that a brand makes.
Either look for statistics that prove the claims on a company’s website, third-party certification or ask the brand and supplier for the evidence of their claims. If they are truly eco-conscious, they’ll proudly share the real numbers.
3. Look for certification
Legit third-party certifications like the EU-mandated energy labels provide valuable and true information about the energy efficiency of household electric appliances. Don’t fall for random stickers that give the impression of formal validation but don’t require any specific criteria to be met.
Plastic recycling labels can be confusing too. The triangle with three chasing arrows, called the Mobius Loop is a universal symbol that means “recyclable”. But, the Mobius Loop with a number in it indicates the type of plastic (there are seven different types) – not that the packaging is recyclable.
Even if technically recyclable, plastic needs to be dry, clean and separated before being recycled. One plastic water bottle may contain three or four different types of plastics, from the bottle itself to the cap and label. Together as a composite, some can be difficult to recycle.
Tthe new tethered bottle caps are mandated by the EU to prevent litter, but they still don’t make recycling any easier.
4. Take a big picture view
Some companies genuinely care. For 35 years, outdoor clothing company Patagonia has pledged 1% of sales to conservation. More than US$89 million (£69 million) has been donated to environmental groups globally through its 1% for the Planet initiative. Cosmetics retailer Lush is working hard to close the loop by limiting water consumption and preventing as much packaging waste as possible.
Investigate the brand’s overall effort to be transparent and environmentally friendly, rather than just looking at one product. If companies aren’t setting clear targets, sharing their progress and being open with their customers, switch to brands that do provide the evidence, listen to their customers and respond.
As paying customers, we have a right to know the environmental footprint of the products and services we’re buying.
You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed Earth overshoot day, when humanity’s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually.
Many economists criticising the developing degrowth movement fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth’s biophysical limits.
Ecologists on the other hand see the human economy as a subset of the biosphere. Their perspective highlights the urgency with which we need to reduce our demands on the biosphere to avoid a disastrous ecological collapse, with consequences for us and all other species.
July 24, 2025 is Earth Overshoot Day, the baseline for the Earth’s resources we can sustainably use. First described in 1971 the overshoot day was Dec 25th. After that date we will be in ecological debt, humanity’s demand for nature’s resources will be exceeding the Earth’s capacity to regenerate
Many degrowth scholars (as well as critics) focus on features of capitalism as the cause of this ecological overshoot. But while capitalism may be problematic, many civilisations destroyed ecosystems to the point of collapse long before it became our dominant economic model.
Capitalism, powered by the availability of cheap and abundant fossil energy, has indeed resulted in unprecedented and global biosphere disruption. But the direct cause remains the excessive volume and speed with which resources are extracted and wastes returned to the environment.
From an ecologist’s perspective, degrowth is inevitable on our current trajectory.
Carrying capacity
Ecology tells us that many species overshoot their environment’s carrying capacity if they have temporary access to an unusually high level of resources. Overshoot declines when those resources return to more stable levels. This often involves large-scale starvation and die-offs as populations adjust.
Access to fossil fuels has allowed us to temporarily overshoot biophysical limits. This lifted our population and demands on the biosphere past the level it can safely absorb. Barring a planned reduction of those biosphere demands, we will experience the same “adjustments” as other species.
One advantage humans have over other species is that we understand overshoot dynamics and can plan how we adjust. This is what the degrowth movement is attempting to do.
To grasp the necessity of reducing ecological overshoot we must understand its current status. We can do this by examining a variety of empirical studies.
Material flows and planetary boundaries
Analysis of material flows in the economy shows we are currently extracting more than 100 billion tons of natural materials annually, and rising. This greatly exceeds natural processes – erosion, volcanic eruptions and earthquakes – that move materials around the globe.
Only about 10% of these resource flows are potentially renewable. In many cases, we are harvesting more than can be regenerated annually (for example, many fish stocks).
Humans have now transgressed at least six of nine planetary boundaries. Each boundary has distinct limits, but in some instances the overshoot is at least double the safe operating level.
We have now exceeded six planetary boundaries, and for some by at least double the safe operating level. Stockholm Resilience Centre, CC BY-SA
Both material flow analysis and planetary boundaries provide critically important information about our impacts on the biosphere. But they fail to capture the full picture. The former doesn’t directly measure biosphere functioning. The latter doesn’t capture inter-dependencies between various boundaries.
The biosphere is a holistic entity, with many self-organising and interconnected subsystems. Our generally reductionist scientific methodologies are not able to capture this level of complexity. The methodology that comes closest to achieving this is the ecological footprint.
Biocapacity
The ecological footprint measures the amount of productive surface on Earth and its capacity to generate resources and assimilate waste. These are two of the most fundamental features of the biosphere.
It then compares this available biocapacity with humanity’s annual demands. Humanity’s ecological footprint has exceeded the biosphere’s annual biocapacity since at least 1970 and is currently almost twice the sustainable level.
The reason we can use more of what is generated annually is because we use stored biomass – ancient solar energy captured over millennia – to power this draw-down.
“The global economy will inevitably contract and humanity will suffer a major population ‘correction’ in this century.” New paper by Bill Rees (one of the people who conceptualized the idea of “the ecological footprint” just dropped…)
The political and public concern about climate change is considerable internationally and in New Zealand. But this is one of many environmental crises, together with soil erosion, groundwater pollution, deforestation, the rise of invasive species, biodiversity loss, ocean acidification and the depletion of resources. They are all symptoms of overshoot.
The climate crisis is seen as a problem requiring a solution rather than a symptom of overshoot. The problem is generally formulated as looking for a way to maintain current lifestyles in the wealthy world, rather than reducing overshoot.
The ecological perspective accepts that we exceed biophysical boundaries and emphasises the importance of reducing energy and material consumption – regardless of how the energy is provided.
The scope of human disruption of the biosphere is now global. This ecological perspective highlights the current magnitude and closeness of significant and unwelcome changes to Earth systems. The reduction of humanity’s demands on the biosphere is an overriding priority.
