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Water

This tag is associated with 16 posts

Garbage Planet

Garbage. On average, each of us deposits over four pounds of garbage every day in waste baskets around the house. That’s about 30 pounds of garbage per person, per week. If we didn’t take the trash out, it would soon fill up our houses and apartments. If garbage trucks didn’t haul it away, it would [...]

It’s World Water Day–and the tap is running dry

“The harsh fact is that we will probably run out of water long before we run out of fuel,” says Nestle Chairman, Peter Brabeck-Letmanthe on the BBC website. “Agriculture accounts for 70% of global water usage today, and . . . the need to feed the growing population of the world will put an even [...]

Infinite monkeys, finite resources

Ever heard of The Infinite Monkey Theorem? It goes something like this: Given infinite time, a monkey banging randomly on typewriter keys would reproduce a given work, such as Hamlet. Variations of the theorem add more monkeys to reproduce more works, such as the complete plays of Shakespeare, or all the books in the British [...]

U.S. sewer systems leaking hazardous waste

“It was drizzling lightly in late October when . . . untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal,” reports the NY Times. “It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall,” said Bob Connaughton, one the plant’s engineers. “Sometimes all it takes is [...]

Guest essay: The Paradise Imperative

A few days ago, “The Paradise Imperative” appeared as a comment on my “Contact” page. It was purportedly an essay by William H. Kötke, author of such works as The Final Empire: The Collapse of Civilization and the Seed of the Future, and Garden Planet. I had read the former work and mentioned it on [...]

Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010

Project Censored has released its “Top 25 Censored Stories for 2010.” The list, compiled annually by sociology students at Sonoma State University, represents news that has been repressed by political, economic, and/or legal pressure on the mainstream media. Here are the stories the MSM has been intimidated into quashing (details on the website or in [...]

The recession is over! Enjoy the Depression.

“From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over at this point.” So said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke on September 15th, 2009 (MarketWatch). What he failed to mention is that, from a real-life perspective, the Depression is well underway. Bernanke’s “technical” bright spots–home prices and sales are up, job losses have slowed, retail [...]

depressed about the Depression

I’m baaack. Haven’t written a lick in months. I’ve been bummed out that millions of Americans, including my brother, are out of work, and that the government is lying about it (double their unemployment percentages; it’s closer to 18% than 9%). And I’m angry that instead of prosecuting the crooks at AIG, Goldman Sachs and [...]

Earth 2100: ABC’s worst-case scenario

“Earth 2100,” ABC’s two-hour “journey through the next century to explore what might be our worst-case scenario,” aired on Tuesday, June 2, 2009. Through a graphic novel format, the program follows generations of an American family during a 21st century in which “the ‘perfect storm’ of population growth, dwindling resources and climate change converge . [...]

Growth without limits–a false assumption

“. . . Our economy, indeed our entire civilization, is based on an obviously false assumption that we can have growth without limits. Even if we were able to restart the economic engine and push the pedal to the floor, we would not get far before we ran out of gas. And fresh water. And [...]

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