Will Population Growth End in This Century?

The human population nearly tripled from 2.5 billion people in 1950 to 7.3 billion today and will continue growing through 2070, according to two recent demographic projections. After that, demographers disagree on whether populations will begin to shrink or continue to rise into the next century, write Worldwatch Institute Senior Fellow Robert Engelman and Research […]

No Easy Answers When Disposing of Oil and Gas Wastewater

We all want easy answers. And often times the harder the question, the easier we want the answer to be. Increased natural gas use, for example, can help decrease U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as it has a lower carbon content compared to coal or oil. Natural gas also can help transition our energy mix to […]

Panicked by population hysteria?

A steady stream of headlines are hyping a new journal article that claims that the world population is a terrifying goliath resolutely stomping towards human destruction. Written by two environmental scientists in Australia, Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, and edited by Paul Ehrlich, (a Stanford zoologist famous for his sensationalist claims about population growth in the 1970s) the article […]

Chemical from Fracking, Acidizing, and Gravel Packing Make us Sick

It is well-known that many of the chemicals used in fracking, acidizing, and gravel packing are harmful to our bodies. Just look at the above graphic. What hasn’t been so clear is the evidence that highlights incidences where these chemicals have actually made people sick. There are two main factors why we still don’t have […]

Population Growth: Does it Spell the End for Planet Earth?

    There are more than seven billion people living on planet Earth and current population growth graphs estimate that the population will reach 10 billion by the end of this century. But can the population continue to grow at such a rate and allow the planet and its vital resources to survive? We already […]

Study Finds Toxins, Cancer-Causing Air Pollution at Oil, Gas Wells

A cadre of citizens taking air samples for a scientific study has found toxic emissions from Wyoming oil and gas operations, some that are many, many of times above federal health standards. In a six-state study published in Environmental Health, authors say the Wyoming samples show high concentrations of benzene, hydrogen sulfide, formaldehyde and more. […]

There Are A Hundred Flashing Red Warning Signs Coming From The Environment

Following up on the previous chapter focusing on human-caused resource depletion, the other disheartening part of the story of the environment concerns the things we humans put back into it, and the impact they have on the ecosystems that support all of life — ours included. Like the economy, ecosystems are complex systems.  That means […]

The Anthropocene and Techno-Utopia

From Berlin, top enviro journalist Christian Schwagerl on his controversial new book “The Anthropocene: The Human Era and How It Shapes Our Planet”. Then two eco-feminists, Charlene Spratnak and Susan Griffin on “Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth.” Radio Ecoshock 141126 Are humans changing the planet so much that we have entered a new […]

Visualizing Peak Popopulation

Even with having existed for millions of years, the process for humans to reach 1 billion in population was long and arduous. It is only about 12,000 years ago that humans started engaging in sedentary agriculture. This allowed humans to settle and consistently produce food, rather than hunt and gather throughout. However, it is with […]

The world will be fine without us

My November book-of-the-month summary is Alan Weisman’s “The World Without Us,” in which he explores what the world will be like after humans. Within a few hundred years residential neighborhoods will return to forests.  The longest-lasting evidence of humans will be plastics, metals and radioactive waste. Future inhabitants will encounter such oddities as fire hydrants […]

World Population Will Soar Higher Than Predicted

Hana Ševčíková and Jen Christiansen; SOURCES: “WORLD POPULATION STABILIZATION UNLIKELY THIS CENTURY,” BY PATRICK GERLAND ET AL., IN SCIENCE EXPRESS. PUBLISHED ONLINE SEPTEMBER 18, 2014 (2014 projections); “THE END OF WORLD POPULATION GROWTH,” BY WOLFGANG LUTZ ET AL., IN NATURE, VOL. 412; AUGUST 2, 2001 (2001 projections) United Nations leaders have worried for decades about […]

Monster Wells: Hundreds Of Fracking Wells Using 10-25 Million Gallons of Water Each

While the oil and gas industry likes to claim that fracking is not an especially water intensive process, a new report has found that there are more than 250 wells across the country that each require anywhere from 10 to 25 million gallons of water. The American Petroleum Institute suggests that the typical fracked well […]

The Future of the Planet and the Irresponsibility of Governments

Less than a week after everybody celebrated the historical agreement on Nov. 17 between the United States and China on reduction of CO2 emissions, a very cold shower has come from India. Indian Power Minister Piyush Goyal has declared: “India’s development imperatives cannot be sacrificed at the altar of potential climate change many years in […]

The Trustfunder Fractivist

The trustfunder fractivist is ubiquitous – a part of every anti-fracking, anti-fossil fuel, save-the-climate brigade out there – yet has zero credibility.  One of the most fascinating aspects of the fractivist movement, to the degree it is one and not the mere manipulation of “useful idiot” ideologues by elitist special interests, is the extent to […]

Fukushima radiation found in California

Very small amounts of radiation from the 2011 meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant have been detected off the California coast, a scientist who has been monitoring the fallout said this week. Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said trace amounts of telltale radioactive compounds were found 100 miles west […]

Navy Sailors Dying From Fukushima Radiation Exposure

Navy Lt. Steve Simmons, retired, talks about how he and hundreds of sailors who were on a humanitarian mission to Fukushima, subsequently became gravely sick with rare cancers and other diseases consistent with radiation exposure.

Fossil fuels: The moral choice

“How does it feel to be the one person disagreeing with over 100,000 people?!” the protester at the People’s Climate March asked me. On that Sunday, September 21, when New York City was swarming with protesters chanting “Hey, hey, ho, ho, these fossil fuels have got to go,” I was asking for trouble holding a […]

The Population Challenge

When people think of the world’s “population problem,” they often focus on rapid demographic growth in parts of the developing world. But, globally, the population-growth rate is actually falling, and is expected to plateau later this century. Though we cannot afford to ignore the fact that, according to United Nations estimates, there will be 2.4 […]

Use and Abuse of the “Natural Capital” Concept

Some people object to the concept of “natural capital” because they say it reduces nature to the status of a commodity to be marketed at its exchange value. This indeed is a danger, well discussed by George Monbiot. Monbiot’s criticism rightly focuses on the monetary pricing of natural capital. But it is worth clarifying that […]

On Guar Beans and Fracking Giants

Last year on July 4, North Dakota oil and gas billionaire, Harold Hamm just couldn’t contain his patriotic enthusiasm. In an op-ed commentary published by Forbes, Hamm wrote, “America has a long history of achieving the impossible.  We defeated the British. We landed on the moon.  We invented the Internet. And now we can add […]

Chokepoint: How to stop a pipeline

For the past four years we have visiting the Unist’ot’en camp and since then, we just can’t shut up about them. Why? Because their form of protest is beyond words and it’s manifested in direct action. They have created a real physical wall of opposition to all the proposed pipelines that could bring oil from […]

Drawing a Line in the Tar Sands

Of all possible futures, the least likely is one in which business as usual continues unabated. Peoples’ movements will either succeed in transforming our economic and political systems to build a new world, or we will burn with the old one. Our title invokes a metaphor of uncompromising resistance because the tar sands are an […]

Regenerative Agriculture: The Transition

In the face of peak oil and in order to curb carbon emissions, methods of farming that depend less on oil and natural gas, respectively to run machinery and to make synthetic fertilizers, must be sought. Such options are to be found within the framework of regenerative agriculture, but the transition from current industrialised agriculture […]

Ground water depletion driving global conflicts

Global ground water supplies, crucial for sustaining agriculture, are being depleted at an alarming rate with dangerous security implications, a leading scientist said. “It’s a major cause for concern because most of the places where it (ground water depletion) is happening are major food producing regions,” James Famiglietti, a University of California professor who conducts […]

More than 40 percent of China’s Arable Land Degraded

More than 40 percent of China’s arable land is suffering from degradation, official news agency Xinhua said, reducing its capacity to produce food for the world’s biggest population. The rich black soil in northern Heilongjiang province, which forms part of China’s bread basket, is thinning, while farmland in China’s south is suffering from acidification, the […]

Panicked by Population Hysteria?

A steady stream of headlines are hyping a new journal article that claims that the world population is a terrifying goliath resolutely stomping towards human destruction. Written by two environmental scientists in Australia, Corey Bradshaw and Barry Brook, and edited by Paul Ehrlich, (a Stanford zoologist famous for his sensationalist claims about population growth in […]

Why your environmentalism is nauseating

Oil products are essential to maintaining our quality of life Recently, I’ve been in the throes of a group project that requires students to address a social issue. At the start of the semester, I groaned inwardly when classmates expressed their interest in an environmental topic. During presentations about environmentally related issues, I resisted the […]

When the Shale Runs Dry: A Look at the Future of Fracking

If you want to see the future of the shale industry — what today’s drilling rush will leave behind — come to Bradford, Pennsylvania. A small city, it was home to one of America’s first energy booms, producing over three quarters of the world’s oil in 1877. A wooden oil rig towering over a local […]

California Could Suffer a Fukushima-Style Meltdown

Scientists warned that an earthquake could take out Fukushima. The Japanese ignored the warning. (The Fukushima reactors were damaged by the earthquake before the tsunami hit, because the design of the reactors was defective.) But that couldn’t happen in the U.S. … right? Well, the engineers who built the Fukushima reactors also built a nuclear […]

It’s Population Explosion, Stupid; or Maybe, Consumption

Planet earth has evolved over 4,500,000,000 years, the last 100,000 years bearing the burden of a prolific parasite, Homo sapiens. Just like the aphis is a tiny predator on the huge rose bush in my garden, if I don’t spray it, it will quickly overpopulate and kill the rose. This is easily understandable by scientists, […]

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