Carbon Ain’t the Culprit, Kids
On a student trip to Manhattan as a high school kid, I was sucked into a sidewalk scam called three-card Monte. Three-card Monte is a classic con game that the “mark” never, ever wins because the con man’s legerdemain will keep you always following and picking the wrong card. I was the mark. Fortunately, I learned quickly after losing only a couple bucks. I may be a born skeptic.
In February, 2021, William Happer, longtime head of the physics department at Princeton University (Albert Einstein’s home base) delivered a compelling talk about climate change and carbon dioxide. Happer is among hundreds of highly considered scientists who oppose the mainstream media position that carbon dioxide is the pollution threat that we are led to believe. (1, 2, 8)
I’m not in favor of dumping huge amounts of any anthropogenic substance into the ecosystem, even carbon dioxide. Should we do away with those godawful diesel school buses? Absolutely! But I’m also taken by the data that Happer presents and it is concerning that we may be led astray by corporate interests and knee-jerk virtue signalers. Following Happer’s (and others’) science, carbon dioxide isn’t the culprit; at least in the eyes of a considerable number of actual scientists. Comparatively, there is scant attention given to the devastation other human pollutants wreak on the planet. In a sense, we are following the wrong card. We should focus on chemicals, not carbon. The wanton use of thousands of other pollutants is what is destroying our planet and biosphere.
Insect apocalypse. Something is killing insects by the trillions. Two years ago I drove a high profile vehicle over six thousand miles across the United States in late summer. Through verdant farmland, over the Rockies and Sierras, among the giant redwoods, I drove. In years past, late summer clouds of insects hitting the windshield would be a constant annoyance. But recently, over those thousands of miles I stopped to clean the windshield exactly one time. Once was all. Chemicals not climate change are killing insects. And it’s happening in your backyard, too. (3)
It’s been two years since I’ve seen even one large garden spider in our yard. And mind you, we have never used anything harsher than city water on our lawn or plants. Wildlife up and down the food chain is disappearing at an alarming rate. And it’s not due to carbon dioxide.
While giant corporations are turning to electric cars, windmills and solar farms, the attack on Mother Nature is ongoing and the worst weapons are readily available at every big box store in the world and to every row crop farmer in haz mat suits spraying chemicals on the Earth. Here’s what is really going on that we should be paying attention to far more than quixotic erection of windmills.
Your driveway. Who’s killing the planet? You and your neighbor, if you’re spraying RoundUp on your driveway or sidewalk. Are you paying one of those big green trucks to spray your lawn? Is your bank, doctor’s office, hospital, drive through, apartment complex, strip mall at fault? Yep. When you see the guy out there in tee shirt and shorts and a backpack sprayer dousing the curbs and walkways, roses and shrubs with poison, pay attention. That’s what’s destroying the planet. (And by the way, ask your city’s park department how much poison they use.)
Agricultural runoff. One of the biggest planet-killers is one you’ve never heard of. Possibly the most-used substance in farming is an herbicide called atrazine. Learn about it. Add to that the synthetic fertilizers that run off the fields into the rivers and streams of American farmland and you’ve got the second-largest dead zone on the planet at the Gulf of Mexico, fed by the Missouri-Mississippi River complex. Dead zone means exactly that. It’s an area where nothing lives. Did carbon dioxide cause it? No. (4)
Killing the Earth with solar. In a case of ill-advised and ill-informed knee-jerk environmentalism, we fell for the three-card Monte of current solar energy technology. Millions of acres of the planet are now starved of life-giving sunlight. Hey, put a panel of plywood over part of your yard then see what happens to the life under it in six months. People think the desert is dead. It isn’t, dummies. It’s part of the planet and blanketing it in manmade panels is just plain stupid. There, I said it. (5,6)
Ethanol kills the planet. Been saying this for years: Raping the planet for corn is the same as raping her for oil. Most of the corn grown in the United States is turned into ethanol, that energy-inefficient liquid carbon. And it’s as bad for the environment as it’s become for the American farmer. Growing the kind of corn used for ethanol requires massive amounts of chemical inputs and demands that the farmer buy GMO seed from one of the Big GMO houses. The only way it worked financially for the farmer is if Big Government decreed that fuel at the pump contain a certain percentage of corn juice. That’s a rigged system. For the planet, topsoil is eroded, chemical inputs are horrendous and the result is bad all around. (7)
Drugs from thugs. It’s not street drug thugs that are the problem. Pharmaceutical drugs have been found in nearly every freshwater stream in the States. How do we find them? Just catch a trout at 7,000 feet and test it. You’ll find Paxil or some other drug almost every time.
There is so much more to address than carbon dioxide levels. Billion-dollar corporations are announcing that they will no longer build gas-fueled cars in the future. But have you heard of one, single company saying they will no longer produce poisons to spray on your sidewalk? One company stop producing hormone disrupting drugs? One corporate farm announce discontinuing herbicide or nitrogen fertilizers?
And we haven’t even gotten to the bees and butterflies.
Look, humans are given to jumping on things — CFLs, Segways, electric cars, vaccines. We’ve got to rethink this thing and stop playing three-card Monte with Big Chem, Mainstream Media and John Kerry.
Be well.
Heartland Healing is a metaphysically based polemic describing alternatives to conventional methods of healing the body, mind and planet. It is provided as information and entertainment, certainly not medical advice. Important to remember and pass on to others: for a weekly dose of Heartland Healing, visit HeartlandHealing.com.
2021.03.09
1 https://dof.princeton.edu/about/clerk-faculty/emeritus/william-happer