*In 2018, we learned the ubiquitous extent of fossil fuel poisons. It is now so egregious that before a human fetus is even born, it’s toxic from fossil fuel pollution.
In April, the Health Effects Institute yearly State of the Global Air revealed that 95 percent of all humans, or, 7.2 billion people, are non-stop inhaling putrid fossil fuel air above the World Health Organization’s “safe level.”
Half of New Delhi’s 4.4 million schoolchildren have permanently stunted lung development from breathing fossil fuel pollution. Image credit: VOA News
Also in April, a research team led by the University of Montana found that 99.5 percent of 203 autopsies from Mexico City, ages ranging from 11 months to 40 years old, possessed the telltales of Alzheimer’s disease in their brainstems from breathing poisonous fossil fuel air. The scientists concluded that those children and young adults also faced an elevated risk of suicide.
Children in cities are at risk of losing their minds from breathing air, their birthright. Hideous.
How in good conscience can world leaders support fossil fuel oligarchs while turning a blind eye to children who are now facing the consequences of Alzheimer’s disease? Photo credit: Emed
In September, my colleagues from Queen Mary University of London reported that air-borne soot from fossil fuel pollution travels from a pregnant woman’s lungs and contaminates the placenta via the bloodstream. That means before a human even leaves the safety of its mother’s womb it’s harmed. Dreadful.
Since the 1980s, Scripps Oxygen Program has measured atmospheric oxygen levels plummeting from burning fossil fuels. In America alone, some 70 million people suffer from sleep-related problems. Not only are fossil fuels impairing us, but also robbing us of our sleep, too.
Image credit: Scripps Oxygen Program, University of California, San Diego.
So why then is the Australian federal government greenlighting its largest coalmine, the Adani Carmichael, with 50 percent of the Great Barrier Reef dead from two protracted marine heatwaves (2016 & 2017)? Moreover, in the face of public opinion, why is the new Prime Minister Scott Morrison handing the Indian-based Adani Enterprises $1 billion in coalmining subsidies to cook the remainder of the reef, poison Earth’s atmosphere and supercharge the planet’s oceans with heat?
Masterpiece sea turtles nor any sea life can now make a living across vast areas of the dead Great Barrier Reef, NE Australia. Photo credit: Irish Times
Earth’s oceans drive its climate so when man supercharges them with fossil fuel heat that stokes climate instability.
Vast cancerous-looking open pit strip mines in northern Alberta’s subsidized tar sands are ruining the ancient boreal forests, poisoning its fresh water and all the wildlife at an unprecedented rate. Image credit: The Narwhal
Equally infuriating, why has Canada approved a new massive 113 square mile tar sands mine, Fort Hills, with a projected longevity of 50 years? Each day, it will generate 194,000 water-poisoning barrels of climate-destroying crude. In fact, the daily tar sands 2.5 million barrels of subsidized oil is projected to reach 4.5 million barrels by 2040. Sucking more petroleum out of the earth is planetary suicide!
Fire tornadoes, 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit, 165 mph winds ripping mature trees out of the earth and plumes of smoke extending 7.5 miles into the heavens, the new “not normal” California firestorms of 2018. Image credit: ZmeScience.com
Hurricane Harvey smothered 107 people in the third week of August, 2017. Image credit: Washington Post
Last year (2017), Hurricane Harvey moved noticeably slower as it approached Texas landfall. It unloaded a staggering 33 trillion gallons of precipitation onto Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Kentucky and it inflicted $125 billion in losses.
Recently, slow moving Hurricane Florence dumped an astounding 11 trillion gallons of rainfall onto the Carolinas drowning at least 42 people and wreaking billions of dollars in untold damages. The innumerable loss of wildlife in these extreme events is simply heartbreaking and impoverishing.
Hurricane Florence’s catastrophic flooding drowned millions of North Carolina’s chickens and pigs. Image credit: Pet Rescue Support
This much my colleagues do know: as we burn more deadly fossil fuels tropical cyclones are slowing down globally. It’s conservatively estimated that Earth will experience20 percent more intense precipitation events from hurricanes of the future.
Tell that to the millions of people of Texas, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Hawaii, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and southern China who have already faced unimaginable torrential rainfalls since August of 2017.
It’s very clear that 195 countries require a WWIII effort to protect civilization and our mother, Nature. It’s imperative that we race towards a zero combustion global economy over the next decade, undertaking the following steps:
Reduce fossil fuel emissions now.
End annual fossil fuel subsidies of$5.3 trillion immediately.
Globally deploy solar thermal concentrated farms generating supercritical steam with lithium-ion battery energy storage facilities.
Protect all fresh water supplies on the planet by banning water-poisoning fracking.
No new coalmines.
Ban seismic surveying in the oceans for more climate-destroying fossil fuels.
Protect all remaining ancient forests, the greatest carbon dioxide warehouse, from chainsaws and poachers.
Record-breaking climate firestorms are raging across the Amazon Rainforest. A stubborn South American drought and extreme temperatures are stoking climate fires in
