I'm afraid we've technologically evolved a lot faster than we have socially and ecologically. We see evidence of advanced civilizations that disappeared. Usually they just sucked up the resources available locally and moved on. Now that we've gotten planetary we're still in the same loop. I've read that Easter Island cut down most of it's trees to made rollers for the statues. My statue is bigger than your statue syndrome? The morbidly rich will always feel they can buy their way out of it and the masses think God will save them because, of course, God made all this for us.... So I had to write a song. https://waynemillersongs.com/track/2999925/momma-don-t-care
Joining the lineup - back in the late '60s, I looked around one day, saw what was going on, like a global vision, and said to myself, "Gaia has a very powerful immune system, and we are the disease." I only mentioned that once, to my wife. A few years later I met an extraordinary man by the name of Mushin, and he lived that name (in both Chinese and Japanese, it means silent mind, the goal of all martial artists). He used exactly the same words. He also warned us that the change was coming, and it would be on the world long before any thought it was possible. And so here it is. It is just the beginning, but it is on an exponential curve, and has been for a couple of years. We have no time to waste.
He was available to all, but truly no one but Debby and myself ever seemed to really take him seriously. As he said, "I'm just freeway noise." He, of course, was much more than that, much more than even I could see. I wish language and thought had the capability to say more about him, but that is like describing the Tao, or its creation, T'ai Chi (Great Ultimate, meaning all creation and the process of arising and falling back into the primordial soup only to arise again in new forms). T'ai Chi Chuan, the martial art, is based on being in harmony with that whole dynamic.
Excellent composition! Easy listening, hard subject. Gaia has a simple rule for her children: adapt or die. Can the human primate learn to change its destructive behavior in time?
During the 1970-2022 America's population has grown from approximately 209 million to 334 million people. The EU's population has increased from 656 million to 747 million. Canada's population has increased from 21 million to approximately 38 million. The projected immigration surge into the Western Developed areas is projected to add similar growth patterns by 2050, bringing the US above 400 million.
The impact these huge population explosions have are accurately described by Mr. Hartman. We are pouring asphalt over an increasing area of former farm land building mega cities, and nature is being destroyed as a result of our demand to live in urbanized areas holding millions and millions of people. The compounded stress factors experienced across Planet Earth by families and nature cannot be solved by just moving away from a petro-oil-and-gas economy to a sun and wind economy, unfortunately. We may already have exceeded the carrying capacity of Planet Earth with 8 billion - a number that is projected to reach 12 billion before 2100.
Many of us have been contributing to www dot kiva dot org to help people make a safe livelihood where they are, but ultimately, unless we stop all these wars, the EU, the US and Canada will be overwhelmed by people fleeing intolerable conditions. Educators across the US, Canada and the EU are already seeing a more and more of their K-12 classrooms populated by +50% of students whose first language is not English, or German, or French.
Thanks for an excellent and timely article, Mr. Hartman.
Conflating immigration — from nations who have benefitted the least by the exploitation of the world’s resources and workers into nations who have benefitted the most — with the almost insurmountable problems caused by overpopulation is a circle-the-wagons mentality. Why should fabulously wealthy nations be immune to the self-owned, predictable consequences of the discord they have sown by profiting hugely from war, war matériel, and economic inequity (seemingly, their most abundant exports over most of the last century), all the while ruining the environment and poisoning the people?
Walling out the rest of the world is the ultimate hypocrisy. Besides, the diversity of language and culture won by a wise and compassionate immigration system makes a nation stronger, not weaker. After all, where would America be today if a displaced, homogenous herd of white Christian European immigrants dominated our culture? Oh, wait...
Chickens come home to roost. And people uprooted by poverty, disease, starvation, totalitarianism, and war flock to the civilized pockets of the planet. If they can. Yes, most progressives agree that the long-term solution is to grow those pockets to include everyone’s homelands, so that they won’t grab their families and flee. Meanwhile, those lucky enough to have been born with all the advantages must show that democracy and empathy are more intrinsic to human nature than greed and selfishness, which are the kernels of an authoritarian mindset and the destruction of life.
In a perfect world, that means exporting real democracy and real economic equality rather than armies and oligarchs. Such basic human principles would especially apply to the women of all cultures by allowing natural agency over their own bodies and lives, which would rapidly reduce overpopulation. Nature always achieves a balance; with humans, evidently, it will always be the hard way.
Good Morning and Thank You Thom! Your "Rant" today should be common sense to anyone with a basic education and half a brain. Unfortunately, it seems so many people around the world, not just Americans, have lost that common sense. They are so immersed in their "personal life" and the distractions presented to us daily by the corporate media that they can not see the "forest for the trees". Those who understand, or even attempt to understand, the situation are painted as "Woke" and therefore biased against capitalism, corporations, the average 'Murican, the surface thinking observer who only sees what they are propagandized with daily.
Those who are "Woke" need to wear that moniker with pride and think even deeper about how they can affect themselves and others in an environmentally positive direction. If it's putting solar on your house, discard your gas guzzler for an EV, replacing those gas powered yard implements for electric one, insulating your house more effectively, turn down your thermostat a degree or two, all of these are potentials actions.
Hopefully everyone who reads the rant today or listens to today's broadcast will be reminded that they can be part of the solution even if it appears to be only a small step but when multiplied by the thousands make a significant improvement for our environment.
Thanks again for your dedication and highlighting the opportunities for as all to improve.
Absolutely -- to all of the above! Plus, the most "common sense" action the good citizens can take is to NOT vote for anti-democratic traitors to the principles upon which our nation was founded.
In case the distracted American audience hasn't been following the bouncing ball and singing along, that would be any (R) politician who still supports the Traitor in Chief after all he's said, done, or has not done (respect our laws and human decency) during his life of crime and treachery, especially these last interminable six years of monumental dishonesty and carnage, literally and figuratively.
The "good" citizens must also realize that, yes, in fact, our country is being overrun by a faction of "bad" citizens armed to the teeth, who are marshaling their fascist forces under the banner of the Republican Party and Trumpism, which are one and the same, and which have emboldened Putin to act upon his worst instincts and to go for the gusto while, in his mind, the "United" States disintegrates into a bickering, partisan bowel of soft mush.
So, can the largest and longest surviving democracy (just barely) prove the Little Ruskie and the Orange Vassal wrong in their basic assumptions come this November?
Forgive me if I have mentioned this before in Comments. I mention it every time I can as I see it as the easiest, fastest and most comprehensive way we can find our way back and perhaps yet save the biosphere, or at least keep enough threads that it might regenerate itself.
That is "Regenerative Farming." It is also known as "No-Till Farming," but if you would like to look it up, and I encourage everyone to do that and spread the word, please use Regenerative Farming for your search string.
In a few words, it is organic farming to the nth degree. The key is probiotics for the soil. Without going into the whys and wherefores, the results are: No need for either pesticides or herbicides; after a few years if farming this way, the top soil becomes deeper, looser, and requires much less water as the roots can grow deeper; the yields first double, then triple - along with the mineral and nutrient levels; in most places, only in a severe drought would a field require watering, and that would be no more than once or twice, depending on how long the field had been worked this way; AND MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, THE SOIL ITSELF BECOMES A CARBON SINK, FROM WHICH IT MAKES ALL THE FERTILIZER THE CROPS WILL EVER NEED. If 2/3 of all farmers, globally, would adopt this pollution-saving (no tractors, no plowing, no furrowing, no pumps for watering) we could shortly reverse the atmospheric carbon load and begin healing the Earth.
P.S. Various insect surveys do indeed indicate a rapid decrease in population on almost all species except water-borne. The results vary from 43% decline in one German survey over 27 years, to 83% in a hardwood forest of New Hampshire over 40 years. My guess is that, just as climate change as a whole, the decline is on an exponential curve, and it just became much steeper. LET'S GO, REGENERATIVE FARMING! RAH! RAH! RAH!
As the fossil fuel connects the events and outcomes, it disconnects us from our roots and neighbors. I think the palaces, super-yachts, and private jets owned by the titans of these industries show us just how disconnected a person can get.
Putin never was connected to his people, but he sure put on an act for the Russians. The older psychopaths get, the better some get at acting. He is exhibit A; "his" people found out the hard way they didn't know him. Now, many Russians are on the move too, bad for them-bad for the planet.
Saving some little part of the flora and fauna should be on each person's agenda. Whether you do something small or enormous, it all counts. The 2022 Fridays for Future Global Climate Strike is coming up on March 25th. Google it to see if there is something in your area. It's a good way to meet the people working on local issues. Try to stay connected, please.
There is no way to achieve true justice for the lives lost and cities destroyed -- war crimes on an unimaginable scale! The very least the world can do, once this insecure and weak little ghost of a man is finally rid of, is to ensure that 100% of the mind-boggling wealth seized from Putin and his enablers goes for war reparations to rebuild Ukraine and the lives of its brave, long-suffering citizens. That, and try all the irredeemable mass murders who are responsible in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity followed by life in prison, preferably death as warning to future tyrants (heads on pikes possibly too extreme). At this point, with one of the three major nuclear powers dug in on a suicide mission, it's hard to see that level of justice happening. Stay tuned.
The problem is "we" don't have the power to act on what "we" know. The wilfully ignorant minority is all set up to make "us" irrelevant come November of this year, and every condition cited in the piece is pretty much done for from there on out. Bye bye, been nice knowin' ya.
Ignorance is not necessarily stupidity; willful ignorance certainly is.
A doctor's waiting room is full of patients ignorant of expert medical knowledge. But the ones who purposely don't follow advice are the stand-out fools, whom the doctor, no matter how he feels, will treat politely and mercifully thanks to the Hippocratic Oath and good business practices. For instance, anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-science are euphemisms for just plain stupid --occupying space, stinking up shoes, sucking off the system, wasting everyone's time and money and effort by wreaking havoc, and little else.
I'm afraid we've technologically evolved a lot faster than we have socially and ecologically. We see evidence of advanced civilizations that disappeared. Usually they just sucked up the resources available locally and moved on. Now that we've gotten planetary we're still in the same loop. I've read that Easter Island cut down most of it's trees to made rollers for the statues. My statue is bigger than your statue syndrome? The morbidly rich will always feel they can buy their way out of it and the masses think God will save them because, of course, God made all this for us.... So I had to write a song. https://waynemillersongs.com/track/2999925/momma-don-t-care
Joining the lineup - back in the late '60s, I looked around one day, saw what was going on, like a global vision, and said to myself, "Gaia has a very powerful immune system, and we are the disease." I only mentioned that once, to my wife. A few years later I met an extraordinary man by the name of Mushin, and he lived that name (in both Chinese and Japanese, it means silent mind, the goal of all martial artists). He used exactly the same words. He also warned us that the change was coming, and it would be on the world long before any thought it was possible. And so here it is. It is just the beginning, but it is on an exponential curve, and has been for a couple of years. We have no time to waste.
I never heard of Mushin. How many ever heard of Masanobu Fukuoka? Very few, and nobody who has any "juice" in this world. Oh well....
He was available to all, but truly no one but Debby and myself ever seemed to really take him seriously. As he said, "I'm just freeway noise." He, of course, was much more than that, much more than even I could see. I wish language and thought had the capability to say more about him, but that is like describing the Tao, or its creation, T'ai Chi (Great Ultimate, meaning all creation and the process of arising and falling back into the primordial soup only to arise again in new forms). T'ai Chi Chuan, the martial art, is based on being in harmony with that whole dynamic.
Excellent composition! Easy listening, hard subject. Gaia has a simple rule for her children: adapt or die. Can the human primate learn to change its destructive behavior in time?
Love this song. It absolutely mirrors my mood these days---she will let us go. Responsibility, what a concept!
During the 1970-2022 America's population has grown from approximately 209 million to 334 million people. The EU's population has increased from 656 million to 747 million. Canada's population has increased from 21 million to approximately 38 million. The projected immigration surge into the Western Developed areas is projected to add similar growth patterns by 2050, bringing the US above 400 million.
The impact these huge population explosions have are accurately described by Mr. Hartman. We are pouring asphalt over an increasing area of former farm land building mega cities, and nature is being destroyed as a result of our demand to live in urbanized areas holding millions and millions of people. The compounded stress factors experienced across Planet Earth by families and nature cannot be solved by just moving away from a petro-oil-and-gas economy to a sun and wind economy, unfortunately. We may already have exceeded the carrying capacity of Planet Earth with 8 billion - a number that is projected to reach 12 billion before 2100.
Many of us have been contributing to www dot kiva dot org to help people make a safe livelihood where they are, but ultimately, unless we stop all these wars, the EU, the US and Canada will be overwhelmed by people fleeing intolerable conditions. Educators across the US, Canada and the EU are already seeing a more and more of their K-12 classrooms populated by +50% of students whose first language is not English, or German, or French.
Thanks for an excellent and timely article, Mr. Hartman.
Conflating immigration — from nations who have benefitted the least by the exploitation of the world’s resources and workers into nations who have benefitted the most — with the almost insurmountable problems caused by overpopulation is a circle-the-wagons mentality. Why should fabulously wealthy nations be immune to the self-owned, predictable consequences of the discord they have sown by profiting hugely from war, war matériel, and economic inequity (seemingly, their most abundant exports over most of the last century), all the while ruining the environment and poisoning the people?
Walling out the rest of the world is the ultimate hypocrisy. Besides, the diversity of language and culture won by a wise and compassionate immigration system makes a nation stronger, not weaker. After all, where would America be today if a displaced, homogenous herd of white Christian European immigrants dominated our culture? Oh, wait...
Chickens come home to roost. And people uprooted by poverty, disease, starvation, totalitarianism, and war flock to the civilized pockets of the planet. If they can. Yes, most progressives agree that the long-term solution is to grow those pockets to include everyone’s homelands, so that they won’t grab their families and flee. Meanwhile, those lucky enough to have been born with all the advantages must show that democracy and empathy are more intrinsic to human nature than greed and selfishness, which are the kernels of an authoritarian mindset and the destruction of life.
In a perfect world, that means exporting real democracy and real economic equality rather than armies and oligarchs. Such basic human principles would especially apply to the women of all cultures by allowing natural agency over their own bodies and lives, which would rapidly reduce overpopulation. Nature always achieves a balance; with humans, evidently, it will always be the hard way.
Good Morning and Thank You Thom! Your "Rant" today should be common sense to anyone with a basic education and half a brain. Unfortunately, it seems so many people around the world, not just Americans, have lost that common sense. They are so immersed in their "personal life" and the distractions presented to us daily by the corporate media that they can not see the "forest for the trees". Those who understand, or even attempt to understand, the situation are painted as "Woke" and therefore biased against capitalism, corporations, the average 'Murican, the surface thinking observer who only sees what they are propagandized with daily.
Those who are "Woke" need to wear that moniker with pride and think even deeper about how they can affect themselves and others in an environmentally positive direction. If it's putting solar on your house, discard your gas guzzler for an EV, replacing those gas powered yard implements for electric one, insulating your house more effectively, turn down your thermostat a degree or two, all of these are potentials actions.
Hopefully everyone who reads the rant today or listens to today's broadcast will be reminded that they can be part of the solution even if it appears to be only a small step but when multiplied by the thousands make a significant improvement for our environment.
Thanks again for your dedication and highlighting the opportunities for as all to improve.
Absolutely -- to all of the above! Plus, the most "common sense" action the good citizens can take is to NOT vote for anti-democratic traitors to the principles upon which our nation was founded.
In case the distracted American audience hasn't been following the bouncing ball and singing along, that would be any (R) politician who still supports the Traitor in Chief after all he's said, done, or has not done (respect our laws and human decency) during his life of crime and treachery, especially these last interminable six years of monumental dishonesty and carnage, literally and figuratively.
The "good" citizens must also realize that, yes, in fact, our country is being overrun by a faction of "bad" citizens armed to the teeth, who are marshaling their fascist forces under the banner of the Republican Party and Trumpism, which are one and the same, and which have emboldened Putin to act upon his worst instincts and to go for the gusto while, in his mind, the "United" States disintegrates into a bickering, partisan bowel of soft mush.
So, can the largest and longest surviving democracy (just barely) prove the Little Ruskie and the Orange Vassal wrong in their basic assumptions come this November?
Forgive me if I have mentioned this before in Comments. I mention it every time I can as I see it as the easiest, fastest and most comprehensive way we can find our way back and perhaps yet save the biosphere, or at least keep enough threads that it might regenerate itself.
That is "Regenerative Farming." It is also known as "No-Till Farming," but if you would like to look it up, and I encourage everyone to do that and spread the word, please use Regenerative Farming for your search string.
In a few words, it is organic farming to the nth degree. The key is probiotics for the soil. Without going into the whys and wherefores, the results are: No need for either pesticides or herbicides; after a few years if farming this way, the top soil becomes deeper, looser, and requires much less water as the roots can grow deeper; the yields first double, then triple - along with the mineral and nutrient levels; in most places, only in a severe drought would a field require watering, and that would be no more than once or twice, depending on how long the field had been worked this way; AND MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL, THE SOIL ITSELF BECOMES A CARBON SINK, FROM WHICH IT MAKES ALL THE FERTILIZER THE CROPS WILL EVER NEED. If 2/3 of all farmers, globally, would adopt this pollution-saving (no tractors, no plowing, no furrowing, no pumps for watering) we could shortly reverse the atmospheric carbon load and begin healing the Earth.
P.S. Various insect surveys do indeed indicate a rapid decrease in population on almost all species except water-borne. The results vary from 43% decline in one German survey over 27 years, to 83% in a hardwood forest of New Hampshire over 40 years. My guess is that, just as climate change as a whole, the decline is on an exponential curve, and it just became much steeper. LET'S GO, REGENERATIVE FARMING! RAH! RAH! RAH!
Great stuff and unfortunately gut wrenching to hear. I choose to use it an incentive. TY Thom.
As the fossil fuel connects the events and outcomes, it disconnects us from our roots and neighbors. I think the palaces, super-yachts, and private jets owned by the titans of these industries show us just how disconnected a person can get.
Putin never was connected to his people, but he sure put on an act for the Russians. The older psychopaths get, the better some get at acting. He is exhibit A; "his" people found out the hard way they didn't know him. Now, many Russians are on the move too, bad for them-bad for the planet.
Saving some little part of the flora and fauna should be on each person's agenda. Whether you do something small or enormous, it all counts. The 2022 Fridays for Future Global Climate Strike is coming up on March 25th. Google it to see if there is something in your area. It's a good way to meet the people working on local issues. Try to stay connected, please.
There is no way to achieve true justice for the lives lost and cities destroyed -- war crimes on an unimaginable scale! The very least the world can do, once this insecure and weak little ghost of a man is finally rid of, is to ensure that 100% of the mind-boggling wealth seized from Putin and his enablers goes for war reparations to rebuild Ukraine and the lives of its brave, long-suffering citizens. That, and try all the irredeemable mass murders who are responsible in the International Criminal Court in The Hague for crimes against humanity followed by life in prison, preferably death as warning to future tyrants (heads on pikes possibly too extreme). At this point, with one of the three major nuclear powers dug in on a suicide mission, it's hard to see that level of justice happening. Stay tuned.
The problem is "we" don't have the power to act on what "we" know. The wilfully ignorant minority is all set up to make "us" irrelevant come November of this year, and every condition cited in the piece is pretty much done for from there on out. Bye bye, been nice knowin' ya.
Ignorance is not necessarily stupidity; willful ignorance certainly is.
A doctor's waiting room is full of patients ignorant of expert medical knowledge. But the ones who purposely don't follow advice are the stand-out fools, whom the doctor, no matter how he feels, will treat politely and mercifully thanks to the Hippocratic Oath and good business practices. For instance, anti-vax, anti-mask, anti-science are euphemisms for just plain stupid --occupying space, stinking up shoes, sucking off the system, wasting everyone's time and money and effort by wreaking havoc, and little else.