I’m beginning to think……always a good thing to what passes for my mind…..anyway I digress…..I’m beginning to think that our attempts to prevent the destruction of humanity through the impact of greed and global warming may be too little too late and irrelevant anyway. I seem to recall someone at an American Heart Association conference years ago justifying a diet which reduced the risk of heart attacks but increased the risk of cancer with the fair enough statement that they never said they could stop people dying just that they wouldn’t die of heart attacks; preventing cancer was the job of another load of doctors. So I’m wondering if our relatively ineffective attempts to stop the planet burning up might be seen as taking our eye off the ball or not noticing there are two balls on the pitch (more about balls shortly). As I write, much of the US is overheating and last year was the hottest on record so I’m not claiming climate change and global warming won’t kill us, just that perhaps there might be a lot fewer of us to kill than we thought. Maybe, the climate crisis isn’t going away until some time after we do and it’s definitely a thing. Here are some recent updates:
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay
“Persistent heat wave in the US shatters new records, causes deaths in the West and grips the East.” Story by Associated Press
‘It’s clear we are facing a climate crisis,’ said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. ‘Communities across America—like Arizona, California, Nevada—and communities across the globe are feeling first-hand extreme heat in unprecedented numbers. NASA and the Biden-Harris Administration recognize the urgency of protecting our home planet. We are providing critical climate data to better lives and livelihoods, and benefit all humanity.’”
I guess those of an extreme religious persuasion in the US will see all this as God’s will and think that, once Trump is elected, God will sort it and enable his (Trump’s not God’s) “burn baby burn” policies to magically cool the planet but there is a scintilla of doubt in my mind about the science behind magical thinking. I sometimes think that it might, on balance, have been better if the Mayflower had just sunk.
Image by Vilius Kukanauskas from Pixabay
Anyway, put global warming on the back-burner for a bit (pun intended); there is something else going on which may mitigate our attempts to destroy life by making the planet uninhabitable, though at some cost to our good selves. So, what might be contributing to the end of human life alongside global warming? I think our love of non-stick pans and convenience packaging might be a great ally of fire storms, extreme weather and associated destruction.
It seems that the space-race by-product of non-stick pan chemicals might have something to do with a world-wide decline in fertility – who’d have thought it? Surely someone would have made sure these ‘forever chemicals’ were safe as well as convenient, wouldn’t they? Well, ‘in your dreams’ comes to mind.
Having PFAs (AKA forever chemicals) in our environment and our bodies might not be a good thing when it comes to our ability to breed.
“The male infertility crisis is an increase in male infertility since the mid-1970s. The issue attracted media attention after a 2017 meta-analysis found that sperm counts had declined by 52.4 percent between 1973 and 2011.[2][3] The decline is particularly prevalent in Western countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Europe, and North America. A 2022 meta-analysis reported that this decline extends to non-Western countries, namely those in Asia, Africa, Central America, and South America. This meta-analysis also suggests that the decline in sperm counts may be accelerating.
This decline in male fertility is the subject of research and debate. Proposed explanations include lifestyle factors, such as changes in diet and physical activity levels, and increased exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals, such as those found in plastics and pesticides. Some scientists have questioned the extent of the crisis; the scientific community, however, generally acknowledges increasing male infertility as a men’s-health issue.“
Rebecca Blanchard, a veterinary teaching associate and researcher at the University of Nottingham, UK conducted research on chemicals found in plastics, fire retardants and common household items. Some of these chemicals have been banned, but still linger in the environment or older items (read more about this in BBC Future’s story on “forever chemicals”). Her studies have revealed that these chemicals can disrupt our hormonal systems, and harm the fertility of both dogs and men.
The findings chime with other research showing the damage to fertility caused by chemicals found in plastics, household medications, in the food chain and in the air. It affects men as well as women and even babies. Black carbon, forever chemicals and phthalates have all been found to reach babies in utero.
Somehow we’ve managed (by we I don’t mean me and you) I mean people whose understanding of risk analysis doesn’t extend beyond the risk to capital) to contaminate the world and most living things in it with micro-plastics and/or PFA’s. Is it possible that industry and our environmental protection agencies focussed on the benefits of these modern miracle products rather than any possible downside; after all, who likes scrubbing pots and pans?
Here’s one well-known example of how the damage was done.
As revealed in Dark Waters, the chemical PFOA has been found in the blood of 99% of humans and even in the ice caps of Antarctica. They are everywhere.
Dark Waters, tells of the toxic spills scandal that ultimately led to US chemicals giant DuPont paying US$671 million (£516 million) to settle more than 3,500 lawsuits in 2017.
The company’s plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia had been contaminating the local water supply with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C-8, which is used to make products such as Teflon. The contamination had a “probable link with six illnesses” among the local population, including kidney and testicular cancer.
theconversation.com/dark-waters-what-dupont-scandal-can-teach-companies-a…
They dumped the waste where the poor lived and worked, provided jobs and facilities and denied that they were doing harm. Eventually the harm was too great to miss and impossible to undo.
Three companies agree to pay more than $1 billion to settle ‘forever chemical’ claims.
WEB3 Jun 2023 · The companies Chemours, DuPont and Corteva announced on Friday they have agreed to pay more than $1 billion to settle claims that “forever chemicals” contaminated public US water systems.
And, if it’s not one thing, it’s another – plastic in this case. Traces of microplastics are found in drinking water, food, air and oh yes, human blood. We are becoming plastic fantastic lovers – call it progress if you want but prepare to find breeding a challenge; balls ain’t what they used to be.
“Shanna Swan, who is a leading reproductive epidemiologist from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, told EHN that, at this point, scientists “can only speculate” the impact of microplastics on human health based on the chemicals that have been studied in plastics — such as phthalates and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs).
‘We know a lot about what those [chemicals] do individually, but what they do in the form of a microplastic or nanoplastic, we don’t know yet,’ said Swan, whose research helped underpin that global human sperm count and quality are declining at an alarming rate.”
So, we may not it seems, need to worry too much about climate change (unless we’ve already been burnt or flooded out or are about to be soon; after all the chances of being shot after jumping from, say the Trump Tower roof, are not great and anyway these existential threats are more like not realising you’ve already been shot while knowing you were very close indeed to the edge of that roof.
