 
# Requiem for Mankind

# By Jon Van Loon

# Copyright 2015 Jon Van Loon

# Smashwords Edition

# 

# Preface

" _The bells which toll for mankind are—most of them, anyway—like the bells of Alpine cattle; they are attached to our own necks, and it must be our fault if they do not make a cheerful and harmonious sound"._

-Sir Peter B. Medawar, awarded the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

## My Credentials

I present the following only because the reader deserves to know whether anyone audacious enough to write a book of this nature has a wide and deep enough background in this subject area to be suitably qualified to do so.

I possess a double major BSc degree in Geology and Chemistry and a PhD in Chemistry. Thereafter I became a Full Professor at the University of Toronto and was cross-appointed to 3 divisions, the Departments of Geology, and Chemistry and The Institute for Environmental Studies. In the case of The Institute of Environmental Studies I am a founding member. In addition I was involved closely with guiding graduate students in the Department of Botany.

My research team was focused mainly towards environmental chemistry. But a factor that really broadened my perspective relating to environmental problems was being a contributing member on several multidisciplinary teams that studied and produced recommendations that related to a broad range of environmental problems. As examples those teams included 'The Lakeshore Capacity Study' and the 'Toronto Lead Study'.

As a result of research from all these sources I published over 150 Peer reviewed research papers and 6 research text books. In this regard it is important to acknowledge the contribution to these publications the efforts of a variety of talented co-workers and co-authors.

I must stress 3 factors of greatest import to the content of this book.

Firstly, the multidisciplinary teams at the Institute for Environmental Sciences having been formulated from a large pool of world ranking professors typical of a university the size and high standing of the University of Toronto provided an unusually authoritative perspective on environmental problems. These studies involved such abroad range of disciplines including not only all relevant branches of pure science and engineering but also for example medics, economists, sociologists and lawyers. Thus it provided a uniquely capacious educational perspective to all members and an important opportunity to view, discuss and report on environmental problems in a uniquely comprehensive and meaningful manner. I should add that a group in the university setting has the important advantage over similar groups formed in governments and at worldwide agencies of being relatively free from partisan political pressure as well as lacking undue influence from lobbyists and other especial interest groups.

Secondly, I was accorded the rare experience of for short periods of time living and working in a variety of jurisdictions on 6 Continents worldwide. This came about because of the development within my own research group of unique relatively inexpensive equipment and uncomplicated methodology for chemical determination of particularly noxious metals and their compounds in complex environmental and clinical samples. My involvement in these instances was sponsored by various scientific bodies, UNESCO and the World Bank.

Thirdly, it was my passion to avoid living in typical North American accommodation such as that provided by the well-known mega hotels that abounded in the larger cities. Thus I insisted that I should stay in accommodation, usually small local hotels, to maximize my exposure to the people and practices of each location. This occasioned not only these desired objectives but resulted in amusing and sometimes heartrending stories some that I have written about separately in a widely available free eBook entitled Brief Encounters with Real Life.

This book I present for your consideration is so contentious that I have taken the position that my own perspectives would be more believable with related views of others. Of equal importance many of these quotes also serve as a record of what if enacted likely would have dismissed the necessity for this 'requiem'. Thus I have included a variety of common quotes, some repeated in appropriate locations, from high profile individuals who have comments that are relevant to each specific issue being discussed.

The majority of quotes used in this manuscript have been made in a number of sources and if this is so I have acknowledged them with the authors name only.

## Premise

In this book I am envisioning that through some Einsteinian relativistic means I have reached a date sometime in the future and have discovered that I am the last individual surviving on earth. Thus it seems propitious that I should compile a short statement in the memory of those billions who died in calamitous fashion before me and seek the whys and wherefores for their demise. The 'I' that appears in illustrative incidents throughout this manuscript is the 'me' before my mysterious transportation in time to sometime in the future to become the last surviving individual on the planet and who writes this book.

For my memorial discourse I have chosen the time interval 2010 to 2015, this being a particularly crucial period in which key issues challenging man's future sustainability on this planet were at their tipping point. Mankind's typical propensity to disregard substantive remediation of those issues judged not to be immediately cataclysmic is particularly well demonstrated during this interval.

## Warning Concerning Mass Extinction of Mankind-June 19 2015

ScienceDaily published an article on June 19 2015 based on results originally published in the Journal 'Science Advances' containing the results of research by an eminent group of scientists headed by Paul Ehrlich, Bing Professor of Population Studies in biology and a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

The following are a few short quotes from the ScienceDaily report.

"[The study] shows without any significant doubt that we are now entering the sixth great mass extinction event,"

-Paul Ehrlich

Focusing on vertebrates, the group for which the most reliable modern and fossil data exist, the researchers asked whether even the lowest estimates of the difference between background and contemporary extinction rates still justify the conclusion that people are precipitating "a global spasm of biodiversity loss." The answer: a definitive yes.

"To history's steady drumbeat, a human population growing in numbers, per capita consumption and economic inequity has altered or destroyed natural habitats".

"If it is allowed to continue, life would take many millions of years to recover, and our species itself would likely disappear early on," said lead author Gerardo Ceballos of the Universidad Autónoma de México.

Ehrlich and his co-authors call for fast action to conserve threatened species, populations and habitat, but warn that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing.

## What Went Wrong?

" _Some doomsayers think the collapse will be triggered by runaway government spending, excessive taxation, oppressive regulation, food shortages, fuel shortages or natural disasters such as deadly pandemics or lethal changes in the world's climate"._

-Robert Higgs

" _This is a beautiful planet and not at all fragile. Earth can withstand significant volcanic eruptions, tectonic cataclysms, and ice ages. But this canny, intelligent, prolific, and extremely self-centered human creature had proven himself capable of more destruction of life than Mother Nature herself.. We've got to be stopped"._

-Michael L. Fischer,

My views on this matter constitute much of what follows.

# Chapter 1

# World Overpopulation – Red Flags Raised 2010-2015

" _All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder — and ultimately impossible — to solve with ever more people."_

-Sir David Attenborough

Using the worldometers website, (www.worldometers.info/world-population/) world population, in April 2015 was 7.3 billion and increasing by 200,000 persons a day. In 2014, according to the Population Reference Bureau there were 4.5 births and 1.8 deaths every second.

In the 1820's, a watershed event with numerous emerging environmental consequences took place - the Industrial Revolution. Prior to this time the world population was 1 billion, technology was relatively rudimentary and the biosphere was in a basically sustainable condition. Consequent drastic changes in mankind's lifestyle began to occur. Industry proliferated and manufacturing placed accelerating demands on existing energy reserves and other natural resources. Meanwhile oil, its refinery products, and natural gas, entered the scene. Greenhouse gas emissions, the product of combustion processes, accelerated.

Then in the 1920's industrial automation emerged. Notably Henry Ford introduced the production line for mass production of motor vehicles. Such industrial processes were highly electrified. Over the years the largest percentage of electricity production involved combustion of carbon containing energy resources to produce steam that in turn powered electricity generating turbines.

In North America, and other technologically advanced regions of the world, significant anthropogenic contribution to the natural atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide, accelerated lock step with rapidly evolving technological innovation. Meanwhile, in less developed world regions with exploding populations and inceptive technology, accelerating requirements for energy contributed substantially to this problem. Drastic alterations in worldwide weather patterns occurred suggesting that the world was accelerating towards the brink of climate change exigency.

Pursuit of environmentally friendlier sources of energy provided few potential practical alternatives. Despite contrary claims proffered by vested interests and in sources like the bestselling book "Abundance", the favored solar and wind technologies never contributed more than a small percentage of energy requirements. Many reasons can be cited including immense space requirements, damage during weather related disasters, infrastructure investment, high cost maintenance, intermittency of operation, public and political obstacles (eg. NIMBism) and most importantly, lack of technology to provide large scale energy storage for use during periods of solar and wind power electricity generation idleness.

Then just a mere 200 years later, at the beginning of the 21st century the population had increased an alarming 700%. Although the population growth rate was slowing, with a World already overpopulated, a 30% increase from 7 billion to 9 billion in 2050 was truly frightening as by this time essential resources such as fresh water and arable agricultural land had suffered a significant decrease.

In July 29/11 the influential journal Science devoted a special edition to the question of population. The lead editorial written by Babatunde Ostimehin, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, stated "As the World's Population reaches 7 billion this year (2011), we should reflect on the many ways in which population dynamics matter to the planet's future. Population growth patterns are linked to nearly every challenge confronting humanity, including poverty reduction, urban pollution, energy production, food and water scarcity and health". So even at that time those dealing in the subset collateral damage of world population growth and overpopulation were constantly forced to play catch up with the variety of resultant predicaments. The most pressing of these other than those mentioned by Ostimehin included climate change, resource depletion, economic inequities, recycling and waste disposal.

In 2012, David Pimentel, Professor Emeritus of Ecology and Agriculture at Cornel University, stated that "With the imbalance growing between population numbers and vital life sustaining resources, humans must actively conserve cropland, freshwater, energy and biological resources". Further within this time frame a United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) entitled 'Global Environmental Outlook' involving 1,400 scientists over a 5 year period found that "Human consumption had far outstripped available resources. Each person on earth now requires a third more land to supply his or her needs than the planet can supply". It faulted humanity, stating there was "a failure to respond to or recognize the magnitude of the challenges facing the people and the environment of the planet". It further noted "The systematic destruction of the earth's natural and nature-based resources has reached a point where the viability of economies is being challenged – and where the bill we hand to our children may prove impossible to pay".

The pre-eminence of the overpopulation problem prompted Nobel Laureate Dr. Henry W. Kendall to state, "If we don't halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity – and will leave a ravaged world".

" _If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos"._

-Edward O. Wilson

### Burgeoning Upper and Middleclass

" _Our most pressing environmental challenge is not how many people the planet can support, but rather how many cellphone-toting, satellite-TV-watching, gas-guzzler driving members of the middle class it can bear"._

-Sir David King,

Today the world middleclass numbers about 2 billion and upper class nearly 350 million. Considering only the middle class due to its dominant numbers, if present growth rates persist and using figures averaged and rounded off from a variety of sources, the middleclass will number about 3 billion in 2020 and over 5 billion by 2035. The percentage of the world middle class in the developing countries (mainly Asia) today about 25% will grow to 50% by 2030. (Upper-class numbers will rise somewhat more quickly). Most commentators stated correctly that the new middleclass will be the main source of economic growth and consider this new economic growth a laudatory fact for the future. I show that instead this 'laudatory' economic growth in worldwide prosperity lead to natural resource depletion/energy disaster for mankind.

### Ironic Research-Squandered Money

" _Man is an animal with primary instincts of survival. Consequently his ingenuity has developed first and his soul afterwards. The progress of science is far ahead of man's ethical behavior"._

-Charlie Chaplin

Antiaging research abounds with worldwide funding exceeding 100 billion dollars. Research proceeding in 2015 predicted the results there-from will lengthen the life span of people being born in this decade to up to 200 years. Much of the funding was coming from wealthy individuals and special interest groups whose motives appeared egocentric and obviously self-serving.

Ironically this was happening when the problem of overpopulation was the greatest threat to the existence of mankind. At the same time strategies for population control languished severely. What a sad commentary on Human nature.

# Chapter 2

# Explicit failings of Mankind

" _We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive"._

-Albert Einstein

## Human Nature

Mankind continued to deal with most major crises in a reactive rather than proactive manner. Such an approach particularly in the Environmental area was doomed to failure.

" _Most people don't believe something can happen until it already has. That's not stupidity or weakness, that's just human nature."  
_ -Max Brooks

Illustrative of this, during this period if a commercial aircraft crashed killing a few hundred aboard, the media highlighted the disaster immediately and with spectacular, lengthy and intimate detail. Airline and government officials reacted and appropriate corrective action resulted. Contrast this with planet earth hurtling through space with billions aboard, providing a profusion of clear indicators that major environmental disasters are approaching sometime in the not too distant future, and yet few noticed and still fewer demanded corrective action.  
Please remember that my overall negative view of human nature stated below came from having lived and performed consulting work here and worldwide in association with universities, business and government. In this regard I observed all niches of society from, as examples, residents of the Favela's of Rio, the chaos at all levels in South Africa, the wealthiest officials of sectors of the Mining Industry, human rights violations in China and almost everything in between. I also experienced the deceit prevalent among governments and industry in Canada when attempting to ameliorate environmental issues. In the case of the latter I, personally, along with family members, became the subject of threats of punitive legal action and even death threats.

" _Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal"._

-E.O. Wilson.

Human nature traits are very pertinent to nearly all the issues discussed in this monograph but must be mentioned under separate headings here and further along. Please be assured that I include myself as an equal to everyone else in the human race in what I write below and do not presume to be pontificating. The only difference is that being an environmental science consultant here and on jurisdictions on 6 continents a good deal more would naturally be expected of me in lobbying worldwide government and industry on crucial issues a duty which I hope I fulfilled. From the considerable number of threats I received over my career I must at least have shaken a few cages.

" _Corruption, embezzlement, fraud, these are all characteristics which exist everywhere. It is regrettably the way human nature functions, whether we like it or not. What successful economies do is keep it to a minimum. No one has ever eliminated any of that stuff"._

-Alan Greenspan

## The Common Good

One of the most telling concepts that I could identify as having been largely ignored by mankind from an environmental perspective and hence became a major issue in mankind's premature demise was 'The Common Good'.

A definition of this concept offered by the Encyclopedia Britannica and written by Simon Lee is; "Common Good, that which benefits society as a whole in contrast to the private good of individuals and sections of society".

This concept is often studied in the field of ethics and hence here is another definition offered by the ethicist John Rawls; Common Good, "Certain general conditions that are equally to everyone's advantage".

" _The individualism of current economic theory is manifest in the purely self-interested behavior it generally assumes. It has no real place for fairness, malevolence, and benevolence, nor for the preservation of human life or any other moral concern."_   
-Herman E. Daly

Aspects of daily life commonly mentioned as integral aspects of the common good include, food supply, public health and safety, political economic and legal systems. Environmental issues when included in the list seem to have received little meaningful discussion and emphasis. This was indeed strange considering that a mankind sustainable environment is the only common good upon which all others depended.

Worse most aspects of the so called common good were perverted by the private good of influential individuals, politics, economics and a wide variety of special interest lobbyist groups. Thus in many important instances what should have constituted to be good for the general public became something good for a small fraction thereof.

The Human race taken as a grouping worldwide was/is basically selfish, greedy, narcissistic, egomaniacal, mercenary, and narrow-minded with certain potential exceptions such as behaviors related to one's close friends and family members. Our own welfares are A number 1 and we can sometimes employ a variety of egregious methods to keep this so.

Unfortunately the further up the power chain we were all this gets amplified and generally the worse human nature traits generally become. Think of world leaders. Certainly there were a few individuals such as Nelson Mandela who represent brilliant exceptions. Another way to understand this view point is to have the reader make 2 lists one for leaders like Mandela that are relatively beyond reproach and the second listing leaders who fall far short. How many individuals could you name worldwide that have Mandela's laudable characteristics? Very few I am certain.

Many of us gave to charity that benefit the poor but often only in a superficial hand to mouth way. There is little indication that most of this charity had permanent benefits. The ratio of well-off to poor was still rising in most jurisdictions worldwide in 2015.

There are of course other types of exceptions to the above negativity. Perhaps courage and compassion stand out here. Again individuals like Mandela are exemplary.

Then there were praiseworthy acts of large scale monetary generosity but even these too often were to serve our ego, or intended to make up for past "sins", or to give the donor a measure of immortality. Good examples are philanthropists who in giving large sums to institutions like Universities and hospitals insisted or at least allowed the resulting wing or building be named after themselves. Other exceptions to humanities mainly negative characteristics can be found but from an environmental point of view good human characteristics fade when high cost, large project solutions threaten our own lifestyle status quo.

## The Norm

" _We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children"._

-Native American Proverb

Returning to the average citizen in 2015 and the ramifications of our human nature as it generally exists. There will be many who claim to be very environmentally aware; seeing themselves as actively doing their part for environmental stabilization and betterment. They for example are avid recyclers, plant trees, take care not to litter, obey rules related to use of insecticides and daily do other related services as their contribution to environmental wellbeing. In the overall tally of what is needed for extended term environmental wellness these routines though very important and laudable are only very minor and totally inadequate in solving major environmental problems. But this was not entirely our fault.

Governments at all levels had mandated and enabled such practices and in turn trumpet this as a major cog in the wheel to ensuring a long term sustainable environment. You and I as responsive citizens naturally bought into this notion. Meanwhile the same governments were dragging their feet on the real issues most of them costly to the tax payer, such as measures like climate change issues (e.g. spending billions of dollars on building subways and other rapid transit that would get hundreds of thousands of greenhouse gas polluting cars off the road). Remember such costly essentials must be enacted in timely fashion without which none of the recycling and other duties we as citizens contributed would have been effective in providing a long term sustainable environment. Multiply this scenario many times to cover all the major worldwide governments.

## What would have been Essential if Citizens had Seriously Wanted to make a Useful Environmental Contribution?

" _You go into a community and they will vote 80 percent to 20 percent in favor of a tougher Clean Air Act, but if you ask them to devote 20 minutes a year to having their car emissions inspected, they will vote 80 to 20 against it. We are a long way in this country from taking individual responsibility for the environmental problem"._

-William D. Ruckelshaus,

The essential question never asked was; "Citizens, in addition to your daily small routine environmental contribution how many of you press your government representatives to enact crucially needed major measures even if such measures would hit you deeply in the pocket book"? This would have been the real test of mankind's commitment to long term environmental health.

Thus with the multitude of a variety of environmental stagnating issues getting daily more problematic worldwide, the costs would have been monumental and if dealt with fully have resulted in lowering the average standard of living. In the light of this reality mankind remained uncommitted.

" _Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth"._

-Albert Schweitzer,

" _We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap"._

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

I presume I will be roundly criticized by many for emphasizing these dominant negative characteristics of human nature. Yet if we are really honest with ourselves and dig deeply into our motivations we will find daily actions with the general public are often fraught with these attitudes and that they most commonly outweigh the positives.

" _We all need to look into the dark side of our nature - that's where the energy is, the passion. People are afraid of that because it holds pieces of us we're busy denying"._

Sue Grafton

## Problems Particularly Rampant Amongst the Privileged and Powerful

People in the developed privileged sections of the world were particularly guilty of having been more concerned with their own wellbeing, employing in many cases mercenary and dishonest tactics and largely ignoring predicaments of their society in general and particularly that of those outside the jurisdictions in which they lived. Even in the world of science fierce often nasty competition including sometimes even using fraudulent results occurred between rival individuals and groups in attempts to gain credit for important discoveries and thereby be awarded large grant awards and prestigious prizes. Thus any critical world problems that didn't at the moment threaten this group and their narrow sense of self, garnered a much diminished concern. As a result world problems, such as long term threats to environmental well-being were most often allowed to develop to crisis stage; that being until the individual and their families were threatened before even this group, most capable of meaningful action, expressed serious concern. In an overpopulated world where critical problems were becoming much more diverse and complex than in previous decades, solutions at the brink of disaster were not forthcoming. Those of us in the privileged upper and middleclass situation were more culpable than others since we should have been taking a leading role in environmental issue remediation future planning.

## Human Nature- Consequences of Mans Need to Invent God(s)

" _People, I thought, wanted security. They couldn't bear the idea of death being a big black nothing, couldn't bear the thought of their loved ones not existing, and couldn't even imagine themselves not existing. I finally decided that people believed in an afterlife because they couldn't bear not to."  
_ -John Green,

" _The word 'God' is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation, no matter how subtle, can (for me) change this".  
_ ― Albert Einstein

There is no topic so controversial than the presence or absence of a supreme being. Despite the claims of religions and related organizations to the contrary there is no proof that a supreme being exists or does not exist. Yet billions clung to the unprovable concept that God exists. Complex lexicons have been compiled that describe the precepts of the followers of a plethora of religions and sects worldwide of which the Christian and Muslim religions predominated in 2015.

" _Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence"._

-Richard Dawkins,

Why bring religion into this requiem? Religion is a precept that requires believers to adopt often stringent beliefs and behaviours. In the case of the latter although 'love one another' is a commonly proffered command while very often the exact opposite was practiced towards particularly members of other religions and sects

It is my stated view that on balance the negative tilting vagaries of human nature had the major determinative role in the demise of mankind. Blind faith in religious precepts and the human nature consequences thereof was the reason why. However the reader should know there are many others of much superior status than I who have similar related views. Thus the following quotes are included here.

" _I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."  
_ -Albert Einstein

" _Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil?  
Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?"   
_-Epicurus

" _I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I've been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn't have. Somehow, it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I'm a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally, I am an atheist. I don't have the evidence to prove that God doesn't exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn't that I don't want to waste my time".  
_ -Isaac Asimov

Certainly the only supposed evidence of such an entity has in reality no basis except in stories and writings from the distant past. So the God concept is based on 'faith' that these ancient stories are true.

" _To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries"._

-Richard Dawkins

Of course a few will claim that there have been modern indications of the existence of some event that points to a God related indicator. One of the more popular of these is the so called 'near death experience'. This consists in most instances of a person who has lost all vital signs regaining these ('coming back to life') and relating some version of an out of body experience. An example being the subjects view that he/she was floating in space while looking back and seeing their own body seemingly lifeless elsewhere such as lying on a hospital gurney. Of course the fact that the person comes back to be able to tell such a tale can be explained by the fact that despite momentary loss of vital signs the subject was never truly brain dead.

Among my own 'there is no God' experiences is having been in a rudimentary hospital in Africa watching innocent children in wretched pain writhing on board like beds dying of Aids that they contracted from birth. Who could possibly stand there with me without disavowing any notion of the existence of a supreme being?

But there is little point in arguing about the God concept here.

More importantly the sins of humanity in the name of religion are much more telling about faults of human nature.

" _The fact is that more people have been slaughtered in the name of religion than for any other single reason. That, that my friends, that is true perversion"!  
_ -Harvey Milk

" _Religion. It's given people hope in a world torn apart by religion_ ".  
-Jon Stewart

Historically there are a plethora of examples in which religious zeal perpetrated horrors of unspeakable magnitude. Segments of mankind rose up in the name of religious beliefs and committed crimes against others of different faiths for no better reason than intolerance of the others beliefs. Arnold Toynbee very correctly and succinctly pointed out the irony inherent in such behavior. He noted that for one religious group to persecute another for being 'wrong' placed the persecuting religion in the 'wrong' and by doing this called into question its own legitimacy.

The following are well-known examples where extremists from 2 of the major world religions used their misguided interpretation of religious precepts to enact a cause. The Christianity empowered Medieval Inquisitions of the 12th and 13th centuries were characterized by acts of unimaginable torture often leading to maiming or death. Ongoing in the 21st century violent Jihad was here and there rising up from within the Muslim religion resulting in destructive insurrections.

But religious conflict is not limited to opposing religions. Protestant and Catholic factions of Christianity have a history of violent conflict, as do Sunni and Shiite factions of Muslim origin.

" _Without God we are condemned to be free."_

-John Paul Sartre

Religious beliefs are an impediment to free thinking. Faith in religious precepts not only discourages freedom to reason the meaning of life but often forms blockades to the acceptance of important provable truths. An important example is Creationists refusal to accept theories of evolution of life. Religion is widespread in different forms throughout the world. It's impediment to all-encompassing freedom of thought is an impediment to finding unimpeded solutions for man's environmental sustainability on this planet.

## Consumerism Gone Wild

" _And Man created the plastic bag and the tin and aluminum can and the cellophane wrapper and the paper plate, and this was good because Man could then take his automobile and buy all his food in one place and He could save that which was good to eat in the refrigerator and throw away that which had no further use. And soon the earth was covered with plastic bags and aluminum cans and paper plates and disposable bottles and there was nowhere to sit down or walk, and Man shook his head and cried: "Look at this Godawful mess"._

-Art Buchwald,

" _The Earth, our home is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth"._

-Pope Francis

Most of Brand Name consumer items sold in discount stores in North America like Wal-Mart, COSTCO, Target etc in 2015 were outsourced, that is usually made offshore in cheap labour markets such as existed in much of Asia, humans working for next to nothing in highly dangerous conditions. It was discovered that even big "brand name" were also resorting to these sources. As a result the average household was well stocked with items that became 'essential' to the 'good life' most of us including myself enjoyed. Shopping had become an obsession with many. For example "Black Friday" the day of the year when shopping was at its peak, people often lined up overnight for blocks at some shops in anticipation of obtaining loss leader bargains available at opening time. Some of these bargains were in such demand and short supply that fights broke out causing stores to require heightened security. The shopping proclivity of many citizens was not restricted to such occasions but was practiced as simply an almost daily activity, out of habit and often simply to prevent boredom.

## Banks a Worse Case Offender

Banks and other Financial Institutions were serious offenders in promoting excessive consumerism and in particular helped individuals to accumulate atrocious levels of personal debt. Credit Cards were perniciously pressed on consumers on the flimsiest credit worthy data. Credit card debt per household in 2012 in the US averaged between $7000 and $8,000 depending on the source. Nearly 3 million US citizens sought Credit Counseling yearly. Statistics on both counts were worse in Canada.

Here is an important indication that mankind driven by its own innate greediness, intensified by the commercial interests surfeit advertising style and easy credit was headed for problems.

" _We can pa_ y the ecological debt by changing economic models, and by giving up luxury consumption, setting aside selfishness and individualism, and thinking about the people and the planet Earth".

 -Evo Morales

Although an issue relating to 2015 shopping practices appeared on the surface to be of limited consequence; it is actually a potent example illustrating a predicament that, when exacerbated by, limited and miss-apportioned resources, large scale energy consumption, labour cost inequities, and other related consequences has grown to assume something of major environmental consequence.

" _Living in the midst of abundance we have the greatest difficulty in seeing that the supply of natural wealth is limited and that the constant increase of population is destined to reduce the American standard of living unless we deal more sanely with our resources"._

-W.H. Carothers

Rampant consumerism is a major cause of turning our attention and funding away from dealing with major environmental issues looming on the horizon poised to becoming long term major impacts. Why turn our efforts to such uncomfortable issues considering that to 2015 when a critical threat arose we had been able to successfully pull ourselves back from the brink of disaster at the last moment?

" _Your grandchildren will likely find it incredible - or even sinful - that you burned up a gallon of gasoline to fetch a pack of cigarettes!"_

-Paul MacCready, Jr.

## Mankind Out of Control

### Corruption a Pervasive Real World Problem

"Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today".

-Mohandas Gandhi

In 2015 mainly in developing countries it was often necessary to circumvent or even sometimes if minor give in to obvious problems like bribes, baksheesh, etc. In this regard I ran into many road blocks. I always carried American currency in my pockets and these bills could be used to circumvent many bureaucratic entanglements for minor daily needs. At the higher bureaucratic levels major money transactions were not uncommonly accompanied by skimming appreciable fractions of the sum into the pockets of those officials involved.

It is often assumed that corruption involving money matters was restricted to the third world. In fact in the developed countries a worst case scenario was actually more common. While there was generally little problem at the ordinary citizen level corruption is often found among corporate and government officials at the executive stratum. In these cases the amounts of money directly or indirectly involved dwarf anything one could imagine in the developing world.

"When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money".

-Alice Adams

### Communication a Real World Problem-A Personal Example

Lecturing in foreign countries in the early 21st century would appear to present a problem since I spoke no foreign languages. In the first instance many student scientists knew English. In fact scientists wishing to succeed in more than just a local venue had to be capable in English. If he/she wished to make a mark with his work worldwide fluency in English was essential. All journals of import and conferences at high levels were in English. To expedite my work an interpreter was provided mostly for my benefit. This also allowed all students to learn the material without problems they might encounter in my tone of voice and phraseology. Additionally he/she could provide foreign language references for my material. Lectures in all countries that I worked were usually 3 hours long so I could cover a terms worth of work in my relatively short allotted time. Exams and assignments were mandatory since these were credit courses. Such were set and student answers were written in the appropriate foreign language to minimize misunderstanding. In some countries I managed to learn a smattering of scientific phrases and key words so with assistance I could mark what was received.

By 2015 there were software related computer/tablet solutions for automated translations and these became more comprehensive. This is a case I can side with a truly technological solution and agree with the power technology alone provided in solving this important problem.

### Concern for Safety a Real World Problem-Personal Example

Consultants like myself typically stayed in Western style accommodation, most opting for American chain hotels where available. This was not a problem since most agencies that hired consultants paid ample salaries and benefits for such living and usually in American dollars. The advantage of the later was that inflation was commonly high in third world countries meaning that a premium was paid on American money exchange both due to inflation as well as the propensity for American money among the local citizens. So the usual consultant staying in American chain hotels got American meals cooked from contaminant free produce of well-defined origin eg. Beef was actually beef and not just named thus while actually originating from some other animal. These consultants were then transported to the consultancy destination by an agency designated vehicle. A consultant using this standard system had minimum safety concerns but experienced a minimum of the local dynamics.

Then there were those like me who felt a consultancy in a foreign country entailed not only providing our best efforts as consultants but was also an opportunity to learn about and actually experience the life of that jurisdiction. First this meant choosing local type accommodations and in many countries this was the first safety hazard. Usually this began with the building itself. Fire and other regulations were often lax compared to those in America. For example a hotel in an African or Asian venue had a wide central stair case from the lobby to the roof. Should a fire start in such a building the central area would act like a chimney and provide a corridor of upward rushing air to help fan the flames. There were no doormen to appraise and verify the entrants and locks on the room doors could easily be released by a credit card. Well you must be getting the picture.

Safety once you left the hotel unescorted as I did frequently depended on the country and the location within that domain. Your chances of a physical mishap also depended on how much you were willing to risk walking around the different neighbourhoods on your own, following the advice of the locals. Two or three incidents occurred where I was threatened but managed to escape due to my athletic background. In one of these I was attempting to have just a quick peak in a South American Slum, not the brightest idea I think you will agree. As a general rule I found pickpockets a particular nuisance in many locales and thus I took particular care not to be carrying important documents or much money. Shoeshine boys and other ad hoc service providers were often a danger. Police on the other hand varied in their veracity and usefulness from country to country and often were variably locally within a country.

### Ecological Reality-Political Protection of Violators

In Brazil resided a biosphere of great diversity and many native plants such as the impatiens which over the years became treasured as garden and house plants worldwide had by 2015 been encroached upon or irreparably damaged. But more familiar the readers and of more serious consequence environmentally immense sections of the Brazilian rain forest had been denuded.

"Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest".

-James Lovelock

What remains must be preserved for future Brazilian generations and to prevent further, human induced, world climate change. But the rainforest continued to be raped by the few and exceedingly rich, land and commerce barons living in a deliberate manner that excludes betterment of the massive deprived Brazilian population and continued the adverse consequences for the worldwide environment. Of course this was being done under the full knowledge and protection of the Political Leaders and their minions.

"Destroying rainforest for economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal".

-E. O. Wilson

Those like me, importing special scientific know-how by working at the Universities such as the UNESCO sponsored UNICAMP in Campinas, could only trust that the client/scientists (usually the small but developing middle class) would make use of this material, part of the solution to the countries unimaginable environmental catastrophe. I was extremely pleased to find that I was dealing, for the most part with academics of high energy, ambition and moral standards. For me life and travel in Brazil were for the most part idyllic. It was evident, however, that a deliberate and concerted effort had been made to exclude and hide sections of widespread poverty and ecological damage, as I found to be common in much of the developing world. Thus in retrospect my deep concern is, what help did I provide to those of the population that were most in need amongst the Brazilians and elsewhere around the world, that vast majority living in poverty?

### Frustration in South Africa-During and After Apartheid

Of great importance this piece has great relevance to my own weaknesses as a member of mankind that I dare to rubbish throughout this monograph. It also is tale that typifies the horrors resulting from Colonialism worldwide. This is my justification for so much personal detail.

The following detailed personal story is a look through a government restricted small window pertaining to the struggles of the indigenous Africans reacquisition of 'Desmond Tutu's lands' as expressed on behalf of all those downtrodden throughout the world.

"When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray. We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land".

-Desmond Tutu

In this first incidence I as an Invited Speaker along with my wife was attending an International Conference of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry in the year of the intense Soweto riots of 1976. Here are a few of our experiences together with some of the related history of foreign occupation of South Africa.

The Johannesburg Metropolitan area including Soweto and other Black Townships in the 1970's, this period of extreme unrest had a population exceeding 8.5 million. The city itself was about 3.2 million. This gives a stark representation of the inequity of Black vs. White population. Additionally throughout South Africa habitation inequities were represented by an average floor area of 33 square meters for each White compared to 4 for each Black person. Both of the above statistics have been approximated from 2001 figures in the New Internationalist, The new South Africa – The Facts. Johannesburg itself has an area of about 1,700 square kilometres or about 2,000 persons per square kilometre. The city and Black suburbs owed their existence to the discovery of gold and other precious metals, in the 1800's, in a unique "Reef" structure. Initially this locale was like a prospecting town near Pretoria and initially depended on this latter city for permissions to build and was governed there from.

A few typical personal experiences in my exposure to a vestige of Apartheid follow.

My Bladder was bursting and by myself on a main street in Johannesburg, where was I to turn? No problem, I was within sight of a public toilet enclosure on the boulevard (long gone in the USA and Canada). Not surprisingly this being 1976 there were 2 doors one marked Coloreds and the other Whites Only. As stated being much opposed to Apartheid, I first thought to use the Coloreds side. On reflection I thought this might offend the Coloreds in some way. So marching into the Whites Only enclosure, imagine my astonishment to bump face to face with a Black. Immediately this gentleman said. "Very sorry boss, please don't tell anyone!" Of course this was the furthest thought in my mind. Having finished my business I found the nearest bench and began to reflect on the wisdom of my presence in this country at this time in history.

On Saturday afternoons in Johannesburg a form of entertainment was available called "The Mine Dances". This name was poorly chosen and the event was no doubt exploitive. Yet our group, including me, attended. The music and dance was provided entirely by different black tribes and the beat, pace, and dance steps were unique to each dance (tribal) group. Somehow the agenda was arranged such that the dance cadence and volume of sound increased throughout the program until at the ending the ground seemed to be literally quaking.

The ramifications of a censored communications Industry, typical of Colonialism, are now demonstrated. During Apartheid heavy censorship of communications characterized the industry. This greatly affected Maureen and me in that we were kept totally ignorant of what turned out to be the worst riots during apartheid that were ongoing during our tenure in Johannesburg. It was only when we reached our next destination, Kenya that this state of affairs came to our attention. Apparently our families in North America were well aware of the happenings and were frantic for news of our safety. On air communications were sketchy until the arrival of TV in South Africa in 1976 after our departure the same year, but of course this medium was subjected to the same intense restrictions. Communications were also divided along White Afrikaans and English speaking communities. During Apartheid illegal Black underground radio broadcasting existed.

As an aside and further to my own personal errors as a member of the human race I must emphasize the point that I as I speak of these personal experiences I am admitting to culpability in supporting the regime by merely accepting this opportunity although offered by an International Scientific Organization, to be in South Africa at that time.)

### Story of Problems Establishing Technology-China Example

As you read this commentary it is crucial to realize how such conditions typified the situation that existed in the majority of the world. Most citizens of developed, westernized countries had no conception of the ecological mess and the almost complete absence, even widespread antagonism related to remedial action relating to any environmental issues in these jurisdictions at that time.

Grimy, polluted and crowded, Changchun a city of more than 1 million in The Manchurian part of China bore all the wounds of heavy industrialized cities everywhere in the developing world. It was the magnitude of the mess that made this city more typical of such localities in these locales. Dried up waterways flowing only during rain and runoff and filled with stinking garbage together with industrial stacks spewing multicolored toxic emissions were the rule. No obvious attempts, even minor, had been made at pollution control in any segments of the local biosphere. Dominated here and there by remnants of the Russian occupation periods Stalinist, heavy blocky looking grey buildings created an additional eyesore. Strangely however, locations of beauty were thrown up here and there against this dismal back drop. Such was The Peoples Square, 2 or 3 hectares of trees flowers, grass and flagstone squares wedged between a large car factory and a military heavy industry site. This gathering place for thousands of citizens became the back drop, especially on weekends and holidays for such diverse activities as Ti Chi and Communist propaganda sessions. Sandstorms from the Gobi Desert a few 1000 Km to the north mixing with the polluted atmosphere were the cause of unimaginable intensely coloured sunsets that from time to time bathed Changchun in a strange blanket of beauty.

Northeast Normal University was my teaching and research responsibility in this city. 'Normal' Universities are the source of most teachers in China. I made it my goal to slant work in both categories towards Environmental Chemistry. In this way I could hopefully create programs that would produce graduate teachers armed both with the will and the tools to begin the auspicious task of engendering an environmental consciousness backed by the ability to begin rectification of China's massive environmental problems. Industrial and Governmental participation in this process was of course essential. The most useful approach in this regard was to involve key personnel in these assemblages in design and implementation of research and teaching programs at the University.

Interweaving university, governmental and industrial interests in almost any endeavor even in developed jurisdictions provided a complicated challenge as I had learned many times in Canada. Attempting this in a country like China was akin to madness. This Government had become entrenched in the habit of establishing and administering programs and the ground rules thus required without consultation or interactions with the principle parties. Commonly individuals sympathetic and cooperative with the Government but seldom qualified were appointed to the decision making roles within industry and university and thus provided no independent leadership roles therein. Fortunately due to internal environmental disasters and outside pressure at highest levels, the Government had by 2015 become anxious to explore changes to industrial and municipal environmental practices. To promote a venue for change my approach was to establish Working Groups of Academics of widely ranging disciplines together with Government representation to investigate problems establish priorities and then plan programs for rectification. Sounds wonderful in theory and does work eventually, but initially just achieving some understanding amongst individuals in such a diverse group is a major education job in itself. Perhaps even more frustrating was the Government propensity for arbitrary decision making.

Upon establishing an 'Agreement' (always couched in generalities and often unwritten), it was common to celebrate with a banquet. The principals involved would gather in a private hall within a good restaurant and partake of a multicourse feast laid out in profusion on an immense Lazy Susan. This was always finished off with a soup course which being the reverse to North American dining procedure was a challenge to pretend to enjoy. The fish eyes being saved for the guest rule, of course pertained and these delicacies so difficultly consumed seemed to roll around in my stomach for days. Thus when shortly after I received a severe rebuff for initiating the establishment of the details of what I thought to be the 'Agreement', it became obvious that the Government officials were more interested in celebrations than living up to their word. This misfortune of having Governments backing out on time consuming and intensively negotiated precepts was common in countries existing on the extremes of the right and left wings politically. Any person in my position had to accept such behavior with understanding or extricate himself from such endeavours post haste.

I reproduce a few sentences from a letter I received after establishing a program of research in China. The letter sounds very encouraging and was very complementary of me for establishing a program of some importance. It is from the Chair of a World Bank International Advisory panel. Take care with the praise because there is an ironic twist.

"Up to this point in the Project, my International Panel has sent some 150 specialists to China. I have no hesitation that in terms of its long term impact your visit is likely to turn out to have been the most successful of the Specialist Program".

This turned out to be a typical disappointment as my program collapsed after several years. Why? It is a big problem to establish enduing programs no matter how useful they may have seemed when they have to be designed to work to fit into foreign systems. There is no evidence that the authors of the popular book 'Abundance' recognize this type of difficulty or have any proposals to offer to ensure their proposals would not suffer the same fate as mine.

Commendably al Chinese citizens requiring employment appeared to have a job. Many of these were menial and unfulfilling as judged by western standards. For example during the night and early morning gangs of street sweepers polished the streets with handmade twig brooms. Moving ever so slowly from end to end these custodians of the byways worked at an amazingly steady pace. Crews engaging in this profession consisted of both male and female members, with the latter being by far in largest proportion.

Gardening in most instances was totally non-mechanized. Scythes were often still used for cutting grass both in the rough as in ditches and on most lawns. Weeding was mainly done by hand and in the cities there was little evidence of use of herbicides or insecticides. Hand weeding of lawns was often performed by large groups of students. This was one aspect of required public service performed by students attending university.

One strange source of fertilizer came through an open flap in baby clothing. This requires an explanation. Shortages of what in Canada would be rated as absolutely essential items are common in Communist countries. China had an absence of an inexpensive supply of diapers. Thus baby clothing was equipped with an open flap over the bum area. In this arrangement when the baby relieved itself the excreta both liquid and solid was dispensed directly onto the ground. An illustration of a similar type occurred in 4 star Hotel in Havana Cuba in which we reposed for several nights. Although there were brand new toilets in the guest rooms these devices lacked toilet seats, requiring the guest to hang in suspension above the porcelain opening during their use.

Of particular amazement to me in China was the use of bamboo scaffolding in the construction of buildings. The use of this approach was not restricted as one might think, strictly for low rise structures. In Canton on the street that fronted the University in which I taught a 50 story office tower was being erected nearby. At the point of my arrival in Canton the building had reached about 35 floors in height. The actual building was almost invisible inside its dense cocoon of bamboo scaffolding. Upon close inspection no metal of any kind had been used in this working platform. Worse in my estimation was the observation that all fastening of the bamboo members consisted of a material that to me looked like fiber strapping. As a point of interest I asked one of my University colleagues; "in a strong wind or worse an earthquake would the bamboo superstructure not be in danger of collapse?" To which he quickly replied "no but the building might."

As was most often the case in Developing Countries safety for workers was noticeably absent or at least very transient. For example vehicles had no seat belts. One strange 3 wheeled taxis was constructed with the gasoline tank residing directly beneath the passenger in the front seat. Rules of the road if such existed were seldom enforced even by police at busy intersections. Habitations seemed to be lacking fire regulations and precautions. Never did I encounter a fire alarm, hose or fire extinguisher.

Although when I lived and worked in China almost every citizen had employment. Most of these jobs being manual in nature required minimal education. Education levels amongst the general public were improving but manual labour still provided the majority of employment opportunity.

### War and Terrorism

" _Most wars are not fought over shortages of resources such as food and water, but rather over conquest, revenge, and ideology"._

-Steven Pinker

We were and will continue to see the effects of war as a population regulator in local areas. War is a persistent problem that seems to have existed throughout the ages as a natural phenomenon related to the human nature. Historically wars emanated most frequently from religious extremists, sectarian groups antagonism, other ideological differences and all manner of racial discord.

Up until the Second World War the technology (nuclear) for destruction had not threatened to, within a period of few seconds, cause havoc over extensive areas and hence represents the almost instant capability of destruction of millions of people. Delivery system technology in 2015 was also under development in many nuclear nations. The testing of long range missiles was a not uncommon item in the 2015 news reports.

Of particular concern in this regard was the rapid proliferation of such technology to numerous nations, some of which are prone to rash behavior. An extension of proliferation meant that the world in 2015 had to face the possible ultimate possession of such devices by terrorist groups.

Another particularly frightening potential instrument of modern warfare is the development of biological weapons. Such weapons had multiple targets for example 3 target areas of particular concern were human beings, agricultural crops and livestock. Offensive biological substances of course must be effective and to be so they must be easily manufactured in quantity, stable over long periods of storage, they must be deliverable in a manner that to which the target is vulnerable and users must have protection there-from. Anthrax is a common example of such a substance.

After the Second World War and up to 2015 conflicts had largely involved weaker nations. With the more widespread availability of modern highly destructive weapons and missile delivery systems such conflicts portended an increasingly greater threat to the world as a whole.

### Pandemics

Throughout history up to 2015 a series of pandemics have been recorded that killed appreciable percentages of the Human population and were thus an example of population control. Pandemics are infectious diseases that spread through large regions of the population. These diseases include many that although today are treatable with vaccines or medications were in earlier times the cause of severe illness and death around the world. Examples of these are influenza, cholera, typhoid fever, smallpox and tuberculosis. The most recent to 2015 was the HIV 1918 flu that killed more persons than the total that perished in the closely preceding World War One. A more recent example threat of this type at that time, H1N1 flu, occurred in 2009 but thankfully for which a vaccine was developed early on. Most virologists that work in this discipline predict that other pandemics of unknown type will develop. The effects cannot be predicted and such depend on their nature and on our ability to mount a quick and effective response.

### Famine

A widespread scarcity of food results in famine and is accompanied by starvation, epidemics, malnutrition and of course a greater than normal incidence of death. In 2015 this problem was not uncommon in Africa, parts of Asia and here and there in Lain America.

From the point of view of agriculture in order to feed a growing population the only practical hope is to increase yields on existing land. This was achieved during the Green Revolution of the 1960's and 70's by Norman Borlaug and his associates and for which he won the Nobel Prize in 1970. In his acceptance speech he noted that man is using his capability for increasing the quantity and rate of production of food but he is not yet, using adequately, any capability for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. Thus the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of food production rise in some areas.

The effort to feed more from yields of crops on existing land had intensified in 2015 and was attended by off shoots of the genetic revolution. Problems which have worsened since Borlaug's time are the continuing loss of arable land both from soil degradation and expansion of urban areas. The rate of population increase has also accelerated.

The severe famine problems in some locales at the time were commonly related to war both civil and international.

Increases in incidence of famine and areas affected were expected due to the rapid population increase and the limitations discussed in detail above under the topic of agriculture.

## Historical Background-Typical White Race Destruction of Old Established Cultures in the Name of Greed and Expansionism

Destruction thus spawned harms western technologies acceptance.

One can easily describe a myriad of examples to illustrate the historical background. These include the Spanish invasion of the Aztecs and the destruction of the latter culture and most of the citizens in a quest for gold and beginning with Columbus's 'discovery' of the West Indies and North America this later territory was invaded and conquered as new land from the indigenous races over a long history of spreading disease and wars. But in general widespread Colonialism, in large part British of the 19th and early 20th centuries is perhaps the worst case scenario in causing destruction of cherished cultures and religions worldwide. Most countries thus raped never recovered and remain in destitute, rudderless and without workable cultures.

## Technology as a Perpetrator of Today's Major Problems

" _For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death"._

-Tom McMillan,

In the era encompassing the 2200's there was a dangerous and erroneous belief pervading the public mind that an exponential output in research presently being experienced particularly in North America, would contain answers that would save mankind from all the present and future serious problems threatening worldwide sustainability of a biosphere suitable for the continued existence of mankind. This belief was erroneous and dangerous because it suggested that the general public could continue sitting back still living on the large scale an environmentally unfriendly lifestyle waiting for the skilled researchers to solve our major life endangering problems.

### Incredible Technology Related Naivety Proffered in Books like "Abundance"

" _The most important and urgent problems of the technology of today are no longer the satisfactions of the primary needs or of archetypal wishes, but the reparation of the evils and damages by technology of yesterday".  
_ -Dennis Gabor _,_

One dimensional technological solutions for our critical environmental problems were being popularized. They were one dimensional because the technology was presented bare without sufficient consideration of essential, intrinsic social upgrade and the multitude of disciplines, organizations government and private, time and money consuming aspects necessary to establish functional facilities for any proposed technology worldwide which always complicates and delays such innovation. Naïve books Like "Abundance" (Abundance by P.H. Diamandis and S. Kotler Published by Free Press, February 2012) exacerbated the problem of convincing the public of the unlikelihood that a sustainable long term biosphere callable of supporting mankind is possible. This without fundamental changes in many of our time worn institutions including governments and economic systems capable of accepting and establishing multidimensional solutions to the worlds many critical environmental and related problems that must be arrived at soon. These solutions should have been vociferously demanded by the public even in that they required sacrifices to our present standard of living.

" _We could have saved the Earth but we were too damned cheap"._

-Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

In my view although the bestselling book "Abundance" was particularly misleading to the public; I am totally convinced the authors wrote the truth therein as they understood it. Thus its conclusions represented their honest contentions. In anything that follows I am in no way questioning their veracity or their heart-felt belief in the views they present.

Also I have no argument that the pace of technological innovation as described in "Abundance" is tremendous and accelerating daily. I also agree that technological developments could have occurred in this massive spouting of technology that may have held answers to many of the world's pressing problems.

Okay then where's the problem? Why would we not only never have this abundance nor have solved some, maybe most, of the world's critical problems?

" _Technology can relieve the symptoms of a problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem -- the problem of growth in a finite system -- and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it".  
_ -Donella Meadows

The difficulty of installing these problem solving technologies on a worldwide basis, for example one that might possess the potential to solve the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emission dilemma, were already legion. Inventing the technology though the crucial first step and praiseworthy can be likened to having constructed a firm base for a house of cards. Unlike attempting to build a house of cards the time involved in this analogy would be measured in many years, time that would take us well beyond the point of no return. A technology developed in a laboratory represents a concept proven on a small scale only. Prototypes often involving several size and complexity levels must be designed, components constructed and then the device assembled and tested. The results of the prototype in operation must be analyzed. On the basis of the results adjustments minor or major must be made. This must be repeated for every prototype necessary to result in a commercial unit.

Meanwhile other time delaying factors awaited related to human nature. These involved vested interests and the institutions that regulated and governed our progress. Hurdles created by governance, lobbyists, the nature of the economy, religious and sectarian special interest groups arose and were of different nature depending on each country involved. Until 2015 the developed world of about 25% of the population was the main player in such dilemmas. Thus these hurdles were predictably met in these relatively few jurisdictions and strategies though often still time consuming could not be handled. Subsequently the above difficulties severely increased with the rapid rising middle class lifestyle in the worlds large population countries such as China and India.

These governments, their decision making institutions and business practices had come into this mess big time with predictable time delays. The delays, regional antagonisms and other complications that disabled the ill-fated Kyoto Accord provide proof of the seriousness of the failures of disparate governments in environmental negotiation. Yes new dialogs were put in its place but could we reasonably expect a positive result given existing world discord.

" _What is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary"._

-James Madison

### Onward and Downward – Humans Inability to be Able to Predict the Long-term Potential Harmful Ramifications of a New Technology

" _Our contemporary culture, primed by population growth and driven by technology, has created problems of environmental degradation that directly affect all of our senses: noise, odors and toxins which bring physical pain and suffering, and ugliness, barrenness, and homogeneity of experience which bring emotional and psychological suffering and emptiness. In short, we are jeopardizing our human qualities by pursuing technology as an end rather than a means. Too often we have failed to ask two necessary questions: First, what human purpose will a given technology or development serve? Second, what human and environmental effects will it have"?_

-U.S. Senate Publicworks Committee _,_

Let's pretend we have conquered all the time consuming technological and human nature related hurdles and have a crucial new technology installed, operational and working worldwide. Problem solved? Maybe unless like the internal combustion engine and coal and gas fired electrical generating stations there are long term unpredicted side effects that threaten to destabilize some aspect of a mankind sustainable biosphere. Unpredicted harmful side effects would be exacerbated by the population glut.

" _For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death"_.

-Rachel Carson,

The magnitude of the greenhouse gas emission side effects was small in the 1920's with a population of 1 million but a mere 3 generations later with a population 7 times greater their effects could be catastrophic. This means that unpredicted side effects of technologies installed in say 2015 could become catastrophic in a much shorter time interval. We have much more sophisticated means of assessing technologies in the 21st Century so unpredicted side effects from any process could expected to be fewer. However our accelerating dependence on technology stimulated by the growing population and middleclass life styles basic requirements and demands harmful unpredicted side effects of proliferating technologies will still pose serious threats.

" _When some high-sounding institute states that a compound is harmless or a process free of risk, it is wise to know whence the institute or the scientists who work there obtain their financial support"._

- _Lancet_ ,

Then how did we manage to dig humanity into an abundance of major world problems? Mankind consists of a large number of talented innovators of technology. The appearance of new technology continues to occur at an accelerating rate. Many of these developments have been of great benefit to mankind and in this regard the medical field should be noted. Unfortunately technology also has caused serious problems.

" _The packaging for a microwavable "microwave" dinner is programmed for a shelf life of maybe six months, a cook time of two minutes and a landfill dead-time of centuries"._

-David Wann,

The world before the Industrial Revolution was largely free of technologies that caused serious pollution. Of course without technology the world at that time was plagued by problems in urban locales of pollution caused by such as untreated sewage running through the streets together with related untreatable disease. Medical procedures were crude and largely ineffective. Today despite a 7 fold increase in population the average life span of individuals in most developed jurisdictions has increased many-fold together with the middle-class and upper-class standard of living. Yet still a staggering percentage the world as a whole remains caught up in poverty and disease that could be treatable given the funds.

" _If there is technological advance without social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery, in impoverishment".  
_ -Michael Harrington

Traditionally we divide the world into 2 camps the developed and the developing nations. The explosion in technology has occurred largely in the developed countries but its side effects have become a threat to all nations worldwide. Developing nations without the means to broadly adopt the latest technology use old dirty technologies which are also a major part of this threat. There is one large difference in the nature of the waste substances of the rich and the poor nations and that is the much more complex chemical and biochemical nature of waste substances from the former which may have consequences in 2015 and in the future that are much more serious than we could predict.

" _There is a demon in technology. It was put there by man and man will have to exorcise it before technological civilization can achieve the eighteenth-century ideal of humane civilized life"._

-Rene Dubos

It is important to stress that the technological acceleration was largely confined to developed nations. Thus the good and the bad effects of this technology were first felt there-in. However pollutants that are air and water born or which transform into such become a threat worldwide. Thus those of us in the developed nations bear a responsibility to take care in the deployment of our new technology to identify harmful side effects that must be controlled and kept out of the environment. This latter problem historically and at the present was a serious omission.

Let's look at the invention of the internal combustion engine to illustrate this point. Here is only one example of a technology that when it first was deployed to propel vehicular devices seemed to have only positive consequences. This engine appeared upon its inception to portend few adverse environmental side effects. The benefits of vehicles to the public seemed unchallenged.

Fast forward to 2015 and observe what has occurred related to this invention. Together with combustion based electrical power generation and other combustion dependent technologies the internal combustion engine side effect mainly carbon dioxide has become a major source of the ongoing Climate Change problem that threatens mankind's sustainability worldwide in the long term. Although this internal combustion engine hazard existed for many years very little was invented to effectively deal with the problem. Catalytic converters were developed to control some of the harmful emitted components in vehicular exhaust but not the carbon dioxide levels. Electric vehicles have existed for years but have never been a serious competitor for internal combustion engine powered devices mainly because of the lack of a suitable battery. Although battery research has been tackled by many talented innovators there appears to be little hope in 2015 of vast improvement in this technology. Thus we have carbon dioxide spewing vehicles an essential part of our lifestyle but also a major contributor to the ongoing climate change problem that threatens the sustainability of a biosphere that will allow mankind to persist into the future. Such a side effect scenario was not predicted when the internal combustion engine was first introduced. Worse, when the carbon dioxide threat became clear many years ago and despite warnings from International groups of experts, most governments and indeed those from the key offending counties failed to take remediative action and still do.

" _It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment"._

-Ansel Adams

What about other technologies that might be developed to propel vehicles? For example research was ongoing to use induction to either propel cars wirelessly from electrical fields generated by infrastructure embedded in roads or to charge electric cars wirelessly on the fly. Any radical new technology such as this has huge new infrastructure requirements which apart from being costly have inherent problems. The point remains that even if some revolutionary technology is proposed, this or any other approach could unlikely be installed and fully operation in a timely manner, that is before the climate change problem is irreversible.

Other ramifications of new technology that may be developed in 2015 and in the future to solve any major problems are not completely predictable. Apart from the possible obvious usefulness of selected new technology, unperceived harmful side effects, cost and operation of associated infrastructure and the question of its timely widespread adoption especially in developing countries can be problems that will prove insurmountable in many cases.

" _Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us"_.

-Henrik Tikkanen

### What about Non technological Approaches-Example-Limit the Numbers of Polluting Sources

" _Modern technology owes ecology an apology"_.

-Alan M. Eddison

The enormous critical environmental problems relating to cars exacerbated by their proliferation in the 2200 decade particularly in large numbers in new jurisdictions with the emergence of appreciable upper and middleclass societies worldwide could well be a major downfall in the attempt to maintain a mankind sustainable biosphere. Not only this factor alone but the related problems tied to the resources and infrastructure required to maintain this situation add immeasurably to the urgency for a solution.

The number of cars and 2 wheeled motorized devices in China using an average of multi sources increased 25 to 30 times between 2009 and 2011 to the point that China already has the largest number of such conveyances in the world. India is second to China in the above growth rate. In contras in the US the number of vehicles owned per 1000 people (men woman and children) has remained almost steady in the 800 range.

In a related vein let's look at the long range transportation of goods industry. Comparing transport, averaging a number of sources, on aircraft, shipping, rail and trucks greenhouse gas emissions mainly carbon dioxide, emissions may be roughly estimated as being in the following ratio with aircraft taken as 1, then comparatively shipping is 18X rail 45X and rail 100X. Particularly factoring in infrastructure switching to ships and rail from trucking which transport the majority of our goods over long halls makes ultimate sense. Of course the above does not consider the many side effects of each of these transport modes which though abundant are of similar consequence magnitude. The particularly serious nature of aircraft injecting pollutants directly into the very low temperature stratosphere does deserve note.

No realistic technological solution to the vehicular greenhouse gas problem appears immanent or even likely to occur before the Climate Change problem becomes overwhelming. Why not for example try a radical approach? Let's set a limit of one car per family unit? This would probably be political suicide. Apart from citizen complaints, obvious exceptional cases of need and the vehicle lobbies etc. Another approach would be to double the price of fuel (presently in Toronto the price of gasoline exceeds that of an equal amount of most high end bottled water of a similar volume.) again impossible for similar reasons.

" _All in favor of conserving gasoline please raise your right foot"._

-Unknown

Human Nature being what it is do you think that any action like the above would be possible unless I could 'prove' that without such action we would all be dead within a week? Even then there would be many who would balk with the view that my methodology in developing the 'proof' must be faulty.

### Welcome to the 21st Century

"How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life"?

-Charles A. Lindbergh,

Living styles supported by the above financial behaviour would soon appear to be impossible to maintain in the near future. The world population in 2015 had expanded in a relatively short period to levels that mean the impact of even relatively simple problems is exacerbated by mere numbers. Now in a crisis be it financial or otherwise if a solution were to be found be it financial or otherwise it might be ample for the short term but the impact of growing numbers of individuals involved could mean that a technological solution for coping today may have to be drastically revised or totally reinvented to handle a greater density of individuals as the world population relentlessly increases. Long term solutions are seldom possible on a crisis basis.

However despite these dire warnings humanity in general remained unaware and unconcerned. A 2014 Gallup survey listing a ranking of public concerns in the US found that apprehension for the environment including climate change did not even rank in the top 10. Other surveys, which were worldwide in nature, generally found public concern for the environment ranked well below the top 5. Disquietude over the preeminent population problem was not even mentioned.

Thus, with the possible exception of Climate Change, only one of the many urgent environmental problems, mankind characteristically remained focused on short term issues relating to economic, political and social concerns. Typical remediation legislation in this area such as Ontario's proposed 'Cap and Trade' system of carbon pricing was only a finger in the dike initiative. Nonetheless public resistance due to increased costs of products such as gasoline that this meager step portended, received wide public and business resistance.

Blind faith in the power of technology to magically appear with solutions blunted people's concern for the future. This was a major error in judgement. Technological solutions to major environmental problems were already constantly failing, a fact not widely accepted, or known, by the general public. Worse most technology based companies, intent as they were on maximizing the bottom line, focused their energies on pandering to mankind's high demand consumerism. New and often exotic waste products from such technologies actually exacerbated environmental problems.

" _Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress"_.

-John Clapham,

## Information Technology a Pivotal Epoch in the History of Mankind

"The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing".

-Douglas Engelbart

As humans have progressed from the Stone Age through a variety of relatively primitive eras then to the Industrial Age and now to the Information Technology epoch advancement of change had become exponential in pace. In the 2010 to 2020 mankind was now at a stage when the capability of humans to adapt to the consequences of such rapid developments was daunting if not impossible.

The birth of digital computerized information processing occurred for all intents and purposes in the early 1060's. Computing power increased exponentially and in 2015 was at a critical crossroads. Although in large part computing and related devices were revolutionizing technology including tremendous advances in education, all disciplines of science and medicine a severe negative downside was beginning to emerge. Humans were becoming slaves to digital gadgetry. This was beginning to have disastrous ramifications in several realms including the sphere of privacy at all levels of mankind's endeavours.

" _The only truly secure system is one that is powered off, cast in a block of concrete and sealed in a lead-lined room with armed guards"._

-Gene Spafford

In fact even in 2015 personal data of any individual was falling into the hands of a multitude of sources from government and businesses to individual hackers on the internet. Even those few who do not own or use digital devices were at risk due to essential activities such people engage at through commercial dealings. Banks and other businesses whose business is carried out on the internet are a good example. Typical of Human nature in its negative context a number of individuals acting independently or in conjunction with industries and governments sought out opportunities to exploit Informational technology for criminal activities.

" _There's no such thing as going to a soapbox and saying, 'The government's corrupt,' and not having the intelligence service see your face. In the digital world, that can be done"._

-Bill Gates

One might suppose that encrypted data would be safe from hackers, but in 2015 advancement in computer hardware and software coupled with innovative decryption schemes could decode most programs for encrypting data. The speed and ingenuity with which these decryption schemes are evolving is truly dispiriting.

" _Privacy is not an option, and it shouldn't be the price we accept for just getting on the Internet"._

-Gary Kovacs

" _The freedom to connect to the world anywhere at any time brings with it the threat of unscrupulous predators and criminals who mask their activities with the anonymity the Internet provides to its users"._

-Mike Fitzpatrick

The ultimate tool for decryption, Quantum Computers, was only a decade or so away in 2015. These devices, capable of decryption with greater speed than technologists could affect re-encryption left classified data from any source exposed without redress.

## Human Intervention with Nature Gone Wrong

There have been many examples of the purposeful introduction by humans of foreign species for controlling local pests or as a new source of food that have led to serious unpredicted problems of their own. Other foreign species were inadvertently introduced by humans and have also become problematic in their new environments. Harmful consequences have usually been the result of the absence in the introduced environment of natural predator to control the foreign species. A few examples follow.

South American native Cane toads were proposed for introduction into the cane fields initially in Queensland Australia for the control of the cane beetle. Pesticides were disavowed because of their nonspecific nature resulting in the loss of useful and harmless insect species as well. The population of cane toads has risen to over 150 million and has caused widespread environmental detriments while showing little effect on the beetles they were intended to control.

Black rats, probably originating in tropical East Asia in addition to self-migration to Europe were transported worldwide in carriers, commonly ships. The problems caused by these pests on the other Continents are well-known. However it bears stressing the particular greater devastation that foreign species unleashed in small island environments such as the Galapagos has caused.

The Cotton White fly should be mentioned because of its familiarity to North American gardeners. These pests are common particularly on indoor plants where they have little control other than pesticides (a soapy solution used as a spray id least problematic as a control). Outdoors these pests are controlled to a degree by insects like aphids which also have their own problematic characteristics. White fly in 2015 extended worldwide and attacked over 1000 plant species.

Common in the American south the mile-a-minute vine or more properly the Kudzu, was brought to America to help control soil erosion. It can spread in a rate of 200,000 acres per year and has wreaked serious havoc.

European Rabbits are one of the most significant known reasons for species loss in Australia. This disaster dates from Thomas Austin's release of 12 wild rabbits imported from England in 1859, to satisfy his uncle's proclivity for hunting. Without natural rabbit predators in Australia, the result of their unabated population growth was predictable _._

### Pesticide Controversies - Another Type of Human Intervention Gone Wrong

" _A Who's Who of pesticides is therefore of concern to us all. If we are going to live so intimately with these chemicals eating and drinking them, taking them into the very marrow of our bones - we had better know something about their nature and their power"._

-Rachel Carson,

The history of pesticide use, abuse and banning, demonstrates how public perceptions of a possible major problem suffer confusion from both scientific bungling and government practice and regulatory inconsistencies.

Pests and diseases have always been a problem in agriculture but the damage these caused was of relatively minor significance when the world population was 1 billion or lower. With exponential rise in population in the 1820 to 2015 relatively short time frame, demand for agricultural products and attendant loss in arable land combined to require increase yields per unit area of farmland. This was successfully accomplished steadily throughout the 20th century with the greatest increase averaging 2.3 % yearly from 1961 t0 1999. A variety of reasons were responsible including advances in farming technology, use of fertilizers and plant breeding by producing plants with higher edible to non-edible portions. Many of these latter high yield varieties were very susceptible to pests and diseases. This had been a problem for agriculture since the man's first involvement in farming. Despite plant breeders production of some varieties of pest and disease resistant food crop strains the pest and disease problem was magnified manifold in recent time. Natural pest and disease control measures became insufficient and hence the necessity to introduce synthetic pesticides. These chemical substances had collateral problems that affected the health of mankind.

Herbicides and pesticides have different active lifetimes, ie time required for each to biodegrade into harmless residues, in the environment depending on their chemical composition. Those that remain active for long periods are most potentially harmful.

Many potentially harmful chemical pesticides and herbicides found widespread non-agricultural use.

Perhaps the best example of a widely sprayed chemical in North America that had a long harmful lifespan in the environment was the pesticide DDT. In the 1940's and 50's this chemical was discharged in large quantities from aircraft flying over marshes in the GTA for mosquito control. Despite its harmful nature but perhaps understandably because of its cheap price and wide availability, this chemical was still extensively used 1n 2015 in many developing countries for control of the malarial mosquito.

A non-agricultural use of herbicides was particularly noteworthy. Agent Orange used by the American Military as a widespread defoliant in the jungles of Vietnam during the war of 1959 to 1975 broke suddenly into the Canadian news a year ago and then disappeared from public scrutiny within a few weeks. The report related to the discovery of the possible widespread use of Agent Orange in Canada.

This substances name arose from the orange coloured barrels in which it was contained. Its health effect horrors were made famous by widespread use during the war in Vietnam. The 2 chemicals that comprise Agent Orange in a 1:1 mixture by volume are 2,4-D and 2,4,5-T.

2,4,5-T the more controversial of the 2 chemicals is actually only of moderate toxicity. However during its manufacture for use in the Vietnam War, which was done without proper temperature controls, it became contaminated with trace amounts of an extremely toxic dioxin which accounted for the major health hazards of Agent Orange. This type of technological bungling is particularly disquieting as the numbers of chemical manufacturing processes proliferate in an ever increasingly populous world.

There were few well documented accounts of the widespread use of Agent Orange in Canada up to 2015. In the most famous case in 1966 the US military was given permission by the Canadian Government to test Agent Orange on forests adjacent to the Canadian Forces Base at Gagetown, New Brunswick. Recent (2014) accounts suggest its usage by unprotected workers as a defoliate near airports. The suggestion that Agent Orange may have been used for clearing hydro right-of-ways was unsettling.

The substance 2,4-D was the more commonly used defoliant of the two chemicals in this regard. When made free from the toxic dioxin the byproduct in Agent Orange both these chemicals decompose in a short period when in the environment and hence do not linger to cause later collateral damage. In this regard they would have distinct advantage over widely used predecessors.

" _The average lawn is an interesting beast: people plant it, then douse it with artificial fertilizers and dangerous pesticides to make it grow and to keep it uniform-all so that they can hack and mow what they encouraged to grow. And woe to the small yellow flower that rears its head!"_

-Michael Braungart,

In 2015 in many urban areas of Canada Dandelions reigned supreme. Pesticide use in Canada was regulated by Health Canada but it is important to point out the inconsistency that existed in the present move to ban the use of synthetic lawn pesticides for cosmetic purposes. At the end of 2010 almost 200 jurisdictions including the Provinces of Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick had adopted a cosmetic ban regulation. However the public must have been confused that we conclude as many experts have, that if these substances have environmental and health risks then why was this ban not adopted nationwide? Additionally what prevents this ban where it existed from being enforced on golf courses? More generally since pesticide use was at that time still widespread in agriculture were their not serious consequences to be faced from this practice?

# Chapter 3

# Specific Concerns 2015

## Water

Up to 1.8 million children die yearly due to water related disease!

About 800 million people worldwide have no safe drinking water.

80% of freshwater is requires for agricultural purposes.

"In an age when man has forgotten his origins and is blind even to his most essential needs for survival, water along with other resources has become the victim of his indifference."

-Rachel Carson

In the minds of many scientists in 2015 problems in maintaining an adequate world supply of fresh water was perceived as the most likely the tipping-point in the fate of mankind and a sustainable earth's biosphere.

" _The shortage of fresh water is the major ecological problem of this moment"._

-Mikhail Gorbachev

"While the amount of freshwater on the planet has remained fairly constant over time—continually recycled through the atmosphere and back into our cups—the population has exploded. This means that every year competition for a clean, copious supply of water for drinking, cooking, bathing, and sustaining life intensifies". This is a quotation from a recent National Geographic article entitled Freshwater Crisis.

A related statement occurred in the 2012 Executive Summary of The UNEP/GRID- publication Sick Water? "The world is facing a global water quality crisis. Continuing population growth and urbanization, rapid industrialization, and expanding and intensifying food production are all putting pressure on water resources and increasing the unregulated or illegal discharge of contaminated water within and beyond national borders. This presents a global threat to human health and wellbeing, with both immediate and long term consequences for efforts to reduce poverty whilst sustaining the integrity of some of our most productive ecosystems".

There was a persistent migration of mankind throughout the world from rural to urban centers, notably in developing countries. This trend became particularly troublesome for dwindling freshwater supplies and the ultimate pollution of nearby water bodies by the polluted waste water remnants of that water. These discharge areas, frequently depended upon as a local aquatic food supply were damaged by the pollutants so that they no longer are useful for this purpose. Waste water treatment energy consumption increases exponentially as the treatment reaches its final stages. Thus to produce potable water from highly populated urban center waste water is often prohibitively energy costly, not to mention methods and cost of disposing of the concentrated often hazardous residues that result.

Most mammals including humans are over 60% water by composition making continuous water replenishment on a daily basis essential. The world is 70% covered by water but of this less than 3% is fresh and of this 2/3 is tied up in polar ice caps and glaciers. Ironically with Global Warming melting this fraction of the world's fresh water was in large part mixing into the surrounding salt water oceans, relentlessly depleting the already small existing fresh water supply.

The above figures emphasize the tiny amount of water, about 1%, in the world that is directly useful to humans and the rest of the world's freshwater water dependent life forms. The desalination process was complex, highly energy consumptive, leaving a difficult to dispose of concentrated brine waste and hence not feasible on a large scale for use widely on ocean water conversion to a potable product. Thus the world remained largely dependent on the present fresh water supply.

" _According to the U.N., more than 2.7 billion people will face severe water shortages by 2025. Many social scientists predict that the next big wars will be over water. Nevertheless, the average American family blissfully consumes 300 gallons a day, when you add in watering the lawn and washing dishes, clothes, and cars"._

-Alex Shoumatoff

" _For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports."_

-Sandra Postel

A look at the map of North America shows a landscape dotted densely with fresh water lakes in the north including the Great Lakes. These latter large fresh water bodies contain 20% of the world's fresh water and 80% of the freshwater in North America. Additionally Local areas of the lower Great Lakes are highly polluted by bordering urban centers and agricultural fertilizers. Statistics are boring but the essential point in this data is the revelation concerning the relatively tiny amount of fresh water available to the bulk of the rapidly expanding human race even in 2015.

Not all available fresh water is visible on the surface of the earth, 30% being below the ground level in the form of large bodies of water known as aquifers. Several large cities including Mexico City, in 2015 the world's largest city which are appreciable distances from an adequate source of fresh surface water must obtain their water supply from aquifers, dams and other reservoirs. Often aquifers exist beneath the surrounding area and even underlie the actual cities themselves. In many cases as with Bangkok replenishment of these sources is slower than the withdrawal causing potential problems due to subsiding of inhabited areas above. In the case of this city a 1.6m subsidence occurred in only 10 years. Some of the world's largest aquifers are brackish in composition that type of water being unfit for human consumption. Probably the most famous of these brackish aquifers, the Great Artesian Basin, underlies much of Australia and although too salty for human use fortunately some major farm animals such as cattle can tolerate water in this condition.

" _It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain. As water becomes scarce and countries are forced to divert irrigation water to cities and industry, they will import more grain. As they do so, water scarcity will be transmitted across national borders via the grain trade. Aquifer depletion is a largely invisible threat, but that does not make it any less real"._

-Lester A. Brown,

In 2015 on average over 70% of the worlds available freshwater was used agriculturally. Depending on location the fraction of domestic to industrial sources varied. In North American locales domestic and industrial usages were about equal. Whereas in Southern Asia only a small percentage of available water was used by industry and for domestic purposes the vast majority being required for agriculture. This situation is changing with rapid urbanization and the associated large scale industrialization that always went hand in glove.

Climate Change, often termed global warming is always certain to have an effect on the water cycle if only to change precipitation patterns perceptibly. Changing patterns involving drought and excessive rainfall are already being noted in many parts of the world. Climate Change and problems related thereto will be covered in much greater detail in a section to follow.

Pollution of fresh water by human, industrial and farm use rose rapidly as a threat to the sustainability of adequate supplies. Water pollution in Developing countries remained largely unabated. This problem was now being addressed in many jurisdictions in the developing world in some cases with new ingenious technology. In many Developed Country urban centers poor quality waste water treatment abounded.

The urban population's 2015 astounding rate of increase would result in doubling the current 3.5 billion by 2050 thus being the main contributor to the rise to about a total 9 billion estimated population in 2050. Sadly the proportion of the population rise in slums in developing country urban centers was even greater than that of the remainder of the urban population. Only a miracle could hope to solve the attendant increasing urban fraction of discharge of developing country urban largely untreated wastewater. With the concentration of most of all of the large urban centers being positioned on the world's major waterways the destruction of self-sustaining aquatic ecosystems due to waste water pollutants in both salt and fresh water was rapid. The attendant damage to natural aquatic food resource followed in close proportion.

" _Water and sanitation problems have reached boiling point: children are dying unnecessarily at the rate of 20 jumbo jets crashing every single day"._

-Ravi Narayanan

The greatest benefit to dealing with wastewater in urban areas was to have a system whereby the sewers that connect to homes, industry and businesses were separated from storm sewers that carry waste water from urban runoff. Thus by concentrating the waste water that required special treatment in sewage treatment plants by separating this from the runoff waste water, treatment plants would not suffer raw sewage overflow problems during storms and other periods of high volume waste water runoff. Low Impact Development (LID) was a program that took this sewer separation a step further in treating runoff sewerage as a resource rather than a waste. A variety of practices became available for this bio-retention of runoff. These included, rain gardens, vegetated roof tops, rain barrels and permeable pavement. In areas where road salt run-off into storm sewers occurred in winter care was required in making choices in the receiving area that do not involve the salty discharge contaminating soils.

Sewer separation is an expensive proposition, especially as a retrofit procedure. Thus to avoid municipal tax increases many municipalities were wary of this approach. Again in 2015 we found ourselves facing the problem that environment related choices that would be essential in the long term often fall by the wayside to prevent expenses that could contribute to a loss of constituent spending power and hence an assault on living standards.

The supply of potable water in Developing countries was sadly restricted since half the population in these jurisdictions did not have adequate sanitation facilities. Under the 2015 condition of rectification the problem was bound to become worse with climate change and population increase. In 2015 over 1 billion people suffer from water shortage peojected to increase to close to 3 billion as early as 2050. My experience of working with environmental chemistry problems particularly in developing countries indicates a persistent lack of will within governments to tackle even such dire problems.

"Water is critical for sustainable development, including environmental integrity and the alleviation of poverty and hunger, and is indispensable for human health and well-being".

-United Nations

The oceans contain vast quantities of water which is too salty for use as potable water by mankind and agriculture. Desalination is a potential way of making this source applicable to the needs of mankind. There were several jurisdictions worldwide, for example Tampa Florida, using desalination by reverse osmosis to recover fresh water from ocean water for an urban water supply. However as discussed above there were a variety of factors that made the general use of desalination a nonstarter. A January 2009 article in Scientific American summarized the problem thusly. "Due to its high cost, energy intensiveness and overall ecological footprint, most environmental advocates view desalinization (or desalination)' the conversion of salty ocean water into fresh water' as a last resort for providing fresh water to needy populations".

" _The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over water"._

-Ismail Serageldin,

## Climate Change/Global Warming

" _As human beings, we are vulnerable to confusing the unprecedented with the improbable. In our everyday experience, if something has never happened before, we are generally safe in assuming it is not going to happen in the future, but the exceptions can kill you and climate change is one of those exceptions"._

-Al Gore

Breaking News, Geneva, 13 November 2013

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Press Release No.981 on this date stated that; "The year 2013 is currently on course to be among the top ten warmest years since modern records began in 1850". In an earlier release also in November 2013 the WMO noted that major greenhouse gases reached a new record in 2012.

Breaking News, May 1, Vol. 348, Journal Science 2015

"M.C. Urban predicts on the basis of 131 major studies that up to 1/6 of world species could go extinct if we follow the presently predicted trajectories of carbon emissions".

### Perspective

To understand the urgency that has been appended to climate change it is important to have the following perspective. The diameter of the earth is approximately 12,000 km. The layers surrounding the earth that contain 99% of our atmosphere are the troposphere and stratosphere. You can think of this in terms of an orange where the skin representing the troposphere is thinner than the skin on a thin skinned typical orange. The troposphere, the band which intersects the earth's surface containing 80% of the world's atmosphere, is 15 km thick. This mere 15km band of the atmosphere where weather phenomena occur is uniquely essential to all life on earth.

Any adverse changes in the composition of this 15 km thick layer are a direct threat to our continued existence. Then consider that anthropogenic (human activity sources) carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions were about 34 trillion tons in 2012 and are being continuously spewed into this relatively thin layer and likewise are accumulating in ever increasing amounts yearly. A frightening imponderable with gauging the present status of the global warming progression is that the effect of the carbon dioxide that is emitted into the atmosphere at any time is subject to a time delay before its repercussions can take effect.

No meaningful concrete plans were in 2015 in place to limit this anthropogenic source carbon dioxide accumulation in the troposphere anywhere worldwide. This was true then and for the foreseeable future.

An article relating to science in the news observations in the October 2013 volume of Scientific American bemoaned the paucity of climate change education in the American classrooms. It fingered political and economic philosophy as mostly responsible for this problem. In this manuscript the 2015 political and economic infrastructures will commonly be noted as fundamental reasons for our no win environmental future.

" _For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Now, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15. Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, floods—all are now more frequent and more intense. We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science—and act before it's too late"._

-Barack Obama

### Greenhouse Gases, the Issues

The so called greenhouse gases include mainly, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, water vapor, ozone and fluorocarbon compounds. All except fluorocarbons are present naturally in the atmosphere.

The consequence of excess accumulating anthropogenic sources of these gases in the atmosphere was designated by many under the umbrella of Global Warming. Climate Change is a weather related phenomenon; a very obvious consequence of global warming. This public confusion has been generated through over use of the moniker "Global Warming" to represent the total consequence of anthropogenic, greenhouse gasses.

A further confusion in understanding the ramifications related to human source greenhouse gas emissions is the slow deleterious acidification of the world's oceans resulting from the dissolution of carbon dioxide in ocean water, which sets up a reaction whereby carbonic acid is the main product. Carbon dioxide the most prominent of the human source greenhouse gases is emitted into the atmosphere and causes increased levels there-in, but it is also dissolvable in water accounting for the present ocean acidification trend. The most immediately proposed ocean acidification consequence is the partial dying off of ecologically important coral reefs in some localities. But for this treatise we will mainly look at the better understood atmospheric consequences of greenhouse gas emissions.

In 2015 the phenomenon of global warming was most obvious in Polar Regions where the predominant rise in average temperature was occurring. In particular the 2011-2012 discovery in the Western Antarctic, a region some distance from the atmospheric ozone hole, that temperatures in this region were rising at rates 2-3 times the global average was particularly ominous.

Weather is a phenomenon related to air pressure differences from one locale to another, the latter thus being responsible for daily weather patterns. Mid-latitude yearly seasonal weather variations are due to the change in the angle of the rays of the sun passing through the troposphere (atmospheric layer that intersects the earth's surface) and hitting the earth's surface. The temperature difference between polar and equatorial regions generates the "Polar" Jet Stream in the mid-latitudes. The Northern Hemisphere jet stream is a thin band of fast flowing air which itself moves from west to east together with the daily weather causing high and low pressure zones.

Climate is the yearly combination of changing weather trends on a seasonal basis. Climate Change is a phenomenon whereby the average weather patterns undergo a permanent change. Ocean temperatures vary seasonably to a lesser degree than those on the land and hence have a buffering effect on coastal temperature fluctuations. Warm or cool ocean currents occur along most coastal regions and these can have a very tangible effect on climate. In the Northern Hemisphere the warm temperature massive Gulf Stream is of particular importance. By this system which travels far north the climate of Western Europe is moderated.

In the mid- latitudes which possess the greatest world population density, climate change was the more prominent vestige of the global warming phenomenon. For this reason the public's attention to dangers there-from were more easily captured noting presently occurring changes in local weather patterns. Shifting regions of wet and dry zones, increased frequency and ferocity of storms and widely fluctuating seasonal temperatures both hot and cold were in 2015 occurring. It is important to stress not all weather changes in every locale were reflected in phenomena suggestive of rising temperatures; some few regions are actually showed colder trends at that time. A frightening comment indicative of human misunderstanding of Climate Change vagaries is the common statement, on a particular cold winters days in the populous mid latitudes; "wouldn't a little global warming go well just now"?

" _On climate change, we often don't fully appreciate that it is a problem. We think it is a problem waiting to happen"._

-Kofi Annan

In 2015 it was not uncommon to encounter in the press and by word of mouth the view that human source global warming was not occurring. Even a few well-known scientists engendered this concept. Many try to reason that the warming being noted today is similar to some of the many natural warming cycles that have been noted in the earth's history over hundreds of millions of years of geological time. Fast forward to an article in the July 2012 Scientific American reporting on a fact finding scientific expedition to the Arctic island of Spitsbergen. The study was carried out by a group of scientists under the jurisdiction on the Worldwide Universities Network by world renowned experts representing a wide variety of specialties and emanating from England, Norway and The Netherlands. The following is an interpretation in my own words of what I felt most relevant in this content.

The concept was to compare the rate of temperature change and consequences that occurred in a particularly notable natural cycle of global warming 56 million years ago, which will be designated (GW 56M), with that occurring in the 2012 era. The (GW 56M) temperature rise maximum of 8 degrees C, with catastrophic consequences, occurred after an ascent lasting about 20,000 years. However it then took another 200,000 years for the earth's natural defenses to decrease the temperature to what we consider normal. In (GW 56M) there were many consequences including a large rise in ocean levels, rapid ocean acidification that destroyed much of the ocean life and a forced migration of much terrestrial life both plant and animal toward the poles to ensure survival.

Thus in The decade between 2010 and 2020 drastic measures were required to cut human activity sourced carbon gas emissions or the same catastrophic 8 degree temperature rise on today's earth was predicted to occur in only a few 100's of years. Grievously all the other same (GW 56M) consequences would also happen but ever so much more quickly. Considering the massive human population involved, heading the consequence list this time would be unthinkably large losses of human life.

" _It's coming home to roost over the next 50 years or so. It's not just climate change; it's sheer space, places to grow food for this enormous horde. Either we limit our population growth or the natural world will do it for us, and the natural world is doing it for us right now"._

-David Attenborough

As demonstrated through fossilized evidence found in cores drilled in many locales into the oceanic subsurface there becomes a point-of-no-return. That is at a presently uncertain point in the temperature rise curve; the disastrous upward temperature rise becomes self-sustaining and hence continues unaffected by any human intervention. At this point-of-no-return mega tons of methane gas now trapped safely in the oceans depths in the form of methane ice begins to melt in the warming ocean water and bubbles into the atmosphere. At that point the unstoppable methane gas release becomes the dominant cause of Global Warming.

Was anything of real consequence enacted to slow or prevent the 2015 calamitous human induced greenhouse gas emissions damage to the earth's environment? In a word - no.

Hypothetically what if one morning we woke up to find that throughout the world the air had turned inky black? If scientific findings related to climate change had predicted that such might at some unknown time in the future occur, would this not likely spurn those in charge into a flurry of drastic action? Trouble would be at this point it would be too late. Of course with climate change no such sudden obvious events were likely to occur before our potential to remediate climate change had past.

Unfortunately decision makers were unlikely to act decisively on problems like climate change without facing blatantly obvious already occurring consequences. This approach had been proven time and again throughout history. Why then should the populous have believed that this was going to happen in the case of climate change?

The very savvy Bill Gates, ex CEO of Microsoft and the personal computer guru was one of the World's richest persons. Through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation during several decades bracketing the 2015 time frame they gave billions to charity and in support of innovative research and technology. In this regard one of his largest grants was supporting a particular favourite, the production of ultra-safe Nuclear Power technology. On the other hand during the same interval the Ontario Government while speaking of expanding Ontario's nuclear power capability spent billions of tax dollars on Wind Power and Solar power projects the former Gates termed, sarcastically, "cute" and the latter he felt so expensive as to be not worth considering. For emphasis again, remember that in 2015 when comparing wind and nuclear power, 1GW of energy requires 1 nuclear power plant. In contrast a wind farm covering ¼ of the surface of Lake Ontario and running at full power 100% of the time (impossible) would have been necessary to generate a similar amount of energy. Meanwhile our yearly output level of carbon containing, greenhouse gas emissions remained undiminished. Remember also that in 2015, climate change was an appropriate term to describe the present consequences of human source greenhouse gas emission. But under existing political and economic circumstances global warming would soon have migrated from Polar Regions to cover even world temperate zones. Most disconcertedly, in 2015 due to worldwide changing greenhouse gas emission dynamics, the time in the future when the point-of-no-return would occur was not known and could not have been be predicted.

" _In the years to come, the combination of climate change and population growth could have a devastating effect on the planet and, needless to say, on humanity"._

-Nathaniel Philbrick

Let's look at the earth from another perspective that casts global warming in an innovatively different light. To give present this unique theory in its full contexts the reader will find statistics especially related to greenhouse gas compounds required repeating from what appears above.

### Gaia-A Novel Concept

Gea better known as Gaia, is the Greek Goddess of the earth (Ge=earth).

This novel concept is for many reasons most realistic in its field and better fits with the resource/energy conundrum related to the environmental consequences of a quickly growing population.

What possible connection to anything relevant in modern times, could be ascribed to Gaia? James Lovelock in 1968 while working at NASA chose this name for his world renowned and revolutionary theory. Here-in he postulated that the earth can be best described as being much like a living organism, particularly in determining earth's atmospheric compositional makeup over time from its inception until its final hot passive uninhabitable state. This precept replaced for most scientists the static earth concept of previous theories.

Since the earth is in dynamic interaction with the atmosphere the composition of the latter is then dependent to a major degree on the reactions occurring in the biosphere and the lithosphere. This self-regulation was crucial not only to maintaining the 20% atmospheric oxygen content into which the human race evolved, but also to preserving life sustaining climatic conditions. Reasoning that helps verify the Gaia approach is convincing, but involves points concerning the need to employ nonlinear rather than linear differential equations in all climate modeling, the first law of thermodynamics and the natural regulation of methane the details of which are beyond our scope here.

But in any case through this approach we can see that the maintenance of this self-regulation must be considered important in deliberations of urgent climatic concerns.

In his book, "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" 2009, James Lovelock outlined the indomitable threat that human sourced emissions, at that time and in the near future, pose to this self-regulation mechanism named Gaia. It is important to emphasize that after the main book title was appended the phrase "A final warning" which should have been ample to garner our rapt attention. But why should this book at the time have been singled out from the many others on climate change? Like other authors of popular Climate Change/Global Warming books Lovelock carefully hunted amongst the available data for material that best served his purpose. However as the inventor and main purveyor of the dynamic earth theory he builds his arguments in a scientific, yet very readable format, around this theory, a fact in marked contrast to most others which had no accepted central theoretical dictum. This scientist who had earned separate degrees in Chemistry, Medicine and Biophysics, all from first rate universities, looked at climatic problems as an expert from a multidisciplinary perspective, also unique from writers of other popular treatments.

Some may ask, how with some current local trends to cooler, wetter, summers and cold winters could Lovelock have offered an urgent plea to please take seriously the present warming trend of this planet as caused by the activities of man? This brings out one of the strengths of the Gaia based approach. Lovelock bases most of his important conclusions on average Northern and Southern hemispheres open ocean temperature trends and accompanying biochemical changes rather than terrestrial local variations. The rising ocean temperatures were most discernible closer to the poles and as stated above the oceans have a buffering effect against short term land based temperature fluctuations providing a truer picture of the seriousness of the Global Warming trend.

### Greenhouse Gases a Closer Look

"Even if we were to stop putting out greenhouse gases right now, we'd still face decades of warming".

-Jamais Cascio

What are Greenhouse gases and why is the situation relating to man's contribution to these so urgent now? Greenhouse gasses are substances that when introduced into the atmosphere impedes the reradiating of heat produced at the earth's surface by radiation from the sun. This can occur because the wavelength of the pertinent radiation from the sun is of such values that they freely penetrate the greenhouse gas laden atmosphere; while on the other hand the heat radiation thus produced is of different wavelengths. Upon re-radiation outward from the earth's surface interaction with the greenhouse gas laden layer of the atmosphere causes these rays to do an about turn thus being reflected back into the earth's atmosphere thereby becoming trapped, causing a temperature rise at the earth's surface. Of particular note; when we introduce greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere their effects are not instant but take several years to develop. Thus should we find some time later, maybe even around 2015 that human source atmospheric discharges are causing a serious problem, it may be too late for meaningful action. This could transpire since the warming trend will continue regardless, based on the delayed effect of years of previous uncontrolled emissions. That could then result in 'The Demise of Gaia' as this indispensable self-regulation gives up and leaves us in an essentially out of restraint situation.

Of the 5 most common greenhouse gases 4, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone were present naturally in the atmosphere; the fifth a fluorocarbons (a commonly used refrigerant) was not. Each of these naturally occurring gases has a different efficiency of effect as a factor in Climate Change/Global Warming. For example methane is many times more severe a problem than is carbon dioxide based on the radiation spectral region in which it is most active. On the positive side methane has a much shorter atmospheric lifetime than carbon dioxide. Up to the present time carbon dioxide has largely been the greenhouse gas released due to human induced activity. It is important to understand that methane, largely a low volume human induced greenhouse gas emission, results mainly from cattle husbandry in agriculture venues. However it is again important to stress that humongous quantities of methane ice, most at great depths cover large areas of costal ocean floor. Some of these deposits; most particularly in the Russian North have been noted to have been subjected to warming typical of polar localities and hence in 2015 was already releasing methane gas slowly bubbling into the atmosphere.

Over millions of years variations in the levels of the naturally occurring greenhouse gases, solar radiation intensity, volcanic activity and other factors had themselves caused climatic disparities. As noted above there have been well defined cycles of natural climatic warming and cooling on the earth each normally lasting 10's to 100's of thousand years. Yet variations of climate under natural circumstances, for example volcanic eruptions, have been recorded that lasted for much shorter times, some even as short as a few hundred years. Again this has led some few scientists to question whether present climatic change trends are just a natural occurrence. Although no absolute proof exists of human sources being the cause of the 2015 era climate change, the best meteorological models absolutely do require a human induced component to account for the magnitude of the global warming trend. Thus approximately 90% of meteorological experts were convinced that human activity, particularly extending since the period of the industrial revolution and rising in a lockstep relationship to the exponential magnitude of population growth and resultant human activity was the cause of this phase of Climate Change/ Global Warming.

"Fiddling While the World Warms" was the title of a climate change opinion and analysis article by the Editors in the October 2013 Issue of Scientific American. The sub heading of this article, "Assessments of climate change must come faster and more frequently" was particularly pertinent to the 2015 epoch intolerable typical delays when major committees such as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), 4 years in the deliberations and out in 2013 presents major findings which because of the long interval in study will of course be in many cases out of date. The IPCC, formed in 1988 issued its most recent former report in 2007 and a variety of authoritative groups have bemoaned the fact that governments have typically been slow to act on the advice. This is not because reports, the result of overly long periods of deliberations, are out of date when released, a fact unknown to most, but because of the usual human nature propensity to reject action based on conflict with economic issues, special interest lobbies and political expediency.

Again it must be stressed that delayed reaction time phenomenon associated with emitted greenhouse gases and their effects was an important parameter of unknown magnitude in establishing the size of the problem being caused thereby and projection of said effects in future calculations. This unknown affected all models of Global Warming and not only Lovelocks Gaia model just discussed above. Thus in attempting to establish the point at which the human induced greenhouse gas emission effects will become irreversible was exacerbated in all cases by this delayed reaction of unknown magnitude in whatever model existed or might be developed.

"Those who deny human-caused climate change offer no compelling evidence to better explain the undeniable rise in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases and global temperature".

-Alan Lowenthal

### Another Case of the Belief that Technology will come to the Rescue

As emphasized throughout this book one of the most worrisome characteristics of the average human being was his propensity to carry on as usual particularly when said problem has been developing over a considerable period of time as with the problem of Climate Change/Global warming. Typically mankind largely ignored such a predicament until it became a full blown crisis; that is the in grained reactive rather than proactive approach The cause of this traditional trend is many fold but mainly results from the fact that up to the 21st century something had normally been devised that provided a solution to such a problems just before the catastrophic point.

With Climate Change/Global Warming a variety of worrisome climate related changes were yearly being revealed with little meaningful remedial phenomena resulting. The plethora of circumstances that one could delineate for example by 2015 included the increased frequency and destructive power of wind related events, widespread drought and record high temperatures in some regions and flooding accompanied by destructive erosion events in others were likely results of this inaction. Particularly noteworthy impediments to dealing with these problems included negative economic ramifications at governmental, industrial and personal and particularly at agricultural levels. Greenhouse gas emissions being the main source of Climate Change/Global Warming phenomena and a rapidly rising increased human activity related component of these is now abundantly obvious as the main culprit. Real progress on reduction of this source can only come at the Federal government and International levels as a worldwide initiative. In democratic countries Governments themselves although directly contributors often through their ownership and/or control of utilities, the problem falls most precipitously within the jurisdiction of industry and individuals. Resistance to amelioration at these latter levels is particularly strong due to the very appreciable added costs that are inherent in any positive action. Of course democratic governments react strongly to pressures imposed from constituents, business and industrial sources and are unlikely to invoke meaningful changes with negative reactions from these origins.

Again it is important to remind ourselves that copious monetary commitment incurred for significant pollution abatement if imposed have strong negative ramifications related to maintaining middleclass and higher standard of living. The situation is totally different in concept with non-democratic systems of government. Depending on the form of governance, the government or individual in power can make decisions independent of the operators of industry and individuals, but in my experience instead of taking positive steps toward amelioration of their pollution sources in general they tend for many self-betterment reasons to be on the average more recalcitrant. Additional comment appears below on worldwide organized attempts to develop multinational strategies to ameliorate the Climate Change/Global Warming Problem.

But first let's stop here for a moment and reiterate again that up to the second decade of the 21st century, solutions often technological or political in nature were developed in good time to prevent serious problems from taking place. In this case where were those solutions in the case of the problem of climate change? Even looking forward from 2015 did technologically effective remedies seem likely anytime soon? Problems that affect the continued sustainability of the world's biosphere are gargantuan being highly multi-disciplinary in nature and demanded radical procedural changes at all levels of government worldwide. Pure and applied science funding and the reordering of priorities and interactions within the disciplines needed drastic change. There was nothing to suggest that such measures were likely to occur.

In the above I have repetitively stressed from a variety of angles that despite being on the brink of climate change disaster in the second decade of the 21st century there were no immanent technological solutions. The reasons for this and lack of action to develop and implement such solutions were also enumerated. It is now time to turn to the literature at the time for confirmation.

An article in the October 2013 volume of Scientific American by David J. Kappos concerning where the money will come to fund big ideas contains the following sentiment. "Important developments in science do not just naturally result in technology of importance. For this to occur besides money, time is one factor that is required. In my own view our present economic and political systems and mode of living essentially run counter current to timely action on both development and particularly implementation of critical solutions to our critical problems".

" _Climate change does not respect border; it does not respect who you are - rich and poor, small and big. Therefore, this is what we call 'global challenges,' which require global solidarity"._

-Ban Ki-moon

## Agriculture and Related Topics

Desertification in 2015 will occur for over 10 million hectares.

Forests lost in 2015 will be more than 4.5 million hectares.

Land lost to soil erosion in 2015 will be greater 6 million hectares.

"The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself".

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

In one form or other in the second decade of the 21st century a variety of scientists from different disciplines indicated Agriculture is the overriding force behind most ecological problems on the earth. Thus agriculture was in many minds the most important aspect of life that required protection and novel developments. I have already stated that water ranks number one in the subsets related to world overpopulation. This can easily be defended since in the absence of adequate freshwater of suitable quality an ever increasingly pressing problem at the time would ham string agriculturist's ability to feed the world.

According to Bill Gates in his 2012 Annual Letter 15% of the world's population live in extreme poverty. This could be the compelling reason to rank agriculture at the highest level. As will be outlined below there are many problems related to retaining high quality soil condition and hence fertility. These included basic agricultural practice, soil protection and amelioration with organic matter, microorganism health, fertilizers use and technology, erosion problems, salinization, and other damage. These combined with animal husbandry, plant breeder's skills, choice and use of herbicides controlled the future of agriculture.

Problems related to present day agricultural practice and food production are gargantuan and our emphasis on and choices in many of the above topics largely determined how the agricultural future played out. Considering all the subsets of the overriding problem of overpopulation, agriculture and fresh water would be among the most future determining considerations.

### Suitable Land Availability

Forest lost this in 2015- will be about 5.5 million hectares

A serious conundrum evident in jurisdictions such as Ontario in Canada, typical of many in Eastern North America was that an appreciable fraction of the best agricultural and forested land was being rapidly consumed by urban sprawl occasioned by the rapidly growing population that had to be accommodated therein. This occurred despite designation of Greenbelts supposedly aimed at protecting an area as green space and defining the limits of further expansion of urban areas. In the case of the Greater Toronto area greenbelts were typical of their name and were relatively narrow and were simply jumped over by developers with a continuing consumption of quality agricultural land on the further side. The negative ramifications to agriculture were only one of the problems this expansion begat. Developers built large communities without, for example any direct obligation to provide roadways and expressways and improvement to ancient sewer systems to deliver the occupants and their waste to their destinations both in many cases 10's of kilometers away. Politicians having little advanced heed for these problems replied if they did so only much later on a crisis basis. This being an example of typical government short sightedness, how could one then expect substantive foresight and action on the major issues involving future sustainability of the biosphere worldwide?

### Soil Quality and Fertility

" _Every time it rains, the soil counts every drop to know exactly how many times to thank to God"!_

-Mehmet Murat ildan

Soil consists of varying amounts of sand, silt, organic matter and clay. Soil textures and hence their ability to retain moisture varies depending on the proportions of these 4 main ingredients. Sandy soils and loose aggregate hold little moisture and require frequent watering. Loams have a clay content of about 25 to 30%. Medium clay soils have clay contents in the 40% range. The latter 2 soils have varying amounts of aggregate. Good soils have loose to medium aggregate and a sufficient quantity of organic matter to hold plenty of moisture. Organic matter must be added periodically to soils to replace that that biodegrades into plant nutrients and inert particulate material.

In the 2015 era treatments of agricultural soils in fields before seeding had changed in some farming practice to the point that some approaches involved no physical disturbance such as plowing. In conventional tillage minimal residual crop residue remained. Using a chisel type plow about 20% of the residual coverage remained. In contrast conservational methods of seeding involve no tillage whatsoever with the seed placed directly into the previous season's crop residue. Since roughly the same amount of herbicides is used in all methods for the killing of weeds, the no crop preparation method was beginning to be preferred.

### Agricultural Soil Degradation

"During the past 40 years nearly one-third of the world's cropland (1.5 billion hectares) has been abandoned because of soil erosion and degradation".

-David Pimentel and Mario Giampietro,

By the second decade of the 21st century massive agricultural soil degradation had already been experienced worldwide. The effects were reduction in soil fertility, decreased soil biodiversity and destruction of the vertical soil ecosystem.

The source of this degradation can be basically summarized as follows.

Tillage and grazing destroyed the soil vertical configuration and in extreme cases causing desertification.

Chemical causes included poor fertilizer practice, particularly application of excess amounts. Other chemical forms of degradation include salinization, acidification or alkalization.

Water problems were related to erosion, flooding, poor tillage practice and deforestation.

Wind over bare tilled fields resulted in dust storms that damaged and blew away the topsoil.

Pesticides were widely used.

" _The more we pour the big machines, the fuel, the pesticides, the herbicides, the fertilizer and chemicals into farming, the more we knock out the mechanism that made it all work in the first place"._

-David R. Brower

Early in pesticide application history the types used had a broad species kill spectrum and long lifetime, breaking down only very slowly and often leaving harmful residues particularly in use on food crops. Unfortunately due to their wide availability and cheap price they were still commonly used in Developing Countries. These substances banned in other jurisdictions had been replaced by more selective varieties that biodegraded quickly leaving much less harmful residues. Pesticides can have a very serious effect on soil and plant beneficial microorganisms and biodiversity. Because of these problems nitrogen fixation was also perturbed.

Soil degradation had already resulted in famines in China and Africa. Natures well established water carbon and nitrogen cycles suffer serious perturbations in soil degradation regions. Desertification was causing widespread area increase of desert in many areas already rife with large deserts.

" _Soil is a living ecosystem, and is a farmer's most precious asset. A farmer's productive capacity is directly related to the health of his or her soil"._

-Howard Warren Buffett

" _The United States is losing soil 10 times faster -- and China and India are losing soil 30 to 40 times faster \-- than the natural replenishment rate. As a result of erosion over the past 40 years, 30 percent of the world's arable land has become unproductive. About 60 percent of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, increasing the risks of flooding and intensifying water contamination from fertilizers and pesticides runoff"._

-David Pimentel

### Food Issues

" _Agriculture is not crop production as popular belief holds - it's the production of food and fiber from the world's land and waters. Without agriculture it is not possible to have a city, stock market, banks, university, church or army. Agriculture is the foundation of civilization and any stable economy"._

-Alan Savory

" _All the human and animal manure which the world wastes, if returned to the land, instead of being thrown into the sea, would suffice to nourish the world"_

-Victor Hugo

People who died of hunger Nov 7, 2013 numbered about 19,000.

Undernourished people in the world was-about 910 million.

People who are obese in 2013 were nearly 600 million.

Amount spent on Drugs 2013 was about $340 billion

"The End of Plenty", "The race to feed the World" a book published in 2015 by J. K. Bourne Jr Norton Press was reviewed in the Journal Science by J. L. Stiener. In the reviewer's first paragraph, in preparation for discussing this books content, she comprehensively summarizes the challenge faced by agriculturalists as follows. "Confronted with a rapidly increasing global population, sluggish crop yield increases, and uncertainty about future climate, the agricultural community faces the challenge of doubling crop yields by 2050". Of particular interest she further states, "Bourne interweaves the legacy of Malthusian demographics-the idea that human populations grow exponentially while food production grows at an arithmetic rate-bringing the demand side to the fore front".

The statistics contained above were made all that more vexatious and untenable in the light of early Jan 2014 widespread reports in the public media that up to one-half of the world food supply was going to waste. Sources for this wastage in Developed Countries include, food discarded by consumers as out of date, unattractiveness, spoilage or not even reaching store food shelves due to not having met appearance and quality expectations.

The most serious result of degradation of soil relates to food production. One of the most serious worldwide problems was to increase food production to meet the growing demand despite the declining soil quality.

In a December 2012 D.K. Ray and coworkers(Nature Communications 3 Article 1293 – 2012) postulated that; " in the coming decades, continued population growth, rising meat and dairy consumption and expanding bio-fuel use will dramatically increase the pressure on global agriculture. Even as we face these future burdens, there have been scattered reports of yield stagnation in the world's major cereal crops, including maize, rice and wheat". In observations over the period 1961 to 2008 they examined the trends in crop yields for four key global crops: maize, rice, wheat and soybeans and found that; "although yields continue to increase in many areas, we find that across 24–39% of maize-, rice-, wheat- and soybean-growing areas, yields either never improve, stagnate or collapse".

Under the title "The Environmental Food Crisis", UNEP/GRID- Arendal (Environmental Knowledge for Change 2012) reported extensively on food issues and agricultural trends and challenges.

They stated; "The world food production has increased substantially in the past century, as has calorie intake per capita. However, in spite of a decrease in the proportion of undernourished people, the absolute number has in fact increased during the current food crisis, to over 963 million. By 2050, population growth by an estimated 3 billion more people will increase food demand". They elucidated that a heavier use of water through irrigation and increased fertilizer application had been responsible in the past for about 70% of crop yield increases. They go on to suggest; ". Yields, however, have nearly stabilized for cereals, partly as a result of low and declining investments in agriculture". In a startling comment this report outlined that only about 43% of the cereal produced is available for use by humans. This is presumably due to harvest and post-harvest loss during distribution, use of these for animal feed and bio-fuel production. By introducing food energy efficiencies, like waste recycling, together with new technology and using waste recovered along the human food chain as a substitute for present animal feed the report suggests that the additional 3 billion people alive by 2050 could be fed.

My comment at the time was that even if this proves true for this time interval of less than 40 years hence what could we expect in much longer intervals which must be considered that must be broached if sustainability of mankind on this planet was to be assured? Again we must emphasize the problem of the short term thinking of that time having limited relevance to long term problems.

This same report goes on to discuss meat as a food. Accordingly it stated that per-capita meat consumption rose from 27kg in 1074/1976 to 36kg in 1997/1999 and problems related to this trend were commonly pointed out here and elsewhere. These included energy inefficiencies when live stock is fed grain food supplies, the need for use of 1/3 of all farmland and wide ranging deforestation for land to be used as pasture(60-70% of previously forested Amazonia has thus disappeared) , overgrazing damage, erosion and land compaction. All this existed even when less than 10% of the world caloric supply is satisfied with meat consumption.

Many environmentalists had also long decried eating meat since raising livestock is felt to be a serious misuse of arable land. Additionally domestic livestock was responsible for 17% of the anthropogenic sourced greenhouse gases (in this case mainly methane) which are implicated in climate change. Most meat consumption occurred in the industrialized nations. The 30% of the earth's surface not covered by ice and now used for livestock production could have served much larger portions of the world for direct food production and for growth of carbon dioxide consuming trees. So should we have given up eating meat to alleviate this problem? At the time meatless meals worldwide would not have been considered

The journal Scientific American in the May17, 2011 edition recorded a laboratory approach to growing beef that involves stem cells from cattle. If this promising approach could be commercialized just one cow could result in enough beef to feed a nation.

Stem cells in contrast to other types have the remarkable property that they can be made to develop into many different species of cells. For this reason researchers have a great interest in these cells for a variety of purposes. For example stem cells can be made to differentiate into red blood cells, they can be used to produce tissue to repair vital organs and other tissue and as will be shown they have the potential for the production of muscle tissue.

In general terms in 2015 two classifications of stem cells were defined, embryonic and adult. Research involving these entities had at that time been controversial, particularly in the case of embryonic stem cells. In this case ethical implications involving use of human embryonic stem cells had spilled over to affect work with embryonic stem cells in general. The argument involved the contention that in the act of harvesting embryonic cells of human origin, human life is actually being destroyed. This point is the subject of much conjecture. The issue was important since the general scientific sentiment was that embryonic stem cells have greatest potential for research purposes and that research using such material must be allowed to proceed.

Adult stem cells are less abundant per unit of tissue and hence harder to harvest in large numbers. Sources include umbilical cord blood, bone marrow and even muscle tissue. These stem cells can differentiate into any type of cell that comprises the tissue in which they are discovered.

To grow beef in the lab at that time embryonic stem cells available in abundance, were accumulated from cattle embryos. They were then prompted to proliferate and differentiate into muscle cells which in turn were stimulated to form large amounts of muscle tissue (meat). Or adult stem cells were harvested from a tiny amount of cattle muscle tissue and caused to proliferate into large amounts of muscle tissue. The muscle tissue cells, placed in many spots spaced over a large scaffold like structure were allowed to grow into sheets of bulk muscle tissue. This meat was then removed and put through a grinder to form hamburger. Research has not yet proceeded to the stage of yielding steaks and roasts.

In a closely related manner other types of animal tissue cells could be employed in the laboratory. Specimens of fish and pig flesh had been thusly produced.

A number of problems still existed at that time with meat production in this manner. For example the present laboratory methodology is expensive and to some degree technically inefficient. Then adapting this approach for commercial production had not yet successfully been broached. The degree of acceptance of such meat by the general public was also in question.

However meat obtained in the above manner if successfully produced on a commercial scale would reduce to near zero the numbers of domesticated animals occupying and utilizing valuable arable land and would also reduce almost entirely animal sources of greenhouse gas emissions. For these reasons alone this type of stem cell research was of great potential importance. It goes without saying that this eminence becomes particularly magnified considering the level and continuing rapid growth of world human population.

On the other hand schemes such as described above very frequently faded from view on the basis that the required technology to initiate large scale production is very complex and considered prohibitively expensive. Since suitable technology did not exist in any related commercial process and would have to be developed through a many level prototyping scheme, the likelihood that before the commercial production level was reached some unforeseen impediment would arise was very probable. Thus readers should rate such proposals reaching the commercial stage as highly unlikely, but due to the important implications worth including for consideration in this book.

### Hydroponics

Growing of plants in nutrient solutions often in an inert substrate but free from soil constitutes the process of pant culture known as hydroponics. This process occurs mainly in greenhouses under carefully controlled conditions of atmospheric moisture, temperature and light exposure. There are a plethora of variations on the basic process, often dictated by the nature of the crop(s) being grown. Cost effectiveness, impact on the environment, pesticide practices and implications relating to population growth are of greatest concern in assessing the potential for any method to feed mankind.

Advances in hydroponic technology, higher quality of the produce in many cases and the acceptance of this type of cultured crops by grocers were some of the reasons that resulted in this the industry becoming cost effective for some types of fruits and vegetables compared to their soil growth counterparts. For example while cucumbers and tomatoes were found to be hydroponically profitable crops lettuce as generally less likely to be so.

The Environmental impact of hydroponics is relatively low. Culture solutions containing plant nutrients are recyclable. Thus serious nutrient pollutants such as phosphorus are contained within the system and do not contaminate local waterways as is the case with use of fertilizer in soil based market gardening. Soil degradation a very harmful effect of poorly practiced conventional market gardening is avoided. Yet hydroponics was limited in types of crops that were amenable. Thus for example cereal grains and corn crops still had to be gown using conventional soil based methods.

Pesticides are required to a much lesser degree than with soil grown crops. Incidence of pest attack is at a lower level and less frequently encountered. Biological control using predator insects such as ladybugs is often employed. Hydroponics does not necessarily constitute "organic" gardening even when pesticides are not employed. Strangely definitions of organic gardening sometimes required that the production of produce occur in soils.

Looking back hydroponics had little impact on feeding the millions of new humans that were yearly being born into an already over populated the world. Most widely consumed fruits and vegetables and cereal crops still had to be grown in soils.

### World Fishery and Aquaculture

" _The industrial way we fish for seafood is harming the marine habitats that all ocean life depends upon. Indiscriminate commercial fishing practices that include miles of driftnets, long lines with thousands of lethal hooks and bottom trawls are ruining ocean ecosystems by killing non-seafood species, including sea turtles and marine mammals"._

-Ted Danson

Figures from a variety of sources suggest that between 146 and 150 million tons of fish was caught or raised through aquaculture worldwide in 2011. Of this as much as half was probably produced through aqua culture. Data from China particularly in the realm of aquaculture having been hard to interpret made these figures hard to estimate. Of the total nearly 90% was consumed by humans with the largest consumption being in Asia.

Aquaculture, commonly termed fish farming, refers to fish and other aquatic species such as mollusks and crustaceans being raised under controlled conditions. This practice has grown from spotty practices in the 1940's and 50's to a widespread essential aquatic species production system worldwide. In 2014 roughly 450 aquatic species had been domesticated.

Over fishing, growing ocean pollution and use of fish capture equipment which destroys sea floor habitat are very serious and are particularly worrisome problems that are increasing rapidly worldwide. For example in Canada the once seemingly unlimited cod population fell so precipitously in the late 1900's that a commercial fishing ban was instituted. Also around the same time interval pollution problems and manmade obstructions in Canadian salmon spawning rivers seriously denuded the wild caught salmon fishery. Strict regulations and remediation in, these rivers resulted in large improvements in the salmon spawning success.

Aquaculture although crucially important in the fishery industry was unable to become the total solution to balance the rapid destruction of natural aquatic ecosystems.

### Bio-fuel Production

As the stable availability of petroleum products obtained by relatively low pollution production methods diminished, the interest in alternate methods of producing fuels for use in internal combustion engines increased. In 2015 two bio-fuels were at the top of this list, ethanol and biodiesel.

The most widely employed methods for the production of both of these required crop production and hence hectares of farmland land in unsustainable quantities. Farm land use for other than food production became untenable in the light of the relentless yearly loss in arable soil coupled with an expanding population.

Worse, in the case of ethanol, calculations by respected non industry related organizations raised the issue of whether the energy required for ethanol production was too excessive to make sense. Even the more modest estimates of the energy balance in this procedure indicated that 30% more energy is consumed in ethanol production than is realized from its use as a fuel ingredient. Despite this knowledge lobbyists for the ethanol industry were able to exert sufficient pressure to ensure this subsidized practice to continue.

Biodiesel production occurred using vegetable oils or by employing waste products from the food industry. Obvious using vegetable oils for this purpose as in the case of ethanol product made no sense. On the other hand biodiesel produced from food waste was an excellent use of material that would otherwise be discarded. The difficulty here was that the amount of biodiesel that could be produced from limited supplies of food industry waste met a very small fraction of total diesel requirements.

### Growing Crops from Genetically Modified Plants

" _Myths about the dire effects of genetically modified foods on health and the environment abound, but they have not held up to scientific scrutiny. And, although many concerns have been expressed about the potential for unexpected consequences, the unexpected effects that have been observed so far have been benign"._

-Nina Fedoroff

2015 food crops most commonly grown from processes involving genetic modification (GM) included, corn, canola, cotton seed oil and soya. GM was used most commonly for increased yields, faster growth, disease and pathogen resistance and increased nutrient content of the crop. On the surface this sounds like a positive step in feeding a fast growing human population.

Genetic modification (GM) is generally carried out by trans or cisgenesis processes. Cisgenic plants the least controversial of the two, result from the use of genes found within a same or closely related species. On the other hand transgenic plants are produced from genes derived from another plant species. The products of these modifications are laboratory tested for the desired characteristics before being licensed for testing in the field.

In the need to feed the rapidly growing population there would seem to be an overriding advantage for the use of (GM) foods, many of which carry a higher yield on a given unit of farm land but there were the following concerns. The safety of (GM) foods was not yet fully confirmed in 2015. While harmful effects would seem on the surface unlikely, the seemingly collateral proliferation in food allergies is the type of phenomena that concern consumers as having been not with certainty ruled in relation to the modified foods. Consumers believe that products containing (GM) constituents have not received extensive enough safety testing.

Contamination of non (GM) crops by these new modified species is of urgent concern. Indeed even in 2015 this problem may already have been out of control.

Genetic modification and other human induced alterations such as cloning of existing plants and animals was a highly controversial topic at the beginning of thr 21st century. Considering the potential advantages herein for the feeding of our burgeoning world population, this was an area that deserved careful immediate increased attention.

## Urban Environments

" _The industrial revolution has tended to produce everywhere great urban masses that seem to be increasingly careless of ethical standards"._

-Irving Babbitt

Growing at the rate of half a million a year Chongqing was the earth's fastest growing urban area. But if you made a 2015 Google search for lists of the world's largest urban areas it was seldom even listed, a factor that was due to its general unfamiliarity outside Asia. Its 2014 population of 31 million was exceeded only by Tokyo/Yokohama at 37 million. The location in the upper Yangtze covered an area of approximately 82,300 square km with New York, the second largest urban area, about 5 times smaller at about 15,000 square km.

Urban centers in 2015 already had approximately 50% of the world's population, a figure that grew steadily. In North America many large cities were closely surrounded by other cities or large population related communities. Mergers particularly along major highways resulted in huge metropolitan areas. Megacities are generally defined as containing greater than a 10 million population. Although only 7 world cities at the time fell into this category, by also counting urban areas there were a total of 20.

" _How long can men thrive between walls of brick, walking on asphalt pavements, breathing the fumes of coal and of oil, growing, working, dying, with hardly a thought of wind, and sky, and fields of grain, seeing only machine-made beauty, the mineral-like quality of life"?_

-Charles A. Lindbergh,

Cities are the sites of large quantity energy and resource consumption. This means that cities are centers of large point source household, business and industrial wastes. On the other hand cities also have a few debilitating large non-point source pollution problems such as vehicular exhaust and heating system emissions. This contrasts with agriculture which is fraught only with broad ranging non-point sources of pollutants.

Point source pollution is more readily remediated which means that given the will based on constituent pressure, the existence of the required and innovative insight, urban governments had an opportunity to control or regulate control over many pollutants. Based largely upon what boils down to ease of ability to control and ameliorating point source pollutants, assuming the relevant technology existed, together with the eventual adaption of electrical vehicles and other electrical devices to transportation requirements, a number of proponents trumpeted the planned growth of Mega-cities as a benefit in solving the long term sustainability of the world's biosphere problem. In my estimation while many of the arguments were appealing the plans were fated to break down based on the heavy energy consumption requirements particularly for the recovery of resources from waste streams, problematic applicability of some of the essential technologies in cities like New York and other colder climate cities and the problem of available sufficient fresh water.

Few environmental budgets are available for mega cities in 2015 but although they contained only 4% of the world population they had a disproportionately large percentage of the problematic environmental issues. Maintaining an adequate supply of fresh water was the single most serious problem for mega urban areas. Cities in developed countries have a better control on ensuring a required fresh water supply, generally originating from nearby reservoirs and lakes. Cities such as Mexico City obtaining water from underground aquifers commonly withdrew water faster than the aquifers could recharge. As a result by 2014 Mexico City had subsided 9 m in the past 100 years. In cities most inputted fresh water after household and industrial use of course became highly polluted waste water. A large proportion of the larger cities abut rivers, lakes or oceans. Thus the polluted water was discharged raw or only partially treated into these waterways. Adverse effect was certain to result on the local aquatic biosphere. Most common problems consisted of nutrient enrichment pollution by phosphorous and nitrogen compounds which in turn caused unsightly growths of algae and an accompanied seasonal lowering of dissolved oxygen content. The latter had a particularly serious effect on increasing the ratio of undesirable coarse fish to game fish.

In the 2015 era urban air pollution from fuels included high levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane and ozone as well as other poisonous gases such as sulfuric acid mist and non-methane hydrocarbons and fluorocarbons. Air pollutants from industry were a complex soup of poisonous substances their identities depend on the type of industry. A familiar example of an extreme case of air pollution was the ozone mist that enveloped Mexico City that was so dominant it was visible from satellites in space.

' _For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death"._

-Rachel Carson,

Solid waste disposal was an ever growing problem due to the vanishing sites available for land fill. In the Tokyo/Yokohama region despite a reported 60% recycling figure no land based landfill sites being available solid waste piles were beginning to build up in the bordering ocean.

By 2015 urban areas were becoming the biggest social, economic, ecological and energy sustaining challenge worldwide. The problem was particularly overwhelming in the developing countries world Megacity areas.

" _Ultimately we need to recognize that while humans continue to build urban landscapes, we share these spaces with others species"._

-David Suzuki

By 2015 the complex challenges that existed in integrating cities worldwide into a global program to achieve long term sustainability were immense, wide ranging, unfolding rapidly.

Remediation attempts covered a prolific variety of scientific, economic and social disciplines. Failure of many initiatives occurred before the deliberations even began. In the face of the need for such a large number of individual disciplinary experts compromises were made whereby a perceived expert on the basic overall problem was chosen to form the head of a select small group of what were assumed to be the main essential disciplines. Failure was almost assured. Input from missing disciplines would become essential during planning and even if some guidance was obtained in these areas the missing experts presence throughout the total process would most frequently have been essential to guarantee a viable plan was developed. That would be a concrete well rounded proposal that could be successfully executed.

Even accepting the proposition that we had the existing capability and technology to achieve such a solution, which unfortunately it is now only too obvious that we did not, could we keep up with the complex demands inherent in rapid population growth in an urban area with slum, middleclass and privileged class ramifications? The answer despite the growing number of programs, such as IDHP, the International Human Dimensions Program on Environmental Change which was attempting to grapple with this problem was again in the negative.

One might ask how in the face of such seemingly relevant planning activity I would even in 2015 predict an ultimate failure. What follows is not a direct criticism of any one program but is symbolic of most. Most importantly the reason is that I myself as a disciplinary expert (albeit in 3 subject areas) had been involved in such complex challenges and can state the following. Due to the melting pot of discipline experts that must be involved in planning a realistic solution to these multi-pronged problems that just accomplishing useful understandable communications between individual experts, never mind planning an agreed upon integrated program and finally settling on a course of actions is a major stumbling block in itself. Again assuming a miracle should occur and a viable comprehensive program of action results, what are the chances first, that principals within the many city bureaucracies will agree that the program is viable economically and secondly that the tax payers will support the inevitable high cost even of the individual components of these complex programs?

Major urban centers exist over a wide range of latitudes. Trying to outline the multitude of individual environmental problems that pertain to cities and that vary considerably depending on component makeup, country of location, weather and other physical realities would virtually be impossible to accomplish.

## The Energy/Resource Conundrum

" _We simply must balance our demand for energy with our rapidly shrinking resources. By acting now we can control our future instead of letting the future control us"._

-Jimmy Carter

Energy sources are the common denominator in processing all of the world's natural resources. This is true because energy is consumed in all enterprises that involve processing any of our other natural resources.

Pursuit of environmentally friendlier sources of energy has provided few potential practical alternatives. As stated early on in this treatise and repeated for emphasis here in the remainder of this paragraph; despite contrary claims proffered in sources like the bestselling book "Abundance", favored solar and wind technologies could never contribute more than a small percentage of our energy requirements. Many reasons could be cited including immense space requirements, damage during weather related disasters, infrastructure costs and maintenance, intermittency of operation and public and political obstacles.

Like traditional energy reserves other natural resources occur worldwide in finite quantities. Industrial and agricultural technologies were increasingly dependent on utilization of fresh water, mineral and related reserves. Thus modern lifestyles became reliant on the consumption of vast and rapidly increasing quantities of the world's resources.

Thus no matter if our energy supplies became eventually infinite the other natural resources upon which the all infrastructure and enterprises of life depend were still finite, confined within near surface areas of the earth. As the population increased and the steadily increasing improved standard of living for the masses ascended, we feasted in an accelerating manner on the diminishing supply of crucial nonrenewable natural resources. Without a drastic change in pattern this scenario could lead only to a disastrous conclusion for mankind.

" _The planet is just too small for these developing countries to repeat the economic growth in the same way that the rich countries have done it in the past. We don't have enough natural resources, we don't have enough atmosphere. Clearly, something has to change"._

-Mario J. Molina

An Illustration of this Point

The following discussion particularly appropriate for the 2015 era, is a generalization for the mining and metallurgical industries but exceptions exist most based on the actual composition of the deposit and on other economic factors. Mineral resources for example iron ores exist in various grades. Those iron ores which are higher grade, that is contain iron at higher levels as one would expect are cheaper to refine to obtain the desired iron. Thus mining companies choose the highest grade they can obtain to mine and sell to the refiner (many mining companies may also do their own metallurgy). Then in turn this iron obtained from a high grade ore can be sold more cheaply to the producers of iron containing products like the auto industry.

Another important factor embedded in this argument, particularly from our viewing point, relates to the grade of the ore being processed. The higher the grade of the ore the less the energy required during refining. This of course means a cost saving. But from the point of view of our interest here the less energy consumed the lower the greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.

At some point the high grade ores of any mineral are depleted and must be abandoned. The time at which this occurs depends on the substance in our example iron. In using iron in our example I have chosen a metal that is widely distributed throughout the world in relatively many high grade deposits. Thus the point that these are depleted is further away in time thatn say gold which may have already in 2015 reached its production zenith and is more and more coming from relatively low grade deposits. Most other mineral resources fall between these 2 extremes.

Now the conundrum emerged. The lower the grade of the ore that must be refined the greater the amount of energy required to extract the desired ingredient and therefore more pollution is also involved. The cost of obtaining 1 unit of this ingredient also goes up making the cost of products that are made from this substance more costly to the consumer.

But again most important from our point of view in this book the amount of energy required for the refining of lower grade ores increases. Thus it is obvious that as years past by ores required to produce the desired substance become lower and lower in grade and hence the energy required in the refining process steadily increases. Not only is this increased amount of energy depleting our conventional energy reserves but the greenhouse gas emissions also increase as we must process incrementally lower and lower grade deposits.

It would be remiss to not include the recovery of and refining of petroleum to the depletion of resources scenario. Middle East petroleum can be thought of in general terms as easily procured from the ground and of highest quality (grade) and in this latter sense most easily processed. There are other scattered world sources that match this standard. So in terms of mining these are the high grade deposits. As time progresses these deposits deplete and degrade in ease of extraction. Thus as in the mining world lower grade deposits become more strongly into play. This brings us to the immense Tar Sands deposits. In 2015 less than 1% of these massive deposits had been worked. In large part these deposits are a traditional mining type proposition although in some cases steam injection into the deposit and recovery of the petroleum/water mix is also employed. Thus since much more processing is involved per unit of product the methodology is comparable to the mining of a low grade ore. Therefor we have the same problems of greater expenditure of energy and much greater pollution per unit of commodity recovered. As time passed and worldwide higher grade oil deposits were depleted the inherently higher costs involved in extracting tar sand oil resulted in much higher costs to the consumer at the gasoline pumps. If as they should have the Canadian Government acquired the guts to force Tar Sand Producers to develop and adopt acceptable pollution control standards the increase in cost at the gas pumps would have become frightful in the minds of consumers. Hand in hand with 2014 oil sand extraction methodology Canada had risen to be among greatest greenhouse gas polluters per capita in the world.

On the other hand in order to complete this picture there are other factors to consider in assessing what has just been stated. Improvements to mining and refining methods occur and offset to a degree the costs involved and energy consumption requirements. But these were to be in large part mere squiggles on the curve of the above relationships. Resource depletion and the need for more and more energy to process lower and lower grade natural resources are relentless.

Likewise recycling of products containing the substance of interest (e.g. car bodies for iron) are competitive to extracting the desired metal from ores. Recycling often was more cost and energy effective. But demand for recycled commodities usually greatly outstripped the availability of such substances obtained in this manner. Thus this is just another blip on the curve on our relentless journey to resource depletion and higher and higher energy demand as the ore grades continuous became lower.

When would this resource depletion/ high energy consumption conundrum reach crisis stage and in what manner(s)?

" _We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive"._

–Albert Einstein

## Discussion of Selected Pivotal Energy Issues

### Nuclear Energy Sources

In the 2015 era nuclear power plants had the greatest potential of all the contending sources of alternate electrical energy to fill this niche. Thus this section appears in more detail than most.

" _The oil companies regard nuclear power as their rival, who will reduce their profits, so they put out a lot of disinformation about nuclear power"._

-James Lovelock

Of great relevance to energy resources, scientists demonstrated to the public that humongous amounts of energy are available from tiny sources when, during the 2nd World War, they used a relatively small quantity of a fissionable isotope of uranium for the destruction of a large portion of 2 Japanese cities. A natural consequence of this discovery was the subsequent development of nuclear reactors as electricity sources. It being impossible to use the explosive release of energy as occurs in the detonation of a nuclear device for direct energy conversion to electricity, Nuclear Power Generation Facilities employed a controlled fission reaction in a very trivial way. That being to generate heat which in turn is used to produce steam that drives turbine electricity generators. The many controversies surrounding this method of electricity production are well-known and their relevance must be outlined.

First let's return to the concept that bonds between particles at the atomic level represent a source of immense energy. Might there not be some way to convert this energy more directly into a method of energy conversion for example into electricity? This led to the concept of nuclear fusion as a possible approach. The world famous Einstein Equation Energy equals the Mass times the square of the Speed of Light holds the secret to how this could be accomplished. Since the speed of light squared is an immense quantity only a tiny amount of mass represents a huge amount of energy. Thus a nuclear reaction was proposed whereby 2 different isotopes of the element hydrogen would be fused together to form on an atom of helium. If this can be made to occur the energy sums would mean that the product helium atom formed, having slightly less total mass than the reactants would release this excess in the form of an equivalent amount of energy which in magnitude would be massive. In 2015 in actual fusion experiments even on a very small scale the output of energy obtained has yet to exceed the input energy required to initiate fusion. Even assuming the problems were overcome and the output exceeded the input energy the scaling up to large plants for commercial sized production was very problematic.

Thus back to realistic sources of energy that might provide a practical long term solution to our energy needs. In this category controlled nuclear fission stands out as a technical winner. Unfortunately despite vast strides in the safe operation and deployment of nuclear reactors public concern for safety still impeded its wider spread adoption.

One modern nuclear power plant can generate the power equivalent to a wind farm that would cover an expanse ¼ the area of Lake Ontario.

" _Nuclear power plants must be prepared to withstand everything from earthquakes to tsunamis, from fires to floods to acts of terrorism"._

-Ban Ki-Moon

The Japanese and Chernobyl nuclear power plant disasters were naturally detrimental to attitudes to the relative safety of the nuclear power generation worldwide. Both of these should never have happened. Both were resulted from deficiencies in old technology. Additionally the Japanese problem occurred from the incompetent decision to locate the problematic reactors in a well-known unstable physiographic region.

Geologically Japan is located on top of an area that is underlain with continuously very active continental tectonic plates. The earth is not a solid system of continents and sea floor that is inherently stable and unmoving. Instead the continents are forever moving, the frequency and magnitude of movement being more in some areas like Japan while much less in most others. The crust and upper mantle of the earth, often geologically denoted the lithosphere, comprise the total surface and under pinning of the earth. The lithosphere is broken up into sections called tectonic plates. There are 8 major tectonic and many minor tectonic plates on the continents and on the sea floor worldwide. There are 3 types of motion occurring along plate boundaries; these are transformal, convergent or collisional and divergent or spreading.

Tranformal movement is most troublesome and is characterized by major earthquakes, volcanic activity and mountain building, this approximating the situation upon which Japan is located. Strong earth quakes happening at sea are usually accompanied by a tsunami, which often accounts for the largest proportion of damage and deaths. Twenty percent of the world's earthquakes occur in Japan making this region the most probable for such a problem. A citizen living in Tokyo would find it unusual not to feel minor earth tremors weekly. Japan has an immense person to surface area ratio and a large industrial base much of it concentrated along the coast. The power requirement is high and in Japan natural resources for conventional power generation are low by proportion making supplementation by nuclear electrical power generation attractive. Unfortunately even using the best safety precautions, many unavailable or improperly maintained in the problematic 40 year old 4 Fukushima, the chances for serious nuclear accidents resulting from an earthquake were high. A frightening figure is that there are a total of 55 nuclear reactors in Japan.

Need the Japanese experience have been the seemingly perptual cause to dynamically alter plans for development of new nuclear electrical power facilities Worldwide? For example according to Natural Resources Canada in all of Eastern Canada 450 earthquakes can be expected to occur each year. Of these only 4, averaging about a magnitude 4, will be strong enough to be felt and then only very slightly. In comparison the recent Japanese quake was about a 9. This is 5 orders of magnitude greater or in other terms 10000 times greater. The reason Eastern Canada does not have large structural damaging earthquakes is that geologically this region is in the middle of a very broad and stable continental land mass containing very old and relatively stable fault zones.

For the more technically minded a few comments on the design and safety features of 2015 era Canadian reactors used for electrical power generation are presented. CANDU reactors, originally designed by Canadian Researchers at Chalk River Ontario, were among the best and safest available worldwide. Multiple systems existed that could detect loss of coolant in the fission (the nuclear reaction) reactor vessel and any one of these could shut down the reactor and inject a reaction poisoning mixture under high pressure to prevent overheating and meltdown. These entities were multiple so that if one or more failed there would always be others to take over this function. Additionally the reaction rods in the core were grouped so that coolant failure could affect only small sections of the total reaction chamber, not the total chamber as occurred in Japan. A large volume low temperature fluid moderator surrounded the reactor chamber and was a heat reducing (heat sink) safety shield that could safely absorb heat from heat causing events. This again was surrounded by a water shield tank for biological and further thermal shielding. The heavy water neutron kinetics (an energy expression), a property of the CANDU nuclear reaction process, was several orders of magnitude slower making control easier than in the Japanese type reactors. There were other technical factors relating to safety too complicated to discuss here that were part of the CANDU design.

Although safe disposal of nuclear reactor waste, even just the large amount accumulated to date was a serious problem; locations and adequate containers for this purpose were being sought. Recycling procedures had been developed to recover reusable components of nuclear waste. Additionally treatments existed to reduce drastically the volume of waste by separating the relatively much smaller quantity of highly radioactive waste components from the whole thus reducing the disposal problem. Much more waste recycling and disposal research was still urgently needed.

Nothing exists of a complicated technological nature that is totally foolproof. However nuclear reactors for electrical power generation in 2015 era Canada existed in areas of Canada under favourable geological conditions plus they possessed the superior safety features embodied in the CANDU design. This meant that as long as safety precautions were continuously reviewed and then updated when these were determined to be advantageous and stable areas are chosen there should be no need to have delayed plans for building new nuclear power installations despite the catastrophic problem with the 4 inferiorly designed and drastically geologically misplaced Fukushima reactors in Japan.

### Electricity Storage Technology Constraints dogging Electric Vehicles

The lack of adequate battery technology to make electric vehicles a practical reality was a long term reality. Electrochemistry, the science on which battery design depends, had been investigated to death and the lithium ion battery in widespread use in 2015 in most electric cars was the technology superior. The trouble was that from a really practical stand point these batteries didn't fit the bill. Continued research relating to this technology could likely achieve only marginal improvements. Lithium ion batteries that were in use in 2015, provided electrical storage power for only short trip driving, recharging was relatively slow, no practical scheme of battery exchange had been proposed and these batteries were expensive and had to be replaced at regular intervals after the recharging limit was reached.

If as has been supposed here no electrochemical scheme would be found to provide batteries of a practical capacity were there other technologies for such a purpose? One area of investigation in the second decade of the 21st century was the ultracapacitor. In 2015 these devices had 2 oppositely chargeable metal plates which were coated with porous activated carbon and then were immersed in an electrolyte. The plates were closely separated by a thin sheet of plastic or ceramic insulator material and the whole device contained in packaging. When ultracapacitors underwent the charging process, 2 layers of opposite charge formed on each of the 2 plates instead of just 1 layer per plate in conventional capacitors; this resulted in the alternate name dual layer capacitors. During charging and discharging no chemical reaction occured as in a battery and hence ultracapacitors did not suffer same type of the wear and tear as did a battery when in operation and hence potentially had a much greater lifetime. These capacitors had the same properties as a battery in the sense that they can deliver an electric current to run an electric motor. The 2015 era available ultracapacitors were unsatisfactory for use in electric vehicles because when used for this purpose they could only store about 5 to 10% the charge of the lithium ion batteries currently in use. Additional capacitors under normal circumstances discharge completely in a fraction of a second thus research into methods to extend the discharge interval to allow these devices to slowly release the charge over a practical interval was abundant.

The above discussion relating to 2015 electrical storage devices having insufficient capacity for really practical all electric vehicles holds has a parallel in the field of high capacity electricity storage for intermittent electricity generation sources. Availability of such a storage device was not available in 2015 and is essential for standalone wind and solar electrical power generation.

### Electrical Energy Transmission Consequences

Another factor to be considered in costs of electricity was that essential new electricity generation facilities both alternate and conventional for greatest transmission economy should be built near the points of greatest demand. An important factor in electricity transmission along the electric power grid was the large power losses that occurred therein. For a given unit of power generated the fraction of that unit that was received by the consumer depended on the distance travelled from source to consumer. The greater the distance of the power generating station from the consumer the lower was the percentage of each unit of generated power that arrived. Unfortunately attempts of electrical power generating utilities to construct generating facilities within local areas of high electricity consumption like urban areas, thus lowering transmission costs were met with a not-in-my-back-yard (NIMBY) attitude.

As an example the resistance to locating power sources near the consumer was so hard core that a week or 2 before the 2011 Ontario election the government currently in power promised to relocate out of an urban area to a location some long distance away 2 partially completed, urgently needed, gas fired electrical power generating plants. This was overtly done to save government politician legislature seats which were presumed likely to be lost because of NIMBism. The politicians' seats were indeed saved but at a projected cost just for disassembly and reconstruction of the facilities of over 1 billion dollars! Of course increased transmission costs incurred by this move were long-term ongoing.

### Ancillary Consequences of Using Petroleum Resources as Fuel

Interesting crucial but seldom thought of serious consequences pertain as to the types of resources chosen as energy sources. Petroleum and natural gas were the most common resources used for production of vehicular propellants.

Both resources consist of organic polymeric compounds that were synthesized over periods of millions of years over a variety of epochs of the earth's evolution; but in large part during the Mississippian era 200 to 400 million years ago. Plant and animal life was at a peak and petroleum resulted from the remains of these life forms in locations at depth and at extremely high pressure. The polymers that form petroleum (hydrocarbons) are long strings of many different lengths of carbon atoms chemically bonded together with hydrogen atoms which in turn are chemically bonded to each carbon atom along these strings.

Why bother the reader with all this millions of years, high pressure and chemical bonding palaver? First and foremost the crux of the matter is the tremendous energy contained in the carbon atom chemical bonds. In the production of gasoline petroleum was placed in a distillation chamber together with steam and subjected to additional heat whereby the various hydrocarbons were separated according to the length of their string of carbon atoms (The shorter the carbon atom string the more volatile the hydrocarbon) into different size fractions with the gasoline fraction being quite volatile, containing that with only 5 to 12 carbon atom strings. Other fractions form other useful products for example that averaging 12 carbon atoms being diesel. Other less volatile, longer string fractions were sent to a petrochemical "cracking" reactor where the carbon atom chains were broken into shorter more volatile hydrocarbon products such as more gasoline.

Not to worry if I lost you in some technical pothole along the way because the critical concept relates simply to the consequence of using the largest portion of our rapidly dwindling supply of petroleum resources for combustion in vehicular transportation. The process of vehicular combustion is the breaking down of the gasoline or diesel carbon atom strings in the engine cylinders releasing energy for vehicular propulsion resulting in the waste pollutant exhaust gases, the worst being the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Yes this was a serious consequence and misuse of the energy of petroleum resources simply as a combustible fuel, but it is not the one I want to emphasize.

The most commonly used raw materials for plastic production were petroleum products. The petroleum industry was commonly cracking the longer carbon atoms in petroleum to augment the amount of gasoline and other more volatile hydrocarbons produced from a unit of petroleum. Instead if these products are treated using other chemical processes they would become raw materials in the plastics industry.

The rapid depletion in non-renewable petroleum resources using most of the energy locked up over millions of years in the carbon chemical bonds as a source of vehicular propulsion meant that when the sources of relatively inexpensive petroleum were depleted likewise this inexpensive raw material from these sources for plastics was gone. In itself this did not mean that no plastics or gasoline were available. There were still costly sources of petroleum products such as the Athabasca Tar Sands available in relatively large supply.

But mankind in his usual shortsighted approach had wasted the bulk of a valuable resource simply to produce energy for vehicular propulsion. This meant that that a serious polluting high energy consumption form of petroleum resources was forced into use. Thus the cost of gasoline, diesel and plastics sky rocketed in lock step with high energy consumption and the attendant high level of pollution. Much of this pollution was greenhouse gasses.

Was this not typical of mankind's reactive problem solving approach weakness? These difficulties could have been predicted and the fabled technology that had for years been presumed to be solving all crucial issues could and should have been concentrated on developing vehicular propulsion systems of a low pollution type. This should have been initiated sometime in the early 1900's not delayed as it was until we were choking in vehicular exhaust.

### Fracking to increase Oil and Gas Production

The process of fracking was another example of mankind's inherent reactive and shortsighted approach to problem solving.

" _Natural gas emits only half the carbon dioxide of coal when burned, but if methane leaks when oil companies extract it from the ground in a sloppy manner - methane is far more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide - it can wipe out all the advantages of natural gas over coal"._

-Thomas Friedman

Oil and gas production is from bores or wells drilled into the surface of the earth down deeply enough to intersect reservoirs of these substances trapped below. Oil from some of these wells flowed freely, but others must be pumped. Gas wells flow freely. Oil and gas fields contain many individual wells. In time oil wells that were free flowing often required pumping as the supply diminished. Finally the flow of oil and gas from a well diminished to the point that working the well was not economical and was sealed off (capped) and abandoned. Since 1947 it had been known that production from gas and oil wells could be increased by hydraulic fracturing (Fracking) of the rock that boarders the wells. In this process new fractures and fissures were created in the adjacent rock by injecting fluids under high pressure into cracks. This opened up areas in the rock formations that have trapped petroleum products that were otherwise inaccessible. This procedure in the second decade of the 21st century was used to reopen capped wells for further production to increase production from existing working wells and reach petroleum products at greater depth and horizontal distance from wells.

" _It's not unexpected that shooting massive amounts of water, sand, and chemicals at high pressure into the earth to shatter shale and release natural gas might shake things up. But earthquakes aren't the worst problem with fracking"._

-David Suzuki

Fracking is a controversial practice that has resulted in a wide variety of environmental concerns. The widely stated concept that water alone was injected during fracking is false. Thus of particular direct worry was ground water contamination both by petroleum and from the complex compounds, some being carcinogenic, used in fracking fluids. Both surface air and water pollution were additional concerns. Fracking has also the potential for causing earthquakes. Without giving more details it is easy to see that fracking is a technique with great potential benefit to the petroleum industry but at a possible environmentally costly price.

Resource depletion problems lead to the proposed wide use of controversial techniques like fracking that complicated our decisions on what can be permitted for commercial reward in the face of possible permanent damage to the biosphere. This technique is discussed here as an example of the economic and environmental conflict that new techniques for working diminishing resource sources can occasion. If fracking were banned as it was in many jurisdictions, the available reserves of these resources would become less. Petroleum and natural are examples of particularly essential resources the depletion of which had negative connotations for our standard of living if not as fuels then certainly for the plastics industry.

There had been recent 2015 unconfirmed rumors that the USA would undertake fracking on a large enough scale such that it could be self-sufficient in petroleum in the future. Such a prospect was truly shortsighted and environmentally scary.

### Journalistic Misinformation on Energy Related Topics

There were many reasons for the 2015 era confused state towards choosing viable future energy sources. Commercial interests and the susceptibility of Governments to their desires frequently predominated. But reports on the energy source question that are disseminated by the media carried appreciable public opinion guidance.

One danger faced in the media world in the 2015 era was the plague of influential newspaper Business Section journalists, often graduates in economics and business with little training in science technology that seemed to constitute the majority of authors of articles on energy in our major newspapers. An average citizen having read these articles had no basis on which to judge there validity. Truly the fate of the world's energy and other resources and the problems related there-to should have been portrayed as having very little to do with economics and much more on the environmental consequences.

Basically there are several main problems that disenfranchise business/economics prattlers as capable of writing meaningful dissertations on the energy problem.

They seldom demonstrated a useful knowledge of even basic science and most particularly the essential material from geology, chemistry, physics and related engineering of energy products.

They considered each source of energy as relatively unrelated marketable commodities whose dollar values in the western world should be governed simply by supply and demand and the markets. Their judgements were related largely to economic impacts in the present and very near future.

In the 2015 era these columnists were frequently stimulated by the public conception that energy prices were excessive and for the most part economists/business scribes with only a cursory compartmentalized understanding of the issues supported this view.

These writers relied in large part on interviews or quoted reports of vocal spokespersons in the energy/resource field whose views they were incapable of expertly judging.

The 2015 era was a pivotal time in the planning of energy sources for the future. Concern for the environment had spurred a sudden spate of alternative energy production alternatives. As already stressed these produced energy at a much higher cost than did present conventional methods. To encourage alternative energy production large government subsidies were paid from our taxes to the entrepreneurs. Thus in many instances the consumer was directly billed at a rate much less than the actual cost of the energy they consumed. Economists/business writers seldom give recognition to this dichotomy. In terms of long term bio-sustainability suitable for the existence of life on this planet, such economic thinking was inapplicable. This of course was understandable since short term problems necessary for financial stability and maintaining our present standard of living were uppermost in the public, corporate and governmental idioms; another excellent example of mankind's reactive mode of dealing with problems.

On the other side of this journalistic coin were the relatively few but often fine articles by industry critic experts under headings such as 'Opinion' presented on topics of importance such as energy concerns. This was highly commendable.

The incredible magnitude and rate of natural energy resource depletion and the skew of this depletion as being a Western World paradox was basically not considered by economists. Considering the earth as 5 billion years old and then for easy illustrative purposes equating this interval to one year. Using this analogy mankind in general will have depleted the readily recoverable resources in less than 1/10th of a second. Petroleum products and coal emanate from a period about 300 million years ago and using the same concept but equating 300 million years to one year these resources will have largely been consumed in 1.7 seconds. The Western world countries containing only 15% of the world's population, with high living standards and considered at the 2015 rates of use was consuming 70% of energy resources.

In the 2015 era major, media outlets had a myopic view of a wide range of important issues. Intervals of more than a few years were rarely considered in crucial reports. Despite "sustainable", the 2015 politicians buzz concept being used to describe a hypothetically stable condition of life in the future, the fate of future generations seldom appears to even enter economist journalistic equations. As harmful as such an approach would prove to be to their reader's perception, perhaps it is easy to understand. Consistently the main departments of dominant news outlets featured spectacular daily events. Why then should economists not have follow suit and report nearsightedly on current hot topics which really deserved a long term perspective.

### Unrealistic Expectations in Energy Pricing

A serious problem that begets public confusion is energy pricing. In 2015 in round figures Ontario residents paid on their electricity bill 7 to14 cents per kilowatt hour depending on the time of use with the new Smart Meters. This was however very misleading. The present mammoth government subsidized costs associated with the establishment and production of electricity from alternate energy, a legitimate item in the price of electricity, were also being paid by the customer but from a different source. In 2014 subsidies for wind and solar power alone were estimated variously as between 3 and 5 billion dollars per annum. At these subsidies Ontario consumers obtained about 800 to 900 megawatts of electrical power. Contrast this with the 3 times greater output from the Darlington nuclear facility of 3500 megawatts. In 2014 total Ontario electricity generation potential stands at 19,000 megawatts. Thus this subsidized generation replaced only about 5% of electricity production.

Governments have the proclivity to hide such costs in yearly provincial tax bills. In this way the citizen while receiving falsely lower charges for power generation on monthly electricity bills were still paying the full cost with part of the true costs hidden in the provincial tax levy. Similar dichotomies are common throughout North America.

There had already been such a public ruckus over rising electricity bills that the government dared not admit to the real cost of electricity. Government subsidies like this for electricity were common across the alternate energy sector and even for that matter in some instances for conventional energy processing.

Electricity pricing in 2015 differed from Province to Province in Canada. Consumer complaints about billing for this commodity in Ontario were particularly vociferous. But again on a nationwide basis, comparisons of our electricity costs with those of other nations are possible. In this case comparing 20 prominent industrialized nations Canadian prices were the third lowest overall. Similar consumer unrest due to energy pricing exists in many of the Developing Nations

In 2013 Ontario residents received a missive from the Ontario Government entitled "Electricity Prices are Changing-Find Out Why". Herein the opening gambit stated "Like a lot of places around the world, electricity prices in Ontario are going up". Under "How much will I pay" we learned that each year for the next 20 the rise was projected at 3.5% but the likely increase in the next 5 years ouldl be 7.9% per year.

Alternate electrical energy producers had contracts promising payment for power produced and hence the government had to pay for the electricity whether needed or not. An option was to sell excess power to adjacent US and Canadian jurisdictions. However it was discovered that at times the government even had to pay these neighbors just to rid ourselves of this surplus. Since the wind does not blow nor the sun shine consistently it is not possible to rely on a steady supply from these electricity suppliers, a problem that aggravated such situations.

It is noteworthy that the government tried to justify the costs for subsidizing companies to build alternate energy installations by emphasizing the many jobs thus produced. Down the line when expensive sources of energy cause electricity rates to skyrocket it could be predicted that there would actually be a loss of jobs when other industry would decide to avoid investment in Ontario due to exorbitant power rates.

Clearer power technologies were indeed needed to combat climate change. The problem is worldwide in stature. The USA and developing countries continued to persist in an appreciable reliance on coal, the dirtiest but cheapest method of power production. Thus again it must be stressed that industry in Ontario would be in a disadvantageous competitive position if clean energy costs did not continue to be subsidized from our taxes but instead were passed on to the consumers. Worse these costly sources of clean energy, mainly wind and solar power, could only hope to provide a small fraction of total energy requirements

Another important misconception existed relating to the price of gasoline, a factor that enters the public's mind after every trip to the gasoline station.

According to a 2012 Yahoo pole 63% of the respondents identified gas prices as the top money issue in a recent Canadian election. Gasoline prices in Canada differed city by city. Taking an average on a national basis several surveys showed Canadian gasoline prices to be in the 40% range of about 150 countries surveyed. For example gasoline was more than 2X as expensive in The Netherlands, Germany, Italy and the UK; while in the US, China and Russia gas was only 0.8, 0.7 and 0.5 as costly as in Canada. Perhaps the chronic complainers should have moved to Venezuela where gas costs a measly 5 cents per litter. Also just for fun compare Markham 2014 Ontario gas price at about $1.36 per litter with local supermarket prices for 1 litter well-known, Brand Name, bottled waters averaged $1.60 at the same time.

A large proportion of Canadian Oil reserves are located in the Western Canadian oil sands. Production from this source is still subsidized at the billion dollar level by the Federal Government. Environmental problems related to production of oil from this source would accelerate drastically with approval of projects such as the Keystone XL pipeline. With the oil sands operation in the second decade of the 21st century already the worst source of pollution in Canada any large scale oil production from oil sands must be queried on this basis alone. Never-the-less as the amount of oil production in Canada from conventional wells inevitably decreased over time, reliance on oil sand produced product would undoubtedly rise. It would have been essential that this also be accompanied by innovative improvements in oil sand processing pollution control. The result would have to be an attendant large increase in the cost of gasoline, diesel and the many consumer products based on petroleum as a raw material.

No one can deny that 2015 era higher gasoline and diesel prices could have unbalance the family budget and caused problems for commercial and industrial users. While gasoline prices would always vary slightly up and down, over the long term a relatively consistently rising trend cannot be avoided. The only answer must be to plan to adjust cost expectations both for fuel and for products and services that depend on this commodity.

Considering these inevitable petroleum product cost increases exacerbated by a growing population and such will appreciably presage the fate of our present average middleclass high standard of living. This detailed discussion involving the fate of a familiar and widely utilized conventional resource is just one example of the constant the relentless shortsighted approach to life that was typical of mankind in the early 21st century era.

## The Persistent Sustainability Myth

The summer 2011 'York Region', York Works Transportation and Environmental Services Newsletter trumpets; "Sustainability is a focus of York Region's community development, reflected in our commitment to efficient transit, clean water, waste management policies and environmental protection". York Region is a region of 1 million in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). On the initial page of Markham's (city of 300,000 in York Region), Greenprint Sustainability Plan, the mayor states; "During my inaugural speech when I was elected Mayor in 2006, I announced the creation of the Greenprint as part of 'Building Markham's Future Together'. It is my pleasure to present the Greenprint, Markham's Sustainability Plan – our commitment to transforming Markham into one of the most sustainable cities in North America".

Apart from the erroneous implications of such statements, I had personal evidence from several jurisdictions that this type of implied commitment was lacking. In my experience it was for the most part only under conditions of duress that remediation of environmental problems could be accomplished in that era.

In environmental publications of the second decade of the 21st century a plethora of communities of all sizes, exemplified by the two above, "Sustainability" had become the quintessential buzzword that was apparently used as a supposed seal of validation and a political exigency. How this erroneous use of the term came into such prominence is hard to fathom. OF course the use of qualifying phrases such as "most sustainable cities" was also redundant and will be obvious in the following.

Sustainability is an imposing term and when used in an environmental sense it should always only have related to the existence of a life sustainable ecosystem worldwide. Additionally it implies the endurance of such a stable ecosystem over the long term. Thus for true sustainability to be developed for any community on this planet the locale, for example, must be able to control climate change. How can any tiny jurisdiction such as York Region and Markham produce a plan for its own sustainability when the world's climate including that pervading Markham is in serious upset? Obviously any contribution that Markham can itself make toward climatic stability is welcome but not integrated into a national and worldwide plan would be infinitesimal. The same argument can be expressed for most other of the crucial sustainability parameters. True sustainability implies worldwide control of many other essentials including, water quality and its long term availably, equitable resource availability including oil, metals and forest products, world health research as in the case of the prevention of pandemics and Political and economic stability. Sustainability programs must originate and be applied at the National and International levels.

In order for relatively small communities like Markham and in a somewhat more extensive area York Region to claim that they can develop a plan for a sustainable future in their locales they must be able to include in their scenario procedures that will exercise control over parameters that are worldwide in nature. This is a very obvious impossibility.

Time in 2015 era was too short to work from the bottom up as is the case when planning at the local levels like this occurs in a nonintegrated form.

## Expectations versus actual Results- Typical Example

Announcements such as that by US President Obama in the Spring of 2015 proposing a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2030, and a resultant positive commitment by China, appeared to be steps in the right direction. But as I look back, these reductions did not actually materialize at the mandated time. This was due largely to well-known impediments such as heavy vested interest lobbying against stemming of the offending technologies and resistance to any possible attendant loss of economic benefit.

" _Public discourse had been polluted for decades by corporate-funded disinformation - not just with climate change but with a host of health, environmental and societal threats. The implications for the planet are grim"._

-Michael E. Mann

Climate Change, although it received the bulk of public and political attention, was but one of many crucial anthropogenic environmentally related issues in the 2015 era. Some others, such as the diminishing supply of potable water and resource depletion, should also have attracted serious attention but sadly did not.

" _Few problems are less recognized, but more important than, the accelerating disappearance of the earth's biological resources. In pushing other species to extinction, humanity is busy sawing off the limb on which it is perched"._

-Paul R. Ehrlich

Despite the brazenly optimistic views expressed in books like 'Abundance' technology had not by 2015 provided any sign of a viable alternate energy source that showed the least potential to totally replace the major worldwide dependence on greenhouse gas emitting sources of power generation. Thus contrary to past experience technology had not saved us from a problem that brought the world to the brink of disaster, in this case galloping climate change.

Judging from present government lackadaisical or even resistive meaningful action on solving environmental problems time could expire before reaching the point of no return on critical issues.

The next few years could be the most pivotal in putting the seal on mankind's future fate; worse in some critical areas that seal may already be in place.

# Chapter 4

# Governance and Business

I fully admit that I have no academic training in government or economy theory. What follows is my experience obtained here and abroad in these fields as a government and industry consultant and in my everyday life.

## Government

In lockstep with humanity in general, most government's activities were reactive rather than proactive.

" _In spite of advances in technology and changes in the economy, state government still operates on an obsolete 1970s model. We have a typewriter government in an Internet age"._

-Matt Blunt

While agreeing with Matt Blunt in principle I believed that what we really faced was much more incongruous, that being a 19th Century Styled Governance facing Twenty First Century complex problems. Some of these problems, particularly relating to the environment, had become so critical that an inability to find solutions in a timely manner was threatening the existence of mankind on this planet.

" _Technological errors made by government, industry [DDT, ABM, SST, CIA, etc.] are those of children, who, even though they don't know what the score is, go on playing pre-technological games of power and profit"._

― John Cage,

I strongly believe in democratic systems of government but must note the following little understood fact.

" _Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country"._

-Franklin D. Roosevelt

One important reason our governments remained what they were, was because the voters did not pressure their elected representatives to make meaningful changes in the system.

The 21st Century was characterized by issues that differed drastically from those even in the fairly recent past. Many problems such as those posed by exponential population growth and its attendant subsets were multilayered and involved research and inputs from multidisciplinary teams of many experts. Solutions proposed by such teams were often so technologically complex that they could not be understood by heads of Government or even the government departmental groups of experts who from my experience could not hope to include nearly all the relevant disciplines involved. Additionally, procedures for the approval of proposed solutions and the enacting of the required amelioration had to occur quickly to prevent the possible long term consequences that can result from the 2015 still protracted governmental forms of decision making.

" _I don't believe that government is good at picking technology, particularly technology that is changing. By the time you get it done and go through democracy, it's so outdated"._

-Michael Bloomberg

Governance as it existed in 2015 was geared for the slowly contemplative discussions relevant to the 19th century, from which it has not significantly been forced to change. The present disaster experienced from Climate Change beginning in the first decade of the 21st century was in large part a testament to this outmoded style of bureaucracy.

It's sad/amusing to think the authors of Abundance fail to realize that researchers would spit out crucial technology at exponential rates into a politically and economically screwed up world thus making not a spec of difference in achieving solutions to our most critical problems. Most of these authors' proposals would never ever be adopted for critical problem solutions in time to save us after they dragged and ground up through the glacially moving political and other deliberation processes worldwide.

Consider the day to day activities of your government in 2015. Are these contributing in a timely manner to the solution of our major problems? Or do personal vendettas, interference by lobbyists, other special interest groups, corruption and other discord slow much the urgent legislation to a crawl?

" _Corrupt politicians make the other ten percent look bad."_

― Henry Kissinger

Are there any countries worldwide in 2015 whose governments move swiftly ahead in a timely thoughtful manner? Are many major countries debt free or in a regular fashion abating their debt?

" _I found this national debt, doubled, wrapped in a big bow waiting for me as I stepped into the Oval Office."_

-Barack Obama

Did the average politician have the long term wellbeing of the country and the world as their priority? Could you see your own countries government capable of dealing quickly with suddenly appearing critical situations? In my worldwide experience the answer to all the above was basically in the negative. This is sad and potentially fatal to maintaining a mankind sustainable biosphere in this fast moving, highly populated, rancorous world of the 21st Century.

" _Money and corruption are ruining the land, crooked politicians betray the working man, pocketing the profits and treating us like sheep, and we're tired of hearing promises that we know they'll never keep"._

-Ray Davies

The persistent gridlock in the 2015 era US Congress over the counties crucial financial affairs was a typical of an outdated style of governance. In the second decade of the twentieth century the worldwide disasters we were beginning to experience from issues such as Climate Change resulted from an inappropriate and outmoded procedure of governmental decision making process.

" _To be surrounded by sixty people who make your life miserable is to be at a family reunion. But to be surrounded by 600,000 people who make the whole world miserable is to live in Washington DC."_

― Jarod Kintz,

Considering the world as a whole, Canada, the greatest greenhouse gas polluter per capita in the developed world, certainly earned the Harper led Canadian Government in Ottawa a Jarod Kintz type simile.

" _But Big Oil and Big Coal have always been as skilled at propaganda as they are at mining and drilling. Like the tobacco industry before them, their success depends on keeping Americans stupid"._

-Jeff Goodell

Considering the Jeff Goodell quotation and perhaps substituting 'misinformed' for the word 'stupid' could there have been any question why the public had distorted perspectives on issues of importance through no fault of their own. Because of such examples it is not difficult to understand why subjects related to the overpopulation problem, although critical to bio-sustainability on this planet, were far from the public eye and therefore did not sustain intense public concern.

### From the Mouths of the Young

Granddad, are you going to vote for the Green Party? This question relating to a Canadian federal election from my teen granddaughter broadsided me unexpectedly. As a university environmental researcher for 25 years, I had arrived at some perplexing conclusions as to the future of the environmental quagmire that we will be consigning to this younger generation. It was essential in the upcoming federal election to elect a political party that would have not only the will but the capability to tackle these issues. As an environmental scientist the Green Party would have appear to be the obvious choice for my vote.

Most environmentally oriented researchers, I included, found themselves working in great depth on a relatively small piece of the immense jigsaw puzzle. For example my research group had devised simple equipment and methodology for assessing the forms of toxic metals in the very complex samples of the solids, liquids and gasses encountered in domestic and industrial wastes. Fortunately the equipment and procedures thus obtained were found to be much more widely applicable, also being useful in the earth sciences, biological and clinical fields. Non-the-less someone of my ilk could hardly have claimed to be an expert in any broad ecological context.

On the other hand others investigators studied the environment from a much broader perspective. They attempted to answer the big questions such as the nature of the present state and future of the climate. However generalists of this stripe are unable to come to valid conclusions on such complex issues because a cutting edge, in-depth knowledge of the specialized interrelated variables concerned, was lacking in such academics.

The answer to dealing with the broad and critical environmental problems which face Canada and the world today, climate change for example, lie in assembling multidisciplinary working groups. In such a case these groups should contain the best specialist researchers available in the many relevant disciplines. A proper aggregation of this type would consist of physicists, climatologists, analytical chemists, botanists, zoologists, chemical and other engineers, economists, physiologists, lawyers and others. Developing a working relationship in such a diverse team was difficult and had to begin by simply learning to speak with and understand one another. Defining the contribution required from each must be next. Only then could the dialog toward the solving of broad complex problems even begin. No generalist or single disciplinary individual can hope to make a meaningful contribution to such a broad complex and multi-faceted problem.

Now back to a choice of political party for the task. Elected politicians of the Parties, including the Prime Minister and appointed Ministers were seldom research experts. One would not expect such individuals to study and develop solutions to environmental problems. Some of the expertise for this purpose arose from the scientists and engineers within the Ministries. In the case of environmental problems several Ministries could be involved headed by the Ministry of the Environment. Additionally since personnel here-in seldom consist of world class researchers, teams of consultants from industries and universities with such pedigrees were often essential to provide the data and interact with the individuals within the Ministries charged with compiling the Government policy on crucial worldwide issues.

The Green Party has a strong will to tackle environmental problems and that is praiseworthy. But what of other compelling issues such as the fragile economy. Such strongly environmentally oriented candidates if elected would they have the will, savvy and understanding even provided with expert help to develop policy in disciplines such as this? This lack of disciplinary breadth underlay my view that only the major political parties had, at least potentially, the depth to handle the complex interwoven priorities that were essential to solving environmental problems. Having argued thusly I have little confidence that the major political parties are convinced of the dire nature of worldwide environmental problems and would devote enough human and monetary resources towards their solutions. The only hope is convincing the candidate of your choice to pledge to do so, followed by constant reminders to honour this undertaking.

### Worldwide Government Failings of the 2015 Era

The above 'granddaughter story' was written in response to having to consider the question of why I could not vote for the only party in Canada that puts the Environment first helps steer our attention to the reason for usual governmental recalcitrance in dealing effectively with issues that bear most consequentially with sustaining life on this planet. In one phrase it was because in the 2015 era the main Canadian interests and vote grabbing issues had little relationship to environmental problems.

From my worldwide experiences in dealing with governments that ran the gamut from left to right, including those which had no need for have public support, political reaction was in many ways based much as in North America. Ignoring those with perennial regional conflicts most governments operated with predetermined agendas, pandered to a wide range of special interests represented by lobbyists, fed egos, lined pockets of their supporters and/or themselves, and avoided any hard decisions that had long range implications.

Government activity could be likened to action occurring within a complex maze designed on a template that basically but not totally contained a continuous pathway for dealing with the above favoured factors. Other avenues were pathways that dead ended at the real problems that beset humanity. These were the issues that desperately needed to gain recognition and amelioration. Breaching these dead end barriers to enter the main pathway occurred only if a severe emergency developed. In short government activity was directed along pathways within the maze, according to party policy most of which is superficial and commonplace and based on the factors listed above, only choosing new directions on emergence of urgent short term issues.

## Business/Economy

" _Economic advance is not the same thing as human progress"._

-John Clapham

Did business and industry in general have the best interests of the public in mind? Did most advertising in the media represent business products and sales practices truthfully? Weren't environmental concerns and their solutions voluntary initiatives in most business planning? In my international experience as a scientific consultant I found the majority of businesses unconcerned and often antagonistic about environmental issues.

A Few factors in the 2015 era democratic economic reality stood out as problematic above most others. Most companies were driven by 'bottom line' maximization based on the realities of rampant consumerism. Government was too intimately intertwined with business. Job numbers, that is jobs created and jobs lost, are the yardstick by which the health of an economy in a democracy is judged.

To keep the economy thriving might it become necessary to pay displaced workers not to work? The health of an economy in the 2015 era was judged in one important aspect on jobs created versus jobs lost. The reality of technological innovation in the 21st Century is that automation in industry provides lower production costs than doing the same processes using manual labour. This means unskilled workers were constantly being dismissed. Most of such individuals did not have the education to operate automated industrial systems. Worse many could not be retrained for such employment. But the simple truth is that even if displaced workers could be retrained to handle automated systems there would still be a large number that would not be required.

" _It's estimated that by 2030 there will be virtually no unskilled jobs in the British economy"._

-Lucy Powell

In total as automation is installed in a formerly manually labour dependent industry fewer total workers are required. Likewise new industry being largely automated simply would not require many of these unskilled or retrained workers.

Business in large part pandered in the 2015 era to the demands of a fanciful, poorly motivated and misinformed public. Since with businesses it's usually the bottom line that dictated their basic undertakings, laws requiring controls on pollutant emissions were met with disfavor. This was because such regulations generally imposed cost factors including purchase of salient equipment its installation and maintenance. Such additional expenditure often affected profits and sometimes a company's competitive edge.

But it's difficult to generalize about the role of business in the scheme of environmental dilemmas. Business ethics can and did run the gamut. A good example of the negative, most blatantly obvious to the public were the East Asian sweatshop scandals where well respected companies had been found complicit in having their name brand merchandise manufactured in dehumanizing dangerous factories maned by workers earning a paltry wage. Additionally industries which on the surface seem to operate in an environmentally neutral or friendly mode were often just assembly operations using components that had been manufactured by sweatshop type technology elsewhere.

Government and industry have complex interrelationships on many fronts. Lobbyists from industry often unduly influence government decisions to negate or reduce environment regulations which for reasons stated above will have negative effects on the profit margin.

"Our society's values are being corrupted by advertising's insistence on the equation: youth equals popularity, popularity equals success, success equals happiness".

-John Arbuthnot Fisher

Rampant consumerism was covered in detail in a preceding section. The average consumer was focused on products and services that served their own desires and wellbeing. Thus most companies cow towed to these demands. Unfortunately the portfolio of products and services in most public demand bore little relevance to the solving of long term environmental problems. Hence the majority of companies likewise showed little emphasis in their research and product line profile on items that had long term benefits for mankind's survival. As a consequence these same companies consumed large quantities of energy and large quantities of natural resources to the detriment of the environment and the future supply of required natural resources.

Would this problem persist even though radical change was essential to mankind's future on this planet?

" _Because we don't think about future generations, they will never forget us"._

-Henrik Tikkanen

Factors that involve world economies are many and varied. Yet the economy is the engine that drives much of daily life worldwide either directly or indirectly. I don't pretend to understand the stated meanings that relate to the term economy. But money, ah money this I do understand at least from the point of having had some and also use of many different countries' currencies worldwide. Although economies are not money the pathways by which issues bound to the economy depend on the flow of this and many closely related commodities is important.

At the level of the individual the possession and access to money drove the 2015 era lifestyle. Individual country currencies varied in type and the basic buying power. A given currency has a determined range of commodity purchasing powers even within the same country. The currencies of many nations although not tied to the American dollar are closely related to changes in its valuation. To the amateur such as I this seemed strange when you consider that the American dollar is strapped to trillions of dollars of the monstrous American debt. Since The US is basically broke the preeminence of its Dollar must only be historical. But money is only paper and of course who knows how much gold is stored in Fort Knox.

" _One main reason the US has been able to prevent its currency and economy from collapsing, despite the latest wars, huge debt and massive currency printing, is because the dollar is the de-facto standard for international trade and reserve currency"._

-Med Jones

This brings us back to gold which we discussed in reference to resources above. When times are tough economically, historically individuals and groups have horded gold and or other precious metals such as silver.

But gold is only a metal and its intrinsic value is probably more closely related to the state of mind of a woman wearing a prized gold necklace.

But what has this "Economy" discussion got to do with anything, but particularly to the fate of mankind? As 2015 era economies were structured could they be manipulated to handle large sums that must be spent on urgent long term essential programs for environmental research and remediation? A more relevant question was whether governments were concerned enough to set aside such sums for these purposes?

## Consumer Credit

" _You must gain control over your money or the lack of it will forever control you."_

-Dave Ramsey

Consumer Credit that potentially dangerous bear trap on the road to improving our apparent ability to possess commodities had become by the 2015 era a major calamity for many consumers by encouraging over spending in the scramble to enhance life styles. One vehicle of credit, the personal Credit Card, became particularly dangerous to our financial wellbeing.

" _What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don't break the knee caps of those who can't pay back, they still are destroying people's lives"._

-Bernie Sanders

The following are rounded off figures from a variety of sources relating to consumer credit card use in the USA in 2011. Six hundred million credit cards were held by consumers in that country having a total population of 310 million, which number includes 60 million that do not qualify for credit card possession. Fifty percent of credit card holders paid only the minimum monthly balance. There was nearly 1 trillion dollars of credit card debt included in a total of 2.5 trillion total consumer debt from all sources.

" _Every time you borrow money, you're robbing your future self."_

-Nathan W. Morris

No figure could be found that estimates the number of maxed out credit cards in the USA in that era. However there were a numerous personal accounts in which the consumer indicated possession of multiple cards that were at their credit limit. Of these it was not uncommon to have more than 3. This begs the questions of the ethical practices of Credit Card Providers. My personal experience was that I shred all of the average 2 or more unsolicited often preapproved credit card applications received in the mail per month. Another questionable practice at the time was the frequent unsolicited offers to raise the credit limit on existing personal credit cards.

### Adding it Up

Estimates in the 2015 time frame place the total wealth of the population of the world at between 100 and 200 trillion dollars. Based on a 150 trillion dollar figure, a value of about 10% of this represented the level of the USA debt. In that era debt crises also of major proportions existed in much of Europe.

Many respected commentators speculated on the consequences on the untenable and increasing levels of world debt which ranged from recession to hyperinflation. Some even predicted total economic collapse worldwide. In any case economic problems of such a nature would stem the flow of money essential for dealing with Mankind's sustainability on this planet. Any prolonged period of inaction in such a way would be a disaster. On the other hand a cynic might be led to predict that such an outcome might help solve the overpopulation problem and therefore some of its subsets.

"Blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national debt".

-Herbert Hoover

### A Pattern for Disaster

But what did all this mean in relation to long term sustainability of life on this planet? Consumers in North America could not continue living at twice their income levels as has been the case over the 2015 era with no sign of a let up. Additionally nations worldwide were economically performing in a similar manner at a variety of untenable debt levels. Overpopulation and all its dire subset of problems continued unsubstantially unabated. At the same time scattered programs in existence that related to amelioration of some aspect of these problems were generally deficient in a meaningful sense and often simply a political smoke screen to suggest that real progress was in the offing. All such programs familiar to the author were heavily government subsidized and thus exacerbate nation debt levels.

The persistent problem in developing adequate and innovative strategies for dealing with Critical Problems, which continue only to worsen, could be seen on the national level by showing how an untenable agenda had developed as a dangerous and negligent position on a dire world problem right here in North America. For this elucidation Canada provides a prime example.

In the first place as was stated earlier Canada was the worst per capita greenhouse gas polluter in the world. It was not difficult to understand how this unforgivable situation arose.

A January 2, 2013 Editorial in the Toronto Star entitled, "Bad Year For the Environment" reported that in a budget, "the most austere in over a decade", consisting of spending cuts in the 5 billion dollar range; projecting the impact of these cuts in many areas was impossible to measure, due to the lack of evaluation of most cuts by the relevant committees of Parliament. Further the Editorial pointed out that the 2012 government environmental policies demonstrated a process of emphasizing a short term economic benefit that triumphed over the risk of possible long term problems. The Editorial then concluded that "there is an important debate to be had about how to negotiate between the economic potential of Canada's natural resources and the environmental cost of exploiting them".

Nowhere was there a better illustration of a government policy long term planning shortcomings than in the highly Government subsidized recovery of petroleum from an almost endless supply of tar sands in the Northwest of Alberta. Despite the prediction in a scientific publication that working the tar sands at full capacity would eventually in itself be enough to send the problem of world climate change past the tipping point, Canada's Federal Government favoured the powerful commercial prospects in this sector. The Harper Government showed no intention of meaningfully ameliorating the tar sands problem. Couple this with equally weak, ineffective government management of many other pollution problems frequently resulting from cow towing to input from vested interests and it was obvious why at the international level Canada was rated as one of the world's environmental offenders. Then also combine this with the widespread adoption in some Provinces of highly subsidized poorly chosen alternate energy schemes based more on political expediency than on a genuine attempt to be solving a problem and you had a prototypical formula for eventual widespread environmental disaster.

Shortsighted national policies such as Canada's when combined with many other phenomena of a similar ilk from other countries and together with the general ineffectiveness of multinational organizations in finding long term solutions to critical environmental problems was specifically illustrative of why mankind was indeed incessantly marching to extinction.

# Chapter 5

# Conclusion-Why Mankind's Untimely Demise?

" _The chief cause for the impending collapse of the world - the cause sufficient in and by itself - is the enormous growth of the human population: the human flood. The worst enemy of life is too much life: the excess of human life"._

-Pentti Linkola,

Little need be added in this monograph as to 'Why Mankind's Untimely Demise?' since the message that flows by combing the network of conclusions from the predicaments discussed in the above manuscript contains the answer. Of greatest consequence was the overriding issue of the impossibility of maintaining a mankind sustainable ecological system subverted by the problem of world overpopulation and its attendant subset of major consequences discussed section by section above. Riding shot gun and equally fatal was mankind's addiction to a reactive rather than proactive approach to dealing with large scale environmental issues.

A few of the standout details embedded in the above consequences require emphasis and are contained in the following.

The exponential rise in world population from 1 billion to 7 billion in the mere 200 years following the industrial revolution transformed the nature of the world's critical problems. By the 21st century the increasing complex nature of these dilemmas demanded development of a radical new mode and speed of evaluation and remediation. These much more complex challenges than formerly encountered required drastic changes in world functional infrastructure and mankind's attitudes and priorities. Unfortunately neither was forthcoming and the major problems facing the world were left on the back burner much too long.

It is important to stress just how deeply embedded the rapidly growing problems destabilizing our environment had become ingrained in 2015 era daily life. These ranged from our personal life style choices, through the various societal, political, business and other environmentally antagonistic infrastructure that at that time ticked and tocked relentlessly in the course of a typical day worldwide. One of the biggest obstacles that faced society in 2015 was that few really concerned themselves about what their highly consumptive energy and natural resources life style portended for future generations. Likewise mankind's intractable mindset, focused as it was on short term wellbeing, resulted in an inability to sense the need to make drastic fundamental changes in worldwide patterns of daily living.

What is so ironic was that ensuring short term wellbeing while downplaying long term consequences was such a natural and seemingly humanly comfortable practice that even I with my clear recognition of its pitfalls had shortcomings in this regard. What this could have meant was that human beings may have been incapable or even lacked the ability to unleash the foresight required for effectively sensing the essentials to protract our existence on this planet. Even assuming this foresight existed; humans seemed powerless to make the fundamental change.

The premise of this requiem was that I was somehow fated to write this as the last human being left alive on the earth. In the context of this premise it means that the date of my death represents the end of mankind as a species. The earliest precursors the family tree of species, one branch of which ultimately evolved into homo sapiens, have been postulated by archeologists to have arisen roughly 1 or 2 million years ago. Homo sapiens, ie modern man, evolved 50,000 to 100,000 years ago. From the mammal family for contrast red foxes and ancestors of modern cats, all still in existence, evolved approximately 1.5 and 2 million years ago respectively. This means that even in the very unlikely event that I am writing this manuscript 100,000 years after 2015, mankind, the supposed most intelligent of all the world's species, would still have the dubious distinction of having one of the shortest lifespan intervals of any major mammal in the 200 million year mammalian history. Worse collateral damage of the self-inflicted demise of mankind will be a mass extinction of much of the world's associated wildlife.

So much data, statistics, erudite quotations and associated damning evidence and as would be expected no valid date can be assigned to when I, as the supposed last person alive on earth, wrote this requiem. However without drastic and hence unlikely changes to human nature, government, business and technological priorities and infrastructure and in a rapidly deteriorating environment overburdened by burgeoning worldwide population, the hopes for maintaining a mankind sustainable biosphere in this rancorous world for a protracted period into the future seems unlikely.

Boiling it all down the penultimate truth is that you and I and our ancestors are the real enablers of this pending disaster. All the other perpetrating factors mentioned throughout this requiem fall on our shoulders.

# 
