This falls under the 'novel entities' boundary, for those who think about overshoot using that model. https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/h...lling/67-9f65ab4c-5e55-46d3-8aea-1843a227d848 Health Brink of a fertility crisis: Scientist says plummeting sperm counts caused by everyday products A 40-year-long study showed sperm counts have dropped by nearly half. Dr. Shanna Swan hypothesizes men will no longer produce sperm by 2045. Author: Liz Crawford Published: 7:35 PM EDT May 18, 2021 Updated: 7:40 PM EDT May 18, 2021 TAMPA, Fla. — You’ve probably heard of someone who struggled with infertility. Maybe you even know a couple who had treatment to help them have a baby. Fertility issues are pretty common, and new research shows we could actually be on the brink of a fertility crisis. Dr. Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, found sperm counts have plummeted over the last four decades. Faces of infertility The journey into parenthood has been long and tedious for Cyndel and Chris Surdovel. They started trying to have a baby four years ago when they were both in their late twenties. They struggled to try to conceive and resorted to in-vitro fertilization. They experienced several failed treatments and a miscarriage. "When you decide you’re ready to start a family and it doesn’t happen, it starts to become this obsession, and then you just kind of lose the joy of your everyday life," Cyndel Surdovel said. The Surdovels were diagnosed with “unexplained infertility,” when doctors can't determine the specific reason a couple is struggling to conceive. "Twenty percent of the couples we see on average have what we call unexplained infertility," said Dr. Celso Silva, the Medical Director at Shady Grove Fertility and Surdovels' doctor. Infertility is on the rise with at least one in 10 couples struggling to get pregnant in the United States. "Age is a major factor as far as the reproductive potential of any couple, the age of the female partner," Silva said. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, advanced maternal age refers to women age 35 and older. The term is intended to highlight the increased risk of complications that can occur such as difficulty conceiving, miscarriage and birth defects. More than age The age factor is pretty well known, especially among women who seem to be reminded of their "ticking clock" from relatives, friends, or strangers at some point in their lives. However, new research shows infertility rates could be rising because sperm counts are dropping. "All we can say is it has significantly declined with no indication that the rate is slowing down," said Swan, a reproductive epidemiologist who spent years studying male sperm counts. Her research found sperm counts have dropped by half in the last four decades. In 1973, the average ejaculate had 99 million sperm per milliliter. By 2011, the average ejaculate had 47 million sperm per milliliter. Credit: 10 Tampa Bay "It’s not just the number of sperm. They have to be shaped well," explained Swan, who described the upstream swim sperm have to travel for conception to occur. In her new book, "Count Down," Swan says based on the current curve, sperm counts could be down to zero by 2045. Credit: Courtesy shannaswan.com The lifestyle factor There are already a number of habits researchers have long established that deplete one's sperm count. Swan says certain occupations, like people who manufacture pesticides, have been shown to have zero sperm along with men who work with lead. Other factors contributing to low sperm counts include smoking, binge drinking, obesity and stress. "The number of stressful events you’ve had in just the last couple months lower sperm count," Swan said. RELATED: US birth rates drop for every major race, ethnicity and almost every age group The unknown variables Here's where things get a little doomsday on us. Swan hypothesizes other factors that we aren't tracking are leading to an eventual fertility crisis. She said, "While you can ask people how much they smoke or what drugs they take, you can’t do that with environmental exposures." Swan believes chemicals from plastics are getting into our bodies, impacting our hormones and ultimately interfering with our reproductive functions. Phthalates are the culprit. Remember that word. Phthalates are chemicals in plastics that lower the bodies’ testosterone. So how do phthalates get in our bodies? Swan says they're everywhere. Any food product that is passed through a soft tube in the manufacturing process has likely absorbed harmful chemicals that could creep into our bodies. "If you eat unprocessed food, particularly, if you can afford it, organic food, then you are avoiding a lot of exposure," Swan said. However, it's not just food. Swan said creams, nail polishes, fragrances and other health, beauty and cleaning products are oozing with phthalates. In regards to sperm counts, much of the damage is done when a male is forming inside the mother's uterus. Swan said the chemicals get into a woman's body, then into the testicles of the fetus and change development. "When that child becomes old enough to have sperm, they’ll have a low sperm count and be infertile," she said. Slow the curve While changing our eating habits and being intentional about what products we use might help slow the curve, Swan says it's not enough. She said we need entirely new products made of safer materials. It will take government intervention. "They have to be made of different chemicals. Chemicals that can’t interfere with our hormones," she said. It’s a call to action many couples, like the Surdovels, who spent years trying to conceive, can get behind.
Interesting thread, all true. Too bad the major contributing polluters, China, Russia and India don't care about any of it.
This is such a clear example of ecological overshoot and our predicament. Our numbers have grown, not far from 50% of total human biomass, solely by the consumption of fossil fuels--ancient sunlight, i.e. trillions of acres equivalent of arable land which we've just exploded through like mice in a grain bin. "The war also threatens another longer-term shock to the food markets: a shortage of fertilizer. "Matt Huie, a farmer near Corpus Christi, Texas, said that skyrocketing prices had already forced him to stop applying fertilizer to the grazing fields that nourish his hundreds of cows, assuring that they will be skinnier come slaughter. Now he is worried he will have to also reduce fertilizer for his next corn crop, which would slash its yield. “We’ve gotten into uncharted territory,” he said." From: Ukraine War Threatens to Cause a Global Food Crisis March 20, 2022, 12:48 p.m. Jack Nicas Farmers harvesting wheat last year near the village of Tbilisskaya, Russia. A crucial portion of the world’s wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war.Credit...Vitaly Timkiv/Associated Press The war in Ukraine has delivered a shock to global energy markets. Now the planet is facing a deeper crisis: a shortage of food. A crucial portion of the world’s wheat, corn and barley is trapped in Russia and Ukraine because of the war, while an even larger portion of the world’s fertilizers is stuck in Russia and Belarus. The result is that global food and fertilizer prices are soaring. Since the invasion last month, wheat prices have increased by 21 percent, barley by 33 percent and some fertilizers by 40 percent. The upheaval is compounded by major challenges that were already increasing prices and squeezing supplies, including the pandemic, shipping constraints, high energy costs and recent droughts, floods and fires. Now economists, aid organizations and government officials are warning of the repercussions: an increase in world hunger. The looming disaster is laying bare the consequences of a major war in the modern era of globalization. Prices for food, fertilizer, oil, gas and even metals like aluminum, nickel and palladium are all rising fast — and experts expect worse as the effects cascade. “Ukraine has only compounded a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe,” said David M. Beasley, the executive director of the World Food Program, the United Nations agency that feeds 125 million people a day. “There is no precedent even close to this since World War II.” Ukrainian farms are about to miss critical planting and harvesting seasons. European fertilizer plants are significantly cutting production because of high energy prices. Farmers from Brazil to Texas are cutting back on fertilizer, threatening the size of the next harvests. Rest of article...
From Pakistan to Peru, soaring food and fuel prices are tipping countries over the edge By Julia Horowitz, CNN Business Updated 4:58 AM ET, Sat April 9, 2022 London (CNN Business) When people took to the streets in Egypt in 2011, protesters chanted about freedom and social justice — but also bread. The cost of pantry staples had jumped because of the skyrocketing price of goods like wheat, stoking fury with President Hosni Mubarak. Now, more than a decade after the Arab Spring,global food prices are soaring again. They had already reached their highest level on record earlier this year as the pandemic, poor weather and the climate crisis upended agriculture and threatened food security for millions of people. Then came Russia's war in Ukraine, making the situation much worse — while also triggering a spike in the cost of the other daily essential, fuel. The combination could generate a wave of political instability, as people who were already frustrated with government leaders are pushed over the edge by rising costs. "It is extremely worrisome," said Rabah Arezki, a senior fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former chief economist at the African Development Bank. Unrest in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Peru over the past week highlights the risks. In Sri Lanka, protests have erupted over shortages of gas and other basic goods. Double-digit inflation in Pakistan has eroded support for Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is clinging to power. At least six people have died in recent anti-government protests in Peru sparked by rising fuel prices. But political conflict isn't expected to be limited to these countries. "I don't think people have felt the full impact of rising prices just yet," said Hamish Kinnear, a Middle East and North Africa analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a global risk consultancy. Lessons from the Arab Spring In the run-up to the anti-government protests that became known as the Arab Spring — which began in Tunisia in late 2010 and spread through the Middle East and North Africa in 2011 — food prices were climbing sharply. The Food Price Index from the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization reached 106.7 in 2010 and jumped to 131.9 in 2011, then a record. "Mohamed Bouazizi didn't set himself on fire because he couldn't blog or vote," an Emirati commentator wrote in January 2011, referring to the street vendor whose protest act helped launch the revolution in Tunisia and, ultimately, the Arab world. "People set themselves on fire because they can't stand seeing their family wither away slowly, not of sorrow, but of cold stark hunger." War has brought the world to the brink of a food crisis Circumstances in individual countries differed, but the bigger picture was clear. Surging wheat prices were a major part of the problem. The situation now is even worse than it was then. Global food prices have just hit a new record high. The FAO Food Price Index published Friday hit 159.3 in March, up almost 13% from February. The war in Ukraine, a major exporter of wheat, corn and vegetable oils, as well as harsh sanctions on Russia — a key producer of wheat and fertilizer — is expected to spur further price increases in the coming months. "Forty percent of wheat and corn exports from Ukraine go to the Middle East and Africa, which are already grappling with hunger issues, and where further food shortages or price increases could stoke social unrest," Gilbert Houngbo, head of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, said last month. Adding to the pain is the surge in energy prices. Global oil prices are almost 60% higher than they were a year ago. The cost of coal and natural gas has spiked, too. Many governments are struggling to protect their citizens, but fragile economies that borrowed heavily to make it through the 2008 financial crisis and the pandemic are most vulnerable. As growth slows, hurting their currencies and making it harder to keep up with debt payments, maintaining subsidies for food and fuel will be difficult, especially if prices keep climbing. "We are now in a situation where countries are indebted," Arezki said. "As a result, they have no buffers to try to contain the tensions that will emerge from such high prices." According to the World Bank, close to 60% of the poorest countries were "already in debt distress or at high risk of it" on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine. Where tensions are simmering Asia: In Sri Lanka, an island nation of 22 million, an economic and political crisis is already boiling over, with protesters taking to the streets in defiance of curfews and government ministers stepping down en masse. Grappling with high debt levels and a weak economy reliant on tourism, Sri Lanka was forced to run down its reserves of foreign currency. That prevented the government from making payments for key imports such asenergy, creating devastating shortages and forcing people to spend hours lining up for fuel. Sri Lanka is facing an economic and political crisis. Here's what you need to know Its leaders have also devalued its currency, the Sri Lankan rupee, as they try to secure a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. But that just made inflation worse at home. In January, it reached 14%, almost double the rate of price increases in the United States. Meanwhile, Pakistan's Khan faces a vote of no confidence on Saturday in the country's parliament. While his political problems date back years, he's now battling claims of economic mismanagement as the cost of food and fuel leaps and the government depletes its foreign exchange reserves. "The extent of economic chaos has united opposition to Imran Khan," Kinnear of Verisk Maplecroft said. Middle East and Africa: Experts are also watching for signs of political distress in other countries in the Middle East that are heavily dependent on food imports from the Black Sea region, and often provide generous subsidies to the public. In Lebanon, where nearly three-quarters of the population was living in poverty last year as the result of a political and economic collapse, between 70% and 80% of imported wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine. Key grain silos were also destroyed during the 2020 explosion at the Beirut port. And Egypt, the world's largest buyer of wheat, is already seeing enormous pressure on its huge subsidy program for bread. The country recently set a fixed price for unsubsidized bread after prices spiked, and is trying to secure wheat imports from countries like India and Argentina instead. With an estimated 70% of the world's poor living in Africa, the continent will also be "very exposed" to rising food and energy prices, Arezki said. Droughts and conflict in countries like Ethiopia, Somalia, South Sudan and Burkina Faso have created a food security crisis for more than a quarter of the continent's population, the International Committee of the Red Cross said this week. The situation risks getting worse in the coming months, it continued. Political instability has already been building in parts of the continent. A series of coups have taken place in West and Central Africa since the start of 2021. Europe: Even countries with more developed economies, which have greater buffers to shield citizens from painful price increases, won't have the tools to fully cushion the blow. Thousands of protesters gathered in cities across Greece this week to demand higher wages to counter inflation, while France's presidential election is narrowing as far-right candidate Marine Le Pen plays up her plans to reduce the cost of living. President Emmanuel Macron's government said last month it was considering issuing food vouchers so that middle and low-income families could afford to eat.
What does degrowth mean? ABSTRACT Degrowth is a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human well-being. Over the past few years, the idea has attracted significant attention among academics and social movements, but for people new to the idea it raises a number of questions. Here I set out to clarify three specific issues: (1) I specify what degrowth means, and argue that the framing of degrowth is an asset, not a liability; (2) I explain how degrowth differs fundamentally from a recession; and (3) I affirm that degrowth is primarily focused on high-income nations, and explore the implications of degrowth for the global South.
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-...ig-oil-companies-betrayed-us-all?fr=operanews ‘What we now know … they lied’: how big oil companies betrayed us all In a powerful new three-part docuseries, the oil industry is put on trial as the extent of climate change awareness is revealed The Power of Big Oil: ‘The longer you put [action] off, the steeper the hill that you have to climb to deal with it.’ Chris McGreal Thu 21 Apr 2022 07.03 BST Last modified on Thu 21 Apr 2022 14.26 There is a moment in the revelatory PBS Frontline docuseries The Power of Big Oil, about the industry’s long campaign to stall action on the climate crisis, in which the former Republican senator Chuck Hagel reflects on his part in killing US ratification of the Kyoto climate treaty. In 1997, Hagel joined with the Democratic senator Robert Byrd to promote a resolution opposing the international agreement to limit greenhouse gases, on the grounds that it was unfair to Americans. The measure passed the US Senate without a single dissenting vote, after a vigorous campaign by big oil to mischaracterise the Kyoto protocol as a threat to jobs and the economy while falsely claiming that China and India could go on polluting to their heart’s content. The resolution effectively put a block on US ratification of any climate treaty ever since. A quarter of a century later, Hagel acknowledges that the vote was wrong, and blames the oil industry for malignly claiming the science of climate change was not proved when companies such as Exxon and Shell already knew otherwise from their own research. “What we now know about some of these large oil companies’ positions … they lied. And yes, I was misled. Others were misled when they had evidence in their own institutions that countered what they were saying publicly. I mean they, lied,” he told the documentary-makers. Asked if the planet would be better placed to confront the climate crisis if the oil industry had been honest about the damage fossil fuels were causing, Hagel did not flinch. “Oh, absolutely. It would have created a whole different climate, a whole different political environment. I think it would have changed everything,” he said. But Hagel apparently has not asked why he was so willing to be swayed by big oil when there was no shortage of scientists, including prominent Nasa researchers, telling him and other political leaders the truth. The Power of Big Oil has the answer. The documentary’s makers have dug out a parade of former oil company scientists, lobbyists and public relations strategists who lay bare how the US’s biggest petroleum firm, Exxon, and then the broader petroleum industry, moved from attempting to understand the causes of a global heating to a concerted campaign to hide the making of an environmental catastrophe. Over three episodes – called Denial, Doubt, Delay – the series charts corporate manipulation of science, public opinion and politicians that mirrors conduct by other industries, from big tobacco to the pharmaceutical companies responsible for America’s opioid epidemic. Some of those interviewed shamefacedly admit their part in the decades-long campaign to hide the evidence of climate change, discredit scientists and delay action that threatened big oil’s profits. Others almost boast about how easy it was to dupe the American public and politicians, with consequences not just for the US but every country on the planet. What emerges is a picture of a political system so compromised by corporate money that even when it finally appears that truth will win out, reality is swiftly smothered. Former senator Timothy Wirth tells the documentary-makers how in 1988 he organised historic hearings at which a distinguished Nasa scientist, James Hansen, testified that greenhouse gases were changing the climate. “That was a kind of a magic sentence,” Wirth said. “This was not environmental groups. This was not some green cabal. This was probably the lead climate scientist in the federal government making this statement.” The New York Times reported the testimony on its front page. It seemed a turning point to Wirth and Hansen. Now the country would have to face reality. Instead the hearing served as a warning to the oil industry to intensify its campaign of denialism. “There have been quite a few moments where it has felt to people interested in climate change that it’s all about to change,” said Dan Edge, the Power of Big Oil series producer, to the Guardian. “There’s a moment in episode one where Senator Wirth laughs and says, ‘I really felt we were getting somewhere. It was so exciting.’ That was 30 years ago. Then you hear some of the Obama speeches, and the genuine hope that something might be done about climate change in 2009. It was palpable and it was destroyed so quickly.” As the documentary-makers trace the evolution of the fossil fuel industry’s success at staving off climate legislation, it becomes clear that the oil firms were swift to adapt their strategies to changing circumstances. Jane McMullen, the director of the first episode in the series, said the research revealed how, as it became harder to deny the overwhelming evidence of global heating, the industry shifted gears. “They realised that they were losing the science arguments, especially after the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report came out in 95 that said there is a discernible human influence. So they turned to economics,” she said. Frontline shows that key to that shift was a little known company in the 1990s, Koch Industries, which specialised in refining and distributing some of the heaviest and dirtiest oil. The firm was run by brothers Charles and David Koch. Charles also founded a libertarian thinktank, the Cato Institute in Washington. The Kochs saw a threat to their business from the Clinton administration’s plan for a carbon tax. They mobilised Cato and a Koch-funded front group masquerading as a grass roots organisation, Citizens for a Sound Economy, to oppose it. The Kochs drew in lobby organisations, such as the American Petroleum Institute and the Global Climate Coalition, a group of businesses that opposed climate science. “We would be meeting in various locales in Washington with over 100 people in the room. It was a real war room situation,” Jerry Taylor, director of Natural Resources Studies at the Cato Institute, told the programme. Jeff Nesbit, communications director for Citizens for a Sound Economy, told the documentary makers that the decision was made to target a senator from Oklahoma, David Boren, who chaired the committee handling Clinton’s budget and therefore the carbon tax. “They basically said: if we can get David Boren to flip, we win. So, they said, we’re gonna do whatever it takes,” he said. The industry ran adverts claiming that the tax would cost the average Oklahoma household $500 a year, and mobilised supporters to call Boren to complain that people would effectively be paying a carbon tax every time they took a shower or drove their car. Years later Nesbit admitted that the supposed public backlash was an illusion manufactured by the Koch brothers. “Maybe there were a handful of folks who thought, oh, gosh, I should call my senator and register my complaint. But they had no such grassroots army. It was funded and fuelled by the corporate interests,” he said. Still, it worked. Boren caved and killed the carbon tax. The oil industry took note. “He folded right away,” Nesbit said. “It’s like, wow, this can really work. We can pick our targets strategically and win, even when we’re not in political power.” McMullen said research for the documentary showed that strategy playing out repeatedly over the years. “It’s become almost accepted fact that tackling climate change will cost the economy, whereas look at the cost of damages were faced with today,” she said. The result, she said, is that one administration after another from Clinton onwards found reasons to delay action because they did not want to face accusations of making Americans poorer. “That’s been a problem all the way through this 40-year history. There’s this very strong impetus for politicians to say, we’ll just wait, we don’t need to do it now. But obviously there isn’t time. And the longer you put it off, the steeper the hill that you have to climb to deal with it,” she said. The Power of Big Oil is showing now in the US on PBS Frontline and in the UK on BBC2 this summer