Zombie Lake Erie is Dying Again

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Algae blooms on Lake Erie, virtually covering its Eastern bay in this August photo from space, are killing the lake. Again. And we know who the killer is.

Declared dead in the 1970s, brought back to life by the environmental movement it did much to inspire, Lake Erie is once again expiring, killed by industrial agriculture. Specifically, phosphorous from synthetic fertilizers, which the aforementioned environmental movement never gained the clout to regulate. After having been reduced by two-thirds with various buffering and conservation practices, phosphorous levels in Lake Erie are, according to an Ohio State University expert, “back up to when it was considered a dead lake.” Continue reading →

Water Scientists say Brace for Impact

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A cow’s carcass in Northern Kenya, photographed last week, testifies to the reality of what happens when the water runs out. And it is running out. (Photo courtesy CIAT The International Center for Tropical Agriculture/Flickr)

The burgeoning world population, already grown far beyond the numbers the planet can sustain, is increasing its consumption of water twice as fast as it is growing, according to the World Resources Institute. In a world already profoundly short of clean water, where the number of people is ratcheting upward past seven billion, in which global climate change is spreading drought across vast areas, this means, in the words of a WRI expert, that “we have a significant challenge on our hands.” To translate from the scientese: her hair’s on fire and she’s screaming “Brace for Impact!”

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Oil: More Peaked Than Ever

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Coming soon to a gas station near you: higher prices, fewer gallons. (Photo by Jason Langheine/Flickr)

Masked by speculation, eased by the great economic contraction in the United States and Europe, the terminal industrial disease known as Peak Oil continues to ravage the industrial world, which has not yet noticed that it is infected, and is just now beginning to feel a little woozy. Peak oil is a little like the Ebola virus — by the time you feel the symptoms, you’re dead.

If you look, you will find the symptoms. Continue reading →

Saudis Try Drinking Oil, Burning Water, Eating Money

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An oil-and-water cocktail is hard to burn and nasty to drink, but the Saudis, running out of both, are drinking hard and burning bright. (Photo by Yortw/Flickr)

While the industrialized world approaches the brink of peak oil — the point at which supply can no longer, ever, meet demand — the supplier of much of that oil, Saudi Arabia, is teetering on the brink of peak water. With increasing desperation, the kingdom is juggling the rising, competing demands for its limited water supplies, and trying to repeal the iron laws of supply and demand.

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Experts Shout “Fire!” in Crowded Planet. Crowd Ignores Them

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Some experts believe, although not without contradiction from other experts, that increased temperatures in the place where we live may be a cause for some level of concern. (Photo by Ada Be/Flickr)

A conference in London this past weekend on climate and health concluded that the “alarming speed” of the depletion of natural resources around the world, now being accelerated by climate change, poses “an immediate, growing and grave threat” to health and security everywhere. The medical, academic and military experts predicted imminent increases in hunger, conflict, social unrest and species extinction worldwide. Continue reading →

From Arab Spring to American Fall

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The Occupy Wall Street folks wear funny hats, brandish simplistic signs and offend regular people. Just like the Tea Party, only without the Koch Brothers' money. (Photo by David Shankbone/Flickr)

The leaves have come off the Arab Spring, and now we see, perhaps, the colors of an American Fall. The people of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Syria are still poor, still hungry, still imprisoned, tortured and dying despite their revolutions begun this spring. Now, in the fall, in numbers and diversity not seen since the Vietnam War era, American people are in the streets, railing against their economic overlords. Walking like Egyptians (in the phrase coined by supporters of Wisconsin public-employee unions). To what end?

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La Niňa: In English, it Means Scapegoat

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This drought, in Texas, was caused by La Niňa, off Peru. But don't worry, the tooth fairy will fix it.

It was one of those articles that subtracted from the sum total of human knowledge. It appeared on the respected Reuters news service, and began: “The dreaded La Niňa weather anomaly, blamed for both drought and record snowfall in the U.S., has returned and will garner strength during the coming winter, the Climate Prediction Center forecast Thursday.” The logical equivalent would be you — on finding your car doesn’t start in the morning — taking your ignition key to the shop and demanding that it be fixed. Because you “blame” it for the problem. Continue reading →

Report: Trawlers Scraping Last Life from Oceans

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A new study details how factory trawlers such as the Northern Osprey are stripping the deep oceans of fish that cannot replace themselves. (Photo by Dennis Jarvis/Flickr)

A perfunctory article deep inside yesterday’s Washington Post paints a horrifying picture of exhausted oceans — described as “more akin to a watery desert” —  being scraped clean of the last traces of marine life by pitiless, gargantuan deep-water trawlers operating beyond the law and beyond sanity.  The story is based on a new study of the world’s fisheries published in the journal Marine Policy (“Scientists call for end to deep-sea fishing”). (The article upholds the new Standards of Fair and Balanced Journalism set by Fox News by somehow, somewhere finding an academic mooch who sees no problem with that.)

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Energy Industries Rush to Sell Out Their Country

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1252 people were arrested for demonstrating against a proposed tar-sands pipeline from Canada. Meanwhile, the real crimes wre being committed elsewhere. (Photo by tarsandsaction/flickr)

The most real and present danger to the security — indeed, the survival — of the United States is the advent of peak oil (the time when the oil-producing nations’ declining output can no longer meet the rising demand of the oil-consuming nations). The condition is imminent (even Forbes Magazine admits the possibility: “Has Peak Oil Come To The Non-Opec World? Maybe.”) and its effects will be catastrophic. The sudden absence, or extreme cost, of a substance whose abundance and cheapness provide the foundation of our entire economy can hardly be imagined. So the American energy industry, aided and abetted by its wholly-owned politicians, is doing everything possible to make it worse. Continue reading →

Monsanto: More Crimes Against Humanity

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Monsanto’s declining reputation worldwide is reflected in this French street art of an imagined member of “Monsanto Youth.” (Photo by Thierry Erhmann/Flickr)

When we come to our senses and begin to mete out capital punishment to corporations, Monsanto will surely be the first to mount the scaffold (see Capital Punishment for Corporations: Time to Start). Just in the past week, there emerged two new examples of its abuse of the planet, two new indications of the catastrophe it is bringing down on all our heads. The general public, which could reasonably be expected to be at Monsanto’s gates with pitchforks and torches, yawned and went back to reality-TV reruns.

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