The public health is also under threat by these and many others

>>> Article by Randi Pokladnik, PhD Environmental Scientist, Tappan Lake, OH, May 7, 2022

Twenty years ago, I lost my mother to cancer. She died two months before her 70th birthday. Her cancer had already progressed to stage 3 by the time of her diagnosis so the outlook for a long-term survival was not good.

At first it was hard to believe that she was sick. She looked perfectly healthy but her oncologist informed us that cancer cells had been slowly growing inside her body for many years. Unlike other cells in our body which have specific functions, cancer cells are undifferentiated, meaning they have no function other than to grow.

Our family wanted to know what caused my mom’s cancer. Her lifestyle wasn’t one that might have led to the development of cancer. Her oncologist told us that “unfortunately these tumors do not come with labels,” however, he pointed out that my mom, like many of his other patients, was born and raised in the heavily industrialized Ohio River Valley.There were few regulations in place in the 1930s and 1940s to protect human health and the environment.

The National Institute of Health Sciences reports that more than two-thirds of cancer is from environmental exposures to substances including pesticides, solvents, heavy metals, benzene, dioxins, and vinyl chlorides.

My folks moved from Steubenville, Ohio (a city once noted as having the dirtiest air in the nation) to Toronto, Ohio in 1962. In 1970, Weirton Steel began construction of their coke ovens on Brown’s Island just outside Toronto’s city limits. Coke ovens heat coal to high temperatures to remove sticky coal tars. These tarry substances are collected and used to make various aromatic solvents like benzene, which are carcinogenic. The remaining light weight coke is used during the steel-making process.

The coke plant drew national attention in late 1972 when 21 workers were killed in an explosion at the construction site. Our home, which was located less than a mile away, was rocked by the explosion. For nearly a decade we lived in the shadow of the dangerous aromatic hydrocarbon emissions spewed from the ovens. By 1982, locally produced coke became too expensive and the plant was shut down. However, the pollution in the form of coal tars and benzene containing compounds remained in the local soils and ground water.

Like many people who are diagnosed with terminal cancer, my mom was willing to try anything to gain a few more months of life. But once the cancer spread to her major organs, she had to admit she wasn’t going to beat the cancer. She would not see her grandkids grow up or see another birthday, she wouldn’t grow old, she wouldn’t celebrate another Mother’s Day with us. Cancer had essentially canceled my mom’s life. She lost her hair, her life savings, her dignity and eventually her life.

We will never know for sure if living in the Ohio Valley had contributed to my mom’s cancer but our next-door neighbor died at the age of 14 from leukemia and another friend died at the age of 11 from stomach cancer.

For years the petrochemical industry has discounted the connection of environmental toxins to cancer and they continue to deny the major role they play in the climate crisis. Many consumers are unaware of the risks associated with these toxic products, which include many personal care products, cleaning products, and lawn and garden chemicals. Industry and government agencies do minimal testing for health effects and provide little information to the public.

Countess studies now show that forever chemicals known as polyfluoroalkyl substances, “PFAS”, are now basically found everywhere on the planet: in food packaging and fast-food wrappers, in water, in fish, and in municipal waste biosolids. These compounds have been linked to cancer, birth defects, and numerous other diseases.

Environmental Lawyer, Rob Bilott (of “Dark Waters” fame), said in a recent interview, “one of the things we found in the internal files of the main manufacturer of the chemical PFOS was that this company was well aware by the 1970s that PFOS was being found in the general US population’s blood and was being found at fairly significant levels.” Yet the manufacturers failed to share this information with citizens.

“In July 2021, a report by Physicians for Social Responsibility presented evidence that oil and gas companies have been using PFAS, or substances that can degrade into PFAS, in hydraulic fracturing, a technique used to extract natural gas or oil.” Ignoring the toxicityassociated with fracking fluids and claiming a need for “energy independence”, local, state and federal politicians are calling for more fracking.

Corporate CEOs and cancer cells have this characteristic in common; their main goal is growth. The collateral damage of that growth is of no concern to them so long as their stock values climb. Scientists frantically warn us we are devastating fragile ecosystems and warming the planet to dangerous temperatures. Still CEOs, media, and politicians ignore the warnings.

Many people, including scientists, have become as desperate as cancer patients; searching for an answer, a cure, some way to stop the death of our planet. It was devastating to watch my mother slip away bit by bit until she was barely recognizable. It’s also devastating to watch the only habitable planet in our solar system, the one that harbors so many marvelous creatures and ecosystems, being killed by corporate greed and a dysfunctional economic system that requires the consumption of Mother Earth to make a buck.

Mayer Hillman says “we are doomed”

From an Article by Julia Conley, The Guardian Newspaper (Common Dreams), April 26, 2018

“What legacies are we leaving for future generations?” asks the influential expert. “In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to climate change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical.”

Dr. Mayer Hillman, the influential social scientist known for producing research that has successfully led to policy changes to improve road safety, has declared humanity “doomed” due to its reliance on the burning of fossil fuels and the capitalist economic system that ensures that dependence will continue.

“We’re doomed,” Hillman told the Guardian in a recent interview. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

While green campaigners and some politicians call for a reduced dependence on fossil fuels and a shift to sustainable energy, like wind or solar power, Hillman warned that such contributions by individual governments are essentially “minute.”

“Even if the government were to go to zero carbon it would make almost no difference,” Hillman said.

According to the Guardian, the only solution is moving “to zero emissions across agriculture, air travel, shipping, heating homes—every aspect of our economy—and [reducing] our human population too.”

But Hillman expressed grave doubts that this hope would be realized, as global leaders are unable or unwilling to lead a movement away from fossil fuels.

“I don’t think they can because society isn’t organized to enable them to do so,” Hillman said. “Political parties’ focus is on jobs and GDP, depending on the burning of fossil fuels.”

The warning of the senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute comes as scientists raise alarm over the accelerated melting of the ice in Antarctica, driven by a “feedback loop” of warmer water melting glaciers, and as experts estimate that global warming has pushed one-third of the world’s bird species closer to extinction.

“We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels,” he said. “So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.”

In his interview with the Guardian, Hillman indicated that he was giving his final word of warning to the world population, calling his statement his “last will and testament.”

“I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he said.

For decades, Hillman’s warnings to policy-makers have resulted in changes that many now take for granted. He urged British politicians to stop the spread of sprawling shopping centers outside city limits due to their environmental impact—eight years before planning rules were changed. He also pushed for energy-efficient ratings for buildings and homes—adopted in the U.K. in 2007—starting in 1984, and for 20 mile per hour speed limits in urban areas.

Now, Hillman is recommending world citizens think past 2100—the year when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns the Earth’s temperature could rise up to 10.44 degrees Fahrenheit—when they think of the effects of the man-made climate crisis.

“Scientists warn that the temperature could rise to five degrees Celsius or eight degrees Celsius [nine degrees or 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit]. What, and stop there? What legacies are we leaving for future generations? In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to climate change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical,” said Hillman.

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“So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.” —Dr. Mayer Hillman

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The Madhouse Effect – How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy | Columbia University Press

The Madhouse Effect — CSPN Interview of Michael Mann

Let's Approach the Future Now!

Sunday School Lesson — An Enlightenment on Climate Change

Public Interest Article by S. Tom Bond, Lewis County, WV, May 15, 2015

Several things have come together in last few days that have made an impression I want to share with readers. The first is an article that identifies the ethic of big business as a sort of religion. The gist of the article is that the thought of big business serves much of the same human needs that religion did in earlier times.

It provides a conceptual frame that explains much of the world, such things as the value system one should hold, why some are more affluent than others, what controls man’s efforts (the market). It organizes people and provides a sense of individual worth. It is a set of ideas that many people can believe in and get pleasure from. It tells us how to get satisfaction. Owning and using is a principal value of this system. Strictly speaking, it is not religion, but has many of the same characteristics.

A second article marks the decline of traditional religions in the United States. In a Pew survey adherents to all major religions declined rapidly between 2007 and 2014, while the category “unaffiliated” rose from 16.1% to 22.8%. Only the category “Evangelical Protestant” has more, a skinny 2.4%, and it is declining, too. What is the replacement, what understanding do people have to replace church going and the value systems of those institutions? Is it getting material things and short range satisfactions that can be gained by proper manipulation of people and things around one’s individual self?

There’s no denying the hold of business on government. As John Dewey said early in the last century, politics is the shadow cast on society by big business.” That situation is increased, not lessened. More recently Noam Chomsky has put it this way. “The United States effectively has a one-party system, the business party, with two factions, Republicans and Democrats.” Business is the state religion, not only of the U. S., but of other English speaking nations, but several of the European nations as well.

So we have this ridiculous situation where many in congress deny what almost all scientists working on the problem agree: the world is warming, and the use of the atmosphere as a dumping ground for the waste product of burning carbon is a principal cause. The effects are shown by satellites, cameras on the ground, measurements of many kinds, and felt by people, particularly in the Arctic. But not of course, in air conditioned offices and homes of congressmen and people at the top of corporate hierarchies. Lyndon Johnson was the first President to warn the nation about global warming in 1965, fifty years ago! At that time carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was 320 parts per million. Now it is 400 ppm.

So what about the continual publicity that global warming is not true, that it won’t have any effect, that carbon dioxide will make plants grow faster so is fertilizer? What about the denigration of adverse claims about fracking, deep ocean drilling, tar sands development, the “war on coal,” and people who complain about them?”

The fervor of these people is best understood as part of a faith hierarchy in business. It certainly isn’t the result of examination of the facts or of the value of an individual present in traditional religion.

Take for example an article written in 2012 by one Barry Stevens, who seems to have made a career of publishing pro-fracking articles in such publications as Oil Price, Breaking Energy, Shale Energy Insider (“Are anti-fracking protestors hypocritical?” is one article) and Power Magazine.  Actually, he has left his academic background behind and is really a pure salesman, divorced from experiment and observation. He even thinks fracking may be feasible in the Karoo Desert of South Africa, one of the world’s driest areas. He suggests exports from there to boost South Africa’s national income, no less.

His arguments are economic. He doesn’t recognize health problems, he claims fracking just like this has been going on for 60 years, there is no property devaluation, no aesthetic loss (probably doesn’t recognize aesthetics as valuable), no loss of ecosystem services such as clean water, and certainly no consideration for the kind of humans who would choose to live in the landscape, rather than a highrise.

As for carbon dioxide, it is as though it doesn’t even exist. Maybe he is rich enough to retire to a place in the mountains of Greenland when the oceans rise and the temperature is too hot to live anywhere outside the Arctic Circle. That’s faith in a kind of heaven, I suppose, so maybe that fits the new religion of business. Imagine a colony of energy company executives and favored subordinates on a mountain in Northern Greenland. I’ll bet this is one of their favorite hymns! Be sure and watch the whole of it! Once in a lifetime is enough, though.

Beyond capitalism and socialism: could a new economic approach save the planet?

A holistic approach to the economy is necessary to avoid social, environmental and economic collapse, according to a new report by the Capital Institute.

From an Article by Jo Confino, The Guardian, April 22, 2015

To avoid social, environmental and economic collapse, the world needs to move beyond the standard choices of capitalism or socialism. That’s the conclusion of a new report released Wednesday by US think tank Capital Institute.

The non-partisan think tank argues that both systems are unsustainable, even if flawlessly executed, and that economists need to look to the “hard science of holism” to debunk outdated views held by both the left and the right.

Jan Smuts, who coined the term “holism” in his 1926 book, Holism and Evolution, defined it as the “tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts”. For example, in the case of a plant, the whole organism is more than a collection of leaves, stems and roots. Focusing too closely on each of these parts, the theory argues, could get in the way of understanding the organism as a whole.

Viewed through this perspective, the capitalist tendency to isolate an economic process from its antecedents and effects is fundamentally flawed. The Capital Institute, created by former JP Morgan managing director John Fullerton, says that society’s economic worldview has relied on breaking complex systems down into simpler parts in order to understand and manage them.

For example, this traditional economic view might view automobile manufacturing separately from the mineral mining, petroleum production and workers on which it relies. Moreover, this view might also not acknowledge the impact that automobile manufacturing has on the environment, politics and economics of an area. Holism, on the other hand, would view the entire chain of cause and effect that leads to – and away from – automobile manufacturing.

The Capital Institute report, titled Regenerative Capitalism, emphasizes that the world economic system is closely related to, and dependent upon, the environment. “The failure of modern economic theory to acknowledge this reality has had profound consequences, not the least of which is global climate change,” it says.

A long chain of cause and effects

According to the Capital Institute, the consequences of this economic worldview are vast and far reaching, encompassing a host of challenges that range from climate change to political instability.

For example, the current capitalist system has created extreme levels of inequality, the report says. This, in turn, has led to a host of ills, including worker abuse, sexism, economic stagnation and more. It could even be considered partly responsible for the rise of terrorism around the world, the report claims. In other words, this inequality has become a threat to the very system that is creating it. Without radical change, the report warns, “the current mainstream capitalist system is under existential threat”.

What is needed now, the Capital Institute argues, is a new systems-based mindset built around the idea of a regenerative economy, “which recognizes that the proper functioning of complex wholes, like an economy, cannot be understood without the ongoing, dynamic relationships among parts that give rise to greater wholes”.

In practice, this might lead to close analysis of supply chains, investigations of the effects of water use, circular economy initiatives, community economic development work or a host of other sustainability efforts.

While some people associate holistic thinking with mystics or hippies, the worldview is borne out in ways that are measurable, precise and empirical. “Universal principles and patterns of systemic health and development actually do exist, and are known to guide behavior in living systems from bacteria to human beings,” the report says.

Holism also can be used to study “nonliving systems from hurricanes to transportation systems and the internet; and societal systems including monetary systems”. Not surprisingly, the theory underlies other scientific and social tools, such as system theory and chaos theory.

A radical shift

This holistic approach flies in the face of a great deal of long-held beliefs. For example, while decision makers usually focus on finding a single ‘right’ answer, holism focuses on finding balanced answers that address seemingly contradictory goals like efficiency and resilience, collaboration and competition, and diversity and coherence. Taken from this perspective, holism wouldn’t approach global economics from a capitalism-or-socialism perspective, but rather from a capitalism-and-socialism perspective.

The report emphasizes the importance of innovation and adaptability over rigid structures and belief systems. It also embraces diversity, suggesting that, instead of trying to find a globalized one-size-fits-all approach to change, it is vital to recognize that each community consists of a “mosaic of peoples, traditions, beliefs, and institutions uniquely shaped by long term pressures of geology, human history, culture, local environment, and changing human needs”.

Ultimately, the report argues, a holistic perspective emphasizes that we are all connected to one another and to the planet, and therefore need to recognize that damaging any part of that web could end up harming every other part.

In business terms, what would this sort of revolutionary shift in business look like? The Capital Institute, which presented a white paper at Yale University’s Center for Business and the Environment on Tuesday, says innovators and entrepreneurs around the world are already responsible for thousands of sustainability initiatives and movements that are helping to re-imagine capitalism, such as social enterprises, B Corps, impact investing, slow food and localism.

The report says that, while some critics view these as “disconnected feel-good activities outside the mainstream capitalist system”, they are, in fact, “in alignment with the regenerative economy framework”. Collectively, it claims, “these forces provide living proof that a new regenerative economy is emergent”.

Beyond movements of change, the institute points to a number of individual initiatives that show how the world could change for the better. For example, Mexico’s Grupo Ecologico has worked to fund impoverished small farmers and ranchers, giving them the economic freedom to preserve and regenerate their own land.

Similarly, Australia’s Bendigo Community Bank splits its net income with local community enterprises. It directs a portion of community branch earnings toward grant making, giving local leaders the opportunity to become active players in their communities.

Community development is also a primary concern for Chicago’s Manufacturing Renaissance, which is forging unusual partnerships among government, labour unions, educators, the private sector, and civil society to create programs that support the region’s advanced manufacturing sectors.

Fullerton says there is great potential ahead if society can change its collective mindset: “This is a monumental challenge that holds the promise of uniting our generation in a shared purpose. We now have a more rigorous understanding of what makes human networks healthy – this alone constitutes an amazing opportunity. It is time to act. Our actions, now, will most certainly define the nobility of our lives and our legacy. This is the great work of our time.”

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net