By Olivia Rosane is a staff writer for Common Dreams from Dec 02, 2024
Environmental organizations cheered as Norway’s controversial plans to move forward with deep-sea mining in the vulnerable Arctic Ocean were iced on Sunday.
The pause was won in Norway’s parliament by the small Socialist Left (SV) Party in exchange for its support in passing the government’s 2025 budget.
“Today marks a monumental victory for the ocean, as the SV Party in Norway has successfully blocked the controversial plan to issue deep-sea mining licenses for the country’s extended continental shelf in the Arctic,” Steve Trent, CEO and founder of the Environmental Justice Foundation, said in a statement. “This decision is a testament to the power of principled, courageous political action, and it is a moment to celebrate for environmental advocates, ocean ecosystems, and future generations alike.”
Norway sparked outrage in January when its parliament voted to allow deep-sea mining exploration in a swath of its Arctic waters larger than the United Kingdom. Scientists have warned that mining the Arctic seabed could disturb unique hydrothermal vent ecosystems and even drive species to extinction before scientists have a chance to study them. It would also put additional pressure on all levels of Arctic Ocean life—from plankton to marine mammals—at a time when they are already feeling the impacts of rising temperatures and ocean acidification due to the burning of fossil fuels.
“The Arctic Ocean is one of the last pristine frontiers on Earth, and its fragile ecosystems are already under significant stress from the climate crisis,” Trent said. “The idea of subjecting these waters to the destructive, needless practice of deep-sea mining was a grave threat, not only to the marine life depending on them but to the global community as a whole.”
“Thankfully, this shortsighted and harmful plan has been halted, marking a clear victory in the ongoing fight to protect our planet’s blue beating heart,” Trent continued.
In June, Norway announced that it would grant the first exploratory mining licenses in early 2025. However, this has been put on hold by the agreement with the SV Party.
“This puts a stop to the plans to start deep-sea mining until the end of the government’s term,” party leader Kirsti Bergstø said, as The Guardian reported.
Norway next holds parliamentary elections in September 2025, so no licenses will be approved before then.
The move comes amid widespread opposition to deep-sea mining in Norway and beyond. A total of 32 countries and 911 marine scientistshave called for a global moratorium on the practice. More than 100 E.U. parliamentarians wrote a letter opposing Norway’s plans specifically, and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has sued to stop them.
“This is a major and important environmental victory!” WWF-Norway CEO Karoline Andaur said in a statement. “SV has stopped the process for deep seabed mining, giving Norway a unique opportunity to save its international ocean reputation and gain the necessary knowledge before we even consider mining the planet’s last untouched wilderness.”
Haldis Tjeldflaat Helle, the deep-sea mining campaigner at Greenpeace Nordic, called the decision “a huge win.”
“After hard work from activists, environmentalists, scientists, and fishermen, we have secured a historic win for ocean protection, as the opening process for deep-sea mining in Norway has been stopped,” Helle said in a statement. “The wave of protests against deep-sea mining is growing. We will not let this industry destroy the unique life in the deep sea, not in the Arctic nor anywhere else.”
However, Norway’s Arctic waters are not entirely safe yet.
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere, of the Labour Party, toldTV2, on Sunday, “This will be a postponement.”
The government said that other work to begin the process of deep-sea mining, such as drafting regulations and conducting environmental impact surveys, would move forward. Norway is currently governed by the Labour and Center parties. The two parties leading in polls for September’s elections—the Conservatives and Progress Party—also both back deep-sea mining, according toReuters.
“If a new government attempts to reopen the licensing round we will fight relentlessly against it,” Frode Pleym, who leads Greenpeace Norway, told Reuters.
Other environmental groups tempered their celebrations with calls for further action.
Trent of the Environmental Justice Foundation said that “while today is a cause for celebration, this victory must not be seen as the end of the struggle.”
“We urge Norway’s government, and all responsible global actors, to make this a lasting victory by enshrining protections for the Arctic Ocean and its ecosystems into law, and coming out in favor of a moratorium or ban on deep-sea mining,” Trent added. “It is only through a collective commitment to sustainability and long-term stewardship of our oceans that we can ensure the health of the marine environment for generations to come.”
Trent concluded: “Today, thanks to the SV Party and all those around the world who spoke up against this decision, the ocean has won. Now, let’s ensure this victory lasts.”
Andaur of WWF said that this was a “pivotal moment” for Norway to “demonstrate global leadership by prioritizing ocean health over destructive industry.”
As WWF called on Norway to abandon its mining plans, it also urged the nation to reconsider its exploitation of the ocean for oil and gas.
“Unfortunately, we have not seen similar efforts to curtail the Norwegian oil industry, which is still getting new licenses to operate in Norwegian waters, including very vulnerable parts of the Arctic,” Andaur said. “Norway needs to explore new ways to make money without extracting fossil fuels and destroying nature.”
Greenpeace also pointed to the role Norway’s pause could play in bolstering global opposition to deep-sea mining.
“Millions of people across the world are calling on governments to resist the dire threat of deep-sea mining to safeguard oceans worldwide,” Greenpeace International Stop Deep-Sea Mining campaigner Louisa Casson said. “This is a huge step forward to protect the Arctic, and now it is time for Norway to join over 30 nations calling for a moratorium and be a true ocean champion.”
Editor’s note: Major plastic polluters win as the UN Treaty talks conclude without an agreement. Modern lifestyles and practices are intimately entwined with the use of plastics. Our phones, computers, food packaging, clothes, and even renewable energy technologies, such as wind turbine blades and the cables that connect them to the power grid, are all largely made from plastics. Plastics production requires fossil hydrocarbons and this connection continues to grow stronger daily. Powerful oil producers, both private companies and governments of oil-producing nations, were seen as the key impediment to a consensus deal. What will happen next? “Agree to a treaty among the willing even if that means leaving some countries that don’t want a strong treaty or concede to countries that will likely never join the treaty anyway, failing the planet in the process.”
“Plastic has been found everywhere on Earth — from deepest oceans to high mountains, in clouds and pole to pole. Microplastics have also been found in every place scientists look for them in the human body, from the brain to the testes, breast milk, and artery plaque. Microplastics pose health risks to humans and wildlife, researchers warn.” PFAS(perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances) – “forever chemicals” contaminate biosolids(waste from sewage) used as fertilizer and pesticides, they also contain heavy metals and nitrates.
Today’s cheerleaders for increased birth rates are well aware of the silent cause of the ongoing rapid decline in male sperm counts. It’s the very industries these corporate managers run and governments regulate that is the blame. So you can be almost 100 percent sure that they are not going to address the real problem in order to achieve the goal of increasing human birth rates.
Laws must mandate companies to reduce their plastic footprint through production reduction, product redesign, or reuse systems — higher-priority strategies in the Zero Waste hierarchy,
Bottlenose dolphins leapt and torpedoed through the shallow turquoise waters off Florida’s Sarasota Bay. Then, a research team moved in, quickly corralling the small pod in a large net.
With the speed of a race car pit crew, veterinarians, biologists and their assistants examined the animals, checking vital signs while taking skin, blood and other samples. They held a petri dish over each dolphin’s blowhole until it exhaled, with an intensity similar to a human cough. Then, they rolled up the net and the dolphins swam off unharmed. A pod in Louisiana’s Barataria Bay was similarly tested.
Generations of dolphins have been part of this ongoing dolphin health study, which has been run by the Sarasota Dolphin Research Program since 1970. It tracks populations and individuals and also looks for health issues related to pollutants in the marine environment.
In the lab, scientists discovered that all 11 of the dolphins had breathed out microplastic fibers, shed from synthetic clothing, says Leslie B. Hart, associate professor at the College of Charleston and an author on this research. The fibers resembled those found in human lungs in previous studies, proving that dolphins, like us, are breathing plastic. In people, microplastic has been linked to poor lung function and possible lung disease.
The dolphin studies are part of a larger quest to understand how plastic pollution is impacting the world’s wildlife. While thousands of human studies have demonstrated damage from tiny plastic particles entering both cells and organs throughout the body, little is known about animal impacts because long-term field studies are difficult and costly. “We’re really just starting to skim the surface,” Hart says.
Beyond the threat plastics pose to individual animals and species, other researchers have detected broader, global harm, a new report warns. Plastic pollution is transforming Earth systems needed to support life, worsening climate change, increasing biodiversity loss, making oceans more acidic and more.
The plastics crisis is escalating rapidly: Each year, petrochemical manufacturers make more than 500 million tons of plastics –– but the world recycles just 9%. The rest is burned, landfilled or ends up in rivers, rainwater, the air, soil or the sea. Today, the planet is awash in plastic. “It’s everywhere. It’s pervasive and it’s persistent,” says Andrew Wargo, who focuses on ecosystem health at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Since the 1930s the polymers industry has completely altered daily life: Plastics are in our homes, cars, clothes, furniture, and electronics, as well as our single-use throwaway water bottles, food packaging and takeout containers.
A critically important fifth round of negotiations begins Nov. 25 when delegates hope to hammer out final treaty language for ratification by U.N. member states.
Meanwhile, the natural world is in great danger, threatened by a biodiversity crisis, a climate crisis and serious degradations of planetary systems. Researchers are now scrambling to understand the growing threat plastics pose to the health of all living organisms.
Plastics conquer the world
Bakelite, the first synthetic plastic product ever made, came on the market in 1907. By the 1950s, production ramped up, changing the course of history and revolutionizing modern life. Plastics facilitated innumerable human innovations — and spawned a throwaway culture. Add in poorly regulated petrochemical manufacturing processes and industrial fishing’s plastic gear, and global plastic pollution stats soared.
Plastic debris was first noticed in the oceans in the early 1960s. For a long time, ecologists’ main wildlife concerns focused on the threat to sea turtles and other marine creatures that ate plastic bags or became tangled in plastic fishing nets. Now, everything from zooplankton to sharks and seabirds eat it and are exposed to it.
Hart emphasizes the problem’s global scope: “Plastic pollution has been found on every continent and in every ocean, in people, terrestrial wildlife and marine wildlife.” It contaminates creatures across the tree of life and concentrates up the food chain, threatening
Seabirds are at particular risk from microplastics, easily mistaking particles for food. Ingestion causes physical and hormonal damage to cells and organs. Image by A_Different_Perspective via Pixabay (Public domain).Image by Alpizar, F., et al. via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Insidious plastic harm to health
It’s well known that animals regularly mistake plastic debris for food. Shearwaters and other seabirds, for example, can choke and starve when plastic pieces block their digestive tracts or pierce internal organs. At least 1,565 species are known to ingest plastic. For decades, scientists have noted dead animals ensnared in plastic nets, fishing gear or six-pack rings.
But those big pieces of petrochemical plastic (along with their chemical additives) don’t decompose; they degrade into ever-smaller pieces, getting smaller and smaller. Eventually, they break down into microplastics, tiny particles no bigger than a grain of sand, or become nanoparticles, visible only under a high-powered microscope. These microplastics can leach toxic chemicals. Of the more than 13,000 chemicals currently used in plastics, at least 3,200 have one or more “hazardous properties of concern,” according to a U.N. report.
Most of what we know today about the health impacts of plastics and their chemical additives is based on human medical research, which may offer clues to what happens to animals; that’s unlike most health research, which is done on animals and extrapolated to people.
We know from human medical research that microplastics can damage cells and organs and alter hormones that influence their function. Plastic particles have crossed the blood-brain barrier. They have lodged in human bone marrow, testicles, the liver, kidneys and essentially every other part of the body. They enter the placenta, blood and breast milk. Exposure may affect behavior and lower immunity.
And what plastics do to us, they likely do to animals. The phthalates found in Florida dolphins, for example, along with phenols, parabens and per- and polyfluoroalkyls, are just a fraction of the many endocrine disruptors released by plastics and their chemical additives that can alter hormone levels and derail body functions. Exposure may affect behavior and lower immunity.
Plastic does not disappear: It breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces that settle in soil and float in the air and water. Microplastic can easily penetrate living organisms, their cells, and even cross the blood-brain barrier. Image by European Commission (Lukasz Kobus) via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).
Doctors have confirmed links between plastic and human disease and disability. “They cause premature birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth as well as leukemia, lymphoma, brain cancer, liver cancer, heart disease and stroke,” Phil Landrigan, a pediatrician and environmental health expert stated in a press conference earlier this year.
In the wild, animals are now exposed daily to microplastics, eating and breathing them, while many freshwater and marine species swim in a plastic soup. But little is known about the long-term impacts of chronic exposure or what microplastics do within animal tissues, with even less understood about what happens when microplastics shrink to nano size and easily enter cells.
In lab experiments, microplastics in the lungs of pregnant rats easily passed to their fetuses’ brains, hearts and other organs. In adult mice, plastic nanoparticles crossed the blood-brain barrier, triggering swift changes that resembled dementia. In a wild animal, cognitive decline can quickly prove fatal, making it difficult to find food, avoid predators, mate or raise young.
In the lab, fish were more susceptible to a common virus after a one-month exposure to microplastic. They then shed more virus (a fish public health problem) and died in high numbers. Surprisingly, “there’s a lot of similarities between fish and humans, so that we have a lot of the same immune pathways,” explains Wargo, an author on this study. However, the reaction depended on the type of plastic. Nylon fibers had the biggest effect; most nylon sheds from synthetic clothing.
Nearly all Laysan albatross (Phoebastria immutabilis) carcasses found on Midway Atoll contain marine plastic debris. Experts estimate that albatrosses feed their chicks approximately 10,000 pounds of marine debris annually on Midway, enough plastic to fill about 100 curbside trash cans. Image by USFWS – Pacific Region via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0).
One challenge to researching health impacts, Wargo explains, is that “plastics oftentimes are lumped into one category, but they’re [all] very different: their structure, chemical composition, their shape and size,” creating thousands of variations. These factors influence how toxic they are, he says, which likely varies between individual animals and different species. Investigation is further complicated and obstructed by petrochemical companies that zealously guard their proprietary polymer product formulas.
The ubiquity of plastics and their global presence means that polymers likely have many undetected and unstudied wildlife health impacts. Some impacts could be masked by other environmental stressors, and untangling and analyzing the particulars will likely take decades.
What we do know is that the poor health, decline or disappearance of a single species within a natural community ripples outward, affecting others, and damaging interconnected ecological systems that have evolved in synchrony over millennia. Here’s just one speculative concern: We know microplastics can bioaccumulate, so apex predators, which balance ecosystems by keeping prey species in check, may be at high risk because they consume and build up large concentrations of microplastics and additive chemicals in their organs.
Plastics harm wildlife –– and humans –– in additional ways: by polluting the air and contributing to climate extremes. Currently, about 19% of plastic waste is incinerated, releasing potentially harmful chemical aerosols into the air. In addition, plastic production sends 232 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere yearly. Then there’s the pollution and carbon released from fracking and drilling operations to source the oil and gas to make these products.
Lastly, the microplastics animals and humans ingest are “Trojan horses.” These tiny particles absorb and carry a wide range of pollutants and bacteria, which then can enter and lodge within our bodies.
Single-use plastic bottles and other throwaway plastic packaging are a major cause of plastic pollution, with many activists and nations calling for a ban. While plastic bottles can be recycled, they frequently aren’t. Also, plastics degrade every time they’re recycled and are usually recycled only once or twice. Image by Hans via Pixabay (Public domain).
Stanching ‘a global-scale deluge of plastic waste’
Climate change and the plastics crisis spring from the same source: The world’s seven largest plastic manufacturers are fossil fuel companies. The U.S. produces the most plastic waste of any country, more than the entire EU combined: 42 million metric tons annually, or 287 pounds per person, according to a 2022 congressional report. It noted that “The success of the 20th-century miracle invention of plastics has also produced a global-scale deluge of plastic waste seemingly everywhere we look.”
Consumers can take small actions to protect themselves and limit plastic pollution by avoiding single-use plastics and carrying reusable bags and stainless-steel water bottles. Disposable fast-food packaging makes up almost half of plastic garbage in the ocean, so cutting back on takeout and bottled water could help.
But realistically addressing the planet’s plastics emergency requires a global paradigm shift that reframes the discussion. Many nations still think of plastics as a waste management issue, but responsibility needs to fall on the shoulders of regulators — and the producers, specifically fossil fuel companies and petrochemical manufacturers.
An international consortium of scientists has stressed the need for “urgent action” in the run-up to this month’s United Nations plastics treaty negotiations, the fifth and hopefully final summit intended to establish international regulations.
The U.S. had been among the largest, most influential dissenters in efforts to limit global plastics production and identify hazardous chemicals used in plastics. But in August 2024, prior to the U.S. presidential election, the Biden administration publicly announced it had toughened its position, supporting production limits, but submitted no position paper. Then, this week it returned to its earlier stance that would protect the plastics industry from production caps.
The plastics treaty summit in Busan, South Korea, beginning Nov. 25 and ending Dec. 1, aims to finalize treaty language that will then need to be ratified by the world’s nations. Regardless of the summit’s outcome, scientists continue to uncover new evidence of plastic’s dangers to humans, animals and the planet, raising the alarm and need for action.
This beach on the island of Santa Luzia, Cape Verde, dramatically illustrates a global problem: a world awash in plastic waste. What it doesn’t show is the breakdown of this debris by wind and tide into microplastics, now sickening people and animals. Image by Plastic Captain Darwin via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Banner: A black-winged stilt (Himantopus himantopus) forages in a swamp polluted with plastic and other trash. Image by Sham Prakash via Pexels (Public domain).
JAKARTA — German chemical giant BASF and French miner Eramet have pulled out of a multibillion-dollar “green energy” project in Indonesia because of its impact on one of the last Indigenous tribes on Earth living in voluntary isolation.
In an announcement on June 24, both companies said they had scrapped plans to invest up to $2.6 billion in the project on the island of Halmahera in Indonesia’s eastern province of North Maluku. The Sonic Bay project would have seen the construction of a refinery producing about 67,000 metric tons of nickel and 7,500 metric tons of cobalt a year. These metals, crucial ingredients in electric vehicle batteries, would have come from the nearby Weda Bay Nickel mine, the world’s largest nickel mine, in which Eramet holds a minority stake.
In its announcement, BASF said it would “stop all ongoing evaluation and negotiation activities for the project in Weda Bay.”
The decision came after a sustained campaign by activists voicing concerns that the Sonic Bay refinery, which is essentially an extension of the Weda Bay Nickel project, would increase the risk of Indigenous peoples in the area losing their lands. Weda Bay Nickel’s concession overlaps with rainforest that’s home to hundreds of members of the Forest Tobelo people, according to U.K.-based Indigenous rights NGO Survival International, which has lobbied both BASF and the German authorities to drop out of the project.
Eramet’s Weda Bay Nickel mine on the territory of the uncontacted Forest Tobelo people in Halmahera, Indonesia. Image courtesy of Survival International.
‘The people who live in the forest’
The Forest Tobelo tribe are among the last Indigenous groups still living in voluntary isolation from the rest of world. They are believed to number between 300 and 500 hunter-gatherer nomadic peoples whose way of life is so intricately tied to the environment that they call themselves O’Hongana Manyawa — the people who live in the forest.
Because the Forest Tobelo people avoid contact with outsiders, it’s unlikely they could ever be reasonably consulted about any projects in their area, or give their free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) for the use of their customary lands. Some tribe members have emerged from their isolation to report losing their forests to the mining concession.
As such, any investment in the Sonic Bay project would likely contribute to the ongoing destruction of the Forest Tobelo people’s forests, Survival International said.
This could be a reason why BASF and Eramet pulled out of the project, said Pius Ginting, coordinator of the Indonesian NGO Action for Ecology and Emancipation of the People (AEER). BASF’s stated reason is that the supply of battery-grade nickel in the market has eased, and that it therefore doesn’t need to invest so heavily to secure supplies.
What it doesn’t mention, however, is that its home government, Germany, is legally obligated to protect, respect and implement the rights of Indigenous and tribal peoples and improve their living and working conditions in the countries where they live. That’s because Germany in 2021 ratified the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Populations Convention.
That would therefore make any German company’s involvement in a project like Sonic Bay that threatens Indigenous peoples a violation of the convention, Pius said.
He also pointed out that WBN had scored poorly in a routine annual assessment of environmental parameters by Indonesia’s Ministry of Environment and Forestry. Known as the PROPER assessment, it assigns a color code to rate companies’ performance, ranging from gold to green to blue to red to black; a gold or green grade means a company exceeds legal requirements.
In 2022, Weda Bay Nickel received a red grade, meaning it failed to operate in accordance with existing environmental and social regulations.
“Even if [BASF and Eramet] said the main reason [for their withdrawal] is because of the market and the economy, we see that environmental risks are of course being considered as well due to WBN’s bad PROPER score,” Pius said.
He added their abandonment of the project should be a wake-up call for the rest of the battery metals industry and the Indonesian government to improve the environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of the industry.
A member of the Forest Tobelo indigenous group in North Maluku, Indonesia. Photo by Muhammad Ector Prasetyo/Flickr.
‘No-go zone’ to protect Indigenous tribe
Despite this development, WBN’s mining operation looks set to continue as the government pushes for Indonesia to become a powerhouse in the production of battery metals. This means the Forest Tobelo people will continue to be at risk of losing their forests, Survival International said.
The campaign group recently posted a video showing an uncontacted Forest Tobelo family approaching workers at a mining camp. According to Survival International, the family was asking for food after their rainforest was destroyed. It said similar scenes can be prevented by establishing a no-go zone, where no mining or other activities can take place.
Much of the nickel mined at Weda Bay goes to Chinese EV makers; the mine’s majority stakeholder is Tsingshan Holding Group, the world’s biggest nickel producer. Tesla, which doesn’t currently source nickel from Weda Bay but has signed agreements worth billions of dollars with Indonesian nickel and cobalt suppliers, said in its 2023 impact report that it was “exploring the need for a no-go zone” to protect uncontacted Indigenous peoples.
In a meeting with Survival International representatives, senior Indonesian politician Tamsil Linrung also voiced his support for the protection of the Forest Tobelo people through the establishment of a no-go zone.
“We will try to make that region a no-go zone. If not in the near future, perhaps after the next president is sworn into office [in October 2024],” he said.
Uncontacted Forest Tobelo peoples appear at a Weda Bay Nickel mining camp. The uncontacted Forest Tobelo are becoming effectively forced to beg for food from the same companies destroying their rainforest home. Image courtesy of Survival International.
Respite — for now
For now, the news that BASF and Eramet are dropping out of the refinery project provides some respite for the Forest Tobelo people, said Survival International director Caroline Pearce.
“BASF’s withdrawal means that they, at least, will not be complicit in the Hongana Manyawa’s destruction. But Eramet, and other companies, are still ripping up the rainforest and the uncontacted Hongana Manyawa simply won’t survive without it. They must stop now, for good, before it’s too late,” she said.
But another top official, Investment Minister Bahlil Lahadalia — who faces allegations of self-dealing and corruption in the revocation and reissuance of mining permits — said negotiations are still underway to get BASF and Eramet to invest in the refinery. He attributed their withdrawal to a decline in EV sales in Europe as a result of weakening purchasing power, but said this would only be temporary.
“[The project] is still pending,” he said as quoted by Indonesian news website Tempo.co. “We’re still negotiating.”
The concept of the “technosphere” aims to reveal the immense scale of our collective impact. The concept was first introduced by US geologist Peter Haff in 2013, but paleobiologist Jan Zalasiewicz has since popularised the term through his work. The technosphere encompasses the vast global output of materials generated by human activities, as well as the associated energy consumption.
Since the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago (when we started building cities and accumulating goods), human enterprise has steadily grown. However, our impact has surged dramatically over the past couple of centuries. This surge has since transformed into exponential growth, particularly since 1950.
The technosphere is indicative of how humans are increasingly emerging as a global force on par with the natural systems that shape the world. The transformation that is needed to reduce our impact is therefore equally large. And yet, despite growing awareness, there has been a lack of concrete action to address humanity’s impact on the planet.
To comprehend the sheer magnitude of the technosphere, it is best visualised. So here are four graphs that capture how our collective addiction to “stuff” is progressively clogging up planet Earth.
1. Weighing the technosphere
In 2020, a group of Israeli academics presented a shocking fact: the combined mass of all materials currently utilised by humanity had surpassed the total mass of all living organisms on Earth.
According to their findings, the collective weight of all life on Earth (the biosphere) – ranging from microbes in the soil, to trees and animals on land – stands at 1.12 trillion tonnes. While the mass of materials actively used by humans, including concrete, plastic and asphalt, weighed in at 1.15 trillion tonnes.
The technosphere weighs more than all life on Earth (trillion tonnes):
The relative weights of the active technosphere and biosphere. The active technosphere includes materials that are currently in use by human activities. The biosphere includes all living things. Elhacham et al. (2020), CC BY-NC-ND
This graph offers a glimpse into the immense size of humanity’s footprint. But it likely only scratches the surface.
When accounting for the associated byproducts of the materials used by humans, including waste, ploughed soil and greenhouse gases, the geologist and palaeontologist, Jan Zalasiewicz, calculated that the technosphere expands to a staggering 30 trillion tonnes. This would include a mass of industrially emitted carbon dioxide equivalent to 150,000 Egyptian Pyramids.
2. Changing the Earth
Remarkably, human activity now dwarfs natural processes in changing the surface of our planet. The total global sediment load (erosion) that is transported naturally each year, primarily carried by rivers flowing into ocean basins, is estimated to be around 30 billion tonnes on average. However, this natural process has been overshadowed by the mass of material moved through human action like construction and mining activities.
Humans change the Earth’s surface more than natural processes (billion tonnes):
Global movement of material: average annual natural sediment transport (blue), the total mass of things transported by humans in 1994 (purple) and in 2015 (orange). Cooper at al. (2018) & ScienceDaily (2004), CC BY-NC-ND
3. Transporting ‘stuff’
Our ability to transport fuel and products worldwide has facilitated the trends shown in the preceding graphs. Humans now transport these materials over increasingly vast distances.
Shipping continues to be the primary mechanism for moving materials around the globe. Since 1990, the amount of materials that are shipped around the world has increased more than threefold – and is continuing to grow.
How shipping has grown since 1980 (million tonnes):
Shipping capacity growth between 1980 and 2022. World Ocean Review (2010) & UNCTAD (2022), CC BY-NC-ND
4. The growth of plastics
Plastic stands out as one of the main “wonder materials” of the modern world. Due to the sheer speed and scale of the growth in plastic manufacturing and use, plastic is perhaps the metric most representative of the technosphere.
The first forms of plastic emerged in the early 20th century. But its mass production began following the second world war, with an estimated quantity of 2 million tonnes produced in 1950. However, the global production of plastic had increased to approximately 460 million tonnes by 2019.
This surge in plastic manufacturing is a pressing concern. Plastic pollution now causes many negative impacts on both nature and humans. Ocean plastics, for example, can degrade into smaller pieces and be ingested by marine animals.
Plastic manufacturing (million tonnes) has grown exponentially since 1950:
Humanity’s escalating impact on planet Earth poses a significant threat to the health and security of people and societies worldwide. But understanding the size of our impact is only one part of the story.
Equally important is the nature, form and location of the different materials that constitute the technosphere. Only then can we understand humanity’s true impact. For example, even the tiniest materials produced by humans, such as nanoplastics, can have significant and far-reaching consequences.
What is clear, though, is that our relentless pursuit of ever-increasing material output is overwhelming our planet.
Dozens of once-pristine rivers and streams in Alaska’s Brooks Range are turning an alarming shade of orange. The discoloration, according to a new study published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, is likely caused by the thawing of permafrost, which is exposing previously frozen minerals that are now leaching into the waterways.
The research team, led by ecologist Jon O’Donnell from the U.S. National Park Service, documented 75 locations across a vast area of northern Alaska where the crystal-clear waters now appear heavily stained. Using satellite imagery and field observations, the scientists determined that the onset of this discoloration coincided with a period of warming and increased snowfall in the region over the past decade.
Permafrost, which is ground that remains frozen year-round, acts as a storage vault for various minerals. As rising temperatures cause this frozen layer to thaw, these minerals are exposed to water and oxygen, triggering chemical reactions that release iron and other metals into the groundwater. This metal-rich water then makes its way into rivers and streams.
“Our recent study highlights an unforeseen consequence of climate change on Arctic rivers,” study co-author Brett Poulin, an environmental toxicologist from the University of California, Davis, told Mongabay. “Arctic environments are warming up to four times faster than the globe as a whole, and this is resulting in deterioration of water quality in the most pristine rivers in North America.”
Map of orange stream observations across Arctic Inventory and Monitoring Network (ARCN) parks in northern Alaska. Picture inserts show aerial images of select iron-impacted, orange streams. Map created by Carson Baughman, U.S. Geological Survey. Photos by Kenneth Hill, National Park Service. Public domain.
Impacts of iron mobilization in a stream tributary of the Akillik River located in Kobuk Valley National Park, Alaska. These images were taken two years apart. The clear picture was taken in June 2016 and the orange picture was August 2018. Photos by Jon O’Donnell, National Park Service.
Water samples collected from the affected streams revealed lower pH levels and higher concentrations of sulfates and trace metals compared to nearby unaffected waterways. In some cases, the pH levels dropped to 2.3, similar to the acidity of vinegar. The presence of elevated levels of iron, zinc, nickel and copper is the primary cause of the color change.
The ecological consequences of this phenomenon could be significant. At one site in Kobuk Valley National Park, researchers observed the disappearance of fish species and a decline in aquatic insect diversity shortly after the appearance of orange water. Juvenile Dolly Varden trout (Salvelinus malma) and slimy sculpin (Cottus cognatus) were among the fish species that vanished from the stream.
“Many of these affected streams serve as important spawning grounds and nurseries for salmon and other fish species that are crucial to the ecosystem and local subsistence fisheries,” study co-author Michael Carey, a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, said in a statement. “Changes in water quality could have effects throughout the food web.”
Human communities in the region also rely on these rivers and streams for their drinking water supply and subsistence fishing. As permafrost thaw accelerates and more minerals are released into the waterways, the safety and reliability of these resources could be impacted. Poulin emphasized the need for further research to understand the long-term implications for humans.
A tributary of the Kugororuk River runs orange in 2023. Photo by Josh Koch, U.S. Geological Survey. Public Domain.
“Our larger research effort aims to identify where the minerals are located that are the source of the metals and identify which rivers are most sensitive,” Poulin said. “With those two pieces of information, we will be able to accurately assess risk to the ecosystem and humans.”
Poulin also highlighted the uniqueness of these observations, noting that while gradual changes in water quality due to permafrost thaw have been documented in other parts of the Arctic and in high elevations of the Rockies and European Alps, the abrupt changes in water chemistry seen in the Brooks Range are particularly concerning.
“The rivers impacted by this phenomenon span the length of the Brooks Range” — about 1,100 kilometers, or 680 miles — “and involve some of the most pristine rivers in North America that are in protected lands and far from mining sources,” Poulin said.
As scientists work to better understand the complex interactions between thawing permafrost, mineral release and aquatic ecosystems, the study underscores the far-reaching consequences of climate change in the Arctic.
Banner image satellite imagery by Ken Hill, U.S. National Park Service.
Liz Kimbrough is a staff journalist for Mongabay. She has written about science and environmental issues since 2012 and holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Tulane University where she studied the microbiomes of trees.
“Number is as fundamental as the other three cardinal metaphors,
space, time, and matter because it is an interrelated aspect of the
divide-and-conquer metaphor which extends and diversifies the primal unity.” – Roger S. Jones, from Physics As Metaphor
where’s the pleasure
when everything’s measured,
and why isn’t water declared
a national treasure,
because everything’s tallied
by numbers in a ledger
monthly bills with
amounts of water,
oil, natural gas, and electricity
the measurement’s diminishing the felicity
it’s mean (literally)
and pretends to be green
the opposite of grist to the mill,
the commodification machine
the commodification machine
with Midas touch
but what you gonna eat
when you touch your burger
and it’s no longer meat
the selfishness is in the word, “mine”
mine for copper, mine for nickel,
mine for lithium, mine for gold
but alchemy is turning cucumber into pickle
grains of sand
and stars in the sky,
too many to count
but at least the stars
they can’t commodify
where’s the pleasure
when everything’s measured,
why isn’t land declared
a national treasure,
because everything’s tallied
by numbers in a ledger
the destruction and deadly side-effects
of divide-and-conquers
proves that disregarding primal unity
is totally bonkers
raindrops, snowflakes,
blades of grass, wildflowers,
too many to count
even with countless hours
it’s mean (literally)
and pretends to be green
the opposite of grist to the mill,
the commodification machine
Editor’s note: Climate change can not be addressed without stopping the extinction and plastics crisis. Every day, an estimated 137 species of plants, animals and insects go extinct due to deforestation alone. Microplastics have been detected in more than 1,300 animal species, including fish, mammals, birds, and insects. A global plastic treaty will only work if it caps production. Bangladesh is about to implement its existing law regarding plastic usage by strictly banning single-use plastic and, gradually, all possible plastic uses.
Scientific models can never account for all of the interconnected relationships within planetary systems’ boundaries. That is one reason why catastrophe predictions are always being pushed ahead.
There is simply no way the current economic system can persist indefinitely on a finite planet. Unfortunately, COP16’s primary goal is critical to striking a sustainable balance between human civilization and the natural world. That is an impossibility. We must tackle the underlying causes of biodiversity loss, including fossil fuel extraction, mining, industrial agriculture, intensive livestock farming, large-scale infrastructure projects, and monoculture tree plantations, basically civilization.
It is time to end civilization. Everything that claims existence must lose it; this is the eternal law. Power never gives up power willingly; it can only be broken with struggle. Nature is struggling to survive; we should help it.
Wildlife, climate and plastic: how three summits aim to repair a growing rift with nature
By the end of 2024, nearly 200 nations will have met at three conferences to address three problems: biodiversity loss, climate change and plastic pollution.
Colombia will host talks next week to assess global progress in protecting 30% of all land and water by 2030. Hot on its heels is COP29 in Azerbaijan. Here, countries will revisit the pledge they made last year in Dubai to “transition away” from the fossil fuels driving climate breakdown. And in December, South Korea could see the first global agreement to tackle plastic waste.
Don’t let these separate events fool you, though.
“Climate change, biodiversity loss and resource depletion are not isolated problems,” says biologist Liette Vasseur (Brock University), political scientist Anders Hayden (Dalhousie University) and ecologist Mike Jones (Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences).
Earth’s fraying parasol “How hot is it going to get? This is one of the most important and difficult remaining questions about our changing climate,” say two scientists who study climate change, Seth Wynes and H. Damon Matthews at the University of Waterloo and Concordia University respectively.
The answer depends on how sensitive the climate is to greenhouse gases like CO₂ and how much humanity ultimately emits, the pair say. When Wynes and Matthews asked 211 authors of past reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, their average best guess was 2.7°C by 2100.
“We’ve already seen devastating consequences like more flooding, hotter heatwaves and larger wildfires, and we’re only at 1.3°C above pre-industrial levels — less than halfway to 2.7°C,” they say.
There is a third variable that is harder to predict but no less important: the capacity of forests, wetlands and the ocean to continue to offset warming by absorbing the carbon and heat our furnaces and factories have released.
This blue and green carbon pump stalled in 2023, the hottest year on record, amid heatwaves, droughts and fires. The possibility of nature’s carbon storage suddenly collapsing is not priced into the computer models that simulate and project the future climate.
However, the ecosystems that buffer human-made warming are clearly struggling. A new report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) showed that the average size of monitored populations of vertebrate wildlife (animals with spinal columns – mammals, birds, fish, reptiles and amphibians) has shrunk by 73% since 1970.
Wildlife could become so scarce that ecosystems like the Amazon rainforest degenerate, according to the report.
“More than 90% of tropical trees and shrubs depend on animals to disperse their seeds, for example,” says biodiversity scientist Alexander Lees (Manchester Metropolitan University).
“These ‘biodiversity services’ are crucial.”
The result could be less biodiverse and, importantly for the climate, less carbon-rich habitats.
Plastic in a polar bear’s gut
Threats to wildlife are numerous. One that is growing fast and still poorly understood is plastic.
Bottles, bags, toothbrushes: a rising tide of plastic detritus is choking and snaring wild animals. These larger items eventually degrade into microplastics, tiny fragments that now suffuse the air, soil and water.
“In short, microplastics are widespread, accumulating in the remotest parts of our planet. There is evidence of their toxic effects at every level of biological organisation, from tiny insects at the bottom of the food chain to apex predators,” says Karen Raubenheimer, a senior lecturer in plastic pollution at the University of Wollongong.
Plastic is generally made from fossil fuels, the main agent of climate change. Activists and experts have seized on a similar demand to address both problems: turn off the taps.
In fact, the diagnosis of Costas Velis, an expert in ocean litter at the University of Leeds, sounds similar to what climate scientists say about unrestricted fossil fuel burning:
“Every year without production caps makes the necessary cut to plastic production in future steeper – and our need to use other measures to address the problem greater.”
A production cap hasn’t made it into the negotiating text for a plastic treaty (yet). And while governments pledged to transition away from coal, oil and gas last year, a new report on the world’s energy use shows fossil fuel use declining more slowly than in earlier forecasts – and much more slowly than would be necessary to halt warming at internationally agreed limits. The effort to protect a third of earth’s surface has barely begun.
Each of these summits is concerned with ameliorating the effects of modern societies on nature. Some experts argue for a more radical interpretation.
“Even if 30% of Earth was protected, how effectively would it halt biodiversity loss?” ask political ecologists Bram Büscher (Wageningen University) and Rosaleen Duffy (University of Sheffield).
“The proliferation of protected areas has happened at the same time as the extinction crisis has intensified. Perhaps, without these efforts, things could have been even worse for nature,” they say.
“But an equally valid argument would be that area-based conservation has blinded many to the causes of Earth’s diminishing biodiversity: an expanding economic system that squeezes ecosystems by turning ever more habitat into urban sprawl or farmland, polluting the air and water with ever more toxins and heating the atmosphere with ever more greenhouse gas.”