Mass Extinction - Are we next?

Only when the last tree has died and
The last river has been poisoned and
The last fish has been caught,
Will we realize that
We cannot eat money"
19th Century Cree Proverb

All of our water, food and air is now contaminated with numerous man-made chemicals and the level of that contamination increases daily. A billion people or more are already in dire straits - they are dying for lack of water, food, and/or shelter. A significant percentage of humanity is already at death’s door. Even in the richest country on the planet, over 40 million people in the USA are already on food stamps.

The latest Fed money-printing scheme is causing the value of our dollar to fall, increasing the prices of every thing that is valuable and is triggering a bond price meltdown! Since talk of new money-printing first surfaced a few weeks ago, 30-year bond yields have jumped sharply higher — from 3.46% to 4.32%. That's a 25% surge in borrowing costs!

The BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico this summer tragically demonstrated the hidden costs of our nation’s reliance on fossil fuels. But despite this ongoing catastrophe, some major corporations—including Safeway and Walmart—are fueling their trucking fleets with tar sands oil, the dirtiest oil in the world. Tar sands oil is even more destructive to human health and the environment than conventional oil. Turning tar sands oil into fuel requires the destruction of fragile forest ecosystems, wastes three barrels of water to extract one barrel of oil, and consumes almost as much energy as it produces. This dirty and inefficient product currently makes up just 4 percent of the crude oil we use, but your tax dollars are already subsidizing pipelines and refineries that would allow oil companies to quadruple that amount.

Human beings are currently causing the greatest mass extinction of species since the extinction of the dinosaurs. If present trends continue one half of all species of life on earth will be extinct in less than 100 years, as a result of habitat destruction, pollution, invasive species, and climate change. For several years now, scientists have been sounding alarms about a devastating fungus, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), which has literally decimated bat populations in the Northeastern U.S. The fungus leaves a white substance on the bat’s nose, wings and body, and disrupts the bat’s hibernation patterns, forcing it to burn through its fat reserves, which quickly leads to starvation. Earlier this year, a survey of the bat population in New Jersey estimated that 90 percent of that state’s bats had been killed off. “This is on a level unprecedented, certainly in mammals,” says Rick Adams, a biology professor at the University of Northern Colorado and a renowned bat expert. “A mass extinction event, a thousand times higher than anything we’ve seen. It’s going through [bat colonies] like wildfire, with 80 to 100 percent mortality.” Experts believe many species of bats may vanish, and like with bee colony collapse, the disappearance of these species will bring profound and long-term changes to the environment and agriculture across North America. A bat eats 60 to 100 percent of its body-weight in insects every day. Adams says one colony of Mexican free-tailed bats in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, an important agricultural region, “pulls about 100 metric tons of insects out of the air in a year.” And having bats in agricultural areas, he says, tends to move insects out of those areas, creating less need for dangerous and expensive pesticides. And like honey bee colonies—which have also been facing massive die-offs in recent years—some bats are important pollinators and seed-distributors. Adams says bats are crucial to the reproduction of tropical fruits like mangos, papayas, figs, and wild bananas. And in Arizona, bats are the primary pollinators for three large cactus species that support much of the region’s ecosystem. Almost a quarter of the world's mammals face extinction in 30 years, according to the United Nations report on the state of the global environmnent. A new global study has concluded that only 10% of the big ocean fish remain. Total extinction of all speciess is coming!

The United States makes up less than five percent of the population on earth, yet easily consumes over 30 percent of its resources. Human consumption and growth can cause extinction of many species through overharvesting, pollution, habitat destruction, introduction of new predators like manmade viruses and antibiotic resistant bacteria, pesticides and other destructive influences. Explosive, unsustainable human population growth is an essential cause of the extinction crisis in other species and we are presently threatening our overall way of life with our neglect of all these basic concerns. Humans are going through their own special type of mass extinction event in terms of chronic disease.

A presidential commission’s leaders proposed a $3.8 trillion deficit-cutting plan that would cut Social Security and Medicare, reduce income-tax rates and eliminate tax breaks including the mortgage-interest deduction. The co-chairmen of the panel appointed by President Barack Obama suggested reducing Social Security spending by raising the retirement age to 68 in about 2050 and 69 in about 2075. The plan also would slow the rate at which benefits grow. The savings would come between 2012 and 2020. “This country’s out of money and we better start thinking,” said co-chairman Erskine Bowles. Without “tough choices,” he said, “we’re on the most predictable path toward an economic crisis that I can imagine.”

Before we die we get sick. We are now seeing: 1 in 6 children with specific learning disabilities; 12-15% children with attention deficit disorder;1 in 87 with autism spectrum – a 1700% increase over ten years; 1% sudden infant death; 40 deaths and 15,000 substantive adverse Gardasil reactions; 1 in 15 over 65 with dementia; 1 in 8 over 85; Chronic fatigue syndrome; Fibromyalgia; Seizure disorders; Global developmental delay; 1 in 450 with type 1 diabetes and hundreds of millions of type 2; 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women to develop cancer over a lifetime. There is no doubt in my mind that over the next few years we are going to be witnessing and participating in a human downdraft of stupendous proportions as human suffering, illness and premature death go off the Richter scale.

Have you even looked at what is already happening—the political confusion and stupidity and the potential for war and all the nuclear weapons that are in the hands of madmen at the Pentagon. They use depleted uranium weaponry routinely now in far away battlefields not calculating one bit the billions of years the resultant nuclear pollution/contamination and the negative health effect it will have on their own children. What can we say about these people? They love war and if push comes to shove - many of us believe they will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons that kick up big mushroom clouds that will turn the entire world into a sea of glass!.

It is not easy to think about billions of tortured souls crying out and perishing from lack of water and food but avoiding these thoughts and images paralyzes us and prevents us as individuals from taking evasive action. In the mainstream news we read: “Yields are not keeping up with a world growing hungrier. Crops are stunted in a world grown warmer. A devastating fungus, a wheat ‘rust,’ is spreading out of Africa, a grave threat to the food plant that covers more of the planet’s surface than any other. In Chicago, London, and other money centers, the wheat market is so roiled by bad news and speculators that rising prices may put bread out of reach for millions more of the world’s poor.” This is a picture of selective mass extinction with the poor getting the boot first. And those who can afford all the food they can eat - will only have Monsanto (who just bought out the biggest security mercenary firm in the world) and many other companies ready to "feed them" their most terrible toxic engineered frankenfoods! — it truly will be a wonder if anyone survives.