Surfing YouTube, I came across an interview of Ezra Klein by Stephen Colbert. He was promoting a new book called Abundance, basically arguing that scarcity is politically-manufactured by “both sides,” and that if we get our political act together, everybody can have more. Planetary limits need not apply. I’ve often been impressed by Klein’s sharp insights on politics, yet can’t reconcile how someone so smart misses the big-picture perspectives that grab my attention.
He’s not alone: tons of sharp minds don’t seem to be at all concerned about planetary limits or metastatic modernity, which for me has been a source of perennial puzzlement.
The logical answer is that I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed. Indeed, many of these folks could run cognitive/logical circles around me. And maybe that’s the end of the story. Yet it’s not the end of this post, as I try to work out what accounts for the disconnect, and (yet again) examine my own assuredness.
Imagined Basis
What is the basis of pundit-level rejection of my premise? Oh yeah: my premise is that modernity is a fleeting, patently unsustainable mode of life on Earth that will self-terminate on a historically relevant (i.e., brief) timescale—likely to convincingly crest the peak this century. Modernity can’t last.
I will reconstruct how I think an ultra-smart person might react, were I to present in conversation the premise that modernity can’t last—based on past interactions with such folks. Two branches stand out.
One branch would be the unwittingly spot-on admission of “I don’t see why not.” I could not have identified the core problem any better, and would be tempted to say: “Wow—what a courageous first step in recognizing our limited faculties. That humble confession is very big of you.” My not having the wit to prove conclusively to such folks that modernity can’t work (and I would say that no human possesses such mental powers) says very little about the complex reality of our future—operating without giving a flip as to what happens in human brains. But it’s also quite far from demonstrating convincingly how something as unsustainable as modernity—dependent on one-time exploitation of non-renewable resources—might possibly address the host of interacting elements that will contribute to its crumbling.
That branch aside, the common reply I want to spend more time on goes something like: “Just look at the past. No one could have foreseen the amazingness of today, and we ought to recognize that we are likewise ill-equipped to speculate on the future. In other words, anyone expressing your premise in the last 10,000 years would have turned out to be wrong [well, so far]. Chances, are: so are you.”
Damn. Blistering. How can one get up from that knockout? And the thing is, it’s a completely valid bit of logic. I also appreciate the intellectual humility involved. Why, then, am I so stubborn on this point? Is it because I want to be popular or rich? Then I’m even stupider than I thought, because those things are basically guaranteed to be incompatible with such a message. Is it because I crave end-times, having been dealt a bad hand and never “good at the game?” Nope: I thrived as an all-in astrophysicist and had/have a rather privileged and comfortable life that I would personally, selfishly prefer not to have disrupted. Is it out of fear of collapse? Getting warmer: that was a big early motivation—the alarming prospect of losing what I held until recently to be a glorious civilization. But at this point all I can say is that based on multiple lines of evidence I really think it’s the truth, and can’t easily or honestly argue myself out of this difficult spot. Denial, anger, bargaining, and depression don’t help us come to terms with the hard reality..
Returning to the putative response: I’ll name it as lazy. It’s superficial. It’s a shortcut, sidling up to: “Collapse hasn’t happened yet—in fact quite the opposite—and thus most likely will not.” It declines to examine the constituent pieces and arguments, falling back on a powerful and persuasive bit of logic straight out of the left brain. It has all the hallmarks: certain, crisp, abstract, decontextualized, logical, clever.
It carries the additional dual advantage of simultaneously avoiding unpleasant confrontation of a scary prospect and inviting starry-eyed wonder at magic the future might bring. No wonder it’s so magnetically attractive as a go-to response!. We’re both driven to it and attracted by it! The very smartest among us, in fact, often have the most to lose, and may therefore be among the most psychologically attached to modernity. We mustn’t forget that every human has a psychology, and is capable of impressive levels of denial for any number of reasons.
Some Metaphors
Its time for a few metaphors that help to frame my approach. I offer two related ones, because none are perfect. Together, they might work well enough for our purposes.
TAKE ONE
Imagine that someone tees up a golf ball in an indoor space full of hard objects: concrete walls and steel shelves—maybe loaded with heavy glass goblets and vases, etc. Poised to deliver a smashing blow to the ball with an over-sized driver, they ask me: “What do you think will happen if I hit this ball?” Imagining a comical movie scene where the ball makes a series of wild-ass bounces shattering priceless collectables as it goes, it might seem impossible to guess what all might or might not happen. So, I “cheat” and say: “The ball will come to rest.”
And guess what: I’m right! No matter how crazy the flight, it is guaranteed that in fairly short order, the ball will no longer be moving. I could even put a timescale on it: stopped within 10 seconds, or maybe even 5—depending on the dimensions of the room. I can say this because each collision will remove a fair bit of energy from the ball, and the smaller the room, the shorter the time between energy-sapping events.
During the middle of the experiment, it is clear that mayhem is happening, and it’s essentially impossible to predict what’s next. That’s where we are in modernity. So, yes: some intellectual humility is called for. We could not have predicted any of the particulars, after all. But one can still stand by the prediction that the ball will come to rest, much as one can say modernity will wind itself down.
TAKE TWO
The golf ball metaphor does 80% of the work, but I don’t fully embrace it because the ball is at maximum destructive capacity at the very beginning, its damage-potential decaying from the first moment. Modernity took some time to accelerate to present speed, now at a fever pitch. For this, I think of a rock tumbling down a slope.
I do a fair bit of hiking, sometimes off trail where—careful as I am—I might occasionally dislodge a rock on a steep slope. What happens next is entirely unpredictable (even if deterministic given initial conditions). Most of the time the rock just slides just a few centimeters; sometimes it will lazily tumble a few meters; or more rarely it will pick up speed and hurtle hundreds of meters down the slope in a kinetic spectacle. Kilometer scales are not entirely out of the question in some locations.
Still, for all these scenarios, I am sure of one thing: the rock will come to rest—possibly in multiple fragments. I can also put a reasonable timescale on it, mid-journey, based on its behavior to that point. I can tell if it’s picking up speed. I can evaluate if the slope is moderating or will soon come to an end. It’s not impossible to make a decent guess for how long it might go, even if unable to predict what hops, collisions, or deflections it might execute along the way.
Maybe the phrase “a rolling stone gathers no moss” can be re-interpreted as: kinetic mayhem is no basis for a healthy, relational ecology. If tumbling boulders were the normal/default state of things, mountains would not last long (or more to the point: never come into being!). Likewise, one species driving millions of others to extinction in mere centuries is not a normal, sustainable state of affairs. That $#!+ has to stop.
Modernity’s Turn
Modernity is far more complex than a tumbling rock. But one side effect of this is a multitude of facets to consider. When many of them line up to tell a similar story…well, that story becomes more compelling. I offer a few, here.
POPULATION
Global human population has been a super-exponential, in that the annual growth rate as a percentage of the total has steadily climbed through the millennia and centuries (0.04% after agriculture began, up to 2% in the 1960s). It is no shock to anyone that we may be straining (or overtaxing) what the planet can support. Indeed, the growth rate has been decreasing for the last 60 years, and the drop appears to be accelerating lately. Almost any model predicts a global peak before this century is over, and possibly as soon as the next 15–20 years. This is, of course, highly relevant to modernity. Economies will shrink and possibly collapse (being predicated on growth) as population falls from a peak. Such a turn could precipitate a whole new phase that “no one could have seen coming.” I’m looking at you, pundits!
The argument of “just look to the past” and imagining some sort of extrapolation begins to seem dubious or even outright silly in the context of a plummeting population. Let’s face it: we don’t know how it plays out. Loss of modern technological capabilities is not at all a mental stretch, even if such “muscles” are rarely exercised.
RESOURCES
Modernity hungry!. Fossil fuels have played a huge role in the dramatic acceleration of the past few centuries. We all know this is a limited-time prospect. Oil discoveries peaked over a half-century ago, so the writing is on the wall for production decline on a timescale of decades. Pretending that solar and wind will sweep in as substitutes involves a fair bit of magical thinking and ignorance of myriad practical details (back to the “I don’t see why not” response). We face an unprecedented transition as fossil fuels wane, so that the acceleration of the past is very likely to run out of steam. Even holding steady involves an unsubstantiated leap of faith—never fleshed out as to how it all could possibly work. “I don’t see why not” is about the best one can expect.
Mined materials are likewise non-renewable and being consumed at an all-time-high rate. Ore grade has fallen dramatically, so that we now must pursue increasingly marginal and deeper deposits and thus impact more land, while discharging an ever-increasing volume of mine tailings. This happened fast: most material extraction has occurred in the last century (or even 50 years). We would be foolish to imagine an extrapolation of the past or even maintaining similar levels of activity for any long duration. More realistically, these practices will be undercut by declining population and energy availability. I’ve spent plenty of time pointing out that recycling can at best stretch out the timeline, but not by orders of magnitude.
WATER/AGRICULTURE
Agricultural productivity has also steadily increased, but on the back of “mining” non-renewable resources like ground water and soils—not to mention an extraordinary dependence on finite fossil fuels. Okay: at least water and soils can renew on long timescales, but our rate of depletion far outstrips replenishment. Land turned to desert by overuse stops even trying to maintain soils, while also suppressing water replenishment by squelching rainfall. This is yet another domain where the fact that the past has involved a steady march in one direction is quite far from guaranteeing that direction as a constant of nature. Its very “success” is what hastens its failure. The simple logic of “hasn’t happened yet” blithely bypasses a lot of context sitting in plain sight.
CLIMATE CHANGE
I don’t usually stress climate change, because I view it as one symptom of a more general disease. Moreover, should we magically eliminate climate change in a blink, my assessment is hardly altered since so many other factors are contributing to the overall phenomenon of modernity’s unsustainability. I include climate change here because it seems to be the one element that has percolated to the attention of the pundit-class as a potential existential threat. It isn’t yet clear how modernity trucks on without fossil fuels. Yet, even if we were to curtail their use by 2050, the climate damage may be great enough to reverse modernity’s fortunes (actually, the most catastrophic legacy of CO2 emissions may be ocean acidification rather than climate change). Again, the “logic” of extrapolation becomes rather dubious. The faith-based assumption is that we will “technology” our way out of the crisis, which becomes perfectly straightforward if ignoring all the other factors at play. Increased materials demand to “technofix” our ills (and the associated mining, habitat destruction, pollution) puts a fly in the ointment. But most concerning to me is what we already do with energy. Answer: initiate a sixth mass extinction by running a resource-hungry, human supremacist, global market economy. Most climate change “solutions” assign top priority to maintaining the destructive juggernaut at full speed—without question.
ECOLOGICAL COLLAPSE
This brings me to the ultimate peril. As large, hungry, high-maintenance mammals on this planet, we are utterly dependent on a healthy, vibrant, biodiverse ecology—in ways we can’t begin to fathom. It’s beyond our meat-brain capacity to appreciate. Long-term survival at the hands of evolution has never once required cognitive comprehension of the myriad subtle relationships necessary for a stable community of life. An amoeba, mayfly, newt, or hedgehog gets on just fine without such knowledge. What is required is fitting into the niches and interrelationships patiently worked out through the process of evolution. Guess what: in a flash, we jumped the tracks into a patently non-ecological lifestyle not vetted by evolution to be viable. It appears to be not even close.
This is not just a theoretical concern. Biologists are pretty clear that a sixth mass extinction is underway as a direct result of modernity. The dots are not particularly hard to connect. We mine and spew/dispose materials alien to the community of life into the environment. Good luck, critters! We eliminate or shatter wild space in favor of “developed” land: exterminating, eradicating, displacing, and impoverishing the life that depends on that land and its resident web of life. The struggle can take decades to resolve as populations ebb—generation after generation—on the road to inevitable failure. Even this decades-long process is effectively instant compared to the millions of years over which the intricate web was crafted.
I have pointed out a number of times that we are now down to 2.5 kg of wild land mammal mass per human on the planet. It was 80 kg per person in 1800 and 50,000 kg per person before the start of the agricultural revolution—when humans held a roughly proportionate share of mammal biomass compared to the other mammal species. In my lifetime (born 1970), the average decline in vertebrate populations has been roughly 70%. Fish, insects, birds decline at 1–2% per year, which compounds quickly. Extinction rates are now hundreds of times higher than the background, almost all of which has transpired in the last century.
Just like the golf ball in the room or the rock tumbling down the mountainside, these figures allow us to place approximate, relevant timescales on the phenomenon of ecological collapse—and that timescale is at the sub-century level. We’re watching its opening act, and the rate is alarming. The consequences, however, are easily brushed aside in ignorance. Try it yourself: mention to someone that humans can’t survive ecological collapse and—Family Feud style—I’d put my money on “I don’t see why not” being among the most frequent responses.
So, Don’t Give Me That…
I think you can see why I’m not swayed by the tidy and fully-decontextualized lazy logic of extrapolation offered by some of the smartest people. This psychologically satisfying logic can have such a powerfully persuasive pull that it short-circuits serious considerations of the counterarguments. This is especially true when the relevant subjects are uncomfortable, inconvenient, unfamiliar, and also happen to be beyond our capacity to cognitively master. Just because we can’t understand something doesn’t render it non-existent. Seeking answers from within our brains gets what it deserves: garbage in—garbage out.
We used the metaphors of a golf ball or rolling stone necessarily coming to rest. Likewise, a thrown rock will return to the ground, or a flying contraption not based on the aerodynamic principles of sustainable flight will fail to stay aloft. Modernity has no ecological context (no rich set of evolved interrelationships and co-dependencies with the rest of the community of life) and is rapidly demonstrating its unsustainable nature on many parallel, interconnected fronts. This would seem to make the default position clear: modernity will come to rest on a century-ish timescale, the initial reversal possibly becoming evident in mere decades. [Correction: I think it will likely be mostly stopped on a century timescale, but it may take millennia to fully melt into whatever mode comes next.]
Retreating to the logic of extrapolation or basic unpredictability amounts to a faith-based approach that deflects any actual analysis: a cowardly dodge. Given the multi-layer, parallel concerns all pointing to a temporary modernity, it would seem to put the burden of proof that “the unsustainable can be sustained” squarely on the collapse-deniers. The default position is that unsustainable systems fail; that non-ecological modes lack longevity; that unprecedented and extreme departures do not become the rule; that no species is capable of going-it alone. Arguing the extraordinary obverse demands extraordinary evidence, which of course is not availing itself.
When logic suggests an attractive bypass, recognize that logic is only a narrow and disconnected component of a more complete, complex reality. Most importantly, the logic of extrapolation only serves to throw up a cautionary flag, without even bothering to address the relevant dynamics. That particular flag is later recognized as a misfire once the appropriate elements are given due consideration: this time is different, because modernity is outrageously different from the larger temporal and ecological context. Pretending otherwise requires turning a spider’s-worth of blind eyes to protect a short-term, ideological, emotionally “safe” agenda. Pretend all you want: it won’t change what’s real.
Editor’s note: “A study published in 2024 found that a change in insecticide use was a major factor in driving butterfly declines in the Midwest over 17 years. The authors, many of whom were also part of the current study, noted that the drop coincided with a shift to using seeds with prophylactic insecticides, rather than only spraying crops after an infestation.”
“Only the Pacific Northwest didn’t lose butterfly population on average. This trend was largely driven by an irruptive species, meaning one with extremely high abundance in some years – the California tortoiseshell. When this species was excluded from the analyses, trends in the Pacific Northwest were similar to other regions.”
“Imagine a world without the delicate flutter of butterfly wings or the vibrant splashes of color they bring to our gardens. Sadly, this could become a reality sooner than we think. A recent study published in the journal Science has revealed a shocking decline in butterfly populations across most regions of the United States.”
A study in the United States found a dramatic 22% decline in butterfly populations between 2000 and 2020.
Previous research has focused on a specific butterfly species or regions of the country. For this study, researchers wanted to understand overall butterfly population trends across the U.S.
They gathered records of 12.6 million individual butterflies across 554 species, from more than 76,000 surveys, many conducted by citizen science groups in nearly 2,500 locations.
The researchers found that total butterfly numbers were down by 22% over the first two decades of this century. It’s a concerning trend, said Collin Edwards, lead author of the study and an ecological modeler with the state of Washington Fish and Wildlife Department.
To put it in context, “for someone who was born in 2000, one out of every five butterflies had disappeared by the time they became an adult,” Edwards told Mongabay by phone.
The 22% decline is an average. Of the 554 species examined, 107 declined by at least 50% and 22 species declined by more than 90%.
At the same time, nine species saw population increases. The eastern population of the monarch (Danaus plexippus) doubled in 2025, though its overall population is still down roughly 80%, prompting the iconic butterfly to be proposed for the U.S. endangered species list.
Several of the nine species that increased in population are predominantly found in Mexico; the U.S. is the northern edge of their range. Edwards said with a warming climate, many butterfly species are shifting their habitats north.
“If the southern edge of their limit is just barely cold enough for them, as the climate warms, that’ll get worse. But the northern edge where it used to be a little bit too cold will start to get warm enough,” Edwards said.
This study adds to a growing body of research showing a global decline in insect populations, raising concerns about a depleting food source for many animals including birds and frogs, which are facing population crashes in their own right.
Furthermore, while bees get most of the glory, butterflies are also critical pollinators. A 2021 study in Texas found butterflies provide about $120 million per year in pollination services for cotton.
Tierra Curry, a senior scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, told Mongabay by email that “this is a landmark study” that “shows that we need to take urgent action to safeguard butterflies. Every action we take to help pollinators also helps us because our fate is directly tied to their health.” Curry wasn’t involved with this research.
Edwards said this study focused on butterflies because that’s the order of insects they had data for, but he added there’s “every reason to think that if butterflies are declining there are probably similar declines in other groups of insects,” especially since the drivers of decline — habitat loss, climate change and pesticides — affect most insects.
Editor’s note: “MMA is methyl methacrylate, a chemical compound that was banned by the FDA in the 1970s for use in nail enhancements due to its potential health hazards,” Hanna says. Celebrity manicurist Julie Kandalec adds, “It’s an ingredient commonly found in acrylic liquids, called monomer.”
One of the easiest ways to check if there is MMA in your acrylic or nail supplies is to check the ingredient list of your products. It should not be listed as an ingredient in any reputable acrylic nail product. A few additional tips include: Smelling a very harsh odor when applying and filing your acrylic nails – some people say it smells like cat urine.
“Mitsubishi Chemical Group (MCG) has concluded a license agreement with SNF Group regarding MCG’s N-vinylformamide (NVF) manufacturing technology. NVF is a raw material of functional polymers. Using the manufacturing technology licensed under this agreement, SNF will start the commercial production of NVF at its new plant in Dunkirk, France as of this June. NVF is a monomer used as a material for papermaking chemicals, water treatment agents, and oil field chemicals.”
Environmental activists claim victory as Mitsubishi scraps $1.3 billion chemical plant in ‘Cancer Alley’
by Tristan Baurick, Verite News New Orleans
Environmental groups are claiming victory after Mitsubishi Chemical Group dropped plans for a $1.3 billion plant in the heart of Louisiana’s industrial corridor.
In the works for more than a decade, the chemical manufacturing complex would have been the largest of its kind in the world, stretching across 77 acres in Geismar, a small Ascension Parish community about 60 miles west of New Orleans. Tokyo-based Mitsubishi cited only economic factors when announcing the cancellation last week, but a recent report on the plant’s feasibility noted that growing community concern about air pollution could also hamper the project’s success.
“The frontline communities are fighting back, causing delays, and that amounts to money being lost,” said Gail LeBoeuf with Inclusive Louisiana, an environmental group focused on the industrial corridor along the Mississippi River known as Cancer Alley.
The nonprofit group Beyond Petrochemical declared the project’s failure a “major victory for the health and safety of Louisianans.”
According to Mitsubishi, the plant could have produced up to 350,000 tons per year of methyl methacrylate, or MMA, a colorless liquid used in the manufacture of plastics and a host of consumer products, including TVs, paint and nail polish.
The plant was expected to be a major polluter, releasing hundreds of tons per year of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and other harmful chemicals, according to its permit information.
Mitsubishi cited rising costs and waning demand for MMA as the reasons for dropping the project. In a statement, the company indicated the plant likely wouldn’t have enough MMA customers to cover “increases in capital investment stemming from inflation and other factors.”
In July, a report on the plant’s viability warned that a global oversupply of MMA and fierce local opposition made the project a “bad bet.”
Conducted by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the report said that credit agencies are paying more attention to “community sentiment” about petrochemical projects, particularly in Louisiana. In Geismar and other parts of Cancer Alley, there’s a “disproportionately heavy concentration of polluting industrial facilities” and Mitsubishi could become “entangled in a decades-long dispute involving issues of racial inequality and environmental justice,” the IEEFA report said.
Geismar residents are surrounded by about a half-dozen large chemical facilities that emit harmful levels of air pollution. Of the more than 6,000 people who live within the three miles of the planned project site, about 40% are Black or Hispanic, and 20% are considered low-income, according to federal data.
“The air here is already so dirty that the kids can’t play outside anymore,” said Pamela Ambeau, Ascension Parish resident and member of the group Rural Roots Louisiana.
The proposed plant is the latest in a string of failed industrial projects in Cancer Alley. Since 2019, local activism was instrumental in halting the development of two large plastics complexes in St. James Parish and a grain export terminal in St. John the Baptist Parish. All three projects would have been built in historically Black and rural communities.
Mitsubishi’s project had the strong backing of Louisiana political leaders. In 2020, then-Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, praised the project as a “world-scale” chemical manufacturing facility that would create “quality jobs.”
Louisiana Economic Development predicted the plant would create 125 jobs with an average salary of $100,000 and another 669 “indirect jobs” in the region.
The state agency began courting Mitsubishi in 2016, offering the company worker recruitment and training assistance and a $4 million grant to offset construction costs.
In 2021, Mitsubishi applied for property tax abatement via the state’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP. The tax relief, which Louisiana has granted to several similar projects, was pending the plant’s construction and would have saved the company an estimated $17 million in its first year, according to LED.
The first of a series of project delays began in 2022 due to what Mitsubishi called “market volatilities.”
Mitsubishi appeared to be betting on generous state subsidies “while ignoring the larger financial landscape,” said Tom Sanzillo, author of the IEEFA report.
The combination of sustained market weakness and strong public opposition “erased the potential benefits they are counting on,” he said.
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: “In recent years, the Southeast Asian country of Vietnam experienced a boom in renewable energy investments driven by generous feed-in tariffs, under which the state committed to buying electricity for 20 years at above-market prices. However, the high tariffs increased losses for Vietnam’s state-owned power utility EVN, the only buyer of the generated electricity, and led to an increase in power prices for households and factories. Authorities have repeatedly tried to reduce the high tariffs. Now they are considering a retroactive review of the criteria set for accessing the feed-in tariffs.”
“It’s really hard to build wind farms in Arizona, and if you put this into place, it’s just pretty much wiping you out,” said Troy Rule, a professor of law at Arizona State University and a published expert on renewable energy systems. “It’s like you’re trying to kill Arizona’s wind farm industry.”
United States Congressional House Republicans are seeking to prevent the use of taxpayer dollars to incentivize what they describe as “green energy boondoggles” on agricultural lands, citing subsidies that could cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.
They are expensive to build, just finding their footing on this side of the Atlantic, and have faced backlash from parties as varied as beachfront property owners and fishermen to coastal businesses and fossil fuel backers(most of the developers have fossil fuel ties).
The future of Humboldt County’s offshore wind industry appears increasingly uncertain following mass layoffs at RWE and Vineyard Offshore, the multinational energy companies leading efforts to develop commercial-scale floating wind farms on the North Coast. The job cuts come in response to widespread market uncertainty following President Donald Trump’s efforts to ban offshore wind development in the United States.
A critical permit for an offshore wind farm planned near the New Jersey Shore has been invalidated by an administrative appeals board.
COLOMBO — In a dramatic turn of events, Indian tycoon Gautam Adani’s Green Energy Limited (AGEL) has withdrawn from the second phase of a proposed wind power project in northern Sri Lanka. The project, which was planned to generate 250 MW through the installation of 52 wind turbines in Mannar in the island’s north, faced strong opposition since the beginning due to serious environmental implications and allegations of financial irregularities.
While renewable energy is a crucial need in the era of climate change, Sri Lankan environmentalists opposed the project, citing potential ecological damage to the sensitive Mannar region. Additionally, concerns arose over the way the contract was awarded, without a competitive bidding process.
The former government, led by President Ranil Wickremesinghe, had inked an agreement with AGEL, setting the power purchase price at $0.82 per unit for 20 years. This rate was significantly higher than rates typically offered by local companies. “This is an increase of about 70%, a scandalous deal that should be investigated,” said Rohan Pethiyagoda, a globally recognized taxonomist and former deputy chair of the IUCN’s Species Survival Commission.
Legal battles
Five lawsuits were filed against this project by local environmental organizations, including the Wildlife and Nature Protection Society, the Centre for Environmental Justice and the Environmental Foundation Ltd. In January, the newly elected government expressed its desire to cancel the initial agreement and to renegotiate its terms and conditions, citing the high electricity tariff. Environmentalists welcomed the decision, believing the project would be scrapped entirely. However, their relief was short-lived when AGEL clarified that the project itself was not canceled, only the tariff agreement.
Government spokesperson Nalinda Jayatissa later confirmed that the project would proceed after renegotiating a lower power purchase rate. However, two weeks later, AGEL announced its complete withdrawal from the project, a decision widely believed to be influenced by the government’s stance.
Wind energy potential
Sri Lanka has been exploring wind energy potential for more than two decades, with the first large-scale wind farm in Mannar named Thambapavani commissioned in 2020. This facility, comprising 30 wind turbines, currently generates 100 MW of power. With an additional 20 turbines planned, the Mannar wind sector would have surpassed 100 towers.
The Adani Group had pledged an investment totaling $442 million, and already, $5 million has been spent in predevelopment activities. On Feb. 15, the Adani Group formally announced its decision to leave the project. In a statement, the group stated: “We would respectfully withdraw from the said project. As we bow out, we wish to reaffirm that we would always be available for the Sri Lankan government to have us undertake any development opportunity.”
Environmentalists argue that Mannar, a fragile peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow land strip, cannot sustain such extensive development. “If built, this project would exceed the carrying capacity of the island,” Pethiyagoda noted.
Mannar is not only a growing tourism hub, known for its pristine beaches and archaeological sites, but also Sri Lanka’s most important bird migration corridor. As the last landmass along the Central Asian Flyway, the region hosts millions of migratory birds, including 20 globally threatened species, he added.
Sampath Seneviratne of the University of Colombo, who has conducted satellite tracking research on migratory birds, highlighted the global importance of Mannar. “Some birds that winter here have home ranges as far as the Arctic Circle,” he said. His research has shown how extensively these birds rely on the Mannar Peninsula.
Although mitigation measures such as bird monitoring radar have been proposed to reduce turbine collisions, power lines distributing electricity remain a significant threat, particularly to species like flamingos, a major attraction in Mannar. The power lines distributing electricity from the already established wind farm near the Vankalai Ramsar Wetland and are already proven to be a death trap for unsuspecting feathered kind.
Nature-based tourism
Given Mannar’s ecological significance, conservationists say the region has greater potential as a destination for ecotourism rather than large-scale industrial projects. “Mannar’s rich biodiversity and historical value make it ideal for nature-friendly tourism, which would also benefit the local community,” Pethiyagoda added.
With AGEL’s withdrawal, Sri Lanka now faces the challenge of balancing its renewable energy ambitions with environmental conservation. However, there are other sites in Sri Lanka having more wind power potential, and Sri Lankan environmentalists hope ecologically rich Mannar will be spared from unsustainable wind farms projects.
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!
