ECOLOGY - INDUSTRY/PERSONAL PARTICIPATION, QUALITY OF LIFE, DEVASTATION

in a quiet, composed, rational tone we would like to say that

at the very least, the higher life forms, ulp! meaning us, don't have great prospects.

fact: it took from the time of christ to 1700 for the population to double. now we're going over the edge.

clip can you see the aliens in their flying saucers right now? smirking behind their tentacles, saying, "they destroy their own environment!! they even call it 'high technology' because they're past fire and the wheel."  that's why those flying saucers are round, it gives you room to roll around laughing. "this is too depressing. get us out of here, Zorp, and turn on those flashing lights. the 'dominant species' really gets a kick out of those."

the first account used the expression
"like a child's toy."

 

this is the famous photograph, "the blue marble," taken by the astronauts in 1972 on their way to the moon. it is one of the most widely distributed images ever. yes the earth is large, but as this photo so poignantly demonstrates,

it is finite.
it is the very definition of species maturity to recognize this.

it still looks kind of big, doesn’t it? 
consider:
98 percent of the atmosphere is below 30.5 killometers or 100,000 ft.
½ of the weight is below 5.59 kilometers or 18,000 ft.
the principle active area of the oceans of the world, 
defined as allowing photosynthesis, 
is a mere 200 meters or 600 ft, 
below which less than 1 percent of light reaches.
the height of mount everest – 8,848 m, 29,029 ft.
the “tree line,” the extreme of complex ecologies, 
is highly dependant on complex local conditions. 
it is commonly 3 - 14 k ft, but is usually 5 – 10 k ft.

we live in an unimaginably thin layer.

"low cost"

 

left. we thought this street poster was powerful in its form but hard to read - blame the cat - so we reproduced the words below. right. we know the feeling, girl.

“the earth is finite. its ability to absorb wastes and destructive effluent is finite. its ability to provide food and energy is finite. and we are fast approaching many of the earth’s limits...  no more than one or a few decades remains before the chance to avert the threat we now confront will be lost and the prospects for humanity are immeasurably diminished. we the undersigned, senior members of the world scientific community, hereby warn all of humanity of what lies ahead. a great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated...  a new ethic is required...  a new attitude toward discharging our responsibility for caring for ourselves and for the earth. we must recognize the earth’s limited capacity to provide for us. we must recognize its fragility. we must no longer allow it to be ravaged. this ethic must motivate a great movement, convincing reluctant leaders and reluctant governments and reluctant peoples themselves to effect the needed changes."

g  g
all this little stuff gets thrown away a zillion times a day.

can you guess which animal contains the most toxic chemicals?
do you persist in thinking all effects of stupid acts are only local?  or that only minor problems are occuring with a few out of the way species? the answer to the question lies up in the arctic circle - the polar bear, who was very recently replaced by the orca, or mis-named "killer whale". many peoples live in this environment, where the food chain is very narrow, thus concentrating pollutants.  how will you tell an eskimo mother the rock bottom truth,

                                -national archives and bbc news world edition, uk:england  thurs, 5 dec ‘02

does the word "deaths" strike you at all?

 
left. plastic islands. for the rest of the article on the right,
on brain damage from construction materials,
click:
"the hidden danger
in your deck"

everything is connected - from the smallest germ to the sperm whale.

we have the reference somewhere for this. this picture was taken where
overpopulation by pre-tech people
is driving elephants to literal starvation.
notice that this skeleton still has its tusks.

"mono-culture," 
the dominant practice of giant agri-biz companies, is far, far from eco-friendly, being more like farming with a sledge hammer. vast tracts of land are cleared, sown with just one crop and drenched with pesticides and fertilizers. it does not support any real  ecology in any sense:  there is no variety, no bugs, no birds,  no snakes, no small plants, no small animals. you might as well pave it over.

- clyde and chad peeling          
  40 years curators of a reptile and amphibian zoo

read a paper - kill a tree
a logging company executive took adds out in most national newspapers proclaiming that they plant tens of thousands of trees a year. unfortunately what he didn't say was that this amounted to about .001 percent of what just that one company cuts down. 
paper mills,
outside of mining or heavy industry, are the worst polluters of the land and rivers, doing permanent damage to  aquafers and whole regions of towns.

when explorer/anthropologist thor heyerdahl crossed the  atlantic ocean in a primitive reed craft, his intent being to prove the possibility of early migrations, his diary recorded floating garbage 

left. a  photo from heyerdhal's book on the voyage. right. from a tourist company.

eds. note. - it's amusing that t.h. angered many anthropogists, because he actually went out and did things instead of wallowing in a cushy academic position. though his ideas of migration are probably wrong, since genetic and linguistic data are against it, he proved that they were possible. this issue is stii not settled. there are plants on easter island from south america, and though most genetic data point westerward, this does not disallow a mix. early vistors described the easter islanders as fair skinned anmd red haired. also, the cultures of the western pacific have no tradition of monumental stone working. another amusing note on the many hacks that inhabit the science community. since its discovery by honkeys it has been thought that easter island could not support a large population because of the scarcity of arable land. one person was curious about the fields of closely packed pebbles that no one had explained. underneath he found spores and bacteria and husks, all the signs of cultivation. the pebbles were mulch layed over compost.

stress
"as i decended into the valley, i was defened by the noise rising up to greet me: the... factory crashed and belched smoke, creating a horrendous background racket; semis with diesel engines clanked and cranked, dump trucks backed and beeped and rumbled; workers hammered a steady "rat-a-tat-tat" with motor driven tools; sirens, engines, and aircraft all conflated into one echoing din of artificial noise above, below and around me. and the stench. chemicals, raw sewage, exhaust, gasoline, hot tar, and an odor i couldn't identify pervaded the air. --- however, once i returned to ohio, wherever i went, i found noise all around me. background blare greeted me everywhere - grocery store, shopping mall, dentist's office, gas station, gym, park, airport, ice cream stand, train station, telephone hold nowhere, beauty salon, stable, theatre, concert hall, sporting event - nowhere, it seemed, could i escape bachground music and advertising.. in addition, each location had its own unique set of sounds - motors, drills, horns, announcement systems, bells sirens, and people's voices - loud, louder, loudest."

.
picture and quote below from vogue, '05.

the taj mahal, built by a king grieving for his wife. if you’re going to build large buildings, an odious question in itself, this one wins hands down over the temples of business that literally define the urban landscape. many places are beginning to ban buildings over a certain height. "its like defiling a cathedral or a temple. its so scary. the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, it's all contaminated, all of it. it gets into the breast milk, fetuses. some of the whales washed ashore in british columbia are treated as toxic waste."  - primatologist jane goodall

" i want to draw you a word picture of a lagoon. this is not an azure lagoon trimmed with pearly beaches and wreathed with leafy palm trees, not the type of lagoon you may remember from "gilligan's island"...  this lagoon is a rectangle the size of three football fields, lined with 42-mil high density polyethylene and filled, to a depth of thirty feet, with pig shit. now imagine that, at the bottom of the lagoon, pebbles have punctured the liner, allowing the liquefied pig shit to seep under and ferment. a bubble is growing. the polyethylene liner rises like a pungent creature from the brown lagoon. it breaks the surface, spilling a pungent stew of  untreated feces and urine into a nearby creek. an undocumented guatamalian worker is ordered to puncture the liner with a shotgun blast. retching, he fires. the swollen liner retreats into the fetid depths. mission accomplished. the next day however, one of the most magnificent  sights in nature, a shit geyser, explodes into the afternoon sky. those working nearby watch the pillar rise ten, then twenty, then thirty feet above the lagoon. it is as though the earth itself is afflicted with a virulent case of projectile diarrhea. giles, president bush's deputy secretary of the interior, has opened public lands to oil, gas, and mining interests, all while still receiving money from his former employers in the oil, gas and mining industries. there is a particular boon to the industry that removes mountain tops, gaining ready access to diamonds, molybdenum or bituminous, or "dirty", coal. the thing is, a removed mountain top doesn't just vanish, it usually goes into a nearby valley. when miners detonated mountain ridges, filling in valleys and streams with trees, rocks, and thirteen species of songbirds, they also sent boulders flying into local houses. as you can imagine, neighbors complained, not just about the boulders, but also about the choking, asthma inducing dust. huge coal loading machines ran twenty four hours a day, right next to the houses. until recently, its been illegal to dump mountain tops into a nearby stream or river. the bush administration has changed all that by rewriting the Clean Water Act's rules. twenty years ago, hogs were produced in this country were raised by family farmers. today, three companies produce 60 percent of all hogs in america on factory farms, or CAFOs: Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations. a single CAFO in utah is home to 850,000 hogs, producing as much shit as new york city, which fourteen sewage treatment plants. CAFOs have none. people lucky enough to live in the vicinity of the lagoons are, with each breath, made keenely aware of the cause of their declining property values. if you drink a glass of orange juice it tastes like hog shit. "i've seen grown men cry because their homes stank," says don webb, a very retired hog farmer. the shit stink is exacerbated by the practice of spraying excess shit into the air and onto fields of bermuda grass. the grass is so toxic that it will kill any animal that eats it, but most goes into ground water, air, and rivers and streams. in 1995 a spill from one of these lagoons killed a billion fish in the Neuse river of north carolina. every year since, dead fish have washed up by the tens of millions. the fish are dying from a previously unknown life form: the microscopic pfiesteria piscicidea, that can mutate into at least into twenty four different forms. the fish have horrible bloody lesions. the fishermen and bridge keepers of the Neuse river have also developed these ugly sores, and suffer from lethargy, headaches and severe cognitive impairment. the vertically integrated Big Meat industry has put the family hog farm out of business. twenty years ago there were 25,000 family farms in north carolina alone. now there are none. Big Meats defenders say that  it brings "economies of scale" that drive down the price of meat for consumers. this is true as long as you don't factor in the shit. bobby kennedy jr., president of Water Keepers Alliance, told me that if the waste were disposed of legally, the cost of the pork would be higher than from family farms. 'they're not in favor of responsibility or democracy or private property. it's about privatizing the air, water, all the things that the public is supposed to own.'

left. from “exploring biology” by ella t. smith, 1938. right. from “the biology of people” by sam singer, 1978.

people don't catch on too quickly, do they?

the chinese river dolphin, found only in the yangtze river.

let us give a big hand to the forward thinking chinese communists for eradicating an entire species out of total stupidity – almost purely through pollution and heavy fishing. there are reports of a film of a sighting of a single dolphin a year after an international team searched for six weeks and found none.

          g
oil cannot be cleaned off. any attempt to clean the animals is just as likely to kill them.

oil spills 
happen again, again and AGAIN devastating vast areas of large and subtle ecologies.

this is the true meaning of idiocy.

in turn of the century brazil, as the human population explodes the the fish population of entire species off the north east coast are 

damaged forests
with the totally erroneous excuse that they are now not viable, laws have been passed that allow burned forests to be harvested. the planet has been rebuilding burned forests for millions of years and every scrap is useful to that process. something always survives and finds a home in the rubble. some species even cannot reproduce without fire, and some cannot without having passed through a bear. that is so cute. nothing is obvious.

burning rivers
not unique to the u.s.a., rivers have become so polluted that they literally catch on fire. russia and europe are equal offenders. where there is less pollution, still, whole rivers have no fish. there were river fires as early as the nineteenth century in industrialized cities, including in michigan, new york, maryland, and pennsylvania. the 1969 cleveland cuyahoga river was not the only river to burn in this era. pollutants fueled fires on a river into the baltimore harbor, the buffalo river in upstate new york and the rouge river in michigan. cleveland's hands had been tied where state laws overrode local authority and did not allow the city to take action against the polluters. the federal government had enacted the River and Harbors Act of 1899 to grapple with pollution, but the general focus of the law was to keep waterways navigable for river traffic. the law barred disposal of wastes but not all liquid wastes, which comprised most of the water's pollutants. the Cuyahoga fire was the primary motivation for the Clean Water Act of 1972.

"the lower cuyahoga has no visible life, not even low forms such as leeches and sludge worms that usually thrive on wastes."

 “my mother warned me almost daily not to play in the small river (stream) near our house and today, it thrives with fish and wildlife. people  born after the clean   water act was passed just don't realize how bad things had gotten back then.” 

– a blogger

g

light pollution.
no wonder you never see the stars.

DISDAIN
TO RECAP. THE MAJOR THEME, THE PROBLEM IS NOT JUST THE MADNESS OF CORPORATIONS, BUT THE COMMON DISDAIN FOR ANY CONCEPT OF ECOLOGY. ONE OF THE CENTRAL IDEAS OF ECOLOGY IS "BIO-DIVERSITY," BUT THE COMMON MAN IS SO FAR REMOVED FROM HIS HOME PLANET THAT THIS IS SEEN NOT JUST AS RIDICULOUS BUT 

yea, let me breed as much as i want and give me a job on lifeless, paved over planet. my job is sacred. after all, i have to feed my family.

 
NO CORPORATION DID THIS.

elsewhere
in europe it is not uncommon for littering to be accorded a fine of thousands of dollars, and it is enforced. while in america the land and the cities are one endless

do paper napkin trees flourish in plastic spoon filled valleys? how can people use this stuff daily and not wonder what happens to it?

little things
let's not forget global warming, and depletion of the ozone layer. there is a rising incidence of cataracts and skin cancer because of the higher incidece of ultra-violet rays due to the depletion of the ozone layer. do you want your kiddies going blind? some forms of skin cancer take you out of the picture in six months.  ecology is a pretty new science, but it has exploded to more than prove itself. now there isn't a college that doesn't have a "major" in it, if not a degree. the average human being, though, has yet to catch up, barring a few high publicity media events. of course this stuff is nothing less than incredibly complex and hence difficult to decide, but for the sake of basic intelligence, allow us a few large point words:

should we say it's not a fact and debate it endlessly? or just wait until the whole planet looks like new orleans? weather is an extremely complex phenomena, almost beyond comprehension. really, global warming is just one aspect of what could happen. the weather could change to forms we barely are familiar with.  but if just the ozone layer goes we'll all be dead in very short order. should we all obliviously go marching ahead, saying we'll fix that bridge when we come to it? that lacks foresight but does indicate arrogance.

two facts:

1. science has proved that the earth has gone through both large and sudden changes before, many of them.
2. a thousand other effects of peoples' stupidity have been documented, so why is it so unbelievable that the whole ball of wax can melt? the only nay sayers are those with a vested interest in the industries that are causing this.

what you don't know you're missing is killing your soul
illinois alone once had 22 million acres of prairie, which was, in the words of one pioneer, 

please don't kill everything beautiful.

by aimee larrabee and john altman

only those who have not walked and breathed and slept here could say,
"but it's just empty."

do you want your children to live in a chicken-cow-dog-cat-pigeon world?

preserving diversity - what YOU can do

for the rest of the article, click:

preserving diversity.

a little dip
the pollution just from "recreational" vehicles in the lake behind hoover dam, the largest in the country, is so bad that even putting your hand in the water is dangerous.

a complete lack of thought
in your kitchen use aluminum foil once - then throw it away. to make that little piece of foil

and everything that lived on top of it.

g

trivia points to a deeper sickness 
this is really disgusting. this has to be the personal equivalant of tanker oil spills. why are there an infinite number of plastic shopping bags, used once only to be thrown away. this is just one aspect of

everything must be packaged - for convenience, for consumer safety, for ease of handling and transport. again, use it once then put it in the earth. 

cfree
these aren't your average back yard trees. for perspective, know that a road goes THROUGH one of these.

redwoods inspire awe
redwoods are giant trees that as a species are older than the alps and they are still being cut down, even though there are only a few stands of these trees left. individual trees are hundreds of years old and the highest is almost three hundred and seventy feet tall. these are some of the wonders of the planet, absolutely irreplaceable.

another genius move
recycled feces is used for fertilizer on food crops. this remarkable practice concentrates heavy metals, the prime cause of

NERVE AND BRAIN DAMAGE.

"to the moon, alice"
this quote from jackie gleason in the "honeymooners" was not that chauvanist, because the chracter of his wife knew he was useless. recently in california four out of twenty brands of lettuce tested positive for 

highly publicized later reports emphasized that the quantities were extremely low. doesn't that make you feel better? of the thousands of chemicals sneaking into your food, there's just this little bit of rocket fuel. there's no harm at all. really. would i lie to you?

asthma and class
asthma is twenty percent more prevalent in the urban poor, and mortality is three to nine times higher than for the middle class, and most of these victims are

landlords and cities and the whole middle class are indifferent to the environmental effects of squalor.   

cfree
the person in the middle is a blue starfish.

coral reefs
coral reefs are extremely beautiful, as anyone who can afford to vacation among them knows, and they support extremely complex ecologies. but they have their own set of problems, being relatively primitive and are hence extrememely sensitive to environmental problems. in some cases they have a major effect on land ecologies, such as with the Great Barrier Reef that borders northeast australia, and almost all sea islands. but now reef corals are deminishing by an inredible rate, partially from pollution, but partially they are devastated for oriental businessmen’s office decorations. they are harvested by poverty stricken local populations with dynamite and cyanide, resulting in entire geo-ecologies being destroyed.

the very economy of the u.s.a. is BASED on waste
people and businesses throw everything away, not just household/office trash. there are endless construction materials, wood, machinery, rubber and plastic, broken things, things that work...   as has been said before, 

gg
                      left. the oldest writing.                                                               which do you think will last longer?

        ...the decay time of styrofoam, the most common packing material and take out food container, is ten thousand years,

the pyramids are three thousand years old, the oldest  language found is five thousand, the earliest artifacts more complex than worked stone are almost twenty thousand, but are much harder to date.

no more babies
the population and diversity of songbirds is in rapid decline from both destruction of habitat and pollution. the most common and glaring fact is that human made chemicals, don't just cause disease, they interfere with

one of the factors that led to the banning of DDT was that trace amounts caused egg shells to be so thin that they did not survive. rachel carson’s book “silent spring” is rapidly becoming fact. is this your gift to your children, that they should have video games but never know the beautiful songs of birds, one of the blessings of being on this planet? do you think these chemical don't effect you?

WATER - ITSELF
the United Nations says 5-10 million die each year from drinking polluted water and 1.2 billion lack access to clean water, also that as populations grow and pollution takes its toll 

CONTENTION FOR WATER WILL ESCALATE TO WAR. 

this is already begining.

state after state is realizing that they can barely supply tap water.

already in southwestern u.s.a. entire states file lawsuits against each other over water rights/use,

and now the same thing is occuring in the lush southeast.

the water of most cities is foul tasting, whether from pollution or the chemicals employed to combat it, and the yuppies' cherished water filter makes less of a difference every year.

• of polluters, NEWSPAPERS and all PAPER companies are among the LARGEST and WORST.
• MOST water use, most water WASTE, and most water POLLUTRION is attributable to a SINGLE SOURCE, giant agri-biz companies.
  

let's repeat that diagram of failing virgin forest.
pretty extreme, no?

logging
in response to environmentalist and popular pressure the president of a large paper company made a televised statement that his company will plant 20,000 trees a year. what was not said was that this is LESS THAN 1 PERCENT CUT DOWN BY THAT COMPANY ALONE.  these two facts are the cost of all that useless news and the homes in ever-increasing urban sprawl.

your body is part of your soul
living conditions are ever more crowded, there is continuous noise or enough noise to drive a person crazy, there is always light so that generations grow up never seeing the stars or a simple true dawn, air quality is increasingly causing health problems and many cities now have alerts for the susceptible – children, elders and the sick - people have gotten used to fantastic rates of crime and officials speak encouragingly of a change of a few percentage points. will we all end up like india, where it is taken as nothing special to see crowds starving to death in the street?

unregulated

almost 16,000 new chemicals are patented a year.

some, a very small percentage, of these chemicals have been tested singly for their effects on people and the environment.

 
left. printed smaller than the original. "the vietnamese are convinced."

what you are risking
we have for the most part avoided unsettling graphics, but this is necessary.

we have read what claims to be the mother-of-all studies on agent orange, and for what the government's word is worth, there is some doubt if the deformity pictured above was from dioxin. but then, as the page on "corporations" says, "doubt is their product."

the picture is a hook for two and a half articles,

click:
troubled waters

synthetic is best
in the u.s.a. people eat dead, simple, tasteless food full of chemicals. diet consists of a miniscule fraction of the vast variety of the plants of nature and the cuisines of the world. while russians couldn't recognize a vegetable on sight. most white people in europe and north and south america dress in dull clothes that can’t compare to what is worn in what they scornfully call the “under developed third world.”

wait a minute.
trash dumps?
junk yards?
this is standard practice? 
this is disgusting, hidiously ugly and STUPID.

there are vast wastelands of garbage and specialized dumpsites,
for cars, mine tailings, construction waste, 
while our leaders tell us about “acceptable levels” of hideous chemicals that are simply unregulated.

                                –u.s.a. Environmental Protection Agency, dec. 95

antibiotics  and other animal chemicals
pervade meat and milk because they have been proven to increase the growth rate of animals, and it is now standard to give continuous massive doses in feed. it is proven that this causes resistant diseases, and there is a high possibility they causes autoimmune diseases. . B.G.H., bovine growth hormone, is used to increase milk production. the industry successfully fights labeling that would allow an informed choice as “biasing their products.” the european union has import restrictions on all these plus G.M.O.s (genetically modified organisms). the u.s.a. ALONE fights these restrictions in a blatant denial of all medical evidence. even brazil, the poverty wracked repressive giant of south america, has stricter laws. 

the hight of absudity
u.s.a. cars have bumpers that withstand collisions of only 5 mile per hour, slightly faster than walking speed. most bumpers are plastic!!! the mandatory installation of seat belts, then airbags, was fought fiercely by corporations. how many have been killed and mutilated by this conspiracy of indifference? is this ecology? we're killing human organisms every day.

"what a great country we have."
the vaunted prosperity and life style of the citizens of the u.s.a. is based on suffering/pollution and 

where there are slave wages and no safety regulations. this prosperity is maintained ON THE BACKS OF THE POOR. huge corporations pollute africa, asia and southeast asia. there are approximately 1000 lawsuits, against huge corporation from the u.s.a. and other countries, with many of the targeted contracts arranged by the government, alleging murder, slavery and torture. did they collude, or just know? does the distinction matter to a sane person? (Business Week, nov 25 ’02) these are carefully hidden from the public. at least one lawsuit is being fought on the grounds of “national security.” - slavery in the interest of national security? Nike, the athletic foot wear giant, is just one well known example of companies that use FORGEIN SWEETSHOP LABOR. your kid just has to have the latest style, but why don't YOU try living on two bowls of rice a day? in some places sulfer, a major industrial chemical, is mined by hand, carried in huge baskets amid clouds of poison gas with only a scarf over the mouth. in the Union Carbide disaster in india, where a huge cloud of toxic gas was released, deaths are counted but not crippling long term health problems or deadly pollution. decades pass with only a paltry financial settlement and NO ADMISSION OF RESPONSIBILTY. in the early days of nuclear power nuclear waste that was released in the south west went down stream onto an indian reservation and killed sheep, not from radiation poisoning, but because it was so intense it rotted the organs. this is one of the oldest examples of nuclear pollution. nothing was done.  again, see the Lincoln quote at end of the large print section.) the GREATEST polluter of land and water tables is the

which holds vast tracts of land, many up stream of or next to population centers. this is why almost all the ground water and wells of Cape Cod, massachusetts, a densly populated area, is severely polluted. 

where prosperity comes from
a crop duster flies over workers while his children play in field and they vomit for three days. 

this at 7 dollars a day. sterility is the most common complaint after headaches and vomiting. workers can’t pay for the protection the corporations deny them. they say,

people do not understand the oceans of the world, having a myth of limitless bounty, but are unaware of how fishing has changed from the fishing fleets stretching back though history to the idea of  factory fishing, totally driven by massive capital and inventing  new technology that sweeps the ocean clean of life.  large predator fish populations are down 90 percent. whole fish populations and even species have already been destroyed, reduced beyond viability, and had their whole ecologies disrupted. much of this started after WWII with the massive new technology and freedom of the oceans. the decimation of tuna began  after the korean war, and the Japanese are almost single handedly responsible.  see reading list, USNews and World Report, june 9, 03

extensive photos trips have shown that the sea floor of Georges Bank, previously one of the most prolific fishing grounds near north america has been scraped clean.

             the barbaric fact is  there is no law to govern the use of the ocean. ecology is a recent idea and until now the oceans were plundered with only puny ships, and still they decimated whole populations. there are countless historical recording of lost populations of sea life, some very recent, before the new technology, and some ancient. but it’s ultimate cause is unlimited breeding by the dominant species, humans. large preditor fish are down 90 percent  in many species and we are fishing our way down the food chain, looking for smaller, more obscure fish. the lower down the food chain we go, the more subtle is the ecology that is destroyed.

the gadgets of our modern world
according to the EPA, less than ten percent of cell phones and computers are recycled. old style monitors contain 3-8 pounds of lead. widely used nicad batteries in cell phones, and computers contain nickel, cadmium, and lithium – the last two being extremely deadly. alkaline batteries contain zinc – which has no federal regulation.

not everyone is quite so thoughtless. japan has a national system for recycling rechargeable batteries, with bins at retail and repair shops. in sweden there is a recycling bin next to newspaper bins, and city maps have recycle bins designated.

the population of gorillas and chimpanzees has been halved in the last ten years. there has been an ebola epidemic, but also, the rare element, coltran,  used

is found in abundance in their habitat, and  with war raging around the entire area, is a literal “gold mine” for armies, which are increasing composed of

a lot closer than you think
sharks, the top of the ocean food chain, are becoming rare. cheetahs are almost extinct, being just on the border of a viable breeding population. the beautiful black and yellow wild dogs of africa, ancestors of all dogs, once roamed half the continent but are now confined to a few tiny ranges..

we are not alone
it has been proved to all but the most chauvinist scientists - we admit, that means most of them - that porpoises are intelligent. read John Lilly, Mind of the Dolphin. lilly was setting up ever more sophisticated intelligence tests at poolside, and his dolphin pal would nudge him aside, do the whole test without any preparation and swim away, as if to say,
                             "give me a hard one."

so it's not the same kind of intelligence that we monkeys have, so what? they love their babies, have complex societies, lovers form attachments and have quarrels just as we do. also that,  with the higher primates, they are capable of  sophisticated emotions. we are killing our brothers and sisters.

there is only one way to summarize

"extinct is forever."

 
 from a children's book. it's kind of sick that this is considered to be helpful...        while the kids nibble brain       and baby seals are killed
                                                                                                                           damaging lead...                   en mass for fur coats.

here are some ARTICLES about

DEATH IN THE WATER.

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