Category: Supposed Superiority of Humans

When the Last Tree Falls

The vital importance of humans connecting to nature: for themselves and for the planet

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
—John Muir

Muir’s century-old observation now reads like a medical prescription. A growing body of research shows that regular contact with living, biodiverse ecosystems is a non-negotiable pillar of human health—and the fastest way to make people care about the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change.

This post unpacks (1) what happens to our bodies and minds when we lose everyday nature, (2) how collapsing ecosystems ricochet back on us, and (3) the personal and collective actions that turn concern into meaningful response.

As the world’s rapidly expanding human population increasingly no longer lives in proximity to our living world- but instead is surrounded by concrete, tar and walled environments, and enclosed within self-defined technological walls of social media, AI and self-selected ‘entertainment’, we are losing both our vital connection with the rest of the natural world we are intrinsically part of, along with our unconscious understanding of its importance to us.

In doing so, we become less and less aware how the natural world is shrinking inexorably year by year, decade by decade, day by day, and what that means for both ourselves and our world, in terms of our wellbeing and our very survival.

Each new generation of humans normalise a poorer natural baseline, lowering conservation ambition and stabilising acceptance of biodiversity loss as the ‘norm’. Along with those changes of what is ‘naturally normal’, cultural definitions of ‘nature’ shift over time ( e.g. Wordsworth’s early 19th century poems vs. today’s TikTok hiking videos).

Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in problematic supply.

As climate extremes intensify with climate change, the impacts of both floods and droughts are magnified from loss of tree cover.

The 30-Minute Cure: How Daily Green & Blue (aquatic)Time Rewires Us

DomainEvidence-Based Benefits of Frequent Nature Contact
PhysicalLower cortisol, heart-rate variability, blood pressure; stronger immunity (natural killer-cell activity up 50 % after a 3-day forest trip) .
MentalReduced risk of depression, anxiety and ADHD; restored “directed attention” capacity (Attention Restoration Theory) .
SocialHigher empathy, pro-social behavior, lower crime rates in neighborhoods with tree cover .
Spiritual / CulturalSense of identity and belonging, especially for Indigenous and rural communities tied to specific species and landscapes .

Dose–response sweet spot: Two hours per week in green or blue spaces (parks, coastlines, riverbanks) delivers optimal well-being gains .

The Flip Side: Nature-Deficit Disorder

When that contact disappears, we see the inverse—rising obesity, Type-2 diabetes, myopia in children, loneliness, and eco-anxiety. Urban populations already spend 90 % of their time indoors; in lower-income areas, unequal access to safe nature is a new axis of health inequity. Little data is available on the impact of nature deprivation in the Global South.

In countries where daily life is entangled with nature (smallholder farming, forest reliance), disconnection manifests differently—often as loss of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) rather than park visits.

What Biodiversity Loss Actually Costs Us

Biodiversity is the planet’s operating system. Every lost species is a deleted line of code.

Every living thing: every individual fish, every insect, every bird every mammal, has its own intrinsic worth. Its ‘value’ is simply in its existence.

A. Health & Medicine

  • 70 % of anti-cancer drugs are natural or bio-inspired; 60 % of all new infectious diseases are zoonotic and surge when habitat edges fragment .
  • Traditional medicine—used by 80 % of people in developing countries—depends on intact ecosystems .

B. Food & Water Security

  • Pollinator decline already threatens crops worth US $235 billion annually .
  • Wetlands loss (35 % since 1970) has left >2 billion people with declining water quality and rising water-borne disease .

C. Climate Stability

  • Forests, peatlands and mangroves store more carbon than all human emissions from 2009–2018 combined. When biodiversity unravels, these sinks flip to sources, accelerating extreme weather that in turn wipes out more species .

D. Positive Impacts of Human Skin Contact with Soil

Regular, safe skin contact with biodiverse, uncontaminated soil—gardening, barefoot walking, forest play etc, rewilds the human microbiome, trains the immune system and supports mental well-being.

1. Immune-System Maturation
Finnish daycare study: children playing on forest-floor (soil-rich) yards had more diverse skin & gut microbiota and stronger immune regulation two years later. Nature 2024
2. Anti-inflammatory Response
Urban adults handling microbially-rich indoor potting soil for one month showed ↑ plasma IL-10 (anti-inflammatory cytokine) and ↑ skin bacterial diversity (Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes, etc.). Environment International 2024
3. Immediate Skin Microbiome Boost
Just two minutes of rubbing hands with soil & plant materials produced an instant increase in skin microbial richness (Actinobacteria, Acidobacteria, etc.) that lasted several hours. Frontiers 2025
4. Gut Microbiome Support
Mice exposed to non-sterile soil developed higher gut microbial diversity than those on sterile soil, indicating that dermal/oral transfer of soil microbes reaches the intestine. NIH PMC 2019
5. Vaccine Response Enhancement
Adults with daily soil-moss skin contact mounted stronger cell-mediated responses to pneumococcal vaccine (higher IFN-γ, IL-17), suggesting soil exposure can improve vaccine efficacy.
Nature 2024
6. Mental-Health & Stress Reduction
Soil bacterium Mycobacterium vaccae triggers anti-neuroinflammatory pathways, lowers stress hormones and may improve mood via the gut-brain axis. New York Times 2024

E. Mental & Cultural Resilience

  • Coastal or forest communities displaced by fires, floods or coral bleaching lose livelihoods and ancestral stories, triggering inter-generational trauma .

Turning Contact into Commitment: The Feedback Loop That Matters

Every exposure to a thriving wild patch biophilically primes the brain. Here’s how to restore that effect:

Personal Practice

  1. Micro-dose daily: 10 minutes of exposure to tree canopy or moving water (even street trees count).
  2. Citizen science: Log birds, insects or plants on iNaturalist—data that feeds real conservation maps.
  3. Nature journaling: Sketching or photographing a leaf or shell deepens attention and memory encoding.

Community Action

  • Green prescriptions: Doctors in the U.K., New Zealand and Japan now write “green prescriptions” alongside statins . National pilots of green prescriptions in Scotland (2021) and Canada (2022).
  • Schoolyard biodiversity: Converting asphalt to mini-forests improves test scores and doubles local insect diversity within three years .
  • Urban rewilding: Pocket meadows, living walls and daylighted streams cool cities, cut AC demand and give residents daily wildlife encounters. Barcelona’s “Green Axes” programme is a great initiative.
  • Biodiverse botanic parks where people of all ages and ability can explore and learn about our natural green world.
  • Plant native trees in your own backyard- replace that lawn you mow!

Policy & Economy

Why the biodiversity decline matters for climate action

PathwayMechanismEvidence
Environmental behaviourHigher NCI (Nature Connection Index) predicts pro-environmental choices (diet, transport, donations).Martin et al., 2020, J. Environ. Psychol.
Biophilic policy supportIndividuals with strong nature connection are 2× more likely to back ambitious conservation funding.Mackay & Schmitt, 2019, Conserv. Lett.
Psychological resilienceNature connection buffers eco-anxiety; enables sustained activism.Whitburn et al., 2020, Climatic Change
Feedback loopShifting baseline syndrome: each generation normalises a poorer natural baseline, lowering conservation ambition.Papworth et al., 2009, Trends Ecol. Evol.

A Thought Experiment

Imagine the last dawn chorus on Earth: no birds, no insects, just human-made noise.
Now rewind the tape. Plant one native tree outside your window this month. Spend 30 undistracted minutes beside it each week. Listen.

Your nervous system will notice the difference within days.
Your neurons will start lobbying your choices.
And the planet will register one more caretaker.

When we experience how nature heals us, we finally understand that healing nature is self-defense.

References

Richardson, M., Dobson, J., Abson, D. J., Lumber, R., Hunt, A., & Young, R. (2020) Nature connectedness in decline: Evidence from 5000 English adults 2013-2019. People and Nature, 2(3), 821–835. https://doi.org/10.1002/pan3.10146

Richardson, M., Hunt, A., Hinds, J., Bragg, R., Fido, D., Petronzi, D., … & White, M. P. (2019) A measure of nature connectedness for children and adults: Validation, reliability and associations with well-being. PLoS ONE, 14(7), e0218641. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0218641

7 Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Humans: gaiacompany.io.

WWF: How does Biodiversity loss affect me and everyone else? Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in irregular

Royal Society: What is the human impact on biodiversity? How do humans affect biodiversity? · Deforestation. · Habitat loss through pervasive, incremental encroachment such as that caused by urban sprawl.

thrivabilitymatters.org 2023/04/14: How do humans affect biodiversity? The Importance Of Contact With Nature For Well-Being. Spending time in nature, or mingling with a natural element has tremendous effects on physical, mental, social and spiritual wellness.

United Nations Foundation 2023/05/18: How Biodiversity Loss Harms Human Health. A higher risk of infectious outbreaks is just one of the many repercussions of biodiversity loss on human health.

Biodiversity loss can have significant direct health impacts if ecosystem services no longer meet societal needs.

World Health Organization (WHO) 2023/10/12: Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes.

Mental Health Foundation(U.K.): How connecting with nature benefits our mental health. Research shows that people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile.

US EPA impacts to human health: Climate Change; City of Chicago: Overview – Temperature Impacts – Air Quality Impacts – Extreme Events – Vector-borne Diseases – Water-Related Illnesses – Food Safety and Nutrition – Mental Health – Populations of Concern – Other Health Impacts.

American Psychological Association 2020/04/01: Nurtured by nature. Exposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, & reduced risk of psychiatric disorders.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; Climate Change and Human Health | US EPA: This includes increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms, increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases .

LOSS OF BIODIVERSITY: THE BURGEONING THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTH: O Adebayo · 2019 · Mencionado — the loss of biological biodiversity appears to affect significantly human health.

Impact of Contact With Nature on the Wellbeing and Nature Connectedness Indicators After a Desertic Outdoor Experience on Isla Del Tiburon by G Garza-Terán · 2022 · Cited by 23 — Results show that both wellbeing and Nature Connectedness are positively influenced by performing activities out in the natural environment.nih.gov2024/05/24

Climate change impacts on health across the life course: The climate crisis results in new disorders such as eco-anxiety and solastalgia. Older people also experience adverse brain effects

Effects of Climate Change on Health – CDC: The health effects of these disruptions include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather .

UC Davis Health2023/05/03: 3 ways getting outside into nature helps improve your health. Research continues to show that being outside and experiencing nature can improve our mental health and increase our ability to focus.

Arizona Health Sciences2023/04/03: A look at the cost of climate change on human health. The evidence is clear – climate change is having a negative effect on our physical and mental health.

ScienceDirect: Natural environments improve parent-child communication by T Cameron-Faulkner · 2018 · Cited by 84 — In this study, natural environments influenced social interactions between parents and children by increasing connected, responsive communication.

The global human impact on biodiversity F Keck · 2025 · Mencionado por 37 — We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.

Benefits for emotional regulation of contact with nature by ML Ríos-Rodríguez · 2024 · Cited by 15 — Exposure to natural environments, such as parks, forests, and green areas, is often linked to a decrease in stress, anxiety and depression.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration: Climate change impacts –

Climate change impacts our society in many different ways. Drought can harm food production and human health. Flooding can lead to spread of disease, death, …

Universidad Veracruzana: Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. The impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change.

Friends of the Earth2020/09/23Importance of nature. For children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list ..

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Climate Change Impacts on Health | US EPA Climate change can disrupt access to health care services, threaten infrastructure, and pose physical and mental health risks.

United Nations: Five ways the climate crisis impacts human security

United Nations University2024/05/16: Understanding Humanity’s Role in Biodiversity Loss Losing species threatens our well-being. As we lose species, our ecosystems also lose genetic diversity.

Science Mission Directorate2024/10/23: The Causes of Climate Change – NASA Science. The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.

ScienceDirect: Modelling human influences on biodiversity at a global scale–A human ecology perspective M Cepic · 2022 · Mencionado — Globalised human interventions cause most biodiversity losses.

gaiacompany.io

7 Consequences of Biodiversity Loss for Humans – Gaia

1. Food Insecurity · 2. Health Impacts · 3. Loss of Medicinal Resources · 4. Reduced Ecosystem Services · 5. Economic Losses · 6. Climate Instability.WWFHow does Biodiversity loss affect me and everyone else?Reduced biodiversity means millions of people face a future where food supplies are more vulnerable to pests and disease, and where fresh water is in irregular …Royal SocietyWhat is the human impact on biodiversity?How do humans affect biodiversity? · Deforestation. · Habitat loss through pervasive, incremental encroachment such as that caused by urban sprawl · Pollution such …thrivabilitymatters.org2023/04/14The Importance Of Contact With Nature For Well-BeingSpending time in nature, or mingling with a natural element has tremendous effects on physical, mental, social and spiritual wellness.United Nations Foundation2023/05/18How Biodiversity Loss Harms Human HealthA higher risk of infectious outbreaks is just one of the many repercussions of biodiversity loss on human health. By disrupting the delicate …WHO2025/02/18BiodiversityBiodiversity loss can have significant direct health impacts if ecosystem services no longer meet societal needs. Changes in ecosystems can …WHO2023/10/12Climate change – World Health Organization (WHO)Climate change is directly contributing to humanitarian emergencies from heatwaves, wildfires, floods, tropical storms and hurricanes and …Mental Health FoundationNature: How connecting with nature benefits our mental healthResearch shows that people who are more connected with nature are usually happier in life and more likely to report feeling their lives are worthwhile.US EPAimpacts to human health – Climate Change – City of ChicagoOn This Page: – Overview – Temperature Impacts – Air Quality Impacts – Extreme Events – Vectorborne Diseases – Water-Related Illnesses – Food Safety and Nutrition – Mental Health – Populations of Concern – Other Health Impacts — Overview The impacts of climate change include warming temperatures, changes in precipitation, increases in the frequency or intensity of some extreme weather events, and rising sea levels. These impacts threaten our health by affecting the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, and the weather we experience. The severity of these health risks will depend on the ability of public health and safety systems to address or prepare for these changing threats, as well as factors such as an individual’s behavior, age, gender, and economic status. Impacts will vary based on a where a person lives, how sensitive they are to health threats, how much they are exposed to climate change impacts, and how well they andAmerican Psychological Association2020/04/01Nurtured by natureExposure to nature has been linked to a host of benefits, including improved attention, lower stress, better mood, reduced risk of psychiatric disorders and …U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyClimate Change and Human Health | US EPAThis includes increasing the risk of extreme heat events and heavy storms, increasing the risk of asthma attacks and changing the spread of certain diseases …nih.govLOSS OF BIODIVERSITY: THE BURGEONING THREAT TO HUMAN HEALTHpor O Adebayo · 2019 · Mencionado por 28 — While the loss of biological biodiversity appears to affect significantly human health, it has also been opined to be a significant threat to the attainment of …nih.govImpact of Contact With Nature on the Wellbeing and Nature Connectedness Indicators After a Desertic Outdoor Experience on Isla Del Tiburonby G Garza-Terán · 2022 · Cited by 23 — Results show that both wellbeing and Nature Connectedness are positively influenced by performing activities out in the natural environment.nih.gov2024/05/24Climate change impacts on health across the life course – PMCThe climate crisis results in new disorders such as eco-anxiety and solastalgia. Older people also experience adverse brain effects from the …CDC2024/02/29Effects of Climate Change on Health – CDCThe health effects of these disruptions include increased respiratory and cardiovascular disease, injuries and premature deaths related to extreme weather …UC Davis Health2023/05/033 ways getting outside into nature helps improve your healthResearch continues to show that being outside and experiencing nature can improve our mental health and increase our ability to focus.UArizona Health Sciences2023/04/03A look at the cost of climate change on human healthThe evidence is clear – climate change is having a negative effect on our physical and mental health. The scale of the impact is vast, with …ScienceDirectNatural environments improve parent-child communicationby T Cameron-Faulkner · 2018 · Cited by 84 — In this study, natural environments influenced social interactions between parents and children by increasing connected, responsive communication. These …NatureThe global human impact on biodiversitypor F Keck · 2025 · Mencionado por 37 — We show that human pressures distinctly shift community composition and decrease local diversity across terrestrial, freshwater and marine ecosystems.nih.govBenefits for emotional regulation of contact with natureby ML Ríos-Rodríguez · 2024 · Cited by 15 — Exposure to natural environments, such as parks, forests, and green areas, is often linked to a decrease in stress, anxiety and depression.National Oceanic and Atmospheric AdministrationClimate change impacts – NOAAClimate change impacts our society in many different ways. Drought can harm food production and human health. Flooding can lead to spread of disease, death, …Universidad VeracruzanaBiodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature PDFThe impacts of diversity loss on ecological processes might be sufficiently large to rival the impacts of many other global drivers of environmental change.Friends of the Earth2020/09/23Importance of natureFor children and adults alike, daily contact with nature is linked to better health, less stress, better mood, reduced obesity – an amazing list …U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyClimate Change Impacts on Health | US EPAClimate change can disrupt access to health care services, threaten infrastructure, and pose physical and mental health risks.Naciones UnidasFive ways the climate crisis impacts human security | United Nations1. Climate change intensifies competition over land and water · 2. Climate change affects food production and drives up hunger · 3. Climate change forces people …United Nations University2024/05/16Understanding Humanity’s Role in Biodiversity LossLosing species threatens our well-being. As we lose species, our ecosystems also lose genetic diversity. This often negatively impacts the …Science Mission Directorate2024/10/23The Causes of Climate Change – NASA ScienceThe greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.ScienceDirectModelling human influences on biodiversity at a global scale–A human ecology perspectivepor M Cepic · 2022 · Mencionado por 62 — Globalised human interventions cause most biodiversity losses.

Biocentrism (Kaitiakitanga): the only future we have

Bill Mollison , the brilliant developer of the concepts and actions of permaculture once said; “We are not superior to other life-forms; all living things are an expression of Life. If we could see that truth, we would see that everything we do to other life-forms we also do to ourselves. A culture which understands this does not, without absolute necessity, destroy any living thing” .

Biocentrism in environmental ethics emphasizes that all living things have intrinsic value and moral standing. It extends moral consideration beyond human beings to encompass the entire biosphere. This perspective suggests that every living organism, whether sentient or not, possesses a right to exist and be protected. 

Such a human culture, is able to live, sustainably alongside its fellow species. Able to acknowledge that all species are part of the web of life that also supports humans. Without that web, humanity, and most other current species, will inevitably die.

Anthropocentrism: the belief that human beings have superiority over nature has driven 6000 years of human’s ecological destruction, biodiversity loss, and now climate crises. This worldview contrasts sharply with Indigenous perspectives (like kaitiakitanga) and emerging ecological ethics that argue for biocentrism (all life has intrinsic value) or ecocentrism (whole ecosystems matter).

Anthropocentrism’s drivers appear to be derived from humanity’s view that the attributes that humans have- particularly the capacity to manipulate his/her environment, make humans a superior being to all other species on the planet. Our self-defined view of what is superior is derived from our own attributes; rather like an elephant determining that it is superior to all other species because it can reach high places with its trunk.

However our “superior” capacity to manipulate our environment is also our downfall; through 4000 years of manipulation of the natural world around us we have progressively destroyed the living world we rely on to survive.

Many like to think that if we did not have capitalism, we would somehow return to a world where humans could co-habitat in sustainable peace with other species – however it is clear that capitalism is simply one of many manifestations of anthropocentrism. Our belief in our inherent superiority allows us to consider capitalism and the pursuit of ‘wealth” by exploiting and destroying other living things as though that had no cost, as a sane objective.

6000 years ago, humanity’s anthroprocentric view of the world did not impact on the rest of the natural world as it does now. There were perhaps 7 million humans in the world, mainly hunter/gatherers who made use of the environment around them, but whose capacity to create systemic damage to the living world was limited in scale. As our capacity increased to not only defend ourselves against more ‘naturally’ efficient predators but also to kill and destroy other living things, so did the human population. Within two thousand years , the global human population had exploded to 160 million. In 2025 the global human population is estimated at around 8.2 billion people. Most humans now live in towns and cities ( what the Romans called ‘civis” – or ‘civilisation’). Surrounded by an inanimate world of asphalt and concrete we have lost our link with the rest of nature. We do not see its value because we cannot see it- except perhaps to see it as ‘entertainment on a hiking trip in the ‘wilds’.

Many of the world’s religions, particularly but not exclusively, the Abrahamaic religions of Judea, Christ and Mecca instruct their followers to believe in humanity as superior beings before their god.

Perhaps part of that wanton destruction has been because humans not only do not understand the inter-relationships between living things, but are also largely oblivious to the living things around us- the insects, the microbes, the fungi, the birds and mammals that help sustain our lives. We do not see how we are ourselves inextricably woven into that intricate web of life.

This sense of superiority has also led humans to become largely compassion-less for the suffering of others- except perhaps for those people and other animals that we focus our attention on and value for whatever reason. e.g. Cats, dogs, dolphins, whales are somehow living things to be valued- but sheep cattle, rats mice can be killed mercilessly; they do not suit our purposes. Or, as in New Zealand, humans may decide that this living animal is to be exterminated because we value this other living species – it is perhaps cuter, more indigenous, more suitable, more useful for exploitation.

Like most other species on earth, humans do not have the capacity to view the world long-term. We are oblivious to the ever encroaching tide year by year of concrete and asphalt into the living world, or of the one more old growth tree cut down to make way for ‘progress’. We cannot see what we have so tragically lost and the many lives we have destroyed.

If we are to save this planet from ourselves, we must re-learn how to value ALL living things; to see their beauty, their intrinsic value , their importance- and to act with compassion to all living things.

Without that compassion, we may continue to find fine and ultimately futile ways to lower our carbon footprint while we continue to destroy the rest of the living world, but we are nevertheless simply hastening our species’ (and many others) demise.

We can start now. Instead of our media pushing us to buy more and more ‘things’, or to travel here or there-we need our media to begin displaying how it is to become interlinked with our world. To grow trees in every back garden and park, to teach young people that they do not need to be ‘somebody’ important- but instead to be kind and caring to all, to learn how to be at ease with what we have; to ‘need’ less.

Politicians need to understand that GDP is a meaningless piece of garbage that does nothing to improve human’s quality of life and certainaly nothing to sustain our living world.

Politicians also need to be educated to understand the vital importance of bringing an end to anthroprocentrism; that given the destruction we have caused, we must now become true guardians of the natural world or ‘kaitiaki’ as New Zealand’s Maori say. We must make more and more of our living world legislatively sacred -that all of nature itself has rights or ‘personhood’, like the sacred Whanganui River in New Zealand.

Links

Introduction to Permaculture Bill Mollison Tagari Publications Tasmania, (2011) Page 1

Understanding Our Collapsing World- https://open.substack.com/pub/predicament/p/understanding-our-collapsing-world

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/14/rights-of-nature-laws-gaining-momentum

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/intrinsic-value-ecology-and-conservation-25815400/

https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-319-09483-0_41

The Sacredness of Life

Life on our planet is a complex and often invisible intertwining of organisms; each  one dependant on many others for its survival.

The World Wildlife Fund states that half the planet’s wildlife population has vanished since 1970 as a result of human activity.   52 percent of Earth’s mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish disappeared over those 50 years, 40% of all insects species and 60% of birds are declining globally.

And those figures do not take into account the total populations of the different species of birds, insects and wild mammals that are being killed off or starved from lack of natural habitat. When did the moths last bang themselves against your lighted nightime windows?- when did the smashed insects last cover your windscreen with their bodies on that last holiday in the natural world?- when did you last see the huge flocks of birds that used to be everywhere?

That absence may seem of no  consequence (or even a relief!) to many humans (especially those who live in  urban spaces) but in  fact  we are all reliant on the multiplicity of other species for our survival-whether it be for pollination for our food, the birds that spread the seeds of life, the Mycorrhizal fungi  that  ensure plants and trees grow healthily, or the many predators and ‘pests” who keep life in  balance.

We need to  revive our lost understanding of our linkage to all other life on this planet. Not just  the species that humans ‘like’; our native fauna and flora and our pets, but ALL life. We must begin again to look and listen with respect and compassion to the living world around us and help  rebuild the natural  world that  sustains us. We are perilously close to cutting the remaining  threads that bind us to life on Earth.

Acknowledging that human ‘growth’ is in fact creating more dead spaces, (more concrete sealing over the soil, more trees felled, and fewer wild spaces to name just a few of our nature destruction options) . Planting trees, reviving diverse habitats and nurturing all other species  with compassion are just some of our key steps towards a better and sustainable world.

A Few Little Pieces of Gold and Silver

A Revised Letter to the Editor to a local New Zealand newspaper:

The current New Zealand government has, in  a  few short months, proposed a Fast Track  Bill to permit friendly quick-rich developers to effortlessly destroy  our natural  environment  which  we  all rely upon, not just for our wellbeing, but for our survival. 

Similarly  the proposed revisions to  the Resource Management Act  not only assist in this quick-rich process by stopping Councils from  designating  for at  least  3 years  Significant Natural  Areas, but also permit farmers to  resume ‘mud-farming’ and other farm process  that not only destroy water quality  but significantly impact on the wellbeing  of farm animals.

But perhaps the pinnacle of achievement of this government to date in putting cash before humanity, is its proposal  to  resume Livestock Export by Sea. Thousands of cattle spend weeks at sea in pens wading in their own faeces horrific and terrifying conditions – but it makes lots of money!

The mark of a good human being is one who  treats all other living beings with kindness, compassion and respect.I find it extraordinary  that supposedly educated government ministers put money that they  and their mates dont really need  more of, before our long term  survival and our humanity.

I would therefore respectfully suggest  that  Prime Minister Luxon  and his Cabinet  Ministers, spend a month  at  sea in a livestock  transport  ship  wallowing in  their faeces as a learning experience.

____________________________________

Links

https://eds.org.nz/resources/documents/media-releases/2024/make-a-submission-on-the-fast-track-approvals-bill-using-edss-template/

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/514993/government-reveals-first-changes-to-resource-management-act

Mud farming
Live export trade in New Zealand

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/511689/government-drops-need-for-councils-to-comply-with-significant-natural-areas-provisions

https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO2407/S00001/live-exports-a-global-animal-welfare-crisis.htm

The Striking Stupidity of Western Leaders

15/4/24

I am writing this blog post the day after Iran’s retaliatory attack on Israel after Israel’s missile attack on the Iranian legation in Damascus which killed several high-ranking IRGC officers. It is worth noting that one of rationales given by Iran for its subsequent attack on Israel was the fact that-despite the UK, France and the US knowing full well that Israel’s Damascus missile attack was a blatant and unique (at that point) breach of both the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, they refused to endorse a UN Security Council resolution condemning the attacks. By doing so, the US, UK and France have acknowledged that they and their Israeli proxy do not choose to abide by the international rule of law or human decency.

While Israel and the West claims that most Iranian drones and missiles were shot down and that there was minimal damage; there are other reports from Iran, Hezbollah and military analysts that there was significant damage to two Israeli airforce bases and a command post in the Golan Heights– all of those Israeli military sites had been used in the Israeli Damascus attack.

Given that there appear to be no casualties from the Iranian attack, it would seem that Iran has taken some care to avoid deaths-in contrast to current and historical Israeli genocidal actions in Palestine and, to a lesser degree, Lebanon.

There are also unverified reports that Iran notified the US of its intentions before the attacks, which then allowed the US , the UK and the Jordanian Army to shoot down many of the Iranian drones before they reached Israel. However there are strong indications that Iranian high velocity/hypersonic missiles did get through and hit the 3 Israeli bases.

Washington reports that President Biden persuaded the Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu not to launch a further reprisal attack on Iran despite Netanyahu’s earleir threats to do so. That’s a possible reason for the current uncharacteristic restraint from Israel, but in my view the more likely reason is that Israel’s military advised Netanyahu that a further attack on Iran would be suicidal, given Iran’s capacity to break through Israel’s much vaunted ‘Iron Dome” anti missile shield.

In addition,Washington on both the Republican and Democrat wings, have been itching to attack Iran ever since the Iranian revolution in 1979 which threw out the US and UK intelligence agencies supporting the brutal Shah’s Savak secret police, invaded the US embassy in Iran and nationalised the Iranian oil industry. This most recent Iranian attack comes after Iran’s previous attack on America’s illegal military bases in Iraq in response to President Trump’s decision to murder General Solomeini, Iran’s chief commander coordinating the destruction of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. That previous precisely targetted Iranian attack- despite again giving the US fore-warning, resulted in some considerable destruction and injuries at several American air force bases in Iraq.

Washington is thus now well aware that Iran can and will respond to further aggression from the US or Israel. The US’s multiple military bases in the Middle East are highly vulnerable to Iranian missile attacks, as are its navy and its commercial shipping in the Gulf of Iran. Sky-rocketing oil prices caused by blazing oil tankers in the Gulf would not improve Joe Biden’s chances of re-election for one thing!

So, predictably the West will further sanction Iran for responding to Israel’s major breach of international conventions when it bombed Iran’s Damascus embassy.

All of this action comes on the back of 6 months of the most depraved genocidal attacks on the Palestinian population in Gaza by the Israeli ‘Defence’ Force. The accuracy of that genocidal description has been confirmed by both the International Court of Justice and the UN, despite the denials from Israel’s Western allies, who continue to pretend that Israel’s genocide is a war against terrorism- there is however too much money at stake for the West to back down from their collusion in genocide now. President Biden alone gets enormous ($5.2 million over 34 years) money personally from the Jewish American agency AIPAC, and most of Congress is likewise in the pocket of AIPAC.

And the EU will of course not sanction or condemn Israel for its ongoing murderous savagery in Gaza.

Western media (and particularly my own New Zealand media) works hand in glove to desperately support the illusion of rectitude by America and its allies and reject their complicity in Israel’s genocide . We cannot be informed about the Nakba of 1948 for instance, the international implications of destroying another country’s Embassy, and we are never admitted into the mystery as to how Gazans are somehow dying of starvation- (what could be causing that we wonder?), or why there are many thousands of Palestinian brutalised hostages in Israeli ‘jails’ who might be exchanged for Israeli hostages?

We are not to learn how really depraved and corrupt our Western politicians are..

In Britain there are clear indications that the Jewish lobby funnels huge amounts of money into both the Tory and Labour parties (as Craig Murray notes 40% of Labour’s shadow cabinet, at least, are financed by the zionist lobby)as well as what they bizarrely call the ‘House of Lords’ to ensure both parties unanimously support Israeli mass murder in Palestine, despite their government lawyers acknowledgment of that genocide. Ironically Keir Starmer, the current Labour leader who is likely to sweep to power in the next UK general election, despite his incompetence and corruption, was once a human rights lawyer, so is knowingly complicit in this murder. And let’s not forget their dear ex prime minister Boris Bojo Johnson, whose sabotage of a Ukraine/Russia peace deal in 2022 has now resulted in his having the blood of over 400,000 Ukrainian men on his hands and his non- existent conscience.

I am ever hopeful as the world moves away from this brutal Western ‘rule based order’ to a multipolar world, that these corrupt stooges in the West will be committed to the International Court of Justice and spend the rest of their lives behind bars. It remains a mystery to me how these Western ‘leaders’ can face the world (and the mirror), knowing they have no integrity, no honesty and no compassion. If it were not for their savagery, I would pity them.

And corruption further drives our environmental destruction- government subsidies for oil companies to produce more oil to produce more global heating from CO2 now total more 7 trillion dollars in 2023. Why would politicans do that, knowing full well that global CO2 levels have already passed the 1.5C degree maximum the world agreed on only a few years ago? Follow the money…’There are no pockets in a shroud’ as my grandma used to say…

Critical thinking is clearly not a strong point for a Western ( or any other)politician . The amazing level of simple blind prejudice of Russia for instance allowed the analysts and leaders of the West to assume (contrary to the actual pre-existing evidence) that Russia would collapse under the West’s sanctions , that the ‘brutal dictator Putin’ would fall and be replaced by someone eager to please the West, while Russia would be defeated in Ukraine because NATO’s Western weapons were so much better than Russian ones and their Western military geniuses so much smarter than Russians!

So it was quite ok to fund train and support neonazis and other nationalist crazies in Kiev who believed they were descended from the Nordic master race, whilst the inferior ‘asiatic’ Russian hordes only had outside toilets and stole washing machine chips for their weapons!

Even now the West simply can’t seem to get it into their heads that they are on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of humanity. The Global South wants no more of the West’s brutal exploitation and colonialism and flat-out lies. And for some strange reason the Global South wants a liveable world!

The evidence is unequivocal, our so-called civilisational ‘progress’ has been made on the backs of environmental destruction and ecocide. Politicians across the globe have consistently refused to acknowledge the real costs of energy consumption and human ‘development’ on our planet and ourselves. The charade of the COP meetings fools no-one

Those devastating costs are only now being made manifest and will continue to do so at an accelerating rate for the next 1000 years or more.

But hey!- whose counting?

Postscript

Israel supposedly DID send a few Sparrow small air to ground missiles into Iran in response, and their terrorist proxies in Iran, the MEK, supposedly also sent a few toy quadrocopter drones of Isfahan– so I kind of got my analysis wrong- but not really!

As a sidenote: ‘In 2017, the year before John Bolton became President Trump’s National Security Adviser, Bolton addressed members of the MEK and said that they would celebrate in Tehran before 2019.’-wikipedia

Humans’ ‘Intelligence’

I was reminded of human beings’ selective cognition by a wonderful recent quote from Patrick Lawrence: ‘The core purpose of ideology is to preclude all need of thinking of any kind’.

As Patrick succinctly points out- frameworks for thinking necessarily limit what we can see and understand- what is outside the framework is often invisible, and unknown to us, or simply incomprehensible or dangerous.

We are of course all limited by pre-determined reference points in our attempt to understand how the world works. The subtle and not so subtle messages we acquire by osmosis for those who care for us (or don’t) in our early formative years. There are a multitude of hypotheses about how that works- from Freud to Piaget to Vygotsky to Stephen Krashen.

Suffice to say that who we become and how we perceive the world is largely determined by our environment, and that environment is, in our early years at least, predetermined by others and random events that impact us. But even those ‘random events’ will be framed in our consciousness by what we have experienced before. One person’s experience and response to an event will often be entirely different to anothers..

And while our childhood provides the strongest framework for perception which may last our lifetime, we are constantly being impacted by new experiences which may subtly, or not so subtly, impact that framework; the experience of trauma for instance can profoundly rewire that mental framework.

And as that wired framework becomes more solid and impermeable to new experience, the lifelong construction of our egos begins. New experiences begin to predominantly simply validate our previous experience and mental framework, rather than providing new insights on the world and ourselves; we become progressively ‘locked-in’ to being ‘this particular person’- or rather this particular ego construction. Validation and inflation of the ego becomes the predominant ‘mind-set’ for many human beings for the remainder of their lives. In a way, our egos take up the brain space that might have been left for inspiration and insight!

And in addition, (going back to Patrick Lancaster’s point), we might choose one or other ideology, or fixed mindset, to further validate that sense of who we ‘think’ we are, and which group of humans we believe we belong to.

Taking all that into account, we might guess that those humans who desire to becomes ‘leaders’ of a particular section of the human race; their predominant driving force is not the furtherance of the good of that group they wish to lead – but the furtherance of their own egos. Once their egos are partially satisfied with that power that leadership endows, there is only one way forward; more power and a larger inflated ego!

And, as we have just stated, the bigger the ego,the smaller resultant brain power there is available to respond to events in innovative and open ways; the cliched, the prejudiced, the racist, or the violent response, is what comes first and easiest.

As 2024 begins to unfold in a multitude of often violent tumultuous ways, it is becoming abundantly clear that our current global leaders are definitively, not up to the job. Whether it be the weather balloon sized egos of Trudeau or Macron, the ruthless egos of Putin or Xi Jinping, or the demented ego of Joe Biden determined to bring the world down around his ears as his dementia unfolds. And let us not forget the pyschopaths like Israel’s Netanyahu, or the excessive intellectual limitations of Germany’s Olaf Sholtz or Britain’s Rishi Sunak!

And lets not go anywhere near Ukrainian comedians who become politicians!

With potential emergencies like global wars initiated in Ukraine or Taiwan, and the very real mammoth global disaster that is global warming and bio-diversity loss, the world desperately needs leaders who can put aside their egos, who can bring people together with really innovative ideas, and who then have the courage to make those ideas happen, for a sustainable and more peaceful world!

What global structure do we need to make that leadership pool happen?

Welcome to 2024! 

Boiling Frogs-again…

You of course know the old (true) metaphor) that frogs in a pot which is slowly heated up, can’t register when the water is too hot for their survival and get boiled alive..

Well, something very similar is now happening for humans across the Northern hemisphere.

Source photo: https://showyourstripes.info/c/europe/all

And something very similar is likely to begin occurring in the Southern Hemisphere in early 2024 with the advent of El Nino and the rapid rise in Pacific ocean temperatures.

Source: https://research.csiro.au/acc/fifty-years-of-carbon-dioxide-co2-measurements-in-the-background-atmosphere-of-se-australia/

But it’s obviously all ok, because all our politicians around the world have far more important things to worry about– their next election defeat for starters, cosying up to big business for another, or sending another billion dollars’ worth of weapons to Ukraine. It’s as though climate catastrophe doesn’t really matter- if we just talk about it from to time and do nothing- that will placate the masses…

The response to the Greek Islands’ wildfires largely caused by climate change are just one of so many hypocritical and insane responses to climate change. The primary purpose of the fire response is not to eliminate the risks to vegetation and wildlife- oh no!-its to ensure that more tourists can flown in next year – and consequently ensuring that CO2 production from the thousands of tourist jets flying in and out of Greece ensure further climate catastrophe. Or we may give the example of why Paris has spent billions to clean up the Seine River -not to ensure river wildlife can return to the river after a century, but to ensure there will be millions of humans attending the Paris Olympics- all coming in on those CO2 producing jet planes from around the world…

Source : EDO https://edo.jrc.ec.europa.eu/edov2/php/index.php?id=1000

We need to ensure our communities can more easily adjust to the changes to our world and lifestyles that will occur whether we like it or not. Global trade will shrink as a result of more dangerous weather and destruction of sea, air and land routes. Transport insurance costs have already risen and will continue to escalate sharply as risks increase exponentially in the next few years. Local weather is becoming more and more unpredictable and dangerous. Multiple points of access to resources at a local level will become a priority.

In addition, to try and mitigate some of the impacts of global warming, species loss and destruction of soils and all the other species that we rely on for our survival, we need to urgently action the following.

In no particular order of priority (because they are all priorities), the following initiatives need to be initiated—NOW! …..

  • All food and products are produced within a 20km radius of major population centres. This limits both the transit/CO2 costs to the customer, and the transit costs of the producer.
  • Essential resources that cannot be produced or accessed locally are stockpiled in key places locally.
  • Transportation routes to other countries and locally, are multi-dimensional- ie different modes of transport which minimise biodiversity and climate harm.
  • All sales of goods account for their real costs to the environment.
  • All government and local government decisions take into account the environmental impact on emissions and biodiversity.
  • Businesses annually account and taxed for the environment costs of their business operations. All sales of goods account for their real costs to the environment.
  • All homes and businesses are retrofitted with high standard insulation. Where feasible solar panels are installed which link to the electricity grid.
  • Water from roofs is stored for either personal use or recycled into the water supply.
  • Urban areas and individual housing must have trees planted in every available area where food is not being produced.
  • All towns and cities are required to provide free or very low-cost community gardens and individual allotments for citizen food production.
  • Other species have the same rights as humans. A formal recognition by the UN and all state actors that all life is sacred and do not exist solely for humans’ benefit.
  • All products produced are capable of repair (or cannot be sold) and real recycling and repair occurs locally.
  • Governments and businesses are required to restore indigenous biodiversity to an agreed percentage each year.
  • Air travel is banned unless for absolutely essential business and family issues (e.g. tourism, global sports and cultural events are limited).
  • Solar, wind-powered or sustainably charged battery-powered sea, air and train vessels are developed and effectively utilised.
  • Farming is required to transition to sustainable practices within 10 years (no sprays, chemical fertilisers, and no ploughing- (use of permaculture, organic farming and biochar among other tools).
  • Indigenous trees are planted on a vast scale, on the understanding that they will never be cut down and ‘harvested’.

_____________________

The above initiatives may seem extreme to you- or even perhaps ridiculous and totally unnecessary. Why, you might say, can’t we, as Bill McKibben argues in his New Yorker article, simply return to 1960s levels of consumption?

The reality is that we have gone too far- way too far, beyond that. We have since had 80+ more years of consumption gone crazy, of CO2 production through the roof and an enormous amount of the biosphere destroyed. We not only need to stabilise humans’ impact on the living world we rely on for our existence, we need to start to actively repair it.

And yes, many of these proposals will have an impact on jobs; but without this forward planning job losses are going to be least of our worries- there will be little long term employment ins world of climate uncertainties and ongoing climate disasters.

Planning and actioning changes now, to cope with some of the enormous impacts climate change will have on our lives, will reduce some of the high risks of loss of income, food and essential resources that every one of us will face in our new climate world.

The alternative does not bear thinking about.

Postscript

In response to the recent US Congressional hearings on whether UFOs and aliens really exist, many of the U.S. public have stated that we really need to know whether we as human beings are really ‘alone’ in the Universe.

The unequivocal answer is of course that we are not alone, there are millions of sentient species right here on this planet that we have never bothered to try and communicate with as equitable partners. They may not look like us, behave like us, destroy the planet in the way that we do, (just like in fact our hypothetical alien friends from outer space would do), but they are, nevertheless our partners on this little world- and we are NOT alone!- let’s start to behave as though they really are our partners on this world!

______________________________________________

Links

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/to-save-the-planet-should-we-really-be-moving-slower?mc_cid=75c3f2d013&mc_eid=895987eb5b

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/05/230517122123.htm

https://jonathancook.substack.com/p/why-action-on-the-climate-crisis?

We need an Earth System Treaty to save civilisation. And we need it now

http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue96/Rees96.pdf

https://theecologist.org/2023/jul/31/future-what-future

Super-charging our Descent into the Unknown

While a savage war grinds on in the Ukraine, killing hundreds of thousands of young men and women on its battlefields for no good reason (along with the other less visible but nonetheless as brutal wars in Yemen, Palestine, Syria and various states of Africa); planet Earth heads ever more rapidly down the slope to a new world: a world where wild weather is the norm, where temperatures and sea-levels climb ever higher at an increasing rate, and where fewer and fewer living things can exist.

A world where humans have increasingly become the predominant inhabitants. A world of humans convinced of their supreme intelligence and foresight when all the factual evidence suggests otherwise. A world where humanity’s short-term avarice has become the dominant driving force for major decisions about our long-term future.

Global warming and loss of bio-diversity are creating a world for which humans and others species are not prepared and will likely not survive in. That global warming and biodiversity loss is purely driven by greed. We do not need all this inanimate ‘stuff’ we have created to lead a full and happy life, but we are hell-bent on acquiring it!

Note that the emissions shown in the above graph relate to the country where CO2 is produced (i.e.production-based CO2) , not to where the goods and services that generate emissions are finally consumed. 

But the greatest threat to us is not so much the steadily increasing temperatures and wilder weather around the globe caused by man’s constant production of Co2- but the loss of other species. Note that the graph below by Living Planet relates only to ‘wildlife’ , which in their terminology, only includes figures on vertebrate species – mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, and amphibians. It does not include insects, corals, fungi, or plants. The corresponding loss of total volumes and different species of insects is equally catastrophic. And man, not simply through his/her actions in increasing global temperatures, but predominantly through loss of habitat to produce more stuff, is the cause of these losses.

If we were to take the current reductionist simplistic approach to these losses we might say that we have no idea what impact these losses will have on humans, or what ‘benefits’ we could extract from those species if they were to survive. However if we were truly the intelligent species we claim to be, we would be examining the relationships between all these species, including ourselves and determining to preserve wherever possible, the current species we have.

We simply do not have a clue how each of the millions of species on this planet uphold the web of life here.

Increasingly ‘science’ is coming to the conclusion that all living things are sentient– they have awareness and are thus worthy of our respect, empathy and kindness, and a recognition and desire by humans to wherever possible preserve the lives of all other living things.

Death by a thousand cuts: Global threats to insect diversity. Stressors from 10 o’clock to 3 o’clock anchor to climate change. Featured insects: Regal fritillary (Speyeria idalia) (Center), rusty patched bumble bee (Bombus affinis) (Center Right), and Puritan tiger beetle (Cicindela puritana) (Bottom). Each is an imperiled insect that represents a larger lineage that includes many International Union for Conservation of Nature “red list” species (i.e., globally extinct, endangered, and threatened species). Illustration: Virginia R. Wagner (artist). https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

And while various mainstream media in the West (and almost nothing in China and Russia) talk about the latest research about climate change and biodiversity and how we need to be doing ‘something’ to address it, and while politicians and bureaucrats put in place global and state agreements to ‘manage’ climate change-in reality , nothing is happening to reduce the risks to us all.

And agreed, the path we are heading down is now a predetermined one, to very high global global temperatures for the next few hundred years or more that will almost certainly make life a living hell literally, but no-one is actually creating the mechanisms to stop humans creating more and more energy for more ‘stuff” we don’t need.

Our rate of destruction of this planet is not reducing!

And yet we humans are Masters of the Universe, are we not?

___________________________________________

Links

https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedented-report/

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2023989118

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/apr/02/bees-intelligence-minds-pollination

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/apr/12/the-trauma-doctor-gabor-mate-on-happiness-hope-and-how-to-heal-our-deepest-wounds

Highest ever readings of atmospheric carbon dioxide in human history recorded

Mainstream Media Parrots

Moon of Alabama recently posted a blog on how Western mainstream media copies the memes about the supposed relationship between Russia and China being one of Russia as the ‘junior partner”. As Moon of Alabama demonstrates, the phrase’ junior partner’ is repeated an nauseam throughout the MSM media (the phrase is repeated verbatim in at least 12 mainstream media articles .

This is however by no means the first time that MSM have regurgitated opinion and phrases as ‘fact’. We saw the phrase “Insurrection’ bandied about by not just US but other English speaking media in the days and months after the mob invasion of the US Capitol on January 6th 2023. Clearly not one of the journalists and editors who published those articles even bothered to look up in a dictionary what the term ‘insurraction” actually means. A single largely non violent mob invasion of a building where a government sits and has no capacity to bring down that government, is not an ‘insurrection’.

I would suggest that where you see these identical media phrases duplicated and parroted across media channels, you can come to the easy conclusion that the media articles are in fact simply propaganda with often no basis in fact because the journalist has not in fact investigated any of the facts- they are simply regurgitating someone else lines- often a government official or politician with quite another agenda than truth or freedom or honesty

The danger to Western populations is that, by repetition, people come to believe these parrotted phrases as facts. If that media company says it- and that one- and that one- it must be true! And conversely when people begin to understand that many mainstream media articles are in fact pure bullshit- they come to believe that everything is a lie- to ‘trust nothing and nobody’- it’s a recipe for disaster in the ever increasing environmental disasters that now impact us all.

We need independent media (not tied to current political agencies or big business) that have the capacity and honesty to truly research and investigate events and can give at least one version of the truth!

We need media that is not beholden to the current allocation of largely corrupt of politicians and bureaucrats for their ‘truths’- journalists who look for the nuances and not simplistic catch-phrases- and readers with the intelligence to both examine the contradictions in the media that is presented to them, who take the time to look for other interpretations of the ‘truth’, and who examine thoughtfully what is ‘conspiracy theory’ or disinformation , and what is not.

Our planet depends on it. With the ever increasing threat of the Russia/NATO war in Ukraine escalating into a full-fledged war between the Russo/Sino bloc and white Western nations, along with the ever increasing severity of the climate catastrophe and catastrophic loss of the natural world, we are in desperate need of reporters who show some intelligence, bravery, honesty and independence from our white-washed mainstream media.

Postscript

Three large Western media companies; The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the Washington Post have published so-called revelations about Russian cyber warfare in the Vulkan papers with the following long identical quote in each paper ‘These documents suggest that Russia sees attacks on civilian critical infrastructure and social media manipulation as one and the same mission, which is essentially an attack on the enemy’s will to fight.’ along with other multiple duplications.

Just think what that says about our so-called investigative media and its ‘bombshells’…

_______________________________________________Links

https://seymourhersh.substack.com/

http://moonofalabama.org/

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/03/the-junior-partner-meme-gives-no-insight-to-real-changes.html#more

View at Medium.com

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/31/craig-murray-the-so-far-non-existent-vulkan-leaks/

A not so Brave New World

COP27, the meeting of the rich and powerful with a smattering of people who actually know something about global warming and its impacts, was a total disaster for the planet. No agreed reductions in fossil fuels but an agreement to ‘compensate’ poorer countries for the impact that rich countries ongoing CO2 production will have on their local environment.

The fact that there were at least 36 private jets which flew participants into the COP27 conference, spewing huge amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is one small demonstration of what these conferences are about- looking good and taking no action while our living planet dies.

While there were many indigenous peoples attending the COP27 who were able to voice their concerns about the current state of the earth and make suggestions for change, their voice had absolutely no weight in the final decisions made by the big power-brokers ( who depend on a CO2 producing economy to keep the electoral money rolling in).

Those indigenous groups talked not only about climate change, but more importantly, about the loss of biodiversity and our dis-connection with the rest of nature which industrialization and commodification has done to our beautiful living world in the last 200 years. Without our fellow living things on this planet ; we are done .

The idea that giving some money to a poor country to compensate for a now unsolvable problem of environmental destruction is frankly bizarre, and amply demonstrates that mental vacuity of those rich and powerful people.

No doubt the money will be useful and may help poorer countries mitigate the losses to their local ecosystems and help humans survive in their devastated environment a little longer, but in many cases that money will simply be spent on more ‘development’ and ‘progress’ and thus more environmental destruction.

And as we can already begin to see, many of the global ‘rich’ countries are already struggling to cope with the environmental ‘costs’ to their own economies, so their capacity to pay anybody else for their own stupidity is soon going to be substantially diminished.

Everywhere we see the powerful and the media portraying climate change as some little problem we can solve- at some stage- but lets get on with the business of despoiling the planet now -while there’s money to be made!

I see sublime examples of this on my local state television news channel, who in one news segment show how our magnificent government has made some new pledge to reduce carbon emissions and the next news segment extols the virtues of that same government encouraging tourists from half way round the world to travel to New Zealand.(and home again). Those enormous jet plane carbon emissions (about 5 tonnes of Co2 each way) will of course not be counted in New Zealand’s carbon emissions but to the tourist’s home country, so naturally everything is ok!

We will undoubtedly exceed 1.5C increases in global temperatures in the not so distant future , and will also certainly reach 3.5C increases if we do not dramatically reduce our consumption of energy globally. Green energy solutions; solar, wind and wave can make that transition a little easier, but they cannot ever replace the quantity of energy from oil gas and coal we continue to consume at ever increasing rates.

We all need to come to terms with consuming less and helping to recreate the natural world .

If we don’t, and very soon, Nature will decide for us in not so pleasant ways.

_____________________________________________

Links

https://doomberg.substack.com/p/exit-stage-left?

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/11/21/another-terrible-failure-cop27-ends-no-action-cut-climate-wrecking-fossil-fuels?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=daily_newsletter
Chilean Indigenous Activist Says COP27 Promoted Devastating Mega-Projects
Badly injured developing nations promised palliative care at COP27
COP27: Australia promotes fossil fuels as pathway to carbon neutrality