Category: The Environment

The People vs. Agent Orange: PBS

I saw this documentary a few days ago using the App for the PBS Passport streaming service on my Roku device. Depending on where you live, you might be able to stream this on to your computer from their website for free.

What many people already know about this subject is that Agent Orange was employed by Americans during the Vietnam war as a weapon of mass destruction. Perhaps the only worse weapon that has been used during war in the earth’s history for the purposes of mass destruction is the nuclear bomb. (One has to admit that the Germans and the Allies did also do a very effective job of mass destruction with their bombing campaigns of London and Dresden during WWII.) In all of these efforts, people did not care who was killed, soldiers or civilians, adults or children.

The use of Agent Orange is quite possibly the worst ever case of the use of chemical warfare on our planet since the use of poison gas during World War I. We efficiently destroyed both the land and the people of the country. They are suffering even today. We also poisoned our own soldiers, even though the people in charge knew what the chemical could do to them. (The Veterans are still fighting for government support and acceptance of responsibility in this regard.) It was quite a shameful episode from history.

What I did not know was what happened in the USA after the Vietnam war with regards to Agent Orange, with the continued use of the chemicals as a herbicide, and the many lives that were destroyed because of this. The air and the drinking water sources for many people living near the forests where the chemicals were being used – the forests that were being cleared by the big logging companies – were being polluted by chemicals that have the ability to damage and destroy the genetic make-up of people, causing illness and disease not only in the people exposed to the poison, but also in their offspring. It appears that the people and organizations responsible for all of this are still escaping their full responsibilities. This includes even the federal government. The facts about the impact of this chemical are still being covered up – even to this day! The documentary indicates that evidence has even been destroyed along the way. It is a very, very, shady story. This is an American Horror story!

Breaking Boundaries: The Science of Our Planet | Netflix

I highly recommend watching this documentary if you have a Netflix account. The whole show was very effective and moving. Human beings on Planet Earth are ultimately doomed unless we change our behaviors as a species. According to the documentary, it may still be possible to change course.

This documentary addresses a few of the factors that define the health of Planet Earth, and talks about “tipping points” when it comes to the state all of these factors.

Yiannis Pavlis Visits Ilulissat in North Greenland

Yiannis is a photographer who posts on Pbase, a photo gallery website at which I also post pictures. Yiannis goes to places far off the beaten path. He is an adventurer! I have noticed that many of the parts of the world that he visits have very cold climates.

Here is Yiannis’ picture gallery of Ilulissat. Lots of interesting information also to be found here along with the pictures. I feel like visiting some day, but this might be too much to hope for!
https://pbase.com/lens/welcome_to_ilulissat

This is the video that he has posted along with the pictures in his gallery.

Here are all his galleries.
https://pbase.com/lens

This is the Wikipedia page for Ilulissat in case you have interest in more information.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilulissat

The Anthropocene Epoch

The geological time-scale of Planet Earth is classified at the highest level in supereons,  the first of which was the Precambrian.   The supereons break down into eons, then further into eras, periods, and finally epochs.  We live in the Phanerozoic eon of a post-precambrian supereon (that apparently does not have an official name for it today).  According to the experts, we are officially in the Holocene epoch, which began about 11,700 years ago after the last major ice age.  (Interestingly enough, this period of time only represents less than a millionth of the history of the earth.)

Recently, the argument has been raised that we should consider ourselves to be in a new new epoch after the Holocene. This epoch should represent the period of time when the impact of human beings on the earth has become significant and non-reversible.  In the past, epochs were broken down based on times of geological change, but the argument is now being made that one should also consider environmental impacts.  Regarding human beings, these changes probably began to accelerate with the coming of the Industrial Revolution, and the rate of change has only increased since then.  While there is probably no exact moment in time that can be pinpointed as a “turning point”, it is clear that we now cannot turn back our impact on the planet.  (I have argued in the past that all changes take place over some period of time even if some of these changes seem to be instantaneous within the time-frames that we are familiar with.)

Even though it is not officially recognized, people are calling the current period of time in the earth’s history the Anthropocene epoch.

Here is an online presence for an organization dedicated to this concept.

Even the Smithsonian is modifying its exhibition space to devote resources to talking about the human impacts on the earth.

A fundamental theme in the consideration of the existence of a new epoch is that humans have finally managed to change the nature of the planet to the extent that  we cannot ignore our environmental impacts.  The destruction caused is irreversible.   It is a sad consequence of our progress, of our knowledge and technology, of our “civilization”.  What will the post-Anthropocene epoch look like when all is said and done?   Or perhaps we will all be destroyed by some cosmic event that we have no control over and none of this will matter in the long run.  I suppose the post-Anthropocene epoch could still happen due to other reasons.

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/land-pollution.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_contamination

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/waterpollution.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_pollution

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/air-pollution-introduction.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch