AN ALIEN 0 BSERVER WRITES

ABOUT OUR
ENVIRONMENTAL CRISIS
 Letter from an Alien

An alien observer
writes about our
environmental crisis

Presented by Shekhar

Copyright@2023 Shekhar Bhattacharya

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the author.
 Letter from an alien
Introduction
Believe it or not, this book, which actually is a long letter, is written by an 'Alien' being. She was
the leader of a research and exploration team that came to Earth from a faraway planet. They
came here to study our human 'civilisation'. They looked almost exactly like human beings, so no
earthling could suspect anything while they lived among us. They disclosed their identity only to a
handful of human beings, and among the latter there is a friend of mine whose name is, say, Jim.
Jim is a very renowned anthropologist (an economic-anthropologist, to be precise) and the alien
researchers happened to consult him often. Jim requested them to write about the findings of
their study on mankind. When they left, they wrote a very long letter to Jim. It was written as a
response to Jim's request. And then Jim entrusted me with the task of getting this sensational
letter published as he does not want to do it himself. By the way – Jim told me these aliens are
far more intelligent and perceptive than an average human being, so they learned about us very
quickly.
Excerpts from the first page of the letter:
We are leaving your planet, and it is about time too. Our stock of compressed pure air, which we
brought from our home planet, has depleted, and we have just about enough water and food-stock
to sustain us during our journey back to our home planet. As you know very well, we cannot
breath in the foul air of your habitats, neither can we eat your chemical-laden low-nutrition food,
and we cannot drink your polluted water – our bodies won’t permit that.
You requested me to write about our findings regarding the so-called ‘modern human civilisation’.
I would have written this piece anyway as a report intended for our community back home. Here, I
have written mostly about anthropogenic pollution, climate crisis and ecosystem destruction
perpetrated by the modern human race. This we have named TFC - The Final Crisis. TFC, which
threatens the existence of your species, is the fallout of the destructive activities of the dominant
social economic System (DSES), controlled by PTB (Powers That Be); so we have wrote on this
pernicious 'System' too in this letter.
My English will not be of a high standard, and you will perhaps find grammatical errors here
and there, but that, I hope, will not prevent you from making sense of the content. I have written
in UK English which I am more familiar with.

I have divided the letter in five parts, but this is not a big book at all.
Part I contains a lot of facts and figures pertaining to HIPED (Human Induced Pollution and
Environmental Destruction). In part II, she explains why the HIPED catastrophe gets so little press
while the climate crisis is so widely discussed. In part III, she describes how the dominant
economic and political system is squarely responsible for both HIPED and climate crisis. In part IV,
she explains why drastic rescue actions are not likely to be taken. In part V, she busts a few myths
surrounding much-hyped green energy, and she explains why she and her team see no ray of
hope for mankind if business-as-usual continues.
 PART 1
Chapter1
Every week, hundreds of seminars and conferences are taking place in the so-called ‘developed’
world on the hot topic of Global Warming, alias Climate Crisis. The putative “World leaders” are
solemnly declaring that they are absolutely committed to the task of saving humanity from the
looming climate catastrophe. Dozens of books and hundreds of articles, penned by experts and
climate activists, are being published every month to cover various aspects of this particular topic.
It seems enough is being said and written about climate crisis, and so, in this first part, I shall
presently try to turn your attention to a few less-talked-about topics related to the environment.
After reading the first few pages you might exclaim “Holy shit! We are turning our only habitat into
hell, yet nobody seems to bother!”.
The things I shall focus on are Human-induced Pollution and Environment Destruction (HIPED)
which includes the following : pollution of land-water-air and body, resource depletion, water
crisis, desertification, land and water-body degradation, forest destruction and devastation of
biodiversity and biosphere in general. In this section, some relevant facts are briefly stated. But
first let us have a look at some of the most important reports and studies related to the subjects on
hand. I shall be mostly quoting from various reputed news agency reports collected from daily
newspapers.
The 1800 page IPBES report was prepared by 400 experts from 200 countries. A 44 page draft
summary of it catalogues the 1001 ways in which our species has plundered the planet and
damaged its capacity to renew the resources upon which we depend, starting with breathable air,
drinkable water and productive soil.
The impact of humanity’s expanding footprint and appetites has been devastating, says the report.
Three-quarters of Earth’s land surface has been severely altered; a third of ocean’s fish stocks are
in decline, and the rest is being harvested at the very edge of sustainability; a dramatic die-off of
pollinating insects threatens essential crops valued at half-a-trillion dollars annually. Twenty
“10-year-targets” adopted in 2010 under the UN biodiversity treaty, to expand protected areas,
slow species and forest loss, and reduce pollution have failed badly. UN biodiversity chief Robert
Watson says “Nature is crucial for food production, for pure water, for medicines, and even for
social cohesion. The destruction of Nature threatens humanity at least as much as human-
induced climate change.” The executive summary says an area of tropical forest five times the
size of England has been destroyed in only five years since 2014, mainly to service the global
demand for meat, biofuels, soybeans and palm oil.
“The way we produce our food and energy is undermining the regulating services that we get
from nature,” said Dr. Watson, adding that only “transformative change’ can stem the damage.
Deforestation and agriculture, including livestock production, account for about a quarter of
Greenhouse Gas emissions, and have wreaked havoc on natural ecosystems as well, the report
noted.
According to the IPBES report, up to I million species face extinction due to human influence. A
quarter of catalogued animal and plant species are already being crowded, eaten or poisoned
out of existence. Humanity is undermining the natural resources upon which its very survival
depend. The draft summary also mentions that biodiversity loss and global warming are closely
related.
In September-2020 WWF published its Living Planet report; it reveals 68% decline in wildlife
population on average in less than 60 years from 1970 to 2016. This 164 page report presents a
comprehensive overview of the state of the natural world with contributions from more than
125 experts from around the world. Its findings tell us, among other things, the following facts :
75% of the Earth’s ice-free land has been significantly altered, most of the oceans polluted, over
85% area of wetlands lost, and wildlife population found in freshwaters suffered a decline of
84%. About 1-in-5 plants is threatened with extinction. WWF director general Marco Lambertini
said “The decline of wildlife directly affects nutrition, food-security and the livelihood of billions
of people.”
A few years ago, a team of researchers from three of your most reputed universities – Stanford,
Princeton and Berkeley – published a report depicting the impact of human induced species
extinction on mankind. Professor Paul Ehlrich of Stanford, one of the writers of this report, says
“We are sawing off the limbs we are sitting on. At this rate we are going to lead ourselves to
extinction.”
Now let us look into the health impact of man-made pollution and environmental damage. A
landmark UN report, prepared by 250 scientists from 70 nations said a quarter of all premature
deaths and diseases worldwide are due to deadly smog-inducing emission, chemicals polluting
drinking water and groundwater, and the accelerating destruction of ecosystems crucial to the
livelihood of billions of people are driving a worldwide epidemic, warns the GEO report. It
depicts how land degradation through mega-farming and deforestation occurs in areas of Earth
home to 3.2 billion people. to MPED (manmade pollution and environmental damage). The
report depicts a growing chasm between rich and poor countries as rampant overconsumption,
pollution and food waste in the developed world lead to hunger, poverty and disease elsewhere.
In these reports and statements cited above we find a few keywords like pollution, land
degeneration, deforestation, mega-farming, overconsumption and food-waste. Experts also warn
us about abject inequality and biodiversity loss that can lead to the extinction of our own species.
We shall elaborate on these topics as we proceed. We begin by taking a look at some data
pertaining to HIPED.
Air pollution:
 In 2016, an organisation named American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS)
prepared a study report on air pollution. It showed that air pollution caused untimely
death of 5.5 million men, women and children per year worldwide.
 Later in 2019 the GEO report estimated that 6-7 million persons die prematurely every
year. Evidently, the numbers are increasing alarmingly.
 The AAAS report also furnished the following fact – 85% of people have to breath in
polluted air all the time. A comprehensive UNICEF study revealed that 90% of world’s
children are living in places where the air is unacceptably polluted.
These numbers are staggering, aren't they?
Water pollution:
 UN estimated that the amount of wastewater produced annually is about 1500 cubic
kilometres, six times more than the water existing in all the rivers of the world.
 Everyday, two million tonnes of industrial, agricultural and sewage waste water are
discharged into the world’s waters.
 A 2018 study by EEA (European Env. Agency) revealed that 60% of waterways and
estuaries are heavily polluted in Europe, and 26% of its groundwater is polluted too.
(European Waters: Assessment of Status and Pressure,2018)
 In almost every country in Asia-Africa-South America 80% of industrial effluent is
discharged untreated into rivers and water-bodies.
 In France, 97% of groundwater was found to be unsafe by WHO standards pertaining to
drinking water.
 A study by National research Council in the USA showed that in at least 1,26,000 sites the
groundwater is contaminated by industrial waste.
 In 2014, the Chinese govt. informed through state media that almost 60% of groundwater
in China is seriously polluted. In 2015, a survey by Chinese Water Resource Ministry
revealed that about 80% of groundwater in the country’s major river basins is polluted by
industrial and farm chemicals.
 India’s waters are heavily polluted. In July 2021, the parliament was informed by a govt.
minister that at least 351 rivers in India are carrying polluted water. India ranks 120th
among 122 countries in Water Quality Index (“Beneath the Surface”, WaterAid report).
 In the USA, an estimated 5,00,000 abandoned mines continue to pollute the
environment; in Colorado alone, some 26000 such mines have polluted 2600 Km of
streams.
 60% of the world’s biggest 227 rivers have interrupted stream flows due to dams and
other infrastructures. Interruption in stream flow dramatically decreases sediment and
nutrient transport to downstream stretches, reducing water quality and impairing
ecosystem health. (I have written on the disastrous impacts of dams in a latter part of this
letter.)
 The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005 told us that 7% of land area on Earth is
wetland which provides us with 45% of natural products and services. About 3 billion
people are dependent on these wetlands for their water, livelihood and resources. But a
staggering 85% of wetlands has been damaged already.
We shall return to the topic of water in the next section. Presently let us look at the state of your
soil which provides 97% of your food..
Soil degeneration :
  FAO led Global Soil Partnership report 2017 said that each year 75 billion tons of soil is
getting eroded and degenerated, mostly due to deforestation, urbanization and modern
farming practice. This causes a loss of $400 billion every year.
 FAO’s “Livestock & Landscape” report says that fodder cultivation and pasture for
livestock grazing takes up 59% of land.
 Livestock farming is responsible for at least 7% of GHG emission.
 All over the world, agricultural and industrial effluent is polluting land at an alarming
rate.
 Desertification is severely affecting as many as 168 countries, according to a research
report released recently by the UN Nations’ Convention to Combat Desertification.
 Desertification has occurred throughout history, but it has accelerated to 32 times the
historical rate in recent decades, which is extremely alarming.
 Every year, 12 million Ha of land is turning into desert; this much arable land is enough to
grow 20 million tonnes of foodgrain, says the report.
Deforestation:
 FAO’s 2020 report reveals a shocking fact: Human beings are a destroying forests at a rate
of about 40,70,000 Hectare each year.
 A research paper, prepared by Wildlife Conservation Society and published in Current
Biology magazine, shows that oil and mineral mining, corporate farming and lumber trade
are responsible for deforestation on a massive scale.
 The leader of this research team, Dr. James Watson said “The rate at which wilderness is
being destroyed is shocking, to say the least”. “You cannot restore wilderness. Once it is
gone, the ecological process that underpins these ecosystems are gone, it never comes
back to state it was.”

Chapter-2
Overconsumption, Wastage, and Waste generation:
How much resources are humans consuming? In 2017, Global Footprint Network estimated that
human ecological footprint is about 1.73 Planet earth; this means humanity’s demands are 1.73
times more than what the planet’s ecosystem renews.
European Union says global consumption of materials, such as biomass, fossil fuels, minerals and
metals is expected to double by 2050, while annual waste generation is projected to increase by
70%.
An EU spokesperson said “There is only one Planet Earth, yet by 2050 we will be consuming as if
there were three.”
This level of overconsumption generates enormous amounts of waste. Some relevant facts are
cited below:
  A colossal 33% of food produced is wasted, revealed FAO a few years ago. This also
means an enormous amounts of energy and other resources linked to fertiliser, water,
transportation, agrichemicals and fodder are also wasted every year.
 Textile waste accounts for 22% of global mixed waste, for which ‘fast-fashion’ is
responsible, says a study published in Nature magazine. (An American generates about 81
Lbs of textile waste each year.)
 Fashion industry also generates 10% of pollution.
 Only 1% is recycled, contrary to popular belief.
E-waste :
Here are some truly shocking e-waste statistics:
Worldwide a record 48.6 million tons (53.6 million metric tonnes) of e-waste was generated in
2019.
 The scale of the problem is only accelerating. From 2014 to 2019, global e-waste grew
by 21%.
 Based on current trends reports predict the total amount of e-waste generated worldwide
will reach 67 million tons (74 million metric tonnes) by 2030, almost doubling the output
from 2014.
However, in 2019 only 17.4% of discarded electronic devices were appropriately recycled.
Plastic waste:
(The following article was created in partnership with the National Geographic Society. In
December 2018, Great Britain's Royal Statistical Society named the core fact in this story.)

A whopping 91% of plastic isn't recycled

ByL A U R A P A R K E R Published December 20, 2018
Mass production of plastics, which began just six decades ago, has accelerated so rapidly that it has
created 8.3 billion metric tons—most of it in disposable products that end up as trash. If that seems
like an incomprehensible quantity, it is. Even the scientists who set out to conduct the world’s first
tally of how much plastic has been produced, discarded, burned or put in landfills, were horrified by
the sheer size of the numbers.
“We all knew there was a rapid and extreme increase in plastic production from 1950 until now, but
actually quantifying the cumulative number for all plastic ever made was quite shocking,” says
Jenna Jambeck, a University of Georgia environmental engineer who specializes in studying plastic
waste in the oceans.
“This kind of increase would ‘break’ any system that was not prepared for it, and this is why we
have seen leakage from global waste systems into the oceans,” she says.
Plastic takes more than 400 years to degrade, so most of it still exists in some form. Only 12 percent
has been incinerated.
The study was launched two years ago as scientists tried to get a handle on the gargantuan
amount of plastic that ends up in the seas and the harm it is causing to birds, marine animals, and
fish. The prediction that by mid-century, the oceans will contain more plastic waste than fish, ton
for ton, has become one of the most-quoted statistics and a rallying cry to do something about it.
The new study, published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances, is the first
global analysis of all plastics ever made—and their fate. Of the 8.3 billion metric tons that has been
produced, 6.3 billion metric tons has become plastic waste. Of that, only nine percent has been
recycled. The vast majority—79 percent—is accumulating in landfills or sloughing off in the natural
environment as litter. Meaning: at some point, much of it ends up in the oceans, the final sink.
If present trends continue, by 2050, there will be 12 billion metric tons of plastic in landfills. That
amount is 35,000 times as heavy as the Empire State Building.
Water waste:
How much water is wasted every year in the world?
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, about 1.7 trillion gallons of water are wasted every year.
This equals about 5.4 trillion litres.

The effects of water scarcity can be catastrophic – so much so that, since 2012, the World
Economic Forum has rated water crises among its top three global risks in terms of impact, ranking
them alongside weapons of mass destruction, climate change and the outbreak of infectious
disease.

FAO says : Evidence suggests that two-thirds of the world population could be living in water-
stressed countries by 2025 if current consumption patterns continue.
The UN’s 2017 World Water Development Report (WWD report) projects that demand will
increase by approximately 55 percent by 2050, driven by a 60 percent global increase in food
demand, along with a 400 percent increase in demand for water in manufacturing from
developed countries.

Climate change also alters water cycles, causing droughts and famine. If left unchecked, the
growing competition for water resources will lead to mass migration, escalating political tensions
and massive upheavals in industry.

Richard Hogeboom, a scientist involved in the study, confirmed in an interview with World
Finance that the situation has indeed escalated: “Water scarcity has worsened over time and a lot
of irrigation draws on water that should be left in rivers to support ecosystems. We draw it from
aquifers where it has collected for sometimes thousands of years, and we pump it up in a few
decades. We are living beyond our means.
Some facts about groundwater depletion:
Groundwater is an essential source of freshwater, accounting for about 30.1% of the world’s available
freshwater. However, groundwater resources are being rapidly used up at an alarming and
unsustainable rate in many areas of the world. A recent NASA study concluded that 21 of the largest
37 aquifers in the world have exceeded sustainability tipping points and are being depleted.
Scientists have estimated that northern India, which includes the nation’s breadbasket of wheat and
rice production, is depleting groundwater at a rate of 54 billion cubic meters per year.

Most of the major aquifers in the world’s arid and semi-arid zones, that is, in the dry parts of the
world that rely most heavily on groundwater, are experiencing rapid rates of groundwater
depletion. Groundwater is being pumped at far greater rates than it can be naturally replenished,
so that many of the largest aquifers on most continents are being mined, their precious contents
never to be returned. These include the North China Plain, Australia’s Canning Basin, the
Northwest Sahara Aquifer System, the Guarani Aquifer in South America, the High Plains and
Central Valley aquifers of the United States, and the aquifers beneath northwestern India4 and the
Middle East. Nearly all of these underlie the word’s great agricultural regions and are primarily
responsible for their high productivity.

Climate change and associated changes to the water cycle vastly complicate the challenge of
sustaining groundwater supplies for the foreseeable future. Changing patterns of precipitation and
groundwater recharge, and increasing extremes of flooding and drought are among the most
palpable impacts of global change, and underscore the need to rethink stationarity in current
water management strategies. As the wet, high- and low-latitude areas of the world become
wetter, and the dry areas in between become drier (and already limited groundwater recharge
decreases), the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ of the future water landscape are emerging.

Moreover, because the natural human response to drought is to pump more groundwater,
continued groundwater depletion will very likely accelerate mid-latitude drying, a problem that will
be exacerbated by significant population growth in the same regions.
The environmental consequences of groundwater depletion extend well beyond decreasing
freshwater availability. As groundwater levels drop, wells run dry and must be dug to deeper levels.
Groundwater quality decreases, and the cost of pumping water from greater depths increases.
Inequity issues arise because only the relatively wealthy can bear the expense of digging deeper
wells, paying greater energy costs to pump groundwater from increased depths and treating the
lower-quality water that is often found deeper within aquifers. Land surface subsidence, seawater
intrusion, sea-level rise, streamflow depletion, loss of springs, wetlands and ecological damages,
and regional climate feedbacks from irrigation are other unintended consequences of groundwater
depletion.

Some alarming facts about solid waste:

Without urgent action, global waste will increase by 70 percent on current levels by 2050,
according to the World Bank’s new What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste
Management to 2050 report. Driven by rapid urbanization and growing populations, global
annual waste generation is expected to jump to 3.4 billion tonnes over the next 30 years, up from
2.01 billion tonnes in 2016, the report finds.

Although they only account for 16 percent of the world’s population, high-income countries
combined are generating more than one-third (34 percent) of the world’s waste. The East Asia and
Pacific region is responsible for generating close to a quarter (23 percent) of all waste. And by
2050, waste generation in Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to more than triple from current levels,
while South Asia will more than double its waste stream.

Plastics are especially problematic. If not collected and managed properly, they will contaminate
and affect waterways and ecosystems for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In 2016, the world
generated 242 million tonnes of plastic waste, or 12 percent of all solid waste, according to the
report.

What a Waste 2.0 stresses that solid waste management is critical for sustainable, healthy, and
inclusive cities and communities, yet it is often overlooked, particularly in low-income countries.
While more than one-third of waste in high-income countries is recovered through recycling and
composting, only 4 percent of waste in low-income countries is recycled.

Based on the volume of waste generated, its composition, and how the waste is being managed, it
is estimated that 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide-equivalent were generated from the
treatment and disposal of waste in 2016 – representing about 5 percent of global emissions.

“Mismanagement of waste is harming human health and local environments while adding to the
climate challenge,” said Laura Tuck, Vice President for Sustainable Development, World
Bank. “Unfortunately, it is often the poorest in society who are adversely impacted by inadequate
waste management. It doesn’t have to be this way. Our resources need to be used and then
reused continuously so that they don’t end up in landfills.”

Chapter-3
Harmful chemicals polluting food and cosmetics:
Expert Joseph E. Pizzorno says “...toxins in the modern food supply are now a major contributor to,
and in some cases the cause of, virtually all chronic diseases."

A List of the More Widely Known Dangerous Ingredients in Body & Food Products
This list only contains the more widely known chemicals and additives in body and food products.
There are thousands more in use. Many of the chemicals listed below are suspected or known
carcinogens, toxins, hormone disruptors, poisons and contaminates.
Acetone
Also known as Dimethylketone, 2-Propanone, Beta-Ketopropane. Inhalation of moderate to high
amounts, even for a short time results in entry of acetone into bloodstream where it is carried to
all other organs. Nose, throat, lung and eye irritant, headaches, confusion, increased pulse rate,
effects on blood, nausea, vomiting and unconsciousness, coma. Shortens the menstrual cycle in
women. Effects of long-term exposure include kidney, liver and nerve damage, increased birth
defects, metabolic changes and coma. Found in nail polish remover.

Acetaldehyde
Found in many nail care products. Known to cause cancers in humans and
experimental animals.

Aluminum
Heavy concentrations may be linked to Alzheimer’s dementia. Aluminum is in many antiperspirants
and prevalent in water supplies. Processed foods contain dietary aluminum. Sodium aluminum
phosphate appears in pickles, cheese and baking soda.

Ammonium Glycolate
A photosensitizer with potential to increase risk of sunburn and skin cancer by intensifying UV
exposures in deep skin layers. This sensitizer can instigate immune system response that includes
itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of skin.
It is also a penetration enhancer which alters the skins’ structure, allowing other chemicals to
penetrate deeper into the skin, thus increasing the amounts of other chemicals that reach the
bloodstream. Found in body products.
Ammonium Persulfate
Found in hair color and bleaching kit sensitizer - can instigate immune system response that can
include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of skin, lung sensitizer - can instigate immune
system response that can include asthma attacks or other problems with the lungs and airways.
Immune system toxin, respiratory toxicant, skin or sense organ toxicant, classifiedas toxic in one or
more government assessments.

Aspartame
Genetically Modified, synthetic sugar substitute. People report dizziness, headaches and even
seizures. Scientists believe it can alter behavior due to altered brain function. Long term effects of
this genetically modified organism on human health has not been studied or tested. Found as a
sweetener in foods and some body products, such as shaving gel. See our Genetically Modified /
GMO Foods section for more information.

Benzene
Inhalation of high levels can cause headaches, rapid heart rate, tremors, confusion,
unconsciousness and death. Hodgkin’s and Lymphomas result from inhalation. Used in detergents,
drugs, pesticides and adhesives.

Benzoic Acid
Inhalation affects nervous system and is moderately toxic by ingestion. Severe eye and skin irritant.
Used as a food preservative and in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics Benzoic / Benzyl / Benzene
Contains carcinogens, endocrine disruptor, may cause birth defects. Found in shower gels,
shampoos, bubble bath.

Benzoyl Peroxide
In acne treatments, bar soap, facial cleansers and food additives! Highly toxic/irritant.
Bisphenol A or BPA
Toxic plastic chemical used as a can lining in brands of some infant formulas. Also found in water
bottles, this chemical is used to produce polycarbonate and epoxy plastics. For babies, check food
container labels and beware of polycarbonate plastic baby bottles. Chemical reactions can occur
when plastic is heated.

BHA – BHT
Banned in many countries, these two preservatives are considered carcinogenic but remain in U.S.
manufactured foods that contain oil as they retard rancidity. Found in foods and body products.

Butylparaben
Potential breast cancer risk and endocrine disruptor raising concern for impaired fertility or
development, increased risk for certain cancers, itching burning and blistering of skin. Found in
body products.

Carboxymethylcellulose
Causes cancer in animals. Used in cosmetics, inhalation could cause chemical pneumonitis.

Coal Tar Dyes – (includes D&C Blue 1, Green 3, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 33, etc.) Even though their
carcinogenicity has recently been proven, the 1938 Act includes a specific exemption for them.
Severe allergic reactions, asthma attacks, headaches, nausea, fatigue, lack of concentration,
nervousness, increased risk of Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
Found in bubble bath, hair dye, dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and foods. For more information,
see the Dyes Commonly Used in Food and Body Product Section.

Cocamidopropyl Betaine
May contain harmful impurities or form toxic breakdown products, itching, burning and blistering
of skin. Synthesized from coconuts, this chemical is found in body products and may be labeled
natural or organic.

Coumarin
Formerly the active ingredient in rat poison. A carcinogenic ingredient used in the
manufacturing of deodorants, shampoos, skin fresheners and perfumes.

D&C Yellow 11
Found in: Lip gloss, polish remover, nail polish, bath oil/salts/soak, body spray,
mositurizer, lipstick, styling gel/lotion, bar soap, after sun products, cologne, nail
treatment. Color safe for external use only, found in ingested products, Color not
approved for use around eyes, in eye products

DEA: Diethanolamine
A chemical used as a wetting or thickening agent in shampoos, soaps, hairsprays
and sunscreens, blocks absorption of the nutrient choline, which is essential to brain
development in a fetus.

Diacetyl
An additive that tastes like butter causes a serious lung condition called bronchiolitis
obliterans, or “popcorn workers’ lung. Found in foods, especially microwave
popcorn.

Dibutyl phthalate (DBP)

A chemical used to keep nail polish from chipping, has been connected to cancer in
lab animals as well as long-term fertility issues in newborn boys. Banned in Europe,
but still in use in the U.S. Found in nail polish.
Dimethicone
A silicone emollient, which coats the skin not allowing toxins out. May promote
tumors and accumulate in the liver and lymph nodes. Found in lotions and creams.

Dioforms
Damage and weaken tooth enamel allowing more staining and discoloration to take
place. Found in tooth whitening products.

Disodium EDTA
Harmful if swallowed or inhaled, causes irritation to skin, eyes and respiratory tract.
Found in cosmetics.

Diazolidinyl Urea
Found in facial cleansers, shampoos and conditioners. Linked to neurotoxicity and
Immunotoxicity

DMDM Hydantoin
Contains formaldehyde , an ingredient linked to cancer, developmental and
reproductive toxicity. Allergenic, can be an irritant to eyes skin and lungs. Common
in manicure/pedicure products and hair treatment packages.

Ethylacrylate
Found in some mascaras suspected as a cause of cancer in humans, based on
studies of human populations or laboratory animals.

Elastin
Suffocates skin by not allowing moisture in or out. Found in facial creams and body
lotions.

Fluoride
May contain lead, mercury, cadmium and arsenic. Accumulates in body and
contributes to bone disease. Carcinogenic. Found in toothpastes.

Formaldehyde
Suspected carcinogen and neurotoxin, it may be fatal if swallowed, absorbed
through skin, inhaled or swallowed. Can cause spasms, edema, chemical
pneumonitis and is extremely destructive to tissue of the mucous membrane, this
chemical is found in many nail care products. Known to cause cancers in humans
and experimental animals. Found in baby shampoo, bubble bath, deodorants,
perfume, cologne, hair dye, mouthwash, toothpaste, hair spray, nail polish.

Fragrances (Synthetic)
Some perfumes / fragrances contain hundreds of chemicals. Some, such as
methylene chloride are carcinogenic. Some cause brain damage or are neurotoxins.
Avoid unless you can be sure they are not carcinogenic.

Glycolic Acid
Penetration enhancer which alters skin structure, allowing other chemicals to
penetrate deeper into the skin, increasing the amounts of other chemicals that reach
the bloodstream, skin or sense organs. As a sensitizer it can instigate immune
system response that can include itching, burning, scaling, hives, and blistering of
skin. Toxicant, neurotoxin, kidney toxicant, gastrointestinal or liver toxicant. Found
in creams, lotions, cosmetics.

GMO/Genetically Modified Organism

Plants, animals or foods that have been genetically modified, genetically engineered
or BT/Biotechnology modified. Genetic engineering enables scientists to create
plants, animals and micro-organisms by manipulating genes in a way that does not
occur naturally. Minimal testing shows that animals fed GMO feed, refuse to eat it.
When force-fed the feed (corn, soy, tomatoes etc.) the animals developed stomach
lesions and malformations of organs. GMO food is not labeled as such in the U.S.
Almost all other countries have banned the use of GMO in food and body products
due to insufficient testing. See GMO section for more information.

Hydroabietyl Alcohol
Found in styling gel/lotions. Unsafe for use in cosmetics according to the fragrance
industry's International Fragrance Association.
High Fructose Corn Syrup/HFCS
High fructose consumption has been fingered as a causative factor in heart disease.
It raises blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides. It makes blood cells more
prone to clotting, and it may also accelerate the aging process. See Sugars, Insulin
Resistance and Glycemic Index section for more information.

Hydrogenated/Partially Hydrogenated Oils

Hydrogenated oils contain high levels of trans fats. A trans fat is an otherwise
normal fatty acid that has been radically changed by high heat. Trans fats are
poison: just like arsenic. Partially hydrogenated oils will not only kill you in the
long term by producing diseases like multiple sclerosis and allergies that lead to
arthritis, but in the meantime they will make you fat! See Hydrogenated and
Partially Hydrogenated Oils section for more information

Hydroquinone
A severely toxic and very powerful chemical. Banned in the United Kingdom, but
still used in the U.S. Found in skin lightening products and hair dyes, this chemical
alters the skins natural structure inhibiting the production of Melanin. Without
natural protection, the skin is more susceptible to skin cancer. Prolonged use of
Hydroquinone will thicken collagen fibers damaging the connective tissues. The
result is rough blotchy skin leaving it with a spotty caviar appearance.

Hydroxymethylcellulose
Used in cosmetics. Inhalation could cause chemical pneumonitis.

Imidazolidinyl Urea
This allergenic chemical finds its way into deodorants, shampoos, hand cream and
some mascaras.

Isobutylparaben
Potential breast cancer risk. Itching, burning and blistering of skin. Found in body
products.

Isoproponal/Isopropyl Alcohol
Moderately toxic chemical causing flushing, pulse rate decrease, blood pressure
lowering, anesthesia, narcosis, headache, dizziness, mental depression, drowsiness,
hallucinations, distorted perceptions, respiratory depression, nausea, vomiting and
coma. Used to clean/disinfect skin, lower temperatures. Found in some body
products.

Kajoic Acid
A chemical that inhibits melanin production. Used in skin lightening products, it
damages the skin and makes it more susceptible to cancer.

Lacquer
Can cause eyelashes to fall out. Found in mascara.
Lye
Can dry and damage skin. Found in bars of soap.
Magnesium Stearate / Stearic Acid
May contain phosphatidyl choline which collapses cell membranes and selectively
kills T-Cells which breaks down the immune system. An execeptant that is used to
bind medicinal tablets and make them smooth it is also used in pharmaceuticals,
foods, talcum powder, ammunition, and as a drying agent in paints.
MEA: Cocamide DEA, Lauramide DEA, Linoleamide DEA, Oleamide DEA
NDEA (N-nitrosodiethanolamine) forms when DEA reacts with nitrosating agents
or the actual addition of nitrite as a preservative. As there is no way to determine if
NDEA has been formed, it is imperative to avoid all products containing DEA as it
is a known carcinogen. Often used in cosmetics to adjust the pH, and used with
many fatty acids to convert acid to salt (stearate), which then becomes the base for a
cleanser.

Methylisothiazoline, or MIT
Causes neurological damage. Found in shampoo.

Methyl Methacrylate
May cause fingers and nails to inflame. Found in nail polish.

Methylparaben
Potential breast cancer risk and endocrine disruptor raising concern for impaired
fertility or development of fetus, and increased risk for certain cancers, itching,
burning and blistering of skin. A close cousin of benzoic acid: poisonous and
moderately toxic it is found in body products.

Mineral Oil
A derivative of petroleum, this additive clogs pores, locks in toxins, suffocates and
dries skin and inhibits your skins natural oil production further increasing
dehydration. Causes testicular tumors in the fetus, deposits accumulate in the lymph
nodes and prevent absorption of vitamin A from the intestines. Found in blush, baby
oil, lotions, foundation and creams.

Monosodium Glutamate/MSG
MSG is an excitotoxin, which causes nerve damage and allergic reactions. Found in
hundreds of foods, often under other names. See our Monosodium Glutamate / MSG
section for more information

MTBE
Gasoline additive. Known as a “likely” human carcinogenic.

Neotame
Neotame is a reformulated aspartame that will require smaller amounts than
aspartame to achieve the same sweetness. Neotame, like aspartame, contains
aspartic acid, phenylalanine, and a methyl esther. Animal studies reveal aspartic
acid and glutamic acid load on the same receptors in the brain, cause identical brain
lesions and neuroendocrine disorders, and act in an additive fashion. People who are
sensitive to processed free glutamic acid (MSG) experience similar reactions to
aspartame, and people who are sensitive to aspartame experience similar reactions
to MSG. People who currently react to MSG and/or aspartame should expect to
react similarly to Neotame. Found in soft drinks, pharmaceuticals, processed foods
of all kinds.

Nitrate – Nitrite
While nitrate itself is harmless; it is readily converted to nitrite. When nitrite
combines with compounds called secondary amines, it forms nitrosamines:
extremely powerful cancer-causing chemicals. The chemical reaction occurs most
readily at the high temperatures of frying. Nitrite has long been suspected as being a
cause of stomach cancer. (See Sodium Nitrite)

Nitrosamines
Extremely powerful, cancer-causing chemicals formed at high temperatures when
the preservative nitrite combines with compounds called secondary amines.

Olestra
While fat-free, this additive has a fatal side effect: it attaches to valuable nutrients
and flushes them out of the body. Some of these nutrients, called carotenoids,
appear to protect us from such diseases as lung cancer, prostate cancer, heart
disease, and macular degeneration. Olestra replaces fats in ‘fat-free’ foods.

Padimate-O (PABA)
Nitrosamines, potent carcinogens, may form in products that contain Padimate-O.
There is no way of knowing if they have formed. Found in cosmetics and
sunscreens.

Paraffin
Possible carcinogen. Found in cosmetics and food.

PBDE
Toxic flame retardant, used in baby bedding to slow advance of fire. Residue found
in breast milk.

Perchlorate
It is rocket science! Perchlorate is a by- product of rocket fuel, discovered in over
90% of the U.S. lettuce and milk supply. It interferes with thyroid function can
cause thyroid cancer and or hypothyroidism.

PEG Stearates
Potentially contaminated with or breaking down into chemicals linked to cancer or
other significant health problems. Found in cosmetics, creams and foods.

PEG (Polyethylene, polyethylene glycol, polyoxyethylene, oxynol: any ethoxylated

compound, including SLES)
May contain ¼-dioxane which is a possible carcinogen, estrogen mimic and
endocrine disruptor. Can only be removed from a product through vacuum stripping
during processing. Avoid all ethyoxylated products as a precaution. Found in foods
and body products.

PEG-12 Distearate
May contain harmful impurities or form toxic breakdown products linked to cancer
or other significant health problems. Found in creams, lotions, cosmetics and foods.
PEG-80 Sorbitan Laurate
May contain harmful impurities or form toxic breakdown products linked to cancer
or other significant health problems, gastrointestinal or liver toxicity hazards. Found
in cosmetics, creams, lotions and foods.

PEG-14M
May contain harmful impurities or form toxic breakdown products linked to cancer
or other significant health problems. Found in foods, lotions, creams and cosmetics.

Petroleum (Petrolatum)
Suffocates skin and traps toxins in body, clogs pores. Found in lotions, skin creams,
and body jelly.

PFOA or C8
Used when processing polytetrafluroroethylene (PTFE) or Teflon. This toxic
chemical remains in animals and humans for indefinite periods.

PFOS
Perflurooctanotane sulfonate. A fluorocarbon used in producing repellents and
surfactant products, like stain resistant fabric.

Phenoxyethanol
Possible connection to reproductive or developmental harm to fetus, potential for
reduced fertility, classified as toxic and an irritant, potential risks to wildlife and
environment through excretion of body product toxins and disposal of cosmetics.

Phthalates
Accumulates in the body; proven damage to liver, lungs, kidneys and reproductive
systems. Appears in vinyl flooring, plastic wallpaper, perfume, hair spray,
deodorant, nail polish, hair gel, mousse, body and hand lotion. Look for it in
children’s toys, as; DEHP, BBP and DBP.

Polyethylene Glycol /PEG

Moderately toxic, eye irritant and possible carcinogen. Many glycols produce severe
acidosis, central nervous system damage and congestion. Can cause convulsions,
mutations, and surface EEG changes. Found in cosmetics, body products, foods,
lotions.

Polypropylene
Possible carcinogen. Found in lipstick, mascara, baby soap, eye shadow.

Polyscorbate-60
Used in cosmetics. Inhalation could cause chemical pneumonitis .
Polyquaternium-7
May contain harmful impurities or form toxic breakdown products linked to cancer
or other significant health problems. Found in body products.

Potassium Bromate
An additive that increases the volume and crumb of bread, is banned worldwide
except in the U.S. and Japan. Considered carcinogenic.
p-Phenylenediamine (PPD)
Very toxic substance, used in hair dyeing, shampoo’s and hair spray. Highly
carcinogenic, developmental and reproductive toxicity, it is allergenic and can cause
skin irritation issues.

Propylene Glycol
Kidney damage, liver abnormalities, inhibits skin cell growth, damages cell
membranes causing rashes, surface damage and dry skin.
Absorbed into blood stream and travels to all organs. Many glycols produce severe
acidosis, central nervous system damage and congestion. Can cause convulsions,
mutations, and surface EEG changes. It is derived from petroleum products. The
Material Safety Data Sheets on propylene glycol warns against contact with eyes,
skin and clothing. It also says inhalation can cause irritation of nasal passages,
ingestion can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Research also shows that it alters cell membranes and causes cardiac arrest. Found
in shaving gel, lotions, shampoo, conditioners, foods, deodorant.

Propylparaben
Potential breast cancer risk and endocrine disruptor raising concern for impaired
fertility or development, and increased risk for certain cancers, itching burning and
blistering of skin, gastrointestinal or liver toxicity hazard. A close cousin of benzoic
acid: poisonous and moderately toxic. Found in body products.

PVC/ polyvinyl chloride

When produced or burned, this common plastic releases dioxins, may cause cancer,
affect immune and reproductive systems.

Quaternium-7, 15, 31, 60 etc.

Toxic, causes skin rashes and allergic reactions. Formaldehyde releasers.
Substantive evidence of casual relation to leukemia, multiple myeloma, non-
Hodgkin’s lymphoma and other cancers. Found in body products.

Sodium Hydroxymethylglycinate
Potentially contaminated with or breaking down into chemicals linked to cancer or
other significant health problems. Found in facial moisturizer, facial cleanser, facial
treatments, skin fading and lightening products, anti-aging products, eye makeup
remover, concealer, makeup remover, around eye cream, acne treatment, shampoo,
conditioner, styling lotion and gel, styling mousse and foam, hair spray, hair relaxer,
tanning oil and sunscreen, after tanning products, body cleanser and wash, body
exfoliants, body firming lotion, baby soap, baby lotion, baby wipes, baby bubble
bath, pain and wound products, hand sanitizer.

Sodium Nitrite
Makes meat look red rather than gray, and gives meat an overly long shelf life of
months. Clinically proven to cause leukemia, brain tumors and other forms of
cancer.

SLS (Sodium Lauryl Sulphate)

Builds up in heart, lungs, brain and liver from skin contact and may cause damage to these organs.
Corrodes hair follicles and may cause hair to fall out. Damages
immune system. Contain endocrine disruptors and estrogen mimics. Impairs proper
structural formation of young eyes. May contain carcinogenic nitrosamines. This is
a detergent derived from coconut oil and may be labeled natural or even organic.
Found in toothpaste, soap, shampoo, body wash, bubble bath, facial cleansers.

SLES (Sodium Laureth Sulfate)

Ether mixtures may contain carcinogenic nitrosamines. Avoid ethoxylated
compounds as a precaution. May form 1.4 dioxane, a potential carcinogen,
endocrine disruptor and estrogen mimic. Allows other chemicals to penetrate skin
more deeply and enter bloodstream. May cause hair loss when applied to scalp.
Found in shampoo, toothpaste, bubble bath, body wash, soap.

Stearalkonium Chloride
Toxic and causes allergic reactions. Used in hair conditioners.

Talc
Carcinogenic when inhaled, may result in fallopian tube fibrosis. Found in blush,
condoms, baby powder, feminine powders, foot and body powders.

Thimerol
At one time in most vaccines for children. Still believed to be in many vaccines.
This form of organic mercury, functions as a preservative. It is highly toxic as it
metabolizes into methylmercury.
Repeated skin applications of DEA-based detergents resulted in a major increase in
the incidence of liver and kidney cancer. Found in shampoos, skin cream, bubble
bath, shaving gel, conditioner, lotions.

Toluene
Poison to humans. Hallucinations, bone marrow changes, may cause liver andkidney damage and
birth defects, endocrine disruptor and potential carcinogen
linked to brain cancer. Irritates respiratory tract. Found in nail polish and cleaning
products.

Triclosan
Found in a lot of antimicrobial soaps and toothpaste products, it can react with
chlorine in the tap water to create Chloroform. This is a toxic chemical that can give
you cancer. If you breathe enough chloroform, you will die. When you wash your
hands with antibacterial soap that contains Triclosan, you are getting the fumes
emitted from this chemical reaction.

Vinyl chloride
Used to create PVC (polyvinyl chloride) a known carcinogen. Often found in toys.
Children chewing on toys can release toxins into their bodies. * see PVC

Zinc Stearate
Carcinogen. Found in blush and powder foundation
The Hormone-Wrecking Power of Plastics
A number of common household chemicals are endocrine disruptors, meaning, they alter the
normal function of your hormones. These are referred to as "endocrine-disrupting chemicals"
(EDCs). 12 of the worst are listed below:

Bisphenol-A (BPA)
Dioxin
Atrazine
Phthalates
Perchlorate
Fire retardants
Lead
Mercury
Arsenic
Perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs)
Organophosphate pesticides
Glycol ethers

Chapter 4
The Pollution in Newborns
In a study spearheaded by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) USA, in collaboration with
Commonweal, researchers at two major laboratories found an average of 200 industrial chemicals
and pollutants in umbilical cord blood from 10 babies born in August and September of 2004 in
U.S. hospitals. Tests revealed a total of 287 chemicals in the group. The umbilical cord blood of
these 10 children, collected by Red Cross after the cord was cut, harbored pesticides, consumer
product ingredients, and wastes from burning coal, gasoline, and garbage.

This study represents the first reported cord blood tests for 261 of the targeted chemicals and the
first reported detections in cord blood for 209 compounds. Among them are eight
perfluorochemicals used as stain and oil repellents in fast food packaging, clothes and textiles —
including the Teflon chemical PFOA, recently characterized as a likely human carcinogen by the
EPA's Science Advisory Board — dozens of widely used brominated flame retardants and their toxic
by-products; and numerous pesticides.

Here is what the researchers said:

Of the 287 chemicals we detected in umbilical cord blood, we know that 180 cause cancer in
humans or animals, 217 are toxic to the brain and nervous system, and 208 cause birth defects or
abnormal development in animal tests. The dangers of pre- or post-natal exposure to this complex
mixture of carcinogens, developmental toxins and neurotoxins have never been studied.

Chemical exposures in the womb or during infancy can be dramatically more harmful than
exposures later in life. Substantial scientific evidence demonstrates that children face amplified risks
from their body burden of pollution; the findings are particularly strong for many of the chemicals
found in this study, including mercury, PCBs and dioxins. Children's vulnerability derives from both
rapid development and incomplete defense systems:

 A developing child's chemical exposures are greater pound-for-pound than those of

adults.
  An immature, porous blood-brain barrier allows greater chemical exposures to the
developing brain.
 Children have lower levels of some chemical-binding proteins, allowing more of a
chemical to reach "target organs."
 A baby's organs and systems are rapidly developing, and thus are often more
vulnerable to damage from chemical exposure.
 Systems that detoxify and excrete industrial chemicals are not fully developed.
 The longer future life span of a child compared to an adult allows more time for
adverse effects to arise.
The 10 children in this study were chosen randomly, from among 2004's summer season of live
births from mothers in Red Cross' volunteer, national cord blood collection program. They were not
chosen because their parents work in the chemical industry or because they were known to bear
problems from chemical exposures in the womb. Nevertheless, each baby was born polluted with a
broad array of contaminants.

U.S. industries manufacture and import approximately 75,000 chemicals, 3,000 of them at over a
million pounds per year. Health officials do not know how many of these chemicals pollute fetal
blood and what the health consequences of in utero exposures may be.

Had we tested for a broader array of chemicals, we would almost certainly have detected far more
than 287. But testing umbilical cord blood for industrial chemicals is technically challenging.
Chemical manufacturers are not required to divulge to the public or government health officials
methods to detect their chemicals in humans. Few labs are equipped with the machines and
expertise to run the tests or the funding to develop the methods. Laboratories have yet to develop
methods to test human tissues for the vast majority of chemicals on the market, and the few tests
that labs are able to conduct are expensive. Laboratory costs for the cord blood analyses reported
here were $10,000 per sample.

A developing baby depends on adults for protection, nutrition, and, ultimately, survival. As a society
we have a responsibility to ensure that babies do not enter this world pre-polluted, with 200
industrial chemicals in their blood. Decades-old bans on a handful of chemicals like PCBs, lead gas
additives, DDT and other pesticides have led to significant declines in people's blood levels of these
pollutants. But good news like this is hard to find for other chemicals.

The Toxic Substances Control Act, the 1976 federal law meant to ensure the safety of commercial
chemicals, essentially deemed 63,000 existing chemicals "safe as used" the day the law was
passed, through mandated, en masseapproval for use with no safety scrutiny. It forces the
government to approve new chemicals within 90 days of a company's application at an average
pace of seven per day. It has not been improved for nearly 30 years — longer than any other major
environmental or public health statute — and does nothing to reduce or ensure the safety of
exposure to pollution in the womb.

Because the Toxic Substances Control Act fails to mandate safety studies, the government has
initiated a number of voluntary programs to gather more information about chemicals, most
notably the high production volume (HPV) chemical screening program. But these efforts have been
largely ineffective at reducing human exposures to chemicals. They are no substitute for a clear
statutory requirement to protect children from the toxic effects of chemical exposure.

Tests show 287 industrial chemicals in 10 newborn babies

Pollutants include consumer product ingredients, banned industrial chemicals and pesticides, and
waste byproducts

Total number of
Sources and uses of chemicals chemicals found in 10
Chemical family name
in newborn blood newborns (range in
individual babies)

Common consumer product chemicals 47 chemicals

(and their breakdown products) (23 - 38)

7 chemicals
Pesticides, actively used in U.S. Organochlorine pesticides (OCs)
(2 - 6)

Stain and grease resistant

coatings for food wrap, carpet, 8 chemicals
Perfluorochemicals (PFCs)
furniture (Teflon, Scotchgard, (4 - 8)
Stainmaster...)

Fire retardants in TVs, Polybrominated diphenyl ethers 32 chemicals

computers, furniture (PBDEs) (13 - 29)

Chemicals banned or severely restricted in the U.S. 212 chemicals

(and their breakdown products) (111 - 185)

Pesticides, phased out of use in 14 chemicals

Organochlorine pesticides (OCs)
U.S. (7 - 14)

Stain and grease resistant

1 chemicals
coatings for food wrap, carpet, Perfluorochemicals (PFCs)
(1 - 1)
furniture (pre-2000 Scotchgard)

147 chemicals
Electrical insulators Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
(65 - 134)

Broad use industrial chemicals -

Polychlorinated naphthalenes 50 chemicals
flame retardants, pesticides,
(PCNs) (22 - 40)
electrical insultators

28 chemicals
Waste byproducts
(6 - 21)
 Polychlorinated and
Garbage incineration and plastic 18 chemicals
Polybrominated dibenzo dioxins
production wastes (5 - 13)
and furans (PCDD/F and PBDD/F)

Car emissions and other fossil Polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons 10 chemicals

fuel combustion (PAHs) (1 - 10)

1 chemicals
Power plants (coal burning) Methylmercury

287 chemicals
All chemicals found
(154 - 231)

Source: Environmental Working Group analysis of tests of 10 umbilical cord blood samples
conducted by AXYS Analytical Services (Sydney, BC) and Flett Research Ltd. (Winnipeg, MB)

The Birth Defect epidemic

The World Health Organisation estimates about three to five per cent of children worldwide are
born with birth defects.
Birth Defects Due To Harmful Chemicals
Each year nearly 120,000 babies in the United States are affected by birth defects. One of the
known causes of birth defects is environmental factors such as contaminants and chemicals.
Environmental contaminants such as chemicals and industrial products are responsible for
approximately 10 percent of all birth defects. There are over four million chemicals present in the
home and work environments. While many of these chemicals are not harmful, some of
those found in the home, workplace, food sources, air and water may pose the threat of birth
defects.
China's horrific pollution has been firmly linked to a staggering increase in birth defects
according to a major scientific survey.
The number of Chinese children with birth defects rose by 40 per cent between 2001 and 2006,
according to the National Population and Family Planning Commission.
Around four to six per cent of all children born in China each year have physical defects, including
congenital heart disease, cleft palates and water on the brain. Of those, around 30 per cent die and
40 per cent are disabled.
In the first large-scale Chinese survey on the topic, Professor Hu Yali of Nanjing University linked
one-tenth of all birth defects in Jiangsu to pollution.
Jiangsu is one of China's richest provinces and the heart of the country's manufacturing hub.
Professor Hu tracked more than 26,000 pregnant women between 2001 and 2005.
"Birth defects are now the single biggest killer of infants on the mainland," she told the Nanjing
Morning Post. More than a million babies are born in China with "visible defects" every year.
Researchers believe that the figures from Jiangsu may be far lower than the national average.
Shanxi, a coal-rich province in the north of China, has the highest rate of defects at 18 per cent and
is notorious for the noxious emissions of its huge coke and chemical industries.
"Statistics show that birth defects in Shanxi's eight large coal-mining regions are far above the
national average," said An Huanxiao, the director of Shanxi's provincial family planning agency.

Chapter-5
Destruction of biodiversity
We have already seen how human activities are leading to species extinction on a massive scale.
This is suicidal, because it is this diversity of flora and fauna that keeps us alive and provides
humans with all the resources they need. I shall write briefly on four instances :
Soil health:
The fertility of arable soil is deteriorating at an alarming rate wherever modern method of farming
is going on for decades. One of the reasons behind loss of fertility is this : agri-chemicals
employed in modern farming are harming the microorganisms in soil. There are billions of
bacteria, viruses and fungi in a fistful of soil, and 95% of them are beneficial for plant growth.
These organisms turn fertilisers into forms that are absorbable by plants, they kill harmful invasive
organisms, and supply plants with essential enzymes and hormones. Millions of tonnes of
pesticides and herbicides, dumped in our soils for decades, are killing off these most important
organisms, leading to drastic fall in soil productivity.

Pollination crisis:
Many species of wild bees, butterflies and other critters that pollinate plants are shrinking towards
extinction, and once again, harmful human activities are responsible. The 20 thousand or so
pollinators are key to hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of crops each year – from fruits and
vegetables to coffee and chocolates. Yet 2 out of 5 species of invertebrate pollinators are on the
path toward extinction. Pollinators like bats and small birds are only slightly better off, with 1 in 6
species facing extinction. Bumblebees and wild bees are fairing worse. The culprit is modern
farming, says the scientists who prepared the IPBES report. There is not enough seed and crop
diversity for pollinators to use as food, and wild flowers are vanishing too, thanks to rampant
deforestation. Pesticides, used in enormous amounts in today's farming, kill critters and many
other beneficial creatures like frogs, spiders, dragonflies and earthworms, all of which helps
agriculture in various ways.
Chemicals also are responsible for the dwindling numbers of beneficial insects and creatures like
earthworms, dragonflies, spiders and frogs.

Seed diversity :
I quote a passage from a report (State of World’s Biodiversity,FAO, 2019):
Worldwide, farmers’ varieties and landraces are disappearing at an unprecedented speed.
Consequently, global diets are becoming increasingly homogeneous, a trend that risks undermining
the diverse and nutrient rich diet which are essential for human health. Out of the 6,000 different
plant species used as food only 9 contribute 66% of total crop production – wheat, rice, sugarcane,
maize, potato, sugarbeet, cassava, oil-palm and soybean.
Economic cost of HIPED:
Polluting and damaging our environment and ecosystems result in economic losses of huge
magnitude too. Below, we mention a few figures:
Food waste cost estimated around $800 billions each year
Land and soil degradation costs us $400 billions per year.
World Bank reports global economy could lose as much as $2.7 trillion per year by 2030 if we
continue to destroy biodiversity.
Losses suffered due to pollution related illness and death is estimated to be around 4.6
trillion(Lancet study). Air pollution alone costs society more than 2.9 trillion dollars every year.

I could have cited many other reports and facts related to HIPED, but I think enough is already
furnished above to make any sensible and rational being to perceive how HIPED threatens the
existence of your species.

Part II

You are perhaps wondering why the so-called world community's attention is being focused only
on climate crisis while HIPED is making life miserable for billions, devastating your only habitat and
killing countless species of plants and animals. We think we found out the reason, and our finding
is well supported by documents cited below. It is like this:
Your global policies are virtually shaped by The Elites, that is, the affluent North. The countries of
these parts have been 'exporting' pollution to the less 'developed' (poor) countries for quite some
time. Most of the polluting industries are now operating in these 'Third World' and 'Emerging'
countries while these are mostly producing goods for a few affluent countries like the USA.
Moreover, hazardous wastes are being dumped in various ways in the poor countries. This
process of using the 'lesser' countries as trash-bins and poison-sinks has made pollution and
environmental destruction less visible and less perceptible in rich countries. So the citizens of
these countries are not very worried about pollution and HIPED. This is why the policymakers of
your world, who mostly reside in these rich countries, can afford to turn a blind eye to this most
serious of problems. Just read the following few articles and excerpts to understand the
situation.

The export of hazardous factories to developing nations

B I Castleman

Abstract
The export of hazardous industrial plants to developing nations is examined for a number of industries. As
hazardous and polluting industries come under increasing regulation in industrial nations, some of the
affected processes are exported, without improvements to make them less hazardous, to nonregulating
countries where cheap and uninformed labor is abundant. "Runaway shops" then market their products in
industrial nations with the competitive advantage of not having had to comply with costly workplace and
pollution-control regulations. The international trade impacts of hazard export include: export of jobs from
regulating to nonregulating countries; shift of international balance of payments in favour of nonregulating
countries; export of mortal health hazards and environmental destruction to workers and communities in
nonregulating nations, in order to produce goods for consumption by the regulating countries; weakened
competitive position of reputable manufacturers who incur control costs and complete in domestic and
would markets against less scrupulous companies; prolonged widespread use of discredited, extremely
hazardous technologies, arising from the continuing "subsidy" of certain industries by workers and
communities exposed to uncontrolled, well-recognized, mortal health hazards; and aggravated international
relations resulting from developing nations' awareness and concern over becoming dumping grounds for
hazard export from industrial nations.
And here is another article:

Developing Countries: Electronic Waste Landfills of America

US to the World - "No E-Waste in My Backyard!"
By Ayesha Riaz -
October 24, 2016
Since the introduction of personal computers in the early 1990’s, our standard of living has continued to rise.
With this, companies discovered how to build better and more efficient models of pre-existing products. This
development spurred the consumer need to always upgrade and stay at the forefront of technology.
However, not much thought was given as to where the discarded electronics would go.
Over the years these items accumulated in large amounts. At first they were simply thrown away with the
municipal trash, but after the effects of battery acid leakage were revealed the EPA installed precautionary
measures. Overall these were known as the Universal Waste Act whose goal was to reduce the amount of
contaminant that would potentially enter landfills. This regulated the amount of electronic waste and where
it would end up once it had reached its life’s end. It wasn’t until 1996 with the Implementation of the
Mercury-Containing and Rechargeable Battery Management Act passed by President Clinton, when the
recycling of nickel-cadmium and rechargeable batteries was controlled. At the same time, the use of
mercury was also phased out.
While batteries were being given attention due to mercury, other electronics were harder to dispose of. Even
if citizens did attempt to recycle old computers and televisions, the items had to be sent to specialized
locations in order to be disposed of properly. Electronics are made up of various metals, plastics, glue, glass,
much of which must be taken apart and separated by material in order to be recyclable. (Similar to the way
food-stained cardboard is not accepted in recycling and certain plastics have different chemical properties
and sometimes cannot be used together).
Like the processing of municipal waste, states rarely dump electronic waste in the same area where it is
consumed. Municipal waste management usually happens where there is no access to facilities that would
recycle the materials correctly. Not all states have highly specialized recycling plants. Different states offer
various rates per ton of garbage dumped which impacts where waste is sent. Because of this, it is
sometimes more economical to ship the waste across county and state lines.
Waste imported to Michigan in 2013, according to the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality.
In 2003, the city of Toronto, Canada began shipping its waste to a landfill in suburban Detroit. This
caused complaints from Michigan citizens as well as legal jurisdiction issues involving crossing international
borders for waste disposal. The US government had to come up with a solution to avoid environmental
lawsuits and accusations of class bias as Canada was sending its waste to a poverty-stricken city like
Detroit. As a result, the EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assistance created WasteWatcher, an
organization that monitors and delivers compliance assistance information for moving solid waste across
the U.S-Canadian border. WasteWatcher specifically focuses on Canadian municipal waste importation into
Michigan.
The distance between Canada and United States is relatively small compared to the other areas where the
U.S. has been dumping its electronic waste overseas. The regulation of exporting e-waste in large amounts
(or at all) to other countries had been severely lacking.
While this practice of exporting e-waste to developing nations for profit had been in use for at least two
decades, the first person was not jailed for this until 2014. Joe Benson of the U.K. had been illegally
exporting tons of hazardous electrical waste to Africa, specifically to Ghana, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and the
Congo. Benson was sentenced to 16 months in prison. He had also been convicted in 2011 for exporting
hazardous waste to Nigeria and was appealing that conviction, while continuing to illegally export old
televisions and refrigerators.
The court authorized that the rules governing electronic waste are there to protect the environment and
human life – Joe Benson’s actions did neither. A jail sentence in his case was important as it was the first
time anyone has been sent to prison over an environmental crime, in this case illegal waste exports.
Environmental crime is difficult to trace, often because it relies on scientific evidence that a region has been
negatively impacted. In cases like Accra, Ghana, it is clear that massive piles of electronic waste surrounding
villages in developing countries is a huge health problem.
Electronic waste itself is a symbol of a high standard of living and economic wealth. Ironically, such
waste ends up in very populated regions of countries like China, India, Ghana, Nigeria, and along the Ivory
Coast.
Most of the world’s electronic trash (a symbol of a high standard of living and economic wealth) ironically
ends up in very populated regions of developing countries. The most common being China, India, Ghana,
Nigeria, and along the Ivory Coast.
Chris Carroll of National Geographic recalls Accra, Ghana, and the thick smoke from smeltering metals. He
explains the hazardous situation in which small children are burning plastics off copper wiring, breaking
copper yokes off television sets, releasing lead, cadmium and other neurotoxins and carcinogens into the air,
all for the pursuit of little profit. This is extremely dangerous for the inhabitant’s health and the
environment. These countries cannot be charged with pubic health endangering practices if their standard
of living does not even allow them the ability of changing those practices.
In an effort to slow this e-waste dumping, the Basel Ban was introduced in 1989. The Basel Ban is an
international treaty to reduce hazardous waste exportation between countries, especially from the
developed to the less developed countries. Although it began to be enforced in 1992, these incidents
of damaging e-waste dumping still occur.
Electronic recycling is a fairly recent endeavor in Illinois alone. It was only in 2008 that a comprehensive
recycling law was passed that created additional opportunities for Illinois residents to recycle their e-waste.
The City of Chicago operates a permanent Chemical and Computer Recycling Facility where residents can
properly and safely dispose of their electronic and hazardous products locally instead of exporting them to
developing countries and harming the environment.
How many Chicago residents even know about this facility and how many use it?
There is a history of developed nations deliberately dumping useless electronic waste in developing
countries. The sheer amount and rate of electronics consumption in developed countries has accelerated this
global problem. With the rapid development of new technologies, older models (some only a few years old)
are quickly phased out and become e-waster landfill fodder. With this continuous flow of creation and
replacement, we generate massive amounts of waste, and much of it is not recyclable.
There are few laws governing the processing of electronic waste and even those laws lack enforcement. It is
this situation that makes it much easier for developed countries, like the US, to say “No e-waste in my
backyard!”
Read yet another article:
Toxic 'e-waste' dumped in poor nations, says United Nations
Millions of tonnes of old electronic goods illegally exported to developing countries, as people dump luxury
items. Millions of mobile phones, laptops, tablets, toys, digital cameras and other electronic devices bought
this Christmas are destined to create a flood of dangerous "e-waste" that is being dumped illegally in
developing countries, the UN has warned.
The global volume of electronic waste is expected to grow by 33% in the next four years, when it will weigh
the equivalent of eight of the great Egyptian pyramids, according to the UN's Step initiative, which was set
up to tackle the world's growing e-waste crisis. Last year nearly 50m tonnes of e-waste was generated
worldwide – or about 7kg for every person on the planet. These are electronic goods made up of hundreds
of different materials and containing toxic substances such as lead, mercury, cadmium, arsenic and flame
retardants. An old-style CRT computer screen can contain up to 3kg of lead, for example.
Once in landfill, these toxic materials seep out into the environment, contaminating land, water and the air.
In addition, devices are often dismantled in primitive conditions. Those who work at these sites suffer
frequent bouts of illness.
An indication of the level of e-waste being shipped to the developing world was revealed by Interpol last
week. It said almost one in three containers leaving the EU that were checked by its agents contained illegal
e-waste. Criminal investigations were launched against 40 companies. "Christmas will see a surge in sales
and waste around the world," says Ruediger Kuehr, executive secretary of Step. "The explosion is happening
because there's so much technical innovation. TVs, mobile phones and computers are all being replaced
more and more quickly. The lifetime of products is also shortening."
According to the Step report, e-waste – which extends from old fridges to toys and even motorised
toothbrushes – is now the world's fastest growing waste stream. China generated 11.1m tonnes last year,
followed by the US with 10m tonnes, though there was significant difference per capita. For example, on
average each American generated 29.5kg, compared to less than 5kg per person in China.
By 2017, Kuehr expects the volume of end-of-life TVs, phones, computers, monitors, e-toys and other
products to be enough to fill a 15,000-mile line of 40-tonne lorries. In Europe, Germany discards the most e-
waste in total, but Norway and Liechtenstein throw away more per person. Britain is now the world's
seventh most prolific producer, discarding 1.37m tonnes, or about 21kg per person. No figures are available
from government or industry on how much is exported.
Although it is legal to export discarded goods to poor countries if they can be reused or refurbished, much is
being sent to Africa or Asia under false pretences, says Interpol. "Much is falsely classified as 'used goods'
although in reality it is non-functional. It is often diverted to the black market and disguised as used goods
to avoid the costs associated with legitimate recycling," said a spokesman. "A substantial proportion of e-
waste exports go to countries outside Europe, including west African countries. Treatment in these countries
usually occurs in the informal sector, causing significant environmental pollution and health risks for local
populations," he said.
And I reproduce below another report from the daily The Gurdian:

CO2 emissions are being 'outsourced' by rich countries to rising economies

Greenhouse gas output of China and elsewhere is increased by making goods that are then used in the US
and Europe

The world's richest countries are increasingly outsourcing their carbon pollution to China and other rising
economies, according to a draft UN report.
Outsourcing of emissions comes in the form of electronic devices such as smartphones, cheap clothes and
other goods manufactured in China and other rising economies but consumed in the US and Europe.
A draft of the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by the Guardian,
says emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases warming the planet grew twice as fast in
the first decade of the 21st century as they did during the previous three decades.
Much of that rise was due to the burning of coal, the report says. And much of that coal was used to power
factories in China and other rising economies that produce goods for US and European consumers, the draft
adds.
Since 2000, annual carbon dioxide emissions for China and the other rising economies have more than
doubled to nearly 14 gigatonnes a year, according to the draft report. But about 2 GT a year of that was
produced making goods for export.
The picture is similar for other rising economies producing goods for export, the report finds.
"A growing share of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in developing countries is released in the
production of goods and services exported, notably from upper-middle-income countries to high-income
countries," the report says.
Factories in China and other rising economies now produce more carbon pollution than industries in America
and Europe.
"A growing share of global emissions is released in the manufacture of products that are traded across
international borders," the draft says.
And here is an excerpt from a Reuters piece:

Rich world seen behind global pollution

By Timothy Gardner
Rich countries are partly responsible for pollution from poor ones, including poisonous mining discharge,
because they buy many of the raw materials and goods that produce the waste, environmental groups said.
“We have exported our industry overseas and yet there’s no pollution controls in these places or the
pollution controls are terribly inadequate.” - said Richard Fuller, founder of the New York-based Blacksmith
Institute, which has compiled a database of 600 of the world’s worst polluted places.
Blacksmith and Green Cross Switzerland, which works to clean up contamination from industrial and military
disasters, released a report on Tuesday called “The World’s Worst Polluted Places” -- available at
www.worstpolluted.org.
It found that artisanal gold mining, contaminated surface water, radioactive waste processing and uranium
mining and the recycling of used lead acid batteries, most of which occur in poor countries from Africa to
Asia, are some of the world’s top 10 sources of pollution dangerous to human health.
Millions of people are poisoned or killed each year by industrial pollution and emissions, it said.
 Part III
Chapter 1

Now I shall write a few words on Global Worming.

This is one subject which is no longer deemed controversial. It cannot be. People all over the globe are
experiencing its devastating effects. When we were leaving your planet, fires were razing in millions of
acres of forests all across the planet – from Australia to USA, from Europe to Asia. Extremely heavy rainfall
were ravaging many parts of the globe. Intensity and frequency of sea-storms were breaking all previous
records. Severe heatwave condition prevailed in many regions, even the temperate zones were not spared.
Vast swathes of land were turning into deserts at an alarming rate while many regions were suffering from
prolonged droughts, and rising sea-levels were continuing to displace people from thousands of miles of
coastal areas. This situation presented mankind with an excellent opportunity to act unitedly and to launch
a 'Save Mankind' mission, but even now you highly 'intelligent' beings are faltering.

I shall quote a few newspaper headlines:

“Earth gets hotter and deadlier during decades of climate talks.... world leaders have been meeting for 29
years [since 1992] to try to curb global warming, but in that time Earth has become hotter and deadlier. “

“Most major nations lag in acting on climate fighting goals.”

“Brazil's Amazon destruction hits record.”

“Over 200 major glaciers disappear in Italy due to climate change.”

“Study connects climate hazards with 58% of infectious diseases.”

“Cement CO2 emissions quietly double in 20 years....since 1992, cement emissions globally have
tripled, contributing more than 7% to GHG emissions.”
“Hot poles: Antarctica an Arctic 40 and 30 degrees C above normal.”
“Zombie ice from Greenland will raise sea level 10 inches.”
Climate summits, big and not-so-big, are ritually held, but pledges made by the so-called 'leaders' at
those summits are seldom followed up by meaningful actions. The Secretary General of UN , Mr. Antonio
Guterres had warned during the COP27 summit “The world is on a highway to climate hell with our foot on
the accelerator.” He is right. But what can the UN do if the most polluting countries stick to their plans of
exponentially increasing “growth”? Such plans entail burning of more and more fossil fuels. Pollution and
climate-crisis are global problems, but you do not have any global body that can directly intervene in any
country's 'internal' affairs even if that country is doing harm to the globe.

After reading this far, I'm sure you've realised how precarious your situation is. HIPED and Climate Crisis
are catastrophic in the gravest sense of the word.

You had once asked me “ Isn't there a way out of the crisis we have created?”. Before I reply, I request
you to read an article written by one of my friends and colleagues. She is from our planet of course, and
she is a member of our Earth-mission team. She studied hundreds of reports and documents in the course
of her research on DSES, TFC and related matters which made her quite angry, and that anger made her
write this piece as an appeal to sensible human beings. I reproduce the entire article bellow. She wrote it
as one of the members of your race – the human race. The reason is obvious. She intended to publish it ,
and we didn't want to disclose our true identity.

The Devil and the Vile Creed

1
The so-called mainstream economists, well entrenched in higher echelons of society’s power
structure, talk ad nauseam about their God called GDP-growth. They are not the only ones;
State officials, Corporate chiefs, Business Chambers and the ‘experts’ of ubiquitous think-tanks are
releasing press statements concerning ‘growth’ almost daily. Through the mainstream media, they
keep reminding us of the immense importance of maintaining a high growth rate, a number which
has almost become synonymous with ‘the economy’ of a State, region or the globe. The overall
well-being of all societies is being equated with their economic performance, and this ‘economy’
thing is being represented by the magic number called GDP growth rate, or simply as Growth with
a capital G.
Let us try here to derive some features of this magic number from a few reported facts and from
some relevant statements made by very eminent persons and reputed organisations. Here we go.
On the 11th of November 2013, India’s then-PM Dr. Manmohan Singh talked about big-time
corruption and related issues in a press meet. I quote below a few sentences from a news piece
published on the 12th of November in The Statesman, Calcutta edition.
Noting that the country’s fast changing economy in the wake-of economic reforms and
globalization was also throwing up new and increasingly complex crimes and corruption cases, the
PM said “Economic growth also implies greater opportunity for corruption.” We must remember
that Dr. Singh himself is a renowned ‘mainstream’ economist, a man who ushered neoliberalism
into India with its accompanying ‘reforms’.
During an IMF-World Bank meet in April 2011, the seating chief of IMF, Mr. Strauss Kahn made the
following statement :
It is absolutely normal for countries like China and India to grow [at the rate of] over 9% and 8%
and experience inflationary pressure.
Now I quote two sentences from the 2014 annual report of ILO:
Business activity is picking up (i.e., growth rate is positive), but the misery of [global]
unemployment continues to pile up….unemployment will increase in coming years. The above lines
were penned by the then DG of ILO Guy Ryder himself, and he had also added that the growth
which the world was witnessing can be called “Jobless Growth’.
In 2015, Larry Summers, the former Secretary of Treasury, USA, wrote an article titled “Persistent
Jobless Growth”, and in it the following lines appeared:
If we look at the data on workers aged 25 to 54 – the group we think of as a backbone of the
workforce – the percentage of those who are not working has risen by a factor of more than three
over the course of my lifetime, and that trend seems inexorably upward. If current trends continue,
it could well be that a generation from now a quarter of the middle-aged demographic will be out
of work at any given moment.
Let us go farther back to 2005; an article in World Affairs journal begins with this line:
Unemployment is rising worldwide, generally unmitigated and, increasingly made worse by
“jobless growth”. (Jobless Growth and Unemployment: A Global Phenomenon, M Victor Louis
Anthuvan)
In that same year. IMF’s MD Christian Lagarde had to say this:
Seven out of ten people today live in countries where inequality has increased over the past 3
decades….the richest 85 people in the world own the same amount of wealth as the bottom half of
global population…..In India, the net worth of the billionaire community increased 12-fold in 15
years, enough to eliminate absolute poverty in this country twice over. We should remember India
was, during the period she referred to, one of the fastest growing economies in the world.
Globally, the three previous decades saw fairly steady, positive growth rate.
An UNDP report, that came out during India’s exciting ‘boom’ period, had this to say:
“India has experienced strong economic growth in recent years, yet extensive, acute, multi-
dimensional poverty persists – 53.4% Indians are victims of multi-dimensional poverty.” An UNICEF
report (Mapping India’s children) revealed at that time that 47% Indian children suffered from
malnutrition.
I now quote a few sentences from an OECD report (2011) that studied the link between inequality
and Growth :
True, in a majority of OECD countries, GDP growth over the past two or three decades has been
associated with growing income disparities….There is a growing gap between low- and middle-
income households which is particularly pronounced in Finland, Israel, Sweden, Spain and the US.
More generally, growing income disparities between low and middle-income households have been
more widespread and pronounced than the average, as measured by the Gini coefficient. Some
countries have seen widening disparities in the lower half of income distribution, taking place even
when overall inequality has been narrowing–this pattern is particularly striking in Spain. In other
countries, such as Australia, the United Kingdom and the US, between 20% and 50% of total income
gains generated have accrued to the top 1% of households, pointing to rising inequalities also
within the upper half of income distribution.
So, what do we find? High growth breeds high-level corruption, it fuels distressing inflation, it
fosters inequality, it takes widespread poverty for granted, its gains bypass the vast majority, and it
does not create the promised jobs. Job growth can even be negative, as has been the case in India
in recent past (ILO-RBI reported that during the period of 2014-15 and 2018-2019 India’s job
growth was negative although Growth was fairly high).
The putative pundits, so conspicuous in corporate media, seldom look concerned about glaring
inequality. For them and their superiors, it is the ‘economy’ that matters, and nothing else. But
the truth is - rising inequality hurts this ‘economy’ thing badly. I quote from the OECD study cited
above:
To explore the question further, our study estimated a relationship for GDP per capita in which a
change in income inequality was added to standard growth drivers such as physical and human
capital. The idea was to test whether the change in income inequality over time has had a
significant impact on GDP per capita on average across OECD countries, and if this influence differs
according to whether inequality is measured in the lower or upper part of the distribution. The
results show that the impact is invariably negative and statistically significant: a 1% increase in
inequality lowers GDP by 0.6% to 1.1%.
Another study, made by a few economists in the USA, reveals that during the 30 year period
between 1990 and 2010 the US economy has lost a whopping $23 trillions due to rising inequality.
This particular group of researchers included Mary Daly, the head of San Francisco federal bank.
The real scenario is lucidly depicted by Max Lawson, Head of Advocacy and Public Policy, Oxfam,
Great Britain: There is no getting away from the fact that the big winners of globalization are those
at the top. Our economic system is heavily skewed in their favour, and arguably increasingly so.
Far from trickling down, income and wealth are instead being sucked upwards at an alarming rate.
Once there, an ever more elaborate system of tax havens and an industry of wealth managers
ensure that it stays there, far from the reach of ordinary citizens and their governments. Instead of
an economy that works for the prosperity of all, for future generations and for the planet, we have
instead created an economy for the [top] 1%.....One of the key trends underlying this huge
concentration of wealth and incomes is the increasing return to capital versus labour. In almost all
rich countries and in most developing countries, the share of national income going to workers has
been falling. This means workers are capturing less and less of the gains from growth. In
contrast, the owners of capital have seen their capital consistently grow (through interest
payments, dividends, or retained profits) faster than the rate the economy has been growing. Tax
avoidance by the owners of capital, and governments reducing taxes on capital gains, have further
added to these returns……As Warren Buffett famously said, he pays a lower rate of tax than anyone
in his office, including his cleaner and his secretary. Within the world of work, the gap between the
average worker and those at the top has been rapidly widening. While many workers have seen
their wages stagnate, there has been a huge increase in salaries for those at the top.
Hmm. This God of economy looks more like an incarnation of Devil.
The apologists of the ruling policy-paradigm try to justify everything by resorting to the phoney
“trickle-down” effect theory, mentioned above by Max Lawson. This particular “theory”,
trumpeted as economic wisdom, has been duly discredited long ago by very renowned economists
including Josef Stiglitz, Paul Crugman and Thomas Picketty. Stiglitz describes this as a “quaint
notion that everyone benefits from enriching those at the top”, and John K. Galbraith, referring to
"trickle down" economics, had quipped “If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass
through to feed the sparrows.”; yet this junk wisdom continues to mould official policies of States
almost everywhere.
Here I shall mention an IMF report. Trickle-down policies not only fail to promote national
economic growth, they actually hurt it, according to a new study by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF). When incomes rise for the bottom 20 percent of earners, GDP improves, but when
incomes rise for the top 20 percent of earners, GDP actually declines, five IMF economists
conclude in their report, “Causes and Consequences of Income Inequality : A Global Perspective.”
The researchers compared data from 159 advanced, emerging and developing economies,
analysing the relationships between GDP growth rates, wealth gaps, and other markers of
economic stability, including poverty rates, worker productivity, economic mobility, and access to
financial services. Economies that relied on trickle down policies experienced higher levels of
income inequality and lower GDPs, the IMF study found. Citizens in these countries had fewer
opportunities for economic advancement and productivity suffered.

2
In the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis, a high level commission (the Sen-Stiglitz-Fitousi
commission) had this to state: The key defect of the GDP concept is undermeasurement of
externalities, natural resource depletion and biodiversity destruction. This commission also
reminded us that not “economic production” but “people’s well-being” should be kept in focus
by the policy makers. Yes, this GDP-obsessed, for-profit system has proved to be disastrous for
our environment, for the biosphere, and for people in general.
Let us look more closely into matters environmental. The landmark Global Environmental Outlook
(GEO) report, prepared by 250 scientists from 70 nations, depicts how deadly smog-inducing
emission, chemicals polluting drinking water and groundwater, and the accelerating destruction of
ecosystems crucial to the livelihood of billions of people are driving us toward catastrophe. It
reveals how land degradation through mega-farming and deforestation occurs in areas of Earth
home to 3.2 billion people. Rampant overconsumption and wastage of products and resources
by the rich, the report says, are mostly responsible for this devastation. Here is a bit of
information: The World Inequality Report-2022 reveals that the top 10%, who own as much as
76% of world’s wealth, is responsible for 50% of harmful emission.
Commenting on the GEO report, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “There is a clear
prognosis of what will happen if we continue with business-as-usual”. This “business-as-usual”,
needless to say, is run by Big Capital & Big Finance (BCBF) in collaboration with pliable States, and it
pursues endless Growth at all costs.
Overproduction, and overconsumption are overtly encouraged and recommended by the
growth-at-all-cost doctrine. In 1955, an American economist, consultant and retail analyst Victor
Lebow published an article in the “Journal of Retailing” in which he said “Our enormously
productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the
buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfactions, our ego
satisfactions, in consumption.. We need things consumed, burned up, worn out, replaced, and
discarded at an ever increasing rate”. This sickening passage was written at a time when Big
Business in the US was beginning to drill consumerism into the hearts and brains of the American
people. The State backed this idea strongly. The Chairman of the Council of advisors, under
President Eisenhower, stated “The US economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce consumer
goods”. This pernicious brand of economic culture was soon exported to most parts of the
industrialised world by the enormously powerful US State and big corporations who were rapidly
expanding their markets abroad. This model of economics serves the purpose of the acquisitive
Power Elite very well, while the rest of mankind and the planet’s ecosystems are being pushed to
the brink of disaster.
It is fashionable these days among ‘experts’ of all hues to express concern about “Global
Warming”, which is being caused by the greenhouse gases emitted by industrial civilisation. The
relation between GDP growth and GHG (Greenhouse gas emission) has been firmly established
years ago. A path-breaking study had shown that an 1% increase in per capita GDP increases
emission by 0.733% (this study used data of 1960-2008 period from 150 countries). Such findings
are not surprising at all; ever-increasing production entails ever-increasing amounts of energy-
consumption and fuel-burning in all the stages of processing and transportation. (Let me just
mention in passing that World Bank’s World Development Indicators database shows how GDP
growth is directly related with air-pollution. Data accumulated during 1990-2016 reveal that air-
pollution is increasing in direct proportion to growth.)
Colossal amounts of food and other commodities are wasted every year. A staggering 33% of food
produced is wasted, revealed FAO a few years ago. Needless to say, enormous amounts of energy
and other resources linked to fertiliser, water, transportation, agrichemicals and fodder is also
wasted in this process. Textile waste accounts for 22% of global mixed waste, for which ‘fast-
fashion’ is responsible, says a study published in Nature magazine. (An American generates about
81 Lbs of textile waste each year!) Fashion industry also generates 10% of pollution. Only 1% is
recycled, contrary to popular belief. No doubt the fashion industry, led by big brands, is growing at
a rapid rate by successfully persuading rich people to discard perfectly wearable but ‘out-of-fast-
fashion’ clothing. This causes the overall GDP growth to rise too, a ‘performance’ which is then
dutifully applauded by mainstream media.
No wonder then that this System is generating incredible amounts of solid waste. According to
the World Bank’s recent report What a Waste 2.0: A Global Snapshot of Solid Waste
Management to 2050 , global annual waste generation is expected to jump to 3.4 billion tonnes
over the next 30 years, up from 2.01 billion tonnes in 2016. The greed-driven capitalist system is
knowingly creating a global wasteland.
The PR institutions of the reigning economic-political system teaches us to regard Growth as the
indicator of ‘development’, and the prevailing official concept of development sets great store by
big constructions of all kind – multi-lane express-ways, dizzying skyscrapers, gigantic building-
complexes, huge shopping malls, large dams, new cities, big ports and airports, sprawling luxury
resorts, huge stadia and amusement parks – all these are being constructed, reconstructed and
renovated everywhere. In fact, we are witnessing an orgy of such ‘development’ activities for
decades now, although construction works for socially desirable public services are shamelessly
neglected. Global Resources Estimate provides us with data of resource consumption in big
construction industry:
Energy consumption – 40% (of total energy consumption in all industries)
Water consumption – 50%
Materials for buildings and roads – 60%
Agricultural land loss – 80%
Timber – 60%
Indirectly, this industry is responsible for 25% rainforest destruction and 50% coral-reef
destruction. This is nothing less than ‘ecocide’ - to borrow a term coined by activist-lawyers - a
horrendous crime against ecosystems tantamount to large-scale genocide.
Coming back to overconsumption, how much resources are humans consuming? In 2017, Global
Footprint Network estimated that our ecological footprint is about 1.73 Planet earth; this means
humanity’s demands were 1.73 times more than what the planet’s ecosystem renews. European
Union says global consumption of materials, such as biomass, fossil fuels, minerals and metals is
expected to double by 2050, while annual waste generation is projected to increase by 70%. An EU
spokesperson said “There is only one Planet Earth, yet by 2050 we will be consuming as if there
were three.” But the ruling plutocracy couldn’t care less; faster rate of overconsumption (by the
rich, of course) means faster rise in GDP, the wealthy worthies get to amass more wealth, and
business-as-usual continues.
A few pieces of information about the wealth of our celebrated High-Net-Worth entities might be
of interest here:
 The London based Tax Justice Network estimates secretive offshore wealth
worldwide to be a stunning $32 trillion. (That, surely, is a bit of super-wealth trickling
(flowing?) down to shady nooks.)
 Governments lose about $500 billion in tax revenue annually through offshore bank
accounts, says TJN.
 Big US multinationals like Pfizer, GE, Walmart, Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, IBM have about 1.6
trillion dollars parked offshore. Apple has Ireland as tax haven while Goldman Sachs and
Nike use Bermuda.
 Tax havens affect far more than tax. They provide an escape route from financial
regulations, disclosure, criminal liability and more.
 The main users of tax havens are large financial institutions and transnational companies -
that is, BCBF, Big Capital and Big Finance, the much-vaunted drivers of the economy.

3
Abbreviations used below :
LABC = Lobbyists and Agents of Big Capital,
EGSP = Essential Goods & Services Provider
VIP = Very Important People
PTB = Powers That Be
RDE = Real Drivers of the Economy
SCFN = State-Corporate-Finance Nexus
The PTB’s propaganda regiment wants everybody to believe that BCBF (and Big Consumers) are
the real drivers of economic Growth, and when they are allowed to grow (that is, to get richer)
rapidly, everybody prospers, and we are thus led into a capitalist utopia, living happily ever after.
“Enrich the rich” – that is their slogan. The State happily pursues economic policies that seek to
maximize profits of Big Business at the expense of everything else. In fact, the State almost
everywhere has become a bizarre kind of Welfare State favouring the wealthy only. It doles out
lots of concessions and incentives to Big Business to improve the “ease-of-doing-business” rating,
but even a tentative proposal to provide similar incentives and concessions to small farmers or
workers or the self-employed millions is vehemently opposed by LABC, both from inside and
outside of governments. They deride it as ‘populist’ idea that would seriously harm the
’economy’.

But the truth is, our workers and labourers, our small peasants, those hundreds of millions of self-
employed women and men, and our unpaid domestic workers are the real EGSP, they are the RDE,
and they are VIP. The findings of a research project, partly sponsored by NASA, warned us about
the possible catastrophic fallout of this feed-the-rich policy which cynically exploits the RDE, but
we shall discuss that project a bit later. The underlined statement made above, I guess, calls for
some elaboration. I shall do that presently. Let me furnish some data first:

 In the developing countries, 80% of food is produced by small farmers. And contrary to
the negative perception created by LABC, these farmers are very efficient. An eminent
food analyst named Miguel Altieri, after a decade-long study, categorically concluded
that small farmers are the most efficient food producers. A World Bank study,
conducted in north-east Brazil, estimated that redistribution of farmlands into small
holdings would raise the output by as much as 79%.
 FAO says, in the fisheries and aquaculture sector, 90% are small fishermen/women who
produce more than 160 million tonnes annually, providing food for billions.
 Most organizations worldwide are small by size, but their importance to both
developed and developing economies and societies is indisputable. According to the
World Trade Organization, small-and micro-sized enterprises represent over 90 per cent
of the business population, 60-70% of employment and 55% of GDP in developed
economies. SMEs therefore do not just significantly contribute to the economy – they
are the economy. In India, for example. 99% of the total MSME units (numbering 6.34
crores, 1 crore=10 million) are micro-units, employing 12 crore Indians and
contributing more than 34% to GDP. (World Bank stats say there are only 59,400
companies enlisted in all the stock exchanges whereas the numbers of small units are
400 million!)
 The self-employed/freelancers, along with the small-and-micro units, form the
backbone of the economy everywhere. More than one-third of the American workforce
freelanced amid the Covid-19 pandemic, contributing $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy,
a study by Upwork revealed. In India, the self-employed form the largest part of total
workforce. They are EGSP, providing countless kinds of services and goods.
 The ‘Wealthy’s Welfare’ scheme is hugely subsidised by, among other things, unpaid
labour. In money terms, the amount of unpaid work, mostly done by women, is a
 stupefying $10.9 trillion per year, as per ILO estimates. The immense importance of
this unpaid labour was tellingly demonstrated by the women of Iceland on 24th of
October, 1974. 99% of them refused to cook, to clean or to look after children; the
whole system came to a virtual standstill.
Such eye-opening facts are seldom highlighted, while the LABC invent and spread lies that further
the interests of SCFN. As Noam Chomsky wrote somewhere, truth is buried under edifice after
edifice of lies upon lies.

The Covid-19 pandemic has clearly revealed to the world how indispensable the services of the
lowly labourers, those health-workers and the self-employed are. Here, I shall quote from a few
pieces of pertinent news reports.
 From an Associated Press report : In Britain, this is the season of shortages….there are
gaps on supermarket shelves, some gas stations have run out of fuel, Milkshakes were
off the menu for weeks at McDonald’s, chicken has been in short supply at KFC. The
problems have several causes, but one stands out: There jaust aren’t enough truck
drivers. The UK is short tens of thousands of drivers, as factors including Brexit and Covid
pandemic converge to create a supply chain crunch. …The Government is scrambling to
lure more people into truck driving, long viewed as an underpaid and underappreciated
job. Other countries like the USA and Germany are also facing a driver shortage. ….The
farming and food processing industries are short of fruit-pickers and meat-packers.
 (Reported in The Statesman, 20.09.2021 “Nurses are leaving the profession and
replacing them won’t be easy”) In the US, the Covid-19 fourth wave is exacerbating the
ongoing crisis for the nursing workforce and has led to burnout for many nurses. As a
result, many are quitting their jobs across the country. …Hospitals are desperate to fill
nursing vacancies. This report tells us that the hospitals are offering very large salaries
to new recruits now, but earlier , the average wage of overworked nurses was a paltry
$1,450 per week.
 An AP report, released in December last year, tells us about the problems faced by the
restaurateurs and pub owners all over UK and the USA, and one of the main problems
were shortage of workers. In U.S., a survey done by the National Restaurants
Association revealed 77% of owners were finding it difficult to run business because
they didn’t have enough workers.
 In India, where a suddenly-announced cruel lockdown forced millions of migrant
labourers to walk hundreds of kilometres back to their native villages, the activities in
construction industry and many other industries came to a grinding halt due to
shortage of workers. Big and not-so-big farmers spent sleepless nights in the harvesting
season as farm labourers were unavailable during lockdown. Similar reports came from
all over the world in the last two years.

The fact of the matter is - the whole system is heavily dependent for its survival on the labour,
abilities, and skills of the RDE. This should have been universally recognised as a self-evident
truth, one that is not required to be proved by citing reports and statistics. But most of us have
been so thoroughly brainwashed by the preachers of the ruling religion that we refuse to see what
they don’t want us to see. Now, unexpectedly, the Covid-19 pandemic has opened the eyes of
some conscientious members of the super-rich community too. In July 2020, eighty multi-
millionaires signed an open letter that called for higher taxes on themselves to pay for the
pandemic aid. In that letter they had a message for their governments : “Tax us. Tax us. Tax us.”.
Calling themselves the Millionaires for Humanity, these wealthy individuals petitioned for higher
taxes on the rich to help pay for the billions in new govt. programmes made necessary by the
pandemic. They wrote –

“Today, we, the undersigned millionaires and billionaires, ask our governments to raise taxes on
people like us. Immediately. Substantially, Permanently. As Covid-19 strikes the world,
millionaires like us have a critical role to play in healing our world. No, we are not the ones
caring for the sick in the incentive care wards. We are not driving the ambulances. We are not
restocking grocery store shelves or delivering food door to door. But we do have money, lots of
it. Money that is desperately needed now.”

This poignant message says a lot with striking simplicity. It makes us see a very obvious but
overlooked truth, it snubs our govt. advisers who always recommend tax cuts for the rich, and it
calls for a permanent and substantial change in regressive tax policies that favour the rich.

4
The LABC, by stressing incessantly on the importance of ‘fiscal prudence’, virtually forbid
governments to spend public money for the welfare of public. “That will hamper growth and hurt
the economy”, they smugly assert. Most governments, being part of the SCFN, readily comply, and
budgetary allocations for people’s basic needs - food, nutrition, health, housing, public transport,
education and social security - get slashed regularly. The PTB willingly overlook an obvious truth
– spending money for public welfare is not ‘expenditure’ but investment that yields huge profits to
the society. Let me present some extremely pertinent data here:

 The prestigious medical journal Lancet found from a study that very impressive $18
benefits accrue from every $1 invested in reducing wasting and stunting.
 A World Bank study based on data from 139 countries since 1950, showed that the
average rate of return (on investment) on education is 9-10% per year.

Conversely, not investing in people hurts the real economy very badly:
 Multiple-forms of-Malnutrition (MoM) costs the world economy more than $3.5
trillion per year (Global Panel on Agriculture & Food)
 A study paper, prepared in 2015 by a Harvard Medical School research team
(published in Health Affairs) showed that economic loss due to 8 million preventable
death worldwide was about $6 trillion per annum.
 DHL International GmbH, a German research organisation, found in 2018 that In
India, 56 million kids were out-of-school. The economic cost of this, they calculated,
was $6.79 billion. I should mention here that according to UNICEF and other
reputable research organisations, school drop-out rate increases with poverty and
deterioration of schools.
 Poor quality housing in England is costing the NHS £1.4bn a year in treatments, a
Building Research Establishment (BRE) report has found. BRE also identified the
cost of poor quality housing to wider society – to mental health, educational
achievement, and long term care for example – calculating it at £18.5 bn each
year.
 The annual total cost to the economies of the EU of leaving people living in
inadequate housing is nearly €194 billion. (Eurofound research group) [If such is the
case with advanced countries, one can easily deduce that the global loss to
 economy runs into trillions of dollars when one takes into account vast regions of
South Asia, South-East Asia, East Europe, South America and Africa where tens of
millions live in shanties and slum dwellings.]
 Losses due to pollution related illness more than $4.6 trillion per annum (Lancet)
 The “Vision for Everyone” resolution, approved and passed by UN General
Assembly in July 2021, says “At least 2 billion are living with vision impairment and
blindness, and 1.1 billion people have vision impairment that could have been
prevented or is yet to be addressed. 90% of these people live in low and middle
income countries, experts linked with this resolution said, the loss of sight costs the
global economy a staggering $411 billion each year.

Evidently, curtailing investments in crucial social sectors is terribly harmful for the real economy.
But the SCFN cares a fig for the real (i.e., social) economy. When their pet experts pontificate
about ‘the economy’ they are actually talking of that economy whose performance they link with
corporate business growth, share-market indices, numbers of multi-millionaires, credit ratings and
similar parameters.

5
OECD came out with a compelling report named “Beyond Growth: Towards A New economic
Approach” in 2020. This is, in a nutshell, what the report says:
Business-as-usual is dead, and what has shaped economic analysis and policy over the last 40
years has failed us. …..this [neoliberal] policy has given us a running series of crises: declining
productivity, rising inequality, financialization of debt, deteriorating jobs and quality of life, civil
wars, pandemics, natural disasters, ecological destruction and climate warming.
This damning report also blamed the GDP-obsession as one of the factors responsible for this
pathetic state of affairs. Even though it came from OECD, one of the most powerful blocks of
countries, the mainstream media overlooked it, which is not at all surprising. But one wonders
why the alternative media and anti-establishment organisations do not highlight such an
immensely significant assessment.
John Maynard Keynes, arguably the most famous and the most influential economist in the last
100 years, was neither a Marxist nor a socialist. Here is what he had to say about the capitalist
system (quoted from his article “National Self-sufficiency”, Yale Review, 1933):
The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found
ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is
not virtuous -and it, does not deliver the goods. In short, we dislike it, and we are beginning to
despise it. Keynes did not live long enough to see the devastation of Nature perpetrated by the
latest avatar of capitalism, the predatory ‘neoliberalism’.

Yes, what we are facing is predatory capitalism at its worst. People’s common land and water is
handed over to private corporations by the complicit State; peasants are forced to give up their
lands, after which they have to become ‘unskilled’ labourers ready to be exploited by Big
Business; labour laws are framed to favour big industry at the expense of workers, denying them
universally recognised labour rights; indigenous people’s communities are ritually devastated to
give Big Capital access to common natural resources: environmental laws are drafted in such a way
that they allow Big-Cap to pollute and damage environment and ecosystems with impunity. All
these heinous crimes are committed openly in the name of ‘growth’, ‘development’ and ‘progress’
while the victims, the people at large, are watching helplessly. But why don’t people erupt in
protest? The situation reminds me of a few lines written by Einstein way back in 1947:
Everyone is aware of the situation, but only a few act accordingly. Most people go on living their
everyday life; half-frightened, half-indifferent, they behold a ghostly tragic-comedy that is being
performed on the international stage. But on the stage, on which the actions under floodlights
play their ordained parts, our fate of tomorrow, life or death of nations, is being decided.

Keynes once famously said “Capitalism is the astonishing belief that the nastiest of motives of
nastiest men somehow or the other work for the best results in the best of all possible worlds.”
This “astonishing belief” has been instilled into our brains by all the institutions controlled by PTB.
It is high time we expunged such beliefs from our minds. Otherwise we are doomed. The 1800-
page IPBES report, the GEO report, WWF’s Living Planet report – they all point to the fact that the
prevailing nasty system threatens the very survival of our species.

A few years ago, an important research paper was published in the peer reviewed Elsevier journal
of Ecological Economics. The study was partly sponsored by NASA, and was done by
mathematician Safa Motehsarrei of US National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Centre in
association with a team of natural and social scientists. By investigating the Human-Nature
dynamics, the study project identified the most salient interrelated factors, namely, Population,
Climate, Water, Agriculture and Energy. These factors can lead to collapse when they converge
to generate two crucial social features: “the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on
the ecological carrying capacity”, and “the economic stratification of society into Elite[rich] and
Masses or Commoners”. Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to
overconsumption of resources, with elites based largely in industrialised countries responsible
for both, it says. It also says “….accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society,
but rather has been controlled by the Elite. The mass of the population, while producing the
wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by the Elite, usually at or just above subsistence
level”. Focussing on the role of continued resource depletion, the team finds: “With a larger
depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elite are still thriving, but
eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elite.” Elite wealth monopolies
mean that they are buffered from the most detrimental effects of environmental collapse until
much later than the Commoners, allowing them to continue “business-as-usual” despite the
impending catastrophe.

On the 7th of February, 2020, Pope Francis urged governments to use the coronavirus crisis as a
revolutionary opportunity to create a world that is more economically and environmentally just
and where basic healthcare is guaranteed for all…..Francis urged governments to use the pandemic
to rest what he said was a sick economic model that exploits the poor and the Earth…..[he said]
There is need for a kind of Copernican revolution that can put the economy at the service of men
and women, not vice versa. …..He said such a revolutionary new economy is one that bring life not
death, one that is inclusive and not exclusive, humane not dehumanising, one that cares for the
environment and does not despoil it. Pope Francis has frequently called for the world to use the
pandemic as chance to re-imagine a global economy that value people and the planet over profits.

The Pope speaks of the urgent need for a great revolution; so did Einstein when he said “Men has
never freed themselves from intolerable bondage, frozen into law, except by revolutionary
action.” Yes, revolutionary actions must be initiated - There Is No Alternative – TINA, and there is
no time to lose. Perhaps the RDE can begin by emulating those Icelandic women and Indian
farmers, while all of us provide logistic as well as active support to enable them sustain themselves
when they launch the greatest- and longest-ever general strike. World’s children should get
involved too; it is their future that is being ruined by the continuation of business-as-usual.
As you can see, this article busted a number of myths and exposed quite a few big lies fed to you by PTB.

Let me tell you that we decided against publishing the above piece because we found that you people in
general do not care for truth, and any such feeble attempt to drive you to action is bound to fail. In fact,
most people do not even care to read serious writings. (You made me read a story penned by one of your
celebrated writers, Doris Lessing, - remember? In that story named Reports on The Threatened City, aliens
like ourselves come to Earth to warn the residents of a city about an impending catastrophe, but the
citizens refused to pay heed and act. We found ourselves in a similar situation.)

Now let me try to answer your above-mentioned question - “ Isn't there a way out of the crisis we have
created?”.

You must have by now realised that in order to survive, the human race must drastically reduce
overproduction, overconsumption and waste-generation, and you must begin the process with the top
10% High Net Wealth individuals as they are the most obvious culprits. But that is not being done
anywhere; instead, these HNW people are hailed as “drivers of growth”, and policies are framed to
facilitate their wealth-accumulation process. Do you think this situation is going to change soon? No, it
isn't, because the decision-makers and policy-makers of your System are themselves mostly members of
the top 10% who are not going to prescribe anything that hurts their self-interests. Moreover, they (PTB)
have very successfully managed to convince most of the people about the infallibility of this 'trickle-down'
System.

We cannot see how you can survive as a species unless you 'civvy' people dismantle the whole system-
structure and rebuild it on the basis of a radically different paradigm, if that is the right word. But most of
you (and the PTB) are unwilling even to consider such radical transformations. The PTB have their own
reasons - they are only concerned with their short-term material gains and they refuse to give up even
an iota of power and wealth and privilege (they are always keen to acquire more). That itself is a big, big
hurdle on the way to radical social-political-economic restructuring , because PTB has almost total control
over your media-world which helps them propagate their own false narrative. Besides lies, they have all
kinds of other weapons at their disposal to brutally suppress any attempt to loosen their stranglehold on
the 'System'.

Let me further explain why I see no ray of hope for your species.
 PART 1V

In order to transform the SES drastically , you and your society's 'executives' must immediately take a few
bold steps; but, as I shall show below, you are hardly prepared to do that.

Let me first quote from an article on smartphones :

Hidden Environmental costs of Smartphones

If you’re reading this on a phone screen, you hold between your hand valuable pieces of the Earth’s crust
which have been extracted from mines all over the planet. You’re not alone: an estimated 3.5 billion people
use smartphones, almost half of the world’s population, and this number grows every day. It’s an
environmental disaster, because building every phone requires the polluting extraction of irreplaceable
elements like gold, cobalt or lithium. To make matters worse, the average user switches phone every two
years without recycling the retired device, generating toxic waste and squandering materials. The model is
unsustainable.

A phone’s birth is the most contaminating part of its life cycle: around 80% of each device’s carbon footprint
is generated at the manufacturing stage. This is due to the mining, refining, transport and assembly of the
dozens of chemical elements that make up cutting-edge tech: iron for the speakers and microphones,
aluminium and magnesium for the frames and screen, copper, silver and gold for the electronic circuits,
graphite and lithium for the batteries, silicon for the processor, and lead and tin for the solderings.

Those are just the most recognisable elements. Nearly all phones also require 16 of the 17 rare-earth metals.
These are substances like neodymium and terbium which are not actually all that rare — however they are
scattered in small concentrations across the planet, which makes their isolation costly. China is their main
exporter.

Minerals of blight and blood

Smartphones generate more greenhouse gases than any other consumer electronic devices, although their
carbon footprint is modest compared to the main perpetrators of global warming, namely the energy sector
and transportation. Even so, mining for components is deeply problematic, because besides contaminating
the atmosphere, the process destroys ecosystems and generates tailings, toxic byproducts which seep into
the soil and water.

According to Patrick Byrne, Senior Lecturer in Geography at Liverpool John Moores University, and Karen
Hudson-Edwards, Professor in Sustainable Mining at the University of Exeter (UK), gold mining for the tech
industry is one of the main causes of deforestation in the Amazon. In addition, the extraction process
generates mercury and cyanide waste which contaminates river systems and drinking water. This sort of
industrial activity is a global problem which affects people as well as ecosystems.

In Chile’s Salar de Atacama (and other Andean regions of Argentina and Bolivia), huge quantities of water
are evaporated to obtain the lithium that fuels our electronic batteries, to the detriment of local farmers.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the Democratic Republic of Congo has become the world’s main producer
of coltan, a mineral containing tantalum for electronic devices which for years has been traded by armed
groups to finance civil war.

Long live the phone

Given the extraordinary social and environmental cost of creating new smartphones, it would make sense to
extend their lifespan for as long as possible — and yet, most phones aren’t durable or repairable. The
website iFixit, which is run by consumers who defend their right to repair, slams manufacturers for common
practices which prevent mending their products, like securing touchscreens and batteries with glue or not
using universal fasteners for the internal components.

Telephone service providers are another guilty party, as they encourage clients to switch phones with every
new contract. In the Netherlands, the company Fairphone tries to avoid this squandering with a modular
smartphone that can be easily fixed (the only one rated 10/10 on iFixit’s repairability score). “ The average
smartphone has a lifespan of two years — we aim for every Fairphone to last around five years,” says
Fabian Hühne, a company spokesman. However, a recent study suggests that repairability is not always the
limiting factor in phones’ life cycles.

“I know that people bash the phone companies for ‘planned obsolescence‘ of their products, but in most
cases phones are replaced when they are still working fine,” says researcher Tamar Makov, from Yale
University. Marketing and technological innovation play a key role, as people want the latest tech, but
Makov’s studies have revealed that brand is also a key factor. By analyzing the sales of second-hand iPhones
and Samsung phones, she and her colleagues discovered that Apple’s products had a lifespan on average
one year longer, which they attribute to the “psychological factor” of owning a well-known branded product.

The smartphone afterlife

Most of the pollution produced by each mobile phone is during its manufacture. Even after a fruitful life of
use, toxic metals in phones will continue to contaminate water and soil if they end up in landfill sites. Current
estimates place smartphone recycling below 15% in developed countries. Consumers are used to hoarding
obsolete devices, whose components devalue with every year they spend in a drawer.

End of the article

Now, do you truly believe that billions of people who have got addicted to their smartphones will stop using
/ upgrading their handsets after knowing the devastations caused by these gadgets? No, they won't. In fact,
they can't.

Let me now talk about cars, private cars.

Every now and then one comes come across news reports and scholarly articles that tell us how
cars are polluting and congesting your cities around the world. One such report, prepared by
researchers at the renowned Environment and Forecasting Institute, Heidelberg, Germany, is truly
revealing. This research paper focusses on the environmental, social and health-related cost of a
car and comes up with some extremely disturbing facts.
The researchers computed the environmental, financial and health impacts of a medium
sized car that has travelled 13,000 Km per year for ten years. As early as in the manufacturing
stage, long before the car is to hit the road, it has caused a lot of damage to the environment and
ecosystem. How? Primarily through the extraction, transportation and storage of raw materials
like steel. The car is yet to run its first mile, and already it has produced 26.5 tonnes of waste and
922 cubic meters of polluted air.
This car, assuming it runs 100 Km per 10 litres of unleaded petrol and is fitted with a three-
way catalytic converter, will exhale 46.8 Kg of nitrogen dioxide, 325 Kg of carbon monoxide, 4.8 Kg
of sulphur-di-oxide and a whopping 44.3 tonnes of carbon-di-oxide. Add to that another 1000 Cu-
m of polluted air containing toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyl) and carcinogens like benzene,
and you have a nice little package of disaster. Even after the ends its useful life, disposal of the
vehicle will produce a further 102 million Cu-m of polluted air!
The birth, the life and the death of a car produce, in total, 59.7 tonnes of CO2, 2.04 billion
Cu-m of polluted air and 26.5 tonnes of rubbish. And then there are other social, environmental
and health-related costs. The researchers estimate that each car in its lifetime is responsible for 3
dead trees and at least 30 ‘sick’ trees. In Germany, an estimated 820 hours of life is lost through
car accident related fatalities, and 2,800 hours of life is damaged by such accidents. These figures
are associated with a single car.
The study also reveals that a vast amount of precious land space is needed for the driving
and parking requirements of cars. In Germany, this is estimated to be 3,700 sq-Km of land, 60%
more than what is allotted for housing!
Way back in 1999 a research paper titled ‘The Health Cost of Motor-vehicles Related Air-
pollution’ ‘was published in the USA-based Journal of Transport Economics & Policy. The
researchers McCubbin and Delucchi had shown how car emission is responsible for a host of
diseases and they also estimated the health related cost of cars. The amount runs into many
millions of dollar per year. In the last 23 years this cost must have gone up quite a bit as number
of cars plying has increased. It has to be mentioned here that along with chronic and acute
bronchial troubles, cardiovascular diseases and cancer, car fumes are found also to be responsible
for kidney damage.
Of course there are other costs which have not been considered in these two articles. One
of them is the cost of ‘lost opportunity’. The huge amount of steel that is consumed by the car
industry could have been utilised in far more productive machinery and infrastructure-related
projects and for the manufacture of public transport vehicles. In most big cities, tens of
thousands of cars run on streets in busy hours, causing traffic congestion and thereby delaying all
kinds of activities which ultimately leads to substantial social and financial losses; after all, in a
world driven by commerce, time lost means money lost. Many countries allow subsidised diesel
to be used as fuel in expensive diesel-powered private cars and thereby wasting millions of dollars
of public money unjustifiably. Tens of thousands of acres of fertile land that could have been used
for growing food crop are being acquired to cultivate bio-fuel crops to meet the ever-increasing
demand for car fuel. In many places like Brazil and Indonesia forests are being destroyed and
indigenous people are being evicted from their homelands to facilitate bio-diesel and bio-ethanol
farming.
Do you think that those accustomed to ride cars, after reading such facts, will dump their vehicles and start
availing public transport and start riding bicycles? I'm afraid they won't.

Now let us look at mining. The environmental impact of mining is devastating, to say the least. I don't think I
need to prove this point with tonnes of statistics, you know it as well as any other knowledgeable person.
Yet I quote here from an article on coal mining by Greenpeace:
About coal mining impacts
Background -1 July, 2016
Mining is the first step in the dirty life cycle of coal. When coal mines move in, whole communities are forced
off their land by expanding mines, coal fires, subsidence, and overused and contaminated water supplies.
Mines are quick to dig up and destroy forests and soils. But once the coal is gone, the problems they leave
behind, like acid mine drainage, can persist for decades.
Underground mines, which provide the majority of the world’s coal, allow coal companies to extract deep
coal deposits. About 40 percent of the world’s coal mines are the more damaging strip mines (also called
open cast, open pit, mountaintop or surface mining).

Strip mining impacts

Strip mining is highly destructive. Yet the industry often prefers to strip mine because it takes less labour and
yields more coal than underground mining. In some countries, such as Australia, strip mines make up 80
percent of mines.

Strip mining damages and pollutes ecosystems

Strip mining clears trees, plants and topsoil. Mining companies scrape away earth and rocks to get to coal
buried near the surface. Mountains may be blasted apart to reach thin coal seams within, leaving
permanent scars on the landscape.
In this way, strip mining destroys landscapes, forests and wildlife habitats. It leads to soil erosion and
destruction of agricultural land.
When rain washes topsoil disturbed by mining into streams, these sediments pollute waterways. This can
hurt fish and smother plant life downstream. It can also disfigure river channels and streams, which leads to
flooding.
Strip mining also causes noise pollution and dust as heavy machinery disrupts topsoil and mining activity
creates coal dust.

Strip mining contaminates water

When miners upturn earth, minerals and heavy metals within it can dissolve into mine wastewater and seep
into the water table. This increases risk of chemical contamination of groundwater and acid mine drainage
(see below).
Strip mining also lowers groundwater levels around the mine. This is because, in order to remove coal, vast
quantities of groundwater must be pumped out of the mine. As a result, surrounding ecosystems and
farmland may become drier, and erosion may start to change the landscape. Strip mining also uses
significant amount of water to suppress dust.
When mines lower groundwater levels, this also affects local people, who must continually drill deeper wells
to get water.
Washing coal (to remove unwanted materials) creates a toxic waste slurry that can threaten surface waters
or leak into groundwater.
Coal power plants also strain precious global water supplies.

Strip mines leave lands barren

Coal mining is land disturbance on a vast scale.
  In the US, from 1930 to 2000, coal mining altered about 2.4 million hectares (5.9 million acres) of
natural landscape, most originally forest.
This mining activity leaves behind barren lands that stay contaminated long after the mine shuts. Although
many countries require coal mines to have reclamation plans, it is a long, difficult task to undo all their
damage to water supplies, habitats and air quality. Re-seeding plants is difficult because mining thoroughly
damages soil. If coal companies go bankrupt, costly rehabilitation may be left undone.
 In China, coal mining degraded the quality of 3.2 million hectares of land, according to a 2004
estimate, but total mine wasteland was restored at a rate of only 10 to 12 percent.
 In Montana, US, replanting projects were only 20 to 30 percent successful. In Colorado, even lower
survival (about 10 percent in some locations) was seen for oak aspen seedlings.

Underground coal mining impacts

Although seen as less destructive than strip mining, underground mining still causes widespread damage to
the environment.

Subsidence
Collapse of earth into underground mines, or subsidence, is a serious problem.
In room-and-pillar and long-wall mines, columns of coal and other structures are used to support the ground
above. Later in the mining process, they are often taken out. The mines are left to collapse. The land above
starts to sink, seriously damaging buildings and entire landscapes. Subsidence can also cause farmland to fill
with water and become wetland or lakes.

Underground mine water drained away

Underground mining lowers the water table, changing the flow of groundwater and streams.
In Germany, the mining industry pumps over 500 million cubic meters of water out of the ground every year.
Only a small percentage of this water is used by industry or local towns — the rest is wasted. What’s worse,
removing so much water creates a kind of funnel that drains groundwater from an area that is much larger
than the immediate coal-mining environment.

Underground mines bring toxins to surface

Underground mining also brings huge amounts of waste earth and rock to the surface. This waste often
becomes toxic when it contacts air and water.

Coal mine methane

Coal mining releases methane into the atmosphere. Formed during the geological process that creates coal,
methane is 84 times as powerful as carbon dioxide at disrupting the climate over a 20-year timespan.
Globally, about six percent of methane emissions due to human activity come from coal mining.
Most coal mine methane comes from underground mines. This methane is often captured and used as town
fuel, industrial fuel, chemical feedstock and vehicle fuel. Methane is also used in power generation projects.
The process to extract this methane, coal seam gas fracking, creates large amounts of waste water, risking
surface and groundwater sources. It also increases the risk of uncontrolled methane leaks, contaminating
water sources and destroying climate. Yet coal bed methane projects have been increasing rapidly globally.
Coal fires smoulder and pollute
Coal fires can burn for decades or even centuries, releasing fly ash and smoke laden with greenhouse
gases and toxic chemicals. These fires are a significant environmental problem in China, Russia, the US,
Indonesia, Australia and South Africa.
Coal fires occur when coal seams burn or smoulder, or when coal storage or waste piles burn. Lightning,
forest fires and peat fires can start coal fires. But they are often caused by mining accidents and bad mining
practises. In Indonesia, the same fires used to clear large tracts of rainforest ignited over 300 coal fires since
the 1980s.
Underground coal fires can release smoke laden gases including carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide
(CO2), methane (CH4), and sulphur dioxide (SO2). Coal fires also cause fly ash to release from mine vents
and fissures.
Coal fires can cause temperatures to rise at the surface, and contaminate groundwater, soil and air.
China has the world's most coal fires. Between 20 and 200 million tons of coal burn uncontrollably each
year. This accounts for 0.5 to 5 percent of China's national coal consumption and related carbon dioxide
emissions. (Although coal fires are significant, emissions from China's power plants are far higher.) India, on
the other hand, has the world’s greatest concentration of coal fires.

Acid mine drainage

When coal and other rocks unearthed during mining mix with water, this creates acid mine drainage. The
water takes on toxic levels of minerals and heavy metal and leaks out of abandoned mines. From there it
contaminates groundwater, streams, soil, plants, animals and humans.
Taking on an orange colour, it can blanket rivers, estuaries or sea beds, killing plants and making surface
water unusable for drinking. Acid mine drainage can continue for decades or centuries after a mine closes
unless costly reclamation projects are done.
 Greenpeace documented massive open-cast coal mines' harmful effects in Kalimantan, Borneo. The
mines cause widespread water pollution when they discharge toxic waste into rivers and leave acid
mine drainage to collect in artificial lakes.

Coal mining harms workers' and residents' health

Mining coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet, exposes both miners and local populations to health
hazards.

Threat to mine workers

When people who work in mines, or live close by them, inhale coal dust and carbon, this hardens their lungs,
leading to black lung disease (also called pneumoconiosis or CWP). An estimated 1,200 people in the US still
die from black lung disease annually. The situation is even worse in developing countries.
Mine collapses and accidents kill over a thousand workers around the world every year. Chinese coal mine
accidents killed more than 900 people in 2014 alone.

Threats to local populations

People living near coal mines have higher-than-normal rates of cardiopulmonary disease, chronic
obstructive pulmonary disease, hypertension, lung disease, and kidney disease.
Local communities also suffer when coal fires occur. These fires emit toxic levels of arsenic, fluorine, mercury
and selenium, contaminants that can enter the air and food chain of local communities.
End of article

Here is another one from the Guardian daily:

Rare earth mining in China: the bleak social and environmental costs

China produces 85% of global supply of the 17 chemically similar elements crucial to smartphone, camera
lens and magnet manufacture – and half that output is from the city of Baotou

Although Wang Jianguo knows little about rare earths mining, he is an accidental expert on its
consequences.
A short walk from the 43-year-old former farmer's dilapidated brick home in Xinguang Number One Village,
is the world's largest rare earths mine tailings pond – an endless expanse of viscous grey sludge built in the
1950s under Mao Zedong. The pond, owned by the Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech
Company, or Baotou Steel, lacks a proper lining and for the past 20 years its toxic contents have been
seeping into groundwater, according to villagers and state media reports. It is trickling towards the nearby
Yellow River, a major drinking water source for much of northern China, at a rate of 20 to 30 metres a year, a
local expert told the influential Chinese magazine Caixin.
"In the beginning, there was no tap water here, so we all drank from wells," Wang said. "The water looked
fine, but it smelled really bad." In the 1990s, when China's rare earths production kicked into full gear, his
sheep died and his cabbage crops withered. Most of his neighbours have moved away. Seven have died of
cancer. His teeth have grown yellow and crooked; they jut out at strange angles from blackened gums.
Rare earths are a group of 17 elements: "iron grey to silvery lustrous metals" that are "typically soft,
malleable, and ductile; and usually reactive", according to the US Geological Survey. They're crucial in
manufacturing a broad array of high-tech products, such as smartphones, wind turbines, camera lenses,
magnets and missile defence systems. China produces more than 85% of the world's supply, about half of
which comes from Baotou, a city of 2.5 million in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, 650km
northwest of Beijing.
Processing rare earths is a dirty business. Their ore is often laced with radioactive materials such as thorium,
and separating the wheat from the chaff requires huge amounts of carcinogenic toxins – sulphates,
ammonia and hydrochloric acid. Processing one ton of rare earths produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste;
Baotou's rare earths enterprises produce 10m tons of wastewater per year. They're pumped into tailings
dams, like the one by Wang's village, 12km west of the city centre.
China began mining the minerals on a mass scale in the mid 1980s, and after nearly two decades of lax
environmental regulation has only recently begun to address their noxious legacy. Seven years ago, China
began restricting and taxing its rare earths exports, ostensibly to improve its environmental record. In 2010,
the US, European Union and Japan – long accustomed to China's inexpensive supply – lodged a complaint
with the World Trade Organisation. China, they argued, was simply encouraging domestic consumers to pick
up the slack. In late October, the organisation ruled that China's export restrictions violated its regulations.
In 2009, Baotou Steel began relocating farmers from villages around the tailings pond to resettlement sites
on the city's outskirts; it has set up a waste managing warehouse staffed by 400 employees. Yet the pond is
still a reminder of how far China's cleanup effort has to go. Surrounding villages are decimated. Stray dogs
amble through dessicated corn and wheat fields, the rusted frames of dismantled greenhouses arching
above tangles of discarded plastic bags.
"In China, the cost of environmental violations and damage is still way too low," said Ma Jun, director of the
Beijing-based Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs. "Rare earths is such a classic case of this – we
basically export the resources at a rather cheap price, and much of the environmental cost is externalised to
local communities."
Most of the rare earths processed by Baotou are extracted in Bayan Obo, a mining district in the Gobi desert
120km north of the city. Its largest open-pit mine is 1,000 metres deep and spans 48 sq km; in satellite
images by Nasa released in 2012, it appears as one of many massive black craters dwarfing a sprawl of
apartment blocks directly to their south.
In 2009, the Beijing Science and Technology News reported that the area is struggling with its own pollution
problems. A villager near its eastern mine told the newspaper that while visiting a nearby sheep market the
year prior, he found that many of the animals had two rows of teeth, some so long that they couldn't close
their mouths.
Other countries have become less dependent on China's rare earths supply since 2010, when export quotas
caused global prices to spike. The US and Australia are developing their own, more environmentally friendly
mines. Rare earths-dependent industries are learning to recycle.
A hard hat-wearing mechanic outside a tightly-guarded refinery near Baotou's tailings pond said the
declining demand has hurt his job prospects. The man, surnamed Li, said a few hundred of his colleagues
had been laid off over the past few months. When asked about the plant's environmental impact, he
shrugged his shoulders. "We don't understand these things," he said. "We're just here to make a living."
End of article

And here is yet another from the USA :

Environmental Impacts of Mining

Compiled by Alaskans for Responsible Mining.

Mining: Environmental Impacts

Mining can pollute air and drinking water, harm wildlife and habitat, and permanently scar natural
landscapes. Modern mines as well as abandoned mines are responsible for significant environmental
damage throughout the West.
 More than 40 percent of stream reaches in western watersheds are contaminated by acid mine
drainage and heavy metals. [1]
 Mining has contaminated drinking water wells used by residents of Questa, New Mexico, and San
Luis, Colorado, among other rural western towns.[2]
 Residents of Silver Valley, Idaho, and other rural communities have been forced to leave their homes
because of mining waste contamination.
 Mining has caused massive fish kills in the Red River in New Mexico, the Sacramento River in
California, and the Alamosa River in Colorado, among others.
 Hundreds of migratory birds have been poisoned after landing at mine pit lakes in California and
Nevada.
 Seventy-eight mines and mining facilities are so toxic that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) has designated them as federal Superfund sites. [3]
Water
“Water is more precious than gold” in the arid mountain West. Dramatic population growth in recent
decades coupled with record-breaking droughts in parts of the West, have intensified demand for this
naturally scarce resource. Pollution further compromises water supplies and increase costs to consumers as
more water treatment becomes necessary to make contaminated water safe for human consumption and
agricultural use.
Acid Mine Drainage
Acid mine drainage is the primary source of water pollution from mining. Mining unearths large amounts of
ore that contains precious metals, such as gold and silver, as well as iron and other sulfides. When sulfides
in the ore are exposed to water and air, sulfuric acid is created, which can seep from mines and waste rock
piles into streams, rivers, and groundwater. This seepage is called acid mine drainage.
· Acid mine drainage can be 20 to 300 times more acidic than acid rain and can burn human skin and kill
fish and aquatic organisms.[4]
 Some of the most acidic water ever recorded was in the Richmond Mine in California. The water
was more acidic than battery acid and had been know to catch fire.[5]
· Acid mine drainage also leaches toxic metals, such as arsenic, cadmium, chromium, lead, from ore and
waste rock, causing additional water pollution.
· Acid mine drainage can often occurs for decades and even centuries after mining operations cease. Acid
mine drainage is still seeping from mines in Europe that were worked by Romans prior to A.D. 476.[6]
Cyanide and Mercury
Chemicals used to separate valuable metals and minerals from ore also may leak into streams, rivers, and
groundwater. Some of these chemicals, such as mercury, persist in the environment for decades. Although
no longer used in mining, mercury continues to contaminate waterways. Cyanide, which is widely used in
modern gold mining, is another potentially deadly chemical that can get into water supplies.
Air and Water Quality Permit Violations
Water and air quality permits for mine operations are frequently violated. For example:
 An EPA inspection between 1990 and 1995 of some U.S. mines and processing facilities found that
about 20 percent were polluting air or water in violation of federal environmental laws. [7]
 In a 1998 case study, EPA documented dozens of toxic releases from mines and processing facilities
in Arizona, New Mexico, and Nevada.[8]Eight out of 12 major mines in Montana have major water
quality problems that were not predicted by federal agencies at the time of permitting.
 Nineteen air and water quality violations at mines in Arizona owned by ASARCO, BHP
Copper, and Phelps Dodge, among others.
 Eighteen water quality violations at mines in Nevada owned by Placer Dome, Barrick
Goldstrike, and Kinross Mining Company, among others.
 Four water quality violations at mines in New Mexico owned by Phelps Dodge and Molycorp,
among others.

Water Quantity
Mining can deplete surface and groundwater supplies. Groundwater withdrawals may damage or destroy
streamside habitat many miles from the actual mine site.[9]
 In Nevada, the driest state in the nation, the Humboldt River is being drained to benefit gold mining
operations along the Carlin Trend.
 “Mines in the northeastern Nevada desert have pumped out more than 580 billion gallons of water
since 1986—enough to feed New York City’s taps for more than a year. “[10]
 Groundwater withdrawn from the Santa Cruz River Basin in southern Arizona for use at a nearby
copper mine is lowering the water table and drying up the river. [11]
Air Quality
Hundreds of tons of rock are unearthed, moved, and crushed in mining operations significantly increasing
the amount of dust and particulates in the air. In addition, mine tailings, which may contain finely ground
and even toxic waste, can become airborne. This air pollution can directly affect human health.
  A high school football game in Questa, New Mexico, had to be cancelled when heavy winds blew
tailings across the field.[12]
 Tailings from uranium mines on Navajo Reservation lands in Arizona have contributed to health
problems experienced by local residents.[13]

Human Health
Mining can cause serious human health problems. Statistical studies suggest linkage between mining
pollution and human disease and mortality. For example:
 “The death rate from serious disease has been unusually high in the Clark Fork Basin near Butte,
Montana, and areas of intensive mining and smelting for over a hundred years. (The Clark Fork
Basin contains the most extensive area of Superfund sites in the United States.) National cancer
statistics also have shown elevated death rates from cancer—particularly lung, bronchial, and
trachea cancer—in areas of the Clark Fork Basin where mining has occurred. Cancer mortality rates
in these areas have been much higher than in other areas in Montana and neighboring states where
mining activity has not occurred.[14]
 Silver Valley, Idaho (Need more information about this one.)
Wildlife and Habitat
Because mining is often a heavy industrial activity that involves road construction and the use of heavy
machinery, wildlife can be dislocated and habitat damaged or destroyed. Birds and other wildlife can be
poisoned after drinking contaminated water in tailings ponds. Increases in sedimentation or acidity can kill
trout, salmon, and other aquatic organisms. Even at very low concentrations, exposure to heavy metals can
stunt fish growth. The macro-invertebrates that fish eat live in stream sediment and eat algae, both of
which often contain higher metal concentrations than surface waters.[15]
 In 1995, 340 migrating geese were found dead in the abandoned Berkeley Pit copper mine in Butte,
Montana.
 A 1995 spill of 40,000 gallons of cyanide from the New Gold Mine in Montana killed all the fish in
Golconda Creek.
 A spill from the Molycorp mine in Questa, New Mexico, killed all of the aquatic life in an eight-mile
stretch of the Red River.[16]
 Fish in a 15-mile stretch of the Alamosa River in Colorado were killed by a spill from the Summitville
Mine, near Leadville.
 Spills and drainage for the defunct Richmond Mine have killed fish and plants along miles of the
Sacramento River, which provides drinking water for 80,000 residents of Redding, California.[17]
 Mining also can cause erosion and sedimentation, burying gravel beds important for salmon
spawning and damaging habitat for trout and other species that depend on clear, cold, oxygen-rich
water.
Hazardous Waste
Metal mining generates hundreds of millions of pounds of hazardous waste each year, but because of a
loophole in the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, mining waste is exempt from the special
handling and treatment normally required for hazardous waste. The metal mining annually produces more
toxic waste by volume than any other industry in the United States.
 In 2001, the metal mining industry reported 2.8 billion pounds of toxics emitted to air, water, and
land or 45 percent of all industry-emitted toxics.[18]

Notes
[1] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Water. Liquid Assets 2000: America’s Water Resources
at a Turning Point. Washington, D.C. May 2000.
[2] Personal communication with Amigos Bravos, Taos, New Mexico, and Alliance for Responsible Mining, La
Jara, Colorado.
[3] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fact Sheet: NPL Abandoned Mine Land Sites and Cleanup Leads.
Washington, D.C. September 2003.
[4] Proceedings of the First Midwestern Region Conference (held at Southern Illinois University at
Carbondale). June 1990.
[5] The Seattle Post Intelligencer, “More than a century of mining has left the West deeply scarred,” Robert
McClure and Andrew Schneider. June 12, 2001.[6] Environmental Impacts of Hardrock Mining in Eastern
Washington, University of Washington, Center for Streamside Studies, College of Forest Resources and
Fishery Sciences, Seattle, WA. 2000.
[7] Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands (1999). National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. National
Academies Press.
[8] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Solid Waste. Damage Cases and Environmental Releases
from Mines and Mineral Processing Sites. Washington, D.C. April 1998.
[9] Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands (1999). National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. National
Academies Press.
[10] The Seattle Post Intelligencer, “More than a century of mining has left the West deeply scarred,” Robert
McClure and Andrew Schneider. June 12, 2001.
[11] Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands. National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. National
Academies Press. 1999.
[12] High Country News, “The mine that turned the Red River blue,” Ernest Atencio. August 28, 2000.
[13] The New York Times. 2003
[14]Da Rosa, Carlos D., and Lyons, James S. Golden Dreams, Poisoned Streams: How Reckless Mining
Pollutes America’s Waters and How We Can Stop It. Mineral Policy Center, Washington, D.C. p. 8.
[15] Hardrock Mining on Federal Lands (1999). National Academy of Sciences, Washington, D.C. National
Academies Press. p. 159.
[16] High Country News, “The mine that turned the Red River blue,” Ernest Atencio. August 28, 2000.
[17] The Seattle Post Intelligencer, “More than a century of mining has left the West deeply scarred,” Robert
McClure and Andrew Schneider. June 12, 2001.
[18] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 2001 Toxics Release Inventory Executive Summary. Washington,
D.C. July 2003. http://www.epa.gov/tri/tridata/tri01/index.htm
End of article

I could have gone on and on, but the point is – your society is not going to drastically reduce
mining activities in the near future, however catastrophic the consequences of such activities are.
On the contrary, huge areas of land are being leased out to big mining companies in India,
China, USA, Australia, Russia, Africa and South America. These Big Miners are being allowed to
flout environmental laws with impunity.

Let me turn to medicine. Worldwide, enormous amount of medicines are simply thrown away
because they have “expired”. Here is an excerpt from a report:
 Drug Expiry Myth

The information we have in our column today about this issue came from a study conducted by the
US Food and Drug Administration, per request of the US military.
Since the military has a massive and expensive stockpile of medications, which it has to discard and replace
every few years, the research was done for
obvious economic incentive.
The study revealed that “90 percent of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were
perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date,” retaining most of their original potency.
Following this scientific investigation by the US-FDA, it is apparent that the expiration date does not
stipulate the exact date at which medication is no longer effective or has become unsafe.
According to the Harvard Guide, “medical authorities state expired drugs are safe to take, even those that
expired years ago.” While the potency diminishes with time, 90 percent of the medications are generally still
effective, even “15 years after their expiration date,” as we quoted earlier.
Of course, there are some exceptions. There are drugs whose stability and potency diminish faster and last
shorter. Examples of these are nitroglycerin, insulin, liquid antibiotics. Tetracycline was listed as a rare
exception, still controversial.
The report further stated that excluding the above, “most medications are as long-lasting as the ones tested
by the military.”
End of report
Clearly, massive amount of material resources are wasted every year due to this phoney expiry thing. But
the authorities do not care, and the pharma companies are profiteering merrily. Not only that, overuse of
medicine is rampant. Just a part of the picture is shown below:

Musculoskeletal procedures
Spain: Rates of inappropriate total knee
replacement 26% and total hip
replacement 25%;34 USA: Rate of
inappropriate total knee replacement
34%35
International: 4-fold variation across
countries and 2–3 fold variation within
countries in rates of knee
replacement;36 England: 13-fold regional
variation in rates of arthroscopic knee
lavage;37 USA: 5-fold regional variation
in adjusted rates of total hip and knee
replacement38

Cardiovascular procedures
Italy: Rate of inappropriate PCI 22%
and inappropriate coronary angiography
30%;39 USA: Rate of inappropriate PCI
1·1% for acute indications and 11·6%
for non-acute indications with variation
across hospitals (6·0–16·7%);40 Brazil:
Rate of inappropriate coronary
angiography 20%41
International: 9-fold variation in use of
PCI and 5-fold variation in use of
coronary artery bypass grafting across
OECD countries;30 USA: Rates of
elective PCIs vary 10-fold within the
state of California;42 India: A second
opinion centre reported recommending
against cardiac interventions in 55% of
patients in whom intervention was
initially recommended43

Hysterectomy Taiwan: 20% of hysterectomies Canada: 2·7-fold variation in rates of

inappropriate;44 Switzerland: 13% of
hysterectomies inappropriate;45 USA:
Rates of inappropriate hysterectomies
between 16 and 70% across studies46
hysterectomy across regions within
Ontario;47 Netherlands: 2·2-fold regional
variation in rates of hysterectomy for
bleeding disorders; 2·3-fold regional
variation in rates for pelvic organ
prolapse;48 India: Prevalence of up to
9·8% overall, with one third of
hysterectomies performed in women
under the age of 35 (probably
inappropriate in this age group)49

Antibiotics for acute diarrhea
Italy: Among children hospitalised for
acute diarrhea, 9% received antibiotics
inappropriately;50 China: 57% of patients
received antibiotics inappropriately;
among those with an indication for
antibiotics, 21% were not treated
(adults);51 Thailand: 55% of children with
acute diarrhea received antibiotics
USA: 10·4% of patients with diarrhea
received antibiotics (often likely
inappropriate);53 India: 71% of children
with acute diarrhea received antibiotics
(despite recommendations against
routine use);54 India: Rates of antibiotic
use for acute diarrhea 43% in public
facilities and 69% in private facilities
 inappropriately52 (despite recommendations against
routine use

Millions of humans die due to wrong medical treatment and/or negligence, which causes huge amount of
drugs go waste (loss $42 billions, WHO data). Your markets are flooded with irrational and “me-too” drugs.
But nobody seems to be concerned about such wastages and wrongdoings. How do you think things are
suddenly going to change? Look at yourself – you are a member of the world community, aren't you? Are
you yourself really much concerned about HIPED? Are you yourself going to join an organisation of
environmental-political activists? Are you truly worried about your children's ' future?
Your “Branded Packaged Food” industry is doing hundreds of billion dollars of business; these big
companies employ industrial farming methods which need 10 Kcal of fossil fuel energy to produce 1 Kcal of
food value, whereas traditional farming uses 1 Kcal for producing 2.3 Kcal. Moreover, the latter practice,
unlike the former, is environmentally sustainable and produces much more nutritious food. Yet, there is
visibly no attempt from any quarters to make big food companies change their method of farming, and
neither is anybody banning junk food.
In fact, changing the food habits of the well-to-do people and reverting to small-scale traditional farming
can be hugely beneficial in all respects. Doing only two things can improve situation a lot - reducing red-
meat consumption and replacing water-guzzling crops like rice, sugarcane, wheat etc. with millet-like
crops and/or by cereal varieties that need less water, like Hopy corn. But is anybody listening? A much-
cited research paper, published in Annual Report of resource Economics, states “meat consumption must
decrease at least by 75% in rich countries to achieve climate targets”. Is any of your global 'leaders'
raising this issue in any of those summits?
Let us now look at the “surface-runoff” problem that starves the groundwater water aquifers . As more and
more people inhabit the Earth, and as more development and urbanization occur, more of the natural
landscape is replaced by impervious surfaces, such as roads, houses, parking lots, and buildings that reduce
infiltration of water into the ground and accelerate runoff to ditches and streams. In addition to increasing
imperviousness, removal of vegetation and soil, grading the land surface, and constructing drainage
networks increase runoff volumes and shorten runoff time into streams from rainfall and snowmelt. As a
result, the peak discharge, volume, and frequency of floods increase in nearby streams.
As you can see, this is one of the most serious problems needing immediate attention, but do you believe
any of the infrastructure or urbanisation projects, which in any case consume enormous natural resources,
will be shelved / stopped as a response? I don't think you are as naïve as that.
Consider the problems of waste-generation and product and resource wastage. The upper strata of your
society, which includes the super-rich, is encouraged to amass far more wealth than they know what to do
with. This automatically leads to overconsumption, wastage, and waste-generation. Moreover, this
extortionary 'System' weakens those billions whose labour drives your economy in reality, which threatens
your much-vaunted 'civilisation' itself. But the dominant economic system (DSES) follows policies which
favour those who already have far more than they need. Obviously, you need to dismantle such an
outrageously unsustainable system , but most of you are not ready even to give it a thought.
Power plants using fossil fuels are the largest emitters of GHG. Between 1980 and 2019, electricity
consumption more than tripled, while the global human population increased by roughly 75 percent. IEA
report 2021 says energy consumption is going to increase by 50% by the year 2050. Yet the privileged of
your world are not at all ready to reduce their energy consumption substantially, and no authority even
asks them to.

According to Carbon Disclosure Project, just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of GHG emission since
1998. Do you see any attempt from any quarters to penalise / control these companies and their asset
managers?
And here is another piece of info : between 2001 and 2017, the US military emitted 1.2 billion tonnes of
GHG. (Brown University study)

As has been stated in many forums, water scarcity is one of the biggest problems facing humanity, yet you
allow your breweries and your big beverage companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi to extract enormous
amounts of groundwater even in perennially dry regions. This is something which most of you know about,
so I shall only cite a couple of reports below

Where Everyone's Rationing Water — Except The Coca-Cola Plant

In the northern Italian region of Veneto, drought has forced half the municipalities to ration water resources.
In contrast, the region's Coca-Cola plant has upped production, using even more water that it gets for a
cheap price. (August 06, 2022)

On the morning of Sat., July 9, several hundred activists from the Rise Up 4 Climate Justice movement
arrived at the Nogara train station from all over the Veneto region, in northeastern Italy, and then walked to
the town's industrial area. They were headed to the local Coca-Cola plant to protest its "extractivist"
policies, which are based on hoarding resources at the expense of the local community.
In the Verona region, drought has caused a severe water crisis that has forced half of the municipalities to
restrict water use. On the other hand, Coca-Cola, which uses water as its main raw material, has not slowed
production.
Indeed, a regional decree from July 31, 2020 allows it to increase the "average flow rate" of water drawn
from the underground aquifer by 37%, and as demand for the soft drink continues to rise, production lines
are running at full capacity. All at a paltry price: one cent (in euros) per every 1,000 liters of water taken
from the aquifer.

Water rationing for citizens — but not Coca-Cola

In cafés along the way to the factory, 400-milliliter bottles of Coca-Cola "produced in Nogara" are on sale for
€3.40. The company has reduced the size of the half-liter bottles, but not the price, a trick used to mask the
effects of inflation and pass it on to customers.
Arriving in front of the factory gates, climate activists blocked the road, displaying signs denouncing
"speculation" and shouting slogans against the U.S. multinational.
"We talk about water rationing in homes and then there are companies that have direct access to water and
use it for products we don't need," a young ecologist, Fabrizia Toninello, told Rainews24.
A group of protesters from northeastern social centers, recognizable by their white overalls, tried to go
through the entrance gate, but were pushed back by police in riot gear. There was shoving, shouting, and a
few batons flew in the air.
"We want to draw attention to the fact that water rationing applies to private citizens and not to Coca-
Cola," explains Sergio Zulian, who arrived from Treviso, a city close to Venice, to participate in the
demonstration.

Here is excerpts another piece from The Guardian:

‘It’s plunder’: Mexico desperate for water while drinks companies use billions of
litres
Lillian Perlmutter in Mexico City

Oct 2022
Monterrey’s wealthy districts have higher water quotas, with tap water available 12 hours a day. The
disparity has led to protests and arson attacks on water pipes. Photograph: Julio César Aguilar/AFP/Getty

As drought grips cities like Monterrey, people queue with buckets for brackish water. But Coca-Cola and
other firms are still extracting groundwater
The drought in North Mexico means taps are dry in the city of Monterrey so pipas, primarily run by the city
authority, are the only way to deliver water to homes and businesses. As people who cannot afford bottled
water are drinking the brackish water from the trucks, anger is growing here that beverage companies with
bottling plants here, including Coca Cola and Heineken, are extracting billions of litres of water from public
reservoirs.
Several brewers and soft drinks companies have factories in the city, and these use nearly 90bn litres a year
in total, and over half of that – nearly 50bn litres a year (or 50m cubic metres) – is water from public
reservoirs.
Mexico is facing its worst water crisis in 30 years as reservoirs serving about 23 million people dry up. The
climate crisis has caused consistently hotter summers, and this year’s La Niña weather patterns created the
perfect conditions for severe drought.
Several cities have now reached “day zero” – the point of critical water scarcity when supplies run out.
More than half of Mexico is suffering from drought, and the national water authority, Conagua, declared a
state of emergency in four northern states. J
But the drought has not halted the water use of companies including Coca-Cola and Heineken use private
wells to continue extracting groundwater for their production lines.
In recent weeks, activists have popularised the phrase: “No es sequía, es saqueo” (“It’s not drought, it’s
plunder”).
Jaime Noyola, director of the Alliance of Users of Public Services, says his organisation predicted the crisis
four months ago. The public-interest group regularly protests outside government buildings. They allege
that local leaders, including the governor of Nuevo León state, Samuel García, are directly profiting from
drinks companies’ water use.
“From the behaviour of the companies, we don’t see anything that indicates they will give up [water]
voluntarily,” Noyola says. “And on the part of the local and state government, there’s a crisis of ineptitude,
and they blame everyone but themselves.”

I do not want to reproduce more such reports – there are hundreds of similar ones, and you can easily find
them on the Net. The point is – even those companies making harmful cola-drinks (we don't understand
why you call them 'soft' drinks) are seldom asked to stop their operations by your authorities. The water-
bottling companies are profiteering by plundering rural peoples' water and selling that to affluent
urbanites while billions of people are finding their water sources drying up. Do you see any drastic steps
being taken to stop this crime? We didn't . As long as the affluent minority is not affected, the PTB care a
fig for the crises facing mankind.
 PART V

Alternative energy

Before I take up this topic I must tell you that even if all your current energy needs are met by 'green'
renewable energy, the crisis created by the following HIPED problems will continue to threaten mankind :

Soil erosion and degradation, desertification

Deforestation

GHG emission from farming and other sources

Water-scarcity
Destruction of biodiversity

Pollution of land, seas, rivers and waterbodies caused by industries and farming

Wastage

Waste-generation

Environmental devastation caused by big constructions.

Environmental devastation caused by mining and by mineral exploration

Strangely, your global 'leaders' seldom hold summits to discuss these most serious of problems; you are
made to think that global warming is the only environmental problem worth considering, and that
problem is going to be solved soon by adopting technologies that produce 'green' energy.

The two most talked about 'green' energy sources are solar and wind-power. Here, I paste part of an article
full of data found in a World Bank report:

The Limits of Clean Energy

By Jason Hickel

In 2017, the World Bank released a little-noticed report (The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low-
carbon Future) that offered the first comprehensive look at this question. It models the increase in material
extraction that would be required to build enough solar and wind utilities to produce an annual output of
about 7 terawatts of electricity by 2050. That’s enough to power roughly half of the global economy. By
doubling the World Bank figures, we can estimate what it will take to get all the way to zero emissions—and
the results are staggering: 34 million metric tons of copper, 40 million tons of lead, 50 million tons of zinc,
162 million tons of aluminum, and no less than 4.8 billion tons of iron.
In some cases, the transition to renewables will require a massive increase over existing levels of extraction.
For neodymium—an essential element in wind turbines—extraction will need to rise by nearly 35 percent
over current levels. Higher-end estimates reported by the World Bank suggest it could double.
The same is true of silver, which is critical to solar panels. Silver extraction will go up 38 percent and perhaps
as much as 105 percent. Demand for indium, also essential to solar technology, will more than triple and
could end up skyrocketing by 920 percent.
And then there are all the batteries we’re going to need for power storage. To keep energy flowing when the
sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing will require enormous batteries at the grid level. This means 40
million tons of lithium—an eye-watering 2,700 percent increase over current levels of extraction.
That’s just for electricity. We also need to think about vehicles. This year, a group of leading British scientists
submitted a letter to the U.K. Committee on Climate Change outlining their concerns about the ecological
impact of electric cars. They agree, of course, that we need to end the sale and use of combustion engines.
But they pointed out that unless consumption habits change, replacing the world’s projected fleet of 2 billion
vehicles is going to require an explosive increase in mining: Global annual extraction of neodymium and
dysprosium will go up by another 70 percent, annual extraction of copper will need to more than double,
and cobalt will need to increase by a factor of almost four—all for the entire period from now to 2050.
The problem here is not that we’re going to run out of key minerals—although that may indeed become a
concern. The real issue is that this will exacerbate an already existing crisis of overextraction. Mining has
become one of the biggest single drivers of deforestation, ecosystem collapse, and biodiversity loss around
the world. Ecologists estimate that even at present rates of global material use, we are overshooting
sustainable levels by 82 percent.
Take silver, for instance. Mexico is home to the Peñasquito mine, one of the biggest silver mines in the world.
Covering nearly 40 square miles, the operation is staggering in its scale: a sprawling open-pit complex
ripped into the mountains, flanked by two waste dumps each a mile long, and a tailings dam full of toxic
sludge held back by a wall that’s 7 miles around and as high as a 50-story skyscraper. This mine will produce
11,000 tons of silver in 10 years before its reserves, the biggest in the world, are gone.
To transition the global economy to renewables, we need to commission up to 130 more mines on the scale
of Peñasquito. Just for silver.
Lithium is another ecological disaster. It takes 500,000 gallons of water to produce a single ton of lithium.
Even at present levels of extraction this is causing problems. In the Andes, where most of the world’s lithium
is located, mining companies are burning through the water tables and leaving farmers with nothing to
irrigate their crops. Many have had no choice but to abandon their land altogether. Meanwhile, chemical
leaks from lithium mines have poisoned rivers from Chile to Argentina, Nevada to Tibet, killing off whole
freshwater ecosystems. The lithium boom has barely even started, and it’s already a crisis.
And all of this is just to power the existing global economy. Things become even more extreme when we
start accounting for growth. As energy demand continues to rise, material extraction for renewables will
become all the more aggressive—and the higher the growth rate, the worse it will get.
It’s important to keep in mind that most of the key materials for the energy transition are located in the
global south. Parts of Latin America, Africa, and Asia will likely become the target of a new scramble for
resources, and some countries may become victims of new forms of colonization. It happened in the 17th
and 18th centuries with the hunt for gold and silver from South America. In the 19th century, it was land for
cotton and sugar plantations in the Caribbean. In the 20th century, it was diamonds from South Africa,
cobalt from Congo, and oil from the Middle East. It’s not difficult to imagine that the scramble for
renewables might become similarly violent.
If we don’t take precautions, clean energy firms could become as destructive as fossil fuel companies—
buying off politicians, trashing ecosystems, lobbying against environmental regulations, even assassinating
community leaders who stand in their way.
Now read the following article:

How the Wind Power Boom is Driving Deforestation in the Amazon

Author:
Francesc Badia i Dalmases
Amazon RJF Grantee
What has the destruction of balsa trees in the Ecuadorian Amazon rainforest got to do with the wind power
industry in Europe? As the international commitment to renewable energy has grown in recent years, the
increase in wind farms has triggered a huge demand for balsa wood, leaving a trail of deforestation in its
wake.
Balsa wood is used in Europe, and also more intensively in China, as a component in the construction of the
blades of wind turbines. Already-installed wind turbines, with blades that stretch to 80 metres, can cover an
area of approximately 21,000 square metres, which is equivalent to about three football pitches. More
recent wind turbine designs can incorporate blades that are up to 100 metres long that consume about 150
cubic metres of balsa wood each — equivalent to several tonnes — according to calculations attributed to
the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
In 2018, international demand for balsa wood increased significantly. The tropical wood is flexible and yet
hard, while also being both light and resilient. Ecuador, which is the main exporter of balsa, with about 75%
of the global market, is home to several large exporters, such as Plantabal S.A. in Guayaquil, which dedicates
up to 10,000 hectares to growing the wood for export.
Balsa fever
The increased demand led to the deforestation of virgin balsa in the Amazon basin, in what came to be
known as ‘balsa fever’. Balseros began to illegally deforest virgin balsa from the islands and banks of the
Amazonian rivers in an effort to overcome the shortage of cultivated wood. This has had a terrible impact on
the Indigenous peoples of the Ecuadorian Amazon, in a similarly brutal way to that caused by mining and oil
extraction in recent decades, and the rubber boom at the start of the 20th century.
In 2019, the extension of a road in the Pastaza province bordering Peru, through Indigenous Shuar and
Achuar territory, to link the community of Copataza to the western city of Puyo, caused controversy among
the Achuar people.
For the most part, locals perceived the road, which was built without waiting for full Indigenous consensus,
more as a threat of extractivism and deforestation than as a contribution to the potential development of
their community. But it advanced like a syringe through the jungle, reaching its destination in November of
that year.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen presented
the ambitious European Green Pact in Brussels. The pact, among other things, aimed to reverse climate
change by promoting the progressive replacement of fossil fuels, which contribute to global warming
through the production of greenhouse gases, with cleaner energy sources.

As a result of the 2019 pact, the financial outlook for renewables, including wind power, boosted the
number of wind farm construction projects in Europe, and added to China’s wind rush. In December 2020,
President Xi Jinping declared that China would increase its installed wind and solar power capacity to more
than 1,200 gigawatts (GW) by 2030, a five-fold increase from the current 243GW.
The triggering of ‘balsa fever’ has had devastating consequences for Ecuador’s Indigenous Amazonian
communities. The story soon moved from the local media to the international press. And in January this
year, The Economist published an article pointing out the problems that the irregular extraction of balsa for
wind turbine blades had caused in Ecuador, highlighting the negative impact on the Waorani Indigenous
people, based within the Yasuní National Park.
In September, when democraciaAbierta visited the Achuar Indigenous territory, travelling down the Pastaza
River, one of the areas most affected by balsa fever, we found that the territory’s balsa had already been
completely deforested and that the balseros, in their determination to obtain more wood, had moved onto
the Peruvian Amazon.
The consequences of this rush have been especially destructive for local communities. In June, the
Indigenous leaders of the Achuar Nationality of Ecuador (NAE) reacted by declaring that they would not
allow the deforestation of balsa wood in their territory. “Don't make any investment, even if you cut down
balsa you won’t be able to extract it, it won’t be sold,” they posted on Facebook.
But it was a futile declaration, which came too late.

In fact, from Scotland to Germany to India, everywhere huge areas of forest are being cleared to set up
wind power plants. So much for 'Green' projects!

We have seen that only a handful of people take notice of such statistics while most of you wax eloquent on
the supposed benefits of transition to 'green energy'.

Both Wind plants and large solar power plants are occupying (and going to occupy millions of acres of
arable land too. Can you afford to allow this to happen? Already, your society is facing food scarcity. Your
population has touched the 8 billion mark and is going to add another billion in next thirty years. Here is an
excerpt from an AP report on looming food-crisis:

UN climate report: Change land use to avoid a hungry future

Human-caused climate change is dramatically degrading the Earth’s land and the way people use the land is
making global warming worse, a new United Nations scientific report says. That creates a vicious cycle
which is already making food more expensive, scarcer and less nutritious.
“The cycle is accelerating,” said NASA climate scientist Cynthia Rosenzweig, a co-author of the report. “The
threat of climate change affecting people’s food on their dinner table is increasing.”
Earth’s land masses, which are only 30% of the globe, are warming twice as fast as the planet as a whole.
While heat-trapping gases are causing problems in the atmosphere, the land has been less talked about as
part of climate change. A special report, written by more than 100 scientists and unanimously approved by
diplomats from nations around the world on Thursday at a meeting in Geneva, proposed possible fixes and
made more dire warnings.

Hydro-power is another favourite of the green-energy proponents. To produce large amounts of electricity,
this form of power source needs large dams. Read the following article on this topic:

The environmental impact of mega-dams

Sonya Angelica Diehn for DW
06/25/2020June 25, 2020
As the reservoir behind a new dam on the Nile River fills up, DW examines the ways such mega-dams hurt
the environment, and looks at a few alternatives.
Dams are often touted as environmentally friendly. Although they do represent a renewable source of
energy, a closer look reveals that they are far from green. DW lays out the biggest environmental problems
of mega-dams.
1. Dams alter ecosystems
Water is life — and since dams block water, that impacts life downstream, both for ecosystems and people.
In the case of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which is being filled in Ethiopia and is set to be
Africa’s largest source of hydroelectric power, Egypt is concerned it will receive less water for things like
agriculture.
Downstream ecosystems rely not only on water, but also on sediment, both of which are held back by big
dams. As solid materials build up in a manmade reservoir, downstream land becomes less fertile and
riverbeds can become deeper or even erode away. Emilio Moran, a professor of geography and environment
at Michigan State University in the US, described sediment loss of 30 to 40% as a result of large dams.
"Rivers carry sediment that feeds the fish, it feeds the entire vegetation along the river. So, when you stop
sediment flowing freely down the streams, you have a dead river."
And ecosystems may have adapted to natural flooding, which dams take away.
Mega-dams also often have a large footprint on land upstream. Aside from displacing human communities,
flooding to create a reservoir also kills plants, and leaves animals to drown or find new homes. Reservoirs
can also further fragment valuable habitat and cut off migratory corridors.
2. Dams reduce biodiversity and cause extinction
Aquatic species, particularly fish, are vulnerable to the impacts of dams. Moran says the Itaipu Dam, which
was constructed on the border between Paraguay and Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, resulted in a 70
percent loss of biodiversity.
"On the Tucuruí Dam that was built in the 80s in the Amazon," he added, "there was a 60% drop in
productivity of fish."
Many fish species rely on the ability to move about freely in a river, be it to seek food or return to where they
were born. Migratory species are badly affected by the presence of dams. In 2016, the International Union
for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported a 99% drop in catches of sturgeon and paddlefish — both of
which are migratory — over a period of three decades. Overfishing and river alteration were cited as major
threats to the species’ survival.
Although sturgeon survived the dinosaur age, they may be wiped out by humansImage:
naturepl.com/Frei/ARCO/WWF

A 2018 study predicted that fish stocks on Asia’s Mekong River could drop by 40% as a result of dam projects
– with consequences not only for biodiversity, but for the people whose lives and livelihoods depend on
those fish.
The stakes for biodiversity are particularly high for animals threatened with extinction. And not only for
aquatic species. The Tapanuli orangutan — the Earth’s rarest ape, with only 500 individuals left — could
finally be pushed to the brink if a planned hydroelectric project in Sumatra, Indonesia, is completed. Dams
can literally snuff out species. The rare Tapanuli orangutan is threatened by a dam in SumatraImage:
Sumatran Orangutan Conservation Programme/Yayasan Ekosistem Lestari (SOCP/YEL)

3. Dams contribute to climate change (and are affected by it)

As reservoirs fill, upstream forests are flooded, eliminating their function as carbon sinks. As the drowned
vegetation decomposes, decaying plants in manmade reservoirs release methane, a powerful greenhouse
gas. That makes reservoirs sources of emissions — particularly those in tropical forests, where there is dense
growth. It’s estimated that greenhouse gas emissions from dams amount to about a billion tons annually
, making it a significant global source.
And as the climate changes, more frequent and prolonged drought means dams will capture less water,
resulting in lower electricity production. Countries dependent on hydropower will be especially vulnerable as
temperatures keep rising.
Moran described a vicious circle, for example in Brazil, which gets 60 to 70% of its energy from hydropower:
"If you wipe out half the rainforest, there will a loss of half the rainfall. And then there won't be enough
water to provide the amount of power from those dams," he explained.
4. Dams reduce water quality
Manmade reservoirs trap fertilizers that run into the water from surrounding land. In addition, in some
developing countries, sewage flows directly into the reservoirs. This kind of pollution can result in algae
blooms that suck the oxygen out of the water, making it acidic and potentially harmful to people and
animals.
Still water in large manmade lakes is warm at the top and cold at the bottom, which can also affect water
quality. While warm water promotes the growth of harmful algae, the cold water that is often released
through turbines from the bottom of a reservoir may contain damagingly high mineral concentrations.
In some cases, water in manmade reservoirs is of such bad quality that it is not even fit to drink.
5. Dams waste water
Since more surface area of the water gets exposed to the sun, reservoirs result in much more evaporation
than the natural flow of the river before that dam existed. It’s estimated at least 7% of the total amount of
freshwater needed for human activities evaporates from the world’s reservoirs every year.
This effect is made worse in hot regions, Moran pointed out. "Certainly if you had a reservoir in a tropical
area with high temperatures, there is going to be a lot of evaporation," he said. And big reservoirs “are, of
course, evaporating constantly.”
Reservoirs are also a haven for invasive plant species, and weed-covered reservoir banks can lead to
evapotranspiration — or the transfer of water from the land to the atmosphere through evaporation from
soil and transpiration from plants. Such evapotranspiration amounts to six times more than the evaporation
from the water’s surface. And there is even evidence that dams increase water use and promote water
waste by creating a false sense of water security.
In the face of dwindling global freshwater resources, some question whether dams should be reconsidered.

What has not been mentioned above is that tens of millions of people has been displaced and distressed
by large dam projects across the world.

By the way - have you ever heard of any PTB member displaced by big projects of any sort?

Not only large hydro-power projects but the small ones and stream-turbine type electricity generators that
use the energy of river-water flow are going to get less and less feasible because your rivers and streams
are drying up at an alarming rate. Read the following please :

The world’s rivers are drying up from extreme weather.

By Natalie Croker, Renée Rigdon, Judson Jones, Carlotta Dotto and Angela Dewan, CNN
August 20, 2022

To be stuck “up a river without a paddle” is an expression for a sticky situation you just can’t get out of. But
if that river happens to be in the northern hemisphere this summer, it’s likely the paddle won’t be helpful,
anyway.
A painful lack of rain and relentless heat waves are drying up rivers in the US, Europe, Asia and the Middle
East. Many are shrinking in length and breadth. Patches of riverbed poking out above the water are a
common sight. Some rivers are so desiccated, they have become virtually impassable.
The human-caused climate crisis is fuelling extreme weather across the globe, which isn’t just impacting
rivers, but also the people who rely on them. Most people on the planet depend on rivers in some way,
whether for drinking water, to irrigate food, for energy or to ship goods.
But global warming is not the only reason. Rivers (and waterbodies) are drying up fast due to massive
extraction of groundwater by humans. Read the excerpts from the article here:

Water bodies running dry at alarming rate due to groundwater depletion, reveals study
Additional effects of groundwater depletion include a sudden sinking of a chunk of land, which
increases risk of floods.
Sandhya Ramesh
5 October, 2019
Groundwater around the world is depleting at a rapid rate and is, in turn, affecting the flow of rivers and
streams, a new study (Environmental flow limits to global groundwater pumping) has found.

This study collected data beginning from 1960 and made projections on the impact of unfettered
groundwater pumping until the year 2100.
The results show that unsustainable groundwater pumping for irrigation exceeds the rate of replenishment
and leads to huge losses in agriculture-intensive societies, such as parts of India. Loss of groundwater results
in loss of flow of water into rivers, potentially destroying aquatic osystems.
The study states that by 2050, up to 79% of all watersheds — large areas where water is naturally stored
from rain and ice-melt — will be pumped beyond sustainability. This will lead not just to large-scale
disruptions in aquatic ecosystems but also global food security.
An already critical situation
This study, published in the journal Nature this week, is the first to model and simulate the impact of
groundwater depletion on other water-bodies such as rivers, lakes, and wetlands.
It also revealed that river flows in over 20% of all regions where groundwater is pumped are already too
weak to sustain healthy ecosystems. Areas where such depletion has already occurred include the Upper
Ganges and Indus basins in India.
In another three decades, at least half of the watersheds in the world would cross their critical threshold of
sustainability. This will be further exacerbated by increasingly hot and dry conditions due to the ongoing
climate emergency.
Increased reliance of irrigation on groundwater in these regions will speed up the process. Tropical regions
such as Asia, Africa, Southern Europe, and parts of Canada and Australia, are expected to be the worst
affected.
There is yet another deterrent – stakeholders' protest. Experts recommend drastic transformation in
many sectors, including the farming sector, but such actions can destroy livelihood s of millions of your
workforce. In July 2022, thousands of Dutch farmers protested against their government's moves aimed
at reducing pollution and emissions from prevailing farming practices. Here is a piece of news from Time
magazine:
A standoff between Dutch farmers and their government is causing havoc in the Netherlands this summer.
Protesters have withheld deliveries from grocery stores, smeared manure outside the home of the
agriculture minister, and blocked highways with hay bales and tires. “That’s what you get when you make
people so very angry,” Sieta van Keimpema, secretary of the Farmers Defense Force (FDF), said July 27 as the
group launched a fresh round of demonstrations.
What’s driving the dispute? Manure. The Netherlands’ intensive livestock farming system produces an
unusual excess of animal feces. When mixed with urine, those feces give off ammonia and nitrous oxide. The
former is a pollutant that can leak into air and water, harming local wildlife. The latter is a potent
greenhouse gas that traps heat in our atmosphere: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says
nitrous oxide accounts for around 6% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
In June, the Netherlands unveiled a world-leading target to halve emissions of the gasses, as well as other
nitrogen compounds that come from fertilizers, by 2030, to tackle their environmental and climate impacts.
The government said it was leading an “unavoidable transition” for agriculture. Farmers can reduce the
release of nitrogen compounds by changing how they manage their cows: feeding them less protein, or
using water to dilute manure, for example. But the target is expected to require a 30% reduction in overall
livestock numbers, and experts say many farms will have to shut down. Farmers are demanding that the
government rethink the plan before it becomes law later this year.
Trienke Elshof, a dairy farmer with 250 cows in the northern province of Friesland, says farmers feel
blindsided: for decades, governments have encouraged them to increase yields. Meanwhile, other high-
polluting industries, such as aviation, construction, and transport, have yet to face such severe
environmental rules. “We know we have to do something about nitrogen, but not in this top-down way, and
not at this speed,” she says. “It feels like they want to get rid of all the farmers in the Netherlands.”
The farmers’ plight is stirring a thorny debate on climate action, with implications well beyond the
Netherlands. A wave of solidarity protests have taken place in recent weeks, from Germany to Canada.
Some have been organized by people who view the measures as an attack on workers’ rights and small
businesses. But far-right figures and conspiracy theorists have also gotten involved. Twitter is filled with
posts linking the Netherlands’ nitrogen policy to the Great Reset—a theory that claims international elites
are trying to use the COVID-19 pandemic to establish an authoritarian global government. On July 7, Fox
News’s Tucker Carlson featured a guest wrongly claiming the policy is designed to clear land for use by
migrants.
This may be just the beginning of much wider global unrest over agriculture. Scientists say dealing with
climate change will require not just gradual reform, but a rapid, wholesale transformation of the global food
system. As one of the world’s most densely farmed nations, the Netherlands is one of the first countries to
grapple with how that upheaval will impact farmers—and how messy the transition will be. It won’t be the
last.

In all your talks on environment and climate crisis, the word 'sustainable' appears quite frequently. We
hear of 'sustainable development', of 'sustainable economy', of 'sustainable lifestyle', of 'sustainable
agriculture' many times. Who are the people who know best about sustainability? Answer : the
indigenous communities . Yet you 'advanced', 'civilised' people are extremely reluctant to learn anything
from them. The findings of the first-ever Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services , the IPBES report, says Nature is better off with indigenous people. Biodiversity is declining
everywhere at an unprecedented rate, but this rate is lower in areas where indigenous people own land,
according to the report. “Nature managed by indigenous people and local communities is under increasing
pressure. Nature is generally declining less rapidly in indigenous peoples’ land than in other lands,” reads
the report. While acknowledging the role of indigenous communities, the report says the pressures on
these lands are high. “The areas managed (under various types of tenure and access regimes) by indigenous
people and local communities are facing growing resource extraction, commodity production, mining and
transport and energy infrastructure, with various consequences for local livelihoods and health. Some
climate change mitigation programmes have had negative impacts on indigenous peoples and local
communities,” reads the report.

IPBES recognizes that indigenous peoples and local communities possess detailed knowledge on
biodiversity and ecosystem trends. This knowledge is formed through their direct dependence on their local
ecosystems, and observations and interpretations of change generated and passed down over many
generations, and yet adapted and enriched over time. Indigenous peoples and local communities from
around the world often live in remote areas, interacting with nature and managing resources that
contribute to society at large. They also suffer directly from the pressures of expanding agriculture frontiers
and commodity production, such as mining, logging, and energy. They are often better placed than
scientists to provide detailed information on local biodiversity and environmental change, and are
important contributors to the governance of biodiversity from local to global levels. However, the
knowledge and perspective of the indigenous communities is absent in the global approaches to
conservation.

But IPBES is not alone in recognising the relation between indigenous communities and conservation. A
2014 report by World Resources Institute found that legal forest rights for communities and government
protection of their rights tend to lower carbon dioxide emissions and deforestation.
“In Brazil, deforestation in indigenous community forests from 2000 to 2012 was less than 1 per cent,
compared with 7 per cent outside them,....There is growing evidence from across the world that
deforestation is much lower in areas with recognised land rights for indigenous communities. ”- reads the
report titled Securing Rights, Combating Climate Change.
Your species is going to face severe food shortage, warns the UN. Indigenous Peoples can provide answers
to food insecurity. Traditional indigenous territories encompass 22 percent of the world’s land surface, but
80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity. A third of global forests, crucial for curbing gas emissions, are
primarily managed by indigenous peoples, families, smallholders and local communities. Indigenous foods
are also particularly nutritious, climate-resilient and well-adapted to their environment, making them a
good source of nutrients in climate challenged areas.
Their ways of life and their livelihoods can teach us a lot about preserving natural resources, growing food
in sustainable ways and living in harmony with nature. Mobilizing the expertise that originates from this
heritage and these historical legacies is important for addressing the challenges facing food and agriculture
today and in the future.
Here are 6 of the many ways in which Indigenous Peoples practices can help you all:
1. Their traditional agricultural practices are resilient to climate change
Throughout the centuries, indigenous peoples have developed agricultural techniques that are adapted to
extreme environments, like the high altitudes of the Andes, the dry grasslands of Kenya or the extreme cold
of northern Canada. These time-tested techniques, like terracing that stops soil erosion or floating gardens
that make use of flooded fields, mean that they are well-suited for the increasingly intense weather events
and temperature changes brought on by climate change.
2. They conserve and restore forests and natural resources
Indigenous peoples see themselves as connected to nature and as part of the same system as the
environment in which they live. Natural resources are considered shared property and are respected as
such. By protecting natural resources, like forests and rivers, many indigenous communities help mitigate
the impacts of climate change.
3. Indigenous foods expand and diversify diets
The world currently relies very heavily on a small set of staple crops. Wheat, rice, potatoes and maize
represent 50 percent of daily calories consumed. With nutritious, native crops like quinoa, oca and moringa,
the food systems of indigenous peoples can help the rest of humanity expand its narrow food base.
4. Indigenous foods are resilient to climate change
Because many indigenous peoples live in extreme environments, they have chosen crops that have also had
to adapt. Indigenous peoples often grow native species of crops that are better adapted to local contexts
and are often more resistant to drought, altitude, flooding, or other extreme conditions. Used more widely
in farming, these crops could help build the resilience of farms now facing a changing, more extreme
climate.
5. Indigenous territories hold 80 percent of the world’s biodiversity
Preserving biodiversity is essential for food security and nutrition. The genetic pool for plants and animal
species is found in forests, rivers and lakes and pastures. Living naturally sustainable lives, indigenous
peoples preserve these spaces, helping to uphold the biodiversity of the plants and animals in nature.
6. Indigenous peoples’ lifestyles are locally adapted and respectful of natural resources
Indigenous peoples have adapted their lifestyles to fit into and respect their environments. In mountains,
indigenous peoples’ systems preserve soil, reduce erosion, conserve water and reduce the risk of disasters.
In rangelands, indigenous pastoralist communities manage cattle grazing and cropping in sustainable ways
that preserve rangeland biodiversity. In the Amazon, ecosystems improve when indigenous people inhabit
them.
FAO considers indigenous peoples as invaluable partners in eradicating hunger and in providing solutions
to climate change. We will never achieve long-term solutions to climate change and food security and
nutrition without seeking help from and protecting the rights of indigenous peoples, says FAO.
From all this, you can see that Indigenous Peoples help protect environment, fight climate change, and
build resilience to natural disasters, yet their rights aren’t protected.
These people, who can provide solution to many of your problems, are facing existential threat from the
onslaught of your 'civilisation'. How many global conferences are held to address this most crucial of
issues? Not many, I guess.

Earlier in this letter I wrote about the hurdles placed by PTB on the path to radical transformation of the
SES. But there is a much bigger hurdle. I call it 'People's Stupidity, Ignorance Complacency and
Conformity'. Yes, there is no doubt that a vast majority of your race is SICC – Stupid, Ignorant, Complacent
and Conformist. Many of your celebrated thinkers famously commented on the astounding extent of
human stupidity., including Einstein, Russell and Stephen Hawking. Such SICC people, docile as they are,
would prefer to remain ignorant and passive; they are not going to take part in the kind of revolutionary
movement Pope Francis (and Einstein) talked about.

In the course of our exploration, we found that not only the ordinary people but even the 'above-the-
ordinary' are extraordinarily ignorant about most things that affect their own lives. Not only that, they
seem to be quite happy to remain stuck in the cesspool of ignorance; anybody trying to impart some useful
knowledge to them is brusquely discouraged . They are incredibly short-sighted, quite blind I should say;
cannot even see the most obvious of truths, yet they are always ready to see reason in whatever their
Masters / Idols preach. These master/masters/idols is / are, of course, part of PTB. He/she can be a
political leader, a top business-tycoon , a military General; it can be a political party or a religious sect.

Another thing I must mention – many members of your species, including some of the 'enlightened'
minority, seem to believe that one of the greatest achievements of your 'civilisation' is taming of Nature.
Human 'triumph' over Nature is cited as a proof of marvellous intelligence of your species. What we
observed is this: you are utterly helpless against tsunami, forest-fire, earthquake, volcanic eruption,
tornado, hurricane, typhoon, cyclone, blizzard, avalanche, cloud-burst, drought, flash-flood, land-slide,
mud-slide and bursting of glacial lakes. You are also extremely vulnerable to hundreds of natural diseases.
Whenever you have tried to 'tame' Nature you have actually managed, in various ways, to harm your own
biosphere that sustains you .

Many 'environmentally conscious' persons (and others) often solemnly say thing like 'we must save our
planet', and everyone nods in assent . This is preposterous, to say the least, and it shows how absurdly
anthropocentric your world-view is. The planet Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and humans arrived just
about 2 million years ago. The planet has survived unimaginably violent events and upheavals for eons.
You humans will vanish into oblivion long, long before life expires on Earth. Whenever I heard someone
say something about saving the planet, I itched to tell him or her “Who the hell do you think you are, huh?
Save your own bum folks - your Mother Earth seems to be terribly angry with you!”

Before I end this letter, I should tell you that your civilisation is in a pathetic state. Civil wars are raging in
many parts of the world, countries possessing nuclear powers are threatening each other while the
Russia-Ukraine war is showing no signs of stopping; billions of people are distressed due to skyrocketing
inflation, while food. fuel and water shortages are making life miserable for most; lay-offs,
unemployment and underemployment are ruining the lives of millions of your workforce; tens of
millions of peasants and fishermen are staring helplessly at dwindling harvests and incomes; billions of
men, women and children are deprived of decent healthcare ; malnutrition is widely prevalent; disease
and trauma are causing tens of millions of untimely deaths annually; suicides are breaking all records as
the numbers of mentally distressed are soaring; more than a hundred million people are forcibly displaced,
and the numbers are rising fast. The System is killing not one but two of your proverbial geese that lay
golden eggs – Earth's biosphere and the human workforce whose labour generates all wealth. You have all
those nicely drafted Universal Declarations and Conventions and Laws on all sorts of 'Rights' - human
rights, legal rights, labour rights, child rights, right to food and shelter, women's rights, minorities' rights,
and yet such rights are being trampled with impunity by the ruling powers all across the globe. You have
an International Court of Justice that hardly does anything to punish criminal regimes, while horrible
crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing are being committed in many regions. And I think I need not say
anything further about how the environmental crisis is making billions of women and men suffer.
You gifted me the book titled “A Short History of The World” written by the famous writer H G Wells. There
is a paragraph in the final section of this book which goes like this:
We call an individual insane if his ruling ideas are so much out of adjustment to his circumstances that he is
a danger to himself and others. This definition of insanity seems to cover the entire human species, and it is
no figure of speech but a plain statement of fact, that man has to 'pull his mind together' or perish.
Goodbye my friend.