Feral Philosophy

Yesterday I went to the bookstore in town. You’ll probably not be surprised that I spent my time there browsing the section labeled “Environment”. Of course, we all know that “green is the new black”. Green is more than trendy. Everyone is on board with green these days…as long as it doesn’t cost too much or require too much sacrifice…and ESPECIALLY if appearing “green” increases profits. Well, given that I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised at the books on the shelves. Yes, there were a lot of the sorts of books I would have expected, books talking about the serious water crises around the world and books talking about loss of biodiversity due to cattle. However, it seems to me that nearly half the books in the section had something to do with what they called the “new green economy”. Granted, I didn’t read or even flip through them all. I’m sure that more than one of these books advocates for a radical rethinking of what we even mean when we talk about economics in the modern world. But all of the “new green economy” books I picked up and flipped through had similar messages. And the messages were thoroughly non-radical. They were very status quo. And I felt sad about this.

My frustration with the thinking advanced in most of these books is similar to the frustration I have with something like An Inconvenient Truth. If you saw An Inconvenient Truth then you know that the message is that we are facing serious problems. We’ve got too many people on this planet, and we’re destroying it rapidly. When faced with problems as serious as what An Inconvenient Truth points out I find it very, very sad that the message is followed by a truly pathetic list of things that you can/should do to “save the environment”. If you visit the official An Inconvenient Truth site at www.climatecrisis.net you can see the list for yourself. But here’s a quick selection of some of the recommendations.

* fly less
* telecommute from home
* keep your car tuned up
* only run your dishwasher when there’s a full load and use the energy-saving setting
* buy recycled paper products
* turn off electric devices you’re not using

I’m not saying these might not be good steps to take. Flying less is not only good for the environment, but it’s good for your own sanity, for example. But here’s why I take issue with this list of things you can do to save the planet. These things won’t save the planet. That’s what I find frustrating. The initial message is good. The initial message is that there’s a really major problem facing us. You get people’s attention. Then, instead of telling people the truth, you essentially say, “Don’t worry, though, you won’t have to really change your lifestyle. Just recycle more and we’ll be okay.” That’s a disservice in my way of thinking. If the climatecrisis.net site was seriously interested in saving the planet then it would say something more like the following.

“Dear reader, you’ve probably just seen An Inconvenient Truth. You just learned about the major problems facing humanity and all of life on this planet. You may now be wondering what you can do to avert the consequences. The truth is that it’s probably far too late to avert the consequences. Our way of life has already set into motion causes and effects that are beyond our ability to control. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s not important for you to make changes. In fact, it’s more important now than ever. You see, if we don’t act now then humanity may not see the 22nd Century, and we may bring millions of other species to extinction with us. Your help and participation is critical. We wish we could tell you that it’s going to be easy, that you won’t have to make real changes. We wish we could tell you that all you have to do is recycle and that would be enough. That’s what we wish because it would be a whole lot less scary and a whole lot more realistic that we’ll actually make the changes we need to make. But the truth is that what’s required are radical changes.”

That would then be followed with a list of the sorts of changes people need to make. And those changes might include things such as the following.

* Stop buying things unless they are artisan goods made locally and sustainably, and even then only buy them if you really need them. Consider bartering instead of buying with currency. Bartering eliminates the need for centralized financial authorities, and limits the ability of such organizations to coerce populations and damage ecosystems.
* Grow your own food using organic practices. Save seeds from your garden to reduce dependency on seed companies and transportation. What food you cannot grow, obtain from your community. Refuse to buy anything that required large scale energy use to produce.
* Reduce your use of electricity to an absolute minimum. If possible stop using electricity entirely.
* Work with your community to build strong community support systems. Ideas may include gardening groups and natural building education groups. The stronger your local community is, the more self-sustaining your community can be, reducing or eliminating the requirement for import.
* Plan families carefully. Consider the negative impact that population growth has on the planet. Discover if it is possible to live a fulfilled life without having children of your own.

Hell, even this list is probably a compromise of what is really necessary. But at least it’s more honest in a lot of ways.

My point is that half-assed “solutions” that require little to no real change just allow everyone to remain complacent. They allow those systems and organizations that are actively destroying the planet to continue as they have been. Worse yet, many of these half-assed solutions actually exacerbate the situation because they provide great PR opportunities for some organizations that are actively destroying the earth. For example, only in an Orwellian environment such as we have today could petroleum companies such as BP or ExxonMobil claim to be “green” in order to boost their profile. And sadly we, the public, fall for these PR insanities.

You might be wondering at this point what any of this has to do with the books I saw on the shelves. A “new green economy” sounds pretty good, right? We might envision a future in which carbon trading has been so effective that every industry on the planet has reduced its greenhouse gases to zero because it was profitable, millions upon millions of people have “green collar” jobs building new, “sustainable” and “environmentally-friendly” houses and offices, etc. But I feel like this whole fantasy is just that, a fantasy. I’m actually cynical enough at this point to believe that the entire fantasy of a future “green economy” is shaped by the dollars and PR work on the behalf of the corporations that already run the system. It’s just another distraction. Meanwhile, the machine keeps on going, destroying thousands more acres of habitats for endangered species every day.

There’s a word used to describe a lot of the PR these companies use. That word is “greenwashing”. Well, I think that it’s not just these companies that have been greenwashed. Our minds have been greenwashed too. We’re so thoroughly greenwashed that we’ve apparently lost all ability to think critically. No. It’s more than that. We can’t even see what’s right in front of our face, plain for all to see should they just open their eyes. It’s like we are characters in 1984 all believing that 2 + 2 = 5. But all the belief in the world won’t make 2 + 2 = 5. It’s still 4 regardless of belief. And that’s true of greenwashing too.

Take the notion of “green collar” jobs. This is a notion that most recently has been popularized by Van Jones. For those who don’t know about Van Jones, he’s an Oakland-based “environmental advocate, civil rights activist, and attorney” (according to Wikipedia) who wrote a book a few years ago called The Green Collar Economy. (Side note, I recently saw that Van Jones was the recipient of the Reebok International Human Rights Award in 1988. Excuse me? Again, just another conformation of the Orwellian nature of our times. The Reebok in Reebok International Human Rights Award is the same Reebok that manufactures “athletic footware”. Isn’t a Reebok International Human Rights Award a bit like a Nazi International Human Rights Award? You may think I’m being dramatic and that the comparison isn’t warranted. But I’m not in a happy mood today, and I’m just going to call it like I see it.) The Green Collar Economy puts forward a plan for how to apparently “solve” the “economic problems” and the environmental problems at the same time by way of a new New Deal approach that creates lots and lots of new “green collar” jobs. What’s my problem with this? Well, for someone who refuses to think outside the box it might look very progressive. Hell, it might seem radical. But radical it is not. It is thoroughly within the box. Whether your thinking is to the left of the box or to the right of the box it’s still in the box either way, and boxed-in thinking ain’t going to solve nothing because the box is designed to always generate destructive thinking. It’s just that some of the thinking is more destructive than other thinking. But less destructive is still destructive. The idea of a “green collar economy” is built fundamentally on all of the same flawed ideas as our current economy.

The thing is, I wouldn’t be satisfied with any idea that greens the economy, no matter how green. Why? Because I believe that the very notion of “an economy” is itself flawed and inherently destructive. The idea that there is such a thing as an economy instantaneously objectifies everything and turns it all into commodities. Don’t believe me? Think about it for a minute. What isn’t a commodity in our current mainstream thinking? Everything and everyone is considered a commodity. Traders will place bets on anything. And this is all in the name of “an economy”. But what is an economy? Does such a thing exist in reality? Or is it just an idea, an idea that is merely a collection of other ideas called commodities? Without commodities there is no economy. There is just life. And I’m advocating for life, not economy.

We’ve seen plenty of evidence that our economic thinking leads to anti-life behavior. Our notion of economics is fundamentally in opposition to life. Look and see for yourself. When environmental issues are mentioned in political debates the counter is always that taking any sort of meaningful steps to stop the environmental damage we are doing would harm the economy. Well, shouldn’t that be a clue? If doing what is necessary to live in harmony with our environment would damage the economy then doesn’t that make the economy anti-life by definition? The environment is life. We like to pretend that we can live without it. We like to pretend that there’s some techno-solution in the future that will clean our air and water and land and restore all the millions of extinct species of plants and animals. But when will we wake up from this greenwashed nightmare? There is no such techno-solution, and even if there was, it would be with its own set of anti-life problems. We can’t get out ahead of the wave of destruction that is the economy. We can only stop. And stop is what we should do.

Do you love your job? If you do, you are in the very small minority. Surely you know this. The majority of people would feel no remorse if they no longer had to live in wage slavery. But we’ve been brainwashed well enough that most of us never even clue in to the fact that there is life outside the box. We’re scared by the horror stories about poverty and homelessness and violence that await us should we decide not to work in the system any more. And that fear has blinded us to the fact that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have lived without this system, and they did well enough to usher in the next generations of humans and to deliver them to a healthy planet. We can’t say the same today. We’re not doing well. We’re far worse off than our ancestors. They may have lived in caves or tipis or other dwellings seemingly less impressive than modern skyscrapers. But they had clean water, and in my way of thinking that’s a hell of a lot more important. We’re mucking things up really badly, and the notion of a “new green economy” is just more fuel to the fire to muck things up more, but this time in the name of environmental progress. It’s insane, though, and we ought to see that immediately. It’s not environmental progress…unless we mean progress in destroying the environment.

What is the alternative to a “green economy”? I’m not advocating for a “non-green economy” either. I’m just saying that perhaps it’s time we consider dropping the economy entirely. Then it’s not a “green economy”. Then it’s just “green”. And to me that is vastly different. Tacking “green” on to “economy” is just a way of dressing up “economy” so it’s not a bad word. But the emphasis is still on economy, not the green part. Hell, the green part is largely not in the equation. But if you take away “economy” then we have to focus on the “green” part. And suddenly there is life again. Suddenly we are thinking in the right direction, which means restoring forests and grasslands and undamming rivers and building communities.

The following is a continuation of the previous post.

Burning coal presents a whole other set of potential problems. As is to be expected burning coal releases a lot of carbon into the air, increasing the carbon ratio in the atmosphere, and contributing to global warming (unless, of course, you’re a global warming skeptic, in which case none of that is true.) Additionally, however, burning coal produces lots of other by-products, including various forms of sulfur and nitrogen, some of which are toxic. The result is toxic substances are also added to the air we breathe. Even some of the safe sulfur and nitrogen compounds that result from coal combustion can have terrible effects. Consider sulfur dioxide, for example. Sulfur dioxide can react with oxygen to create sulfur trioxide, which then reacts with water in the atmosphere to produce sulfuric acid, which then falls to the ground as acid rain. Acid rain can destroy ecosystems.

Coal is made primarily of carbon and hydrogen. However, coal also contains other elements such as sulfur and nitrogen as already mentioned. Yet coal may contain many other elements, including things like arsenic, lead, mercury, uranium, and thorium. You may recognize that some of these elements are heavy metals, which are generally considered to have a negative effect on human and animal health. When the coal remains in the earth these elements also remain in the earth. Once coal is mined and especially once it is burned then these elements make their way into the atmosphere, waterways, etc. You may also recognize that a few of the elements listed are radioactive. An interesting (and scary?) note is that due to the volume of coal burned throughout the world there is more nuclear waste as the result of coal than nuclear power plants.

Petroleum is another fossil fuel used as a major energy source throughout the world. But petroleum too has plenty of problems associated with it at every stage, from extraction to combustion. Consider that offshore drilling often requires dredging the ocean floor, which totally destroys the ancient ecosystems there. Probably the worst environmental damage due to extraction is for “non-conventional” oil such as “tar sands”. Mining tar sands often involves wholesale ecological destruction such as clearing whatever plant life might exist, be that brush or forests or anything between. Then what is referred to as the “overburden” is removed. “Overburden” is a technical term that means all the soil, rock, etc. that is above the tar sands. The rest of the extraction for tar sands is just as horrific, involving water contamination and waste.

Once oil has been extracted that oil is then transported to other regions of the world to convert it into other forms or products. This always runs the risk of an oil spill, whether from a pipeline, a truck, or a ship. We all remember the stories of the various oil spill disasters in the ocean. While all oil spills are destructive, the oil spills in water are particularly catastrophic since they are impossible to contain. The result is an amazing death toll of lifeforms throughout the affected region.

When petroleum is used as fuel its combustion emits all sorts of things into the atmosphere, including many of the same compounds as coal such as nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide, and sulfur compounds. As we all know gasoline-powered engines emit carbon monoxide, which is dangerous to human health.

Natural gas is often touted as the “clean fossil fuel” because it emits less carbon into the atmosphere when burned when compared to coal or petroleum. However, natural gas still emits carbon into the atmosphere that wouldn’t be emitted if it wasn’t extracted and burned.

Thus far I’ve listed just the obvious problems with fossil fuels. But there are plenty of other problems that we don’t often consider. For example, what is the toll we pay for fossil fuel extraction in terms of the loss of human rights? Consider that historically and still today indigenous people are displaced through coercion or outright violence to gain access to the fossil fuels on their land. Also, there are plenty of examples where powerful governments such as the United States has supported or does support authoritarian regimes where they have an interest in maintaining access to fossil fuels in those regions.

We should also consider some of the other costs associated with fossil fuels that are much subtler and much more open to interpretation.

The use of fossil fuels correlates to the rise in world population. Fossil fuels have allowed for many scientific discoveries and technologies that allow the earth to support a population much larger than it would otherwise. One of the most striking examples is the “green revolution” which started in the 1950s. Fossil fuels are a significant and critical part of the changes of the green revolution. Natural gas is used for fertilizers. Petroleum is used for pesticides. And fossil fuels are used to power irrigation systems. The green revolution saw an increase in grain production of 250% from 1950 to 1984.

Setting aside for a minute the concern over whether or not peak oil is real and what the implications might be for agriculture if oil production is in decline. And setting aside also the concern over whether or not it is possible to meet the agricultural demands of a still-growing population. I think those are both issues worth considering. But there is also another issue that is more immediately important. What have been the resulting consequences of the population increases supported by fossil fuels? Just because fossil fuels have been able to provide the energy necessary to power an agricultural system (sustainable or not) to meet the needs of 6.5+ billion people doesn’t necessarily mean that there aren’t other negative consequences to consider. More people means more demand for other things too…like water. And the amount of water on the planet is basically fixed. We aren’t going to be able to use fossil fuels to make significantly more water. More people also means greater land requirements. That means we are pushing plants and animals off their land. That means losses to biodiversity. That weakens the entire system’s ability to adapt to changes.

Even if we don’t want to consider the environmental impacts or the impacts on personal health of fossil fuel use, there is still the social impact to consider. As I wrote previously, the use of fossil fuels has dramatically changed our way of life. Without fossil fuels we wouldn’t have electricity, telephony, automobiles, trains, airplanes, polyester, plastic, or any of the countless marvels (or mundanities) of modern life. It is difficult to know what all of the social impacts have been, though I suppose one of the ways we can guess is to simply compare our modern experience with that of modern traditional primitive (I use this word in a neutral or even a positive intent, meaning primary or natural) groups or perhaps our understanding of historical primitive groups. What is different socially?

I’m not expert on these matters. I’m not an anthropologist. But I’ll venture a few speculations. It seems to me that one really major change is about extreme mobility. Today it is possible for the average American to take an airplane to China, for example. I would guess that primitive groups, though perhaps nomadic in nature, simply don’t experience that sort of mobility. They may move a few hundred miles in a lifetime, but not tens of thousands of miles in a weekend. What are the implications of this sort of extreme mobility? Well, I can only speak from my own personal experience and my observation of the experiences of those I know. I live thousands of miles away from my parents. My sister lives hundreds of miles away from my parents. Is this good or bad? I don’t know. But it’s a fact. Perhaps all the Christian fundamentalists who cry over the “loss of family values” ought to be out protesting oil companies along with the indigenous people of places like Ecuador instead of supporting foreign wars in the middle east. But I’m not a Christian fundamentalist, and I guess I just don’t understand the thinking there well enough.

Fossil fuels have almost certainly changed the ways in which we spend most of our days. Far fewer people today live self-reliant lives. Almost all of us are now dependent on various systems even for basic things like water. As a result we are expected to pay back these systems by working. Our professions are often the sort of things that only exist in a society powered by fossil fuels. For example, even in other historical empires there were never computer programmers, and certainly in subsistence cultures this sort of division of labor was much less pronounced. (Note that I’m not claiming that division of labor is not present in societies without fossil fuels. I’m just observing that the division of labor seems to be much more pronounced as a result of our use of fossil fuels.)

Not only do I live thousands of miles from my parents, but I also live far away from lots of other places where I used to live. I’ve moved to probably five different cities in fewer than five years. What is the effect of this? How does it affect our social behavior, our attitudes, our relationships, etc.? Does this hyper-mobility destroy community? Does it reduce our attention span? Does it reduce our patience? Are we more likely to bail out when the going gets tough because we believe somewhere else will be better? What toll does that exact on our souls? Is it any wonder many of us in modern society feel isolated and alone? Perhaps we’ve lost out on the sort of intimacy and maturity that can develop through sticking it out.

Does fossil fuel entertainment similarly move us in an increasingly isolated and restless direction? Recorded music is available at any time, and you can listen by yourself or with the people you select. But without recorded music what changes? In a primitive context music is social out of necessity. It may not be convenient. It may not be on my terms. I may have to be around people I don’t want to be around. It may be at a time when I’d rather be doing something else. But are these inherently negatives?

The endless forms of entertainment made possible by fossil fuels such as cinema, television, and video on the Internet changes us too, I think. It seems to me that we’re all cynics. And we view entertainment as competitive, pitting one movie against another as though it was tournament. Has the art been lost then? Has the community been lost? Has the spirit of it been lost?

Another thing that occurs to me is the way in which all the comforts and conveniences afforded by fossil fuels may well make us less vitally alive, less appreciative, less joyous. I enjoy warmth in the winter. But it’s worth questioning whether such conveniences are without a cost. What do we lose by having heated homes and cars and offices and such? Do we lose touch with our fellow humans, our plant and animal brethren, and even our home, the planet? Do we forget that we can’t control everything? Do we forget that convenience and comfort are just possible experiences, not necessarily better or worse than, say, inconvenience and discomfort. Perhaps there are lessons and wisdom we miss out on by avoiding inconvenience and discomfort.

I live on the first floor apartment of a multi-family house. The house, like many, if not most houses in New England is heated by oil-burning furnaces. Growing up in the Midwest and later living on the west coast I’d never known anything about heating oil until moving to New England a few years ago. In New England, however, it’s the way people stay warm during the cold winters for the most part. For those not familiar with heating oil, I’ll give you a short description.

Heating oil refers to a petroleum-derived distillate with a fairly low viscosity. It is used as fuel (i.e. it is burned) in furnaces and boilers to produce heat. Heating oil is typically delivered by tank trunk a few times during the winter. Houses have oil tanks that are most often in the basement. In the case of a furnace the heating oil is burned and the resulting heat is circulated through venting systems to heat the house.

Last week my landlord told me that on Monday the oil company was due to service the furnaces, something they do each year. I thought nothing of this. It seemed like it would have little to no effect on me. I was mistaken. Early on Monday I awoke to hammering from the basement. I had forgotten about what my landlord had said and therefore I thought it must be my upstairs neighbor working on a project in the basement. Strange, I thought, but not a big deal. A little while later I noticed a faint smell of fuel. It wasn’t too cold outside and so I went to open the windows to air out the place. That was when I noticed the oil company van in the driveway. I put two and two together and realized that the fuel smell and the hammering were the result of the oil company servicing the furnaces.

Despite the fact that I had opened the windows and was getting a cross-breeze through the apartment the fuel smell continued to increase. Within 10 minutes it was overwhelming. I decided I would go to the basement to ask the technician if this was normal or the sign of a problem. However, upon opening the basement door the fuel fumes were even more overwhelming, and I decided against that approach.

I had an appointment shortly thereafter, and I decided to go early in order to get out of the apartment. I left the windows open in hopes that the place would air out by the time I got back in a few hours. When I went outside the technician was standing next to his van apparently taking a smoking break. I asked him if it was normal to have such strong fuel smells in the living quarters as the result of the furnace servicing. He replied something along the lines of, “well, it does require changing a bunch of filters.” This was hardly a satisfactory reply. However, to be honest, having been in the apartment with the fumes had taken its toll and I was not thinking clearly. I was in a bit of a daze. I just nodded as though what he said made perfect sense, and I walked off to my appointment.

When I returned from my appointment a few hours later the technician was gone. The fumes had decreased. However, it was still quite noticeable. I decided to keep the windows open. It still wasn’t very cold. I just kept my coat on inside and I was quite comfortable temperature-wise.

The problem is that all of yesterday I was in a heating oil fume-induced fog. It affected me physically (I felt lethargic,) mentally (I wasn’t thinking very clearly,) and emotionally (I felt rather depressed, which is quite unusual for me.) And though I was able to sleep yesterday, I was not able to get very restful sleep. All of this has caused me to consider a few things.

If for a moment we set aside whether or not it is normal and/or acceptable for servicing a furnace to cause the living area to be flooded with fuel fumes (something I honestly don’t know,) this situation still might cause a person to consider whether heating oil is worth the potential health risks. Furthermore, it might make a person consider what other implications heating oil poses, and what negative effects might be the result of heating oil use. And then one might generalize this entire thought stream and ponder whether fossil fuels in general are worth the costs to our health, to the environment, to society, to family, to individuals, etc. And even if no normal person would have pondered these things as a result of the events of yesterday, nonetheless I have pondered these things, and I’m now going to write a few of my thoughts on this matter.

Although it is probably clear to anyone who has read any of my writings, I should note that I am biased. Well before yesterday’s heating oil fumes and the fume-induced ponderings I already felt that fossil fuel use wasn’t worth the costs. But yesterday’s events really made this matter less abstract and more direct. I didn’t have to conjure up the imaginings of possible human rights abuses in Nigeria to feel that fossil fuel use might not be a good idea. I was literally breathing in the experience of the negative effects of fossil fuel use. This made my ponderings, even the abstract ponderings, much more impactful to me.

To be fair I think we need to consider the upside of fossil fuels. After all, if there wasn’t a significant upside then we wouldn’t be using fossil fuels, right? And to deny the upside is pure silliness. There are many reasons we like fossil fuels. They allow us to have unbelievable amounts of electricity, which powers lights even after the sun has set, washing machines, telephones, and all sorts of technologies which make life more convenient. Electricity allows me to type this and distribute my thoughts to the world. Electricity allows for countless conveniences and comforts in modern life. As sad as this might be to admit, I have never gone more than a few days without electricity. I have no frame of reference to even know what life would be like without electricity because the electrified lifestyle has always been the context of my experience. But I can see how electricity makes available nearly all of the conveniences of modern life, and life without electricity would be very different. Fossil fuels, whether eventually converted to electricity or used directly (as in the case of heating oil) provide many of us with heat in the winter months. We use typically fossil fuels to travel, whether by car or public transportation or airplane or boat. Fossil fuels are used extensively for the manufacture and distribution of most products. And some of modern life’s most popular materials such as plastics, nylon, vinyl, and polyester are derived from fossil fuels. Consider for a moment the number of products that don’t use at least some material derived from fossil fuels and you’ll realize that the scope of the use of fossil fuel-derived materials is staggering. And these products arguably make life much more convenient. We are able to have durable (yet disposable) products that are cheap and have qualities such as being water proof all because of fossil fuel-derived materials. Plus, these products can allow us vegans to feel guilt-free because we can buy, for example, synthetic shoes instead of leather shoes. Try that without fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are used in everything, even “food” and “health” products. For example, by law petroleum can be used to produce “food grade” distilled vinegar in the United States. And fossil fuels are used to produce many vitamins sold in heath food stores.

Fossil fuels have an upside as we’ve already established. They provide conveniences and have completely transformed our lifestyles such that it is difficult for most of us to imagine a life without fossil fuels. But are fossil fuels without the negatives? My contention is that our use of fossil fuels is rife with negatives. And, furthermore, I actually think that the negatives may well outweigh the positives.

As I said earlier all of these ponderings were initiated by the event yesterday in which my house was flooded with heating oil fumes. Therefore, the most obvious negative of fossil fuels is the potential for adverse health effects resulting from their use. Have you ever read the signs at gas stations that read “long-term exposure to vapors has caused cancer in laboratory animals”? Well, I’m saddened that someone felt it was necessary to mistreat animals in this way when just basic “common sense” probably ought to have yielded the same information. I don’t know anyone who likes the smell of gasoline. Usually when we find the smell of something repulsive it is for good reason. And we’re exposed to these vapors all the time. At the gas station we inhale the fumes. Apparently when we get the furnace services we inhale these fumes. Have you ever been to a marina? All those boat engines spew out fumes. Do you have any small-engine devices like a lawn mower or a chain saw? More fumes.

I remember hearing a report years ago about how frequency of asthma and other respiratory problems is much higher among children who attend schools near major roadways, especially highways/freeways. I hadn’t thought too much more about it until a short while ago when I was driving a long distance and I wondered to myself similar results might not be found for people who spend a lot of time on the road versus those who do not. It seemed logical to me that driving hours on a high-traffic highway in lane behind other cars would necessarily result in higher amounts of dangerous chemicals in the air the driver breaths. I looked this up online and found a few reports that backs up this theory. It looks like that hour commute might be worse for your health than you thought.

I grew up across from a farm that used conventional farming practices, including the use of chemical fertilizer, pesticides, and herbicides, all of which are derived from fossil fuels. I remember summer days when the air was filled with horrible smells that smelled like rotting eggs and cabbage. At the time I didn’t know what it was. But now I know it was when the farmer sprayed the fields. Pesticides and herbicides are designed to kill. That is their purpose. Although the chemical companies (Dow, Monsanto, Syngenta, etc.) and the FDA would like to you to believe that these chemicals are not dangerous to your health as long as they are “used properly” that simply doesn’t jibe with good sense. If a product is designed for the purpose of killing (albeit killing insects or plants) and you live in a neighborhood where you can smell the chemical then I would say that any reasonable person would know that isn’t good for their health. But the effects don’t stop there. We drew our water from a well, as did all of my neighbors. Do you think those chemicals didn’t make their way into the ground water and then to our taps? One of the most common herbicides on the planet is called Atrazine, and it’s marketed under a variety of names. It’s manufactured by a Swiss company called Syngenta. Atrazine is now banned in the EU. But it’s still used in the United States. Tests have demonstrated that Atrazine has demasculizing and even feminizing properties. These tests were on frogs. The male frogs exposed to Atrazine were effectively chemically castrated and they began to produce chemicals normally only produced by female frogs. But you don’t live near a farm, you say. Well, I’ve got news for you. Atrazine has been shown to travel at least 600 kilometers in rain water. Most people live within 600 kilometers of a farm.

Maybe it’s also useful to consider specific fossil fuels and a few of the specific negatives associated with there use.

Coal is one of the fossil fuels with the longest record of human use. The earliest records of coal used for fuel go back more than 2000 years. Coal is typically mined and then burned. Both the mining and the burning of coal have negative health effects associated with them. Coal mining is a classically dangerous profession. Miners are at risk of collapses even with modern technological advances. For example, most of us can remember the Sago disaster several years ago. Historically diseases such as “black lung” were common causes of death among coal miners. Though the frequency of these diseases has lessened in the United States in recent times, coal miners in many other countries world-wide are still frequently victims of these diseases.

But mining coal doesn’t just negatively impact the miners themselves, it can also have a negative impact on the health of other people and the environment as well. One of the important ways in which coal mining can adversely affect people is through changes and contamination of water. Coal mining can cause aquifers to drain, reducing water available to local residents. And coal mining can and frequently does contaminate much, if not all of the local water sources, potentially making the water toxic to humans (and other forms of life.) The changes to the environment caused by coal are often rather drastic. These can include draining bodies of water, removing land, and contaminating water and food supplies. The effects can be devastating to plant and animal life near the mines.

I’ll continue this tomorrow.