Arbitrary List of Environmental Crises
- High tech conflict (nuclear, biological, psyops, etc.)
- Disposal of wastes (food, nuclear wastes, old minefields, leaching landfills, etc.)
- Hot wars (very disruptive of ecologies)
- Topsoil depletion and erosion
- Biodiversity loss (pollinators get the most attention)
- Light and noise pollution (diminishes wildlife in human occupied zones)
- Dispersal of many different pollutants (dead zones from nitrate runoff, for example – 400 of them world-wide)
- Ozone holes: still there, and are they “reviving”?
- Plastic trash and microparticles (found everywhere on earth)
- Sick populaces: global pandemics, plus chronic diseases, like diabetes
- Endocrine disruptors (affect glandular systems of both humans and animals); have cumulative effects
- Water security; floods; droughts; depletion; pollution
- Oceans: warming, acidification, pollution, oxygen levels dropping
- Air pollution (more serious than generally recognized)
- Electromagnetic pollution (from 5G radiation to severe solar flares)
- Trash (damaging wildlife, like coral reefs, overflowing landfills, harboring pathogens)
- Natural disasters (more death & destruction because of human population density and building density. Disasters affect ecology too)
- Food security (lack of nutritious foods; obese malnutrition)
- Cybersecurity and proliferation of disinformation
- Depression and its effects, like drug use, suicides
- Increasing human population, especially the consumption footprint of that population
- Climate change effects: Atmospheric heat trapping, ocean warming, even shifts in major ocean currents
- Psychological blockage: inability to see our situation and deal with it.
All of these are related. They reinforce each other, mostly negatively. However, left unchecked, any of them alone could do in the human race. That’s why there is no silver bullet solution. Broadly addressing a huge range of interrelated issues is the intent of Compression Thinking.
(There’s more but I tired of listing them. Whatever we become dependent on, we also become vulnerable to. No magic fix will let business as usual continue, All too often, a technical solution becomes a new problem.)
THE USUAL REACTION: UH-HUH. YAWN.
Intellectually, we strain to grasp the compounded impact of this list. Its implications stress us emotionally. We don’t want to think about them. Besides, most of us are trapped in the system, earning money to live in consumptive convenience. Perhaps the last bullet point in the list is our deepest threat — our own psychology, fooled by our own mass delusions. So what can we do about that?