Governments, financial institutions, industry, and most people on the planet know how to solve climate change; every animal on the planet knows how to stop climate change. The basic premise is “don’t shit in your home.” The boundaries of your home may be a nest, a tree, a lake, or the whole world. In Panama, a Sloth will put itself at risk once a week to defecate around the roots of the tree where it lives. This stops the pollution of the leaves and branches and provides the tree with nutrients. This is a pure circular economy in which toxicity is not in the loop.
Humanity’s boundaries have expanded to encompass the whole planet; this is our home, but we still think the country in which we live, our company, or even the walls of our own home are the boundaries. We need to learn to see that the entire planet is our home. We have compartmentalised climate change to just be carbon dioxide; this is ridiculous and doomed to failure. Carbon dioxide is important, but it represents less than 20% of all greenhouse gases, along with methane. Water vapour is by far the most important GHG at 70%, and then you have cloud formation, rain, and the reflection of energy back into space.
We need clean, pure rain to support nature, purify the atmosphere, and remove carbon dioxide. We have now destroyed more than 50% of all life on the planet, including plants and animals on land and marine life in the oceans. We are part of nature and cannot survive once it is gone.
So what can we do? Plastic is highly toxic; partially combusted carbon from the burning of fossil fuels is just as toxic as plastic. Then you have the oil, like toxic forever chemicals that float on the surface of water. For these chemicals, the solution to pollution is not dilution in the oceans. These chemicals, including herbicides, pesticides, PBDE (fire retardants), PCBs, and molecular plastics like acrylic and PFOS, must not be effluent.
Every drop of rainwater and every glass of water you drink now contains toxic chemicals. The biggest killer of humanity is pollution, more than all the wars and human diseases combined, and this is getting twice as bad every 5 years.
80% of the world has no water treatment, and 20% of systems in high-income countries do not remove plastic or toxic chemicals. The world needs to be zero discharge and zero harm; effluent must not damage or harm nature. Indeed, we have caused so much damage that to do no harm is not enough; we must now start to do some good to repair the damage.
You might think you can’t do anything, that it is not your responsibility, or that it is so far off in the distant future that it doesn’t affect you. Almost every person currently living on the planet will suffer from climate change and the loss of nature, and in 20 to 30 years, this existential threat will rebalance the planet and cause the loss of 90% of humanity.
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