State of the Earth

This section is intense. It’s highly suggested to do the Inner Ecology section first, and use those tools when reading this section. It’s also hightly suggested to read this with a friend, and talk about it during and after. I have the biobliography on a longer form of the State of the Earth that I’ll post later. I checked and rechecked the figures. I was doing this research around 2023, much of it is more severe now. The intention with this section is to get a clear understanding of what’s happening, to use that as a spring board for things like 12 step recovery, and bioregional regeneration.

  • We could see things as an interconnected web of economics, energy, relationships, and ecosystems.

  • A child born today is expected to outlive coral.

  • 30-40% of ocean species spend some of of their lives on coral.

  • There are ocean dead zones over 20,000 miles wide with very little life in them.

  • There is ocean acidification and decreasing ocean oxygen

  • Every species of wild-caught seafood is projected to be collapsed by the year 2050 (collapse being defined as less than 10% left)

  • Plastics do not biodegrade – ever

  • There are currently 1 lb. of plastics for 3 lbs. of fish in the oceans, by 2050 a 1 to 1 correlation is projected

  • 91% of plastics have not been recycled, including plastics turned in for recycling

  • 66% of people live with severe water scarcity 1 month of the year

  • Global heating is leading to the drying out of 30% of the Earth

  • The ocean AMOC current runs between the Earth’s poles, due to global heating it’s decreased by 15-20%, and it’s a main way the oceans stay oxygenated and the Earth regulates it’s temperature. Potsdam Institute says there’s a 59% chance of tipping point by 2050.

  • The ice caps are melting & they are foundational in regulating the Earth’s temperature

  • The topsoil is badly depleted from commercial agriculture, pesticides, and synthetic fertilizers.

  • Over 1 billion pounds of pesticides are used in the U.S. each year and approximately 5.6 billion pounds used worldwide

  • There’s desertification in previously fertile Iran, North Africa, Egypt, Palestine, the Fertile Crescent, etc., etc.

  • California is currently in the stages of desertification with severe droughts and fires

  • There originally was a vast 90 million acres of forest on the Eastern US. coastal plain, only about 12,000 acres of old growth remain today

  • We could lose the Amazon rainforest in less than 40 years

  • 2/3’s of Earth’s original rainforest is degraded or gone

  • 96% of the biomass on the Earth is from humans and domesticated animals

  • We’re in 6th largest extinction on Earth, caused by humans

  • 10 billion people are projected by 2050, over 2 billion more than 2020

  • 3/4's of species are projected to be extinct in 3 generations

  • It took ten million years for ecosystems to recover from the last mass extinction

  • There’s not just peak oil, there’s also a finite amount of minerals like phosphorus, a key mineral used in commercial agriculture, and a finite amount of metals, including for technology.

  • Around 70% of crops worldwide depend on pollinators. Some experts suggest bees could go extinct, and by the 1990’s the short-haired bumblebee, a key pollinator, had been classified as extinct in the U.K, and other locations.

  • 12,000 tons of waste are produced yearly by nuclear reactors. This waste contains isotopes with a half-life of more than 2 million years. We don’t have a long term solution for the safe disposal of nuclear waste.

  • The U.S. is currently 33 trillion in debt, 250k per taxpayer, including another 500k per taxpayer in government pensions, benefits, etc.

  • The U.S. is the world reserve currency, the world trades mostly in U.S. dollars. When a country is the world reserve currency they lose manufacturing. And the U.S. has little manufacturing. It’s been said the U.S.’s main export is U.S. dollars. Staying the world reserve currency does not last forever, historically countries go through very challenging times when dropped as the world reserve currency.

  • Peak oil happened in 2008, which was involved in the financial crisis. Fracking extended that, and many believe fracking peak oil happened before 2020, with at least a 6% yearly decrease in oil projected forward. Even so, it’s clear that to continue to use the remaining oil at this rate will drastically increase global heating.

  • “The Nobel prize summit in April 2021 declared a planetary emergency. This statement, signed by 126 Nobel laureates, is a world record. We have reached the final decisive decade of our opportunity to land safely at a maximum 1.5 degrees Celsius rise in temperature, and 1.5 is a real planetary boundary. Meeting both the 1.5°C and 2°C limit will require unprecedented transformation across all economies, industries and geographies.” Johan Rockstrom, PhD, Circa 2020

  • As of 2024 very few experts still believe stopping at 1.5 degrees C. is possible, and many experts say at this trajectory a 3 degree increase is likely. From 1.5 to 2 degrees extreme heat would be 2.5 times worse, sea-ice free arctics would be ten times worse, vertebra and plant species loss 2 times worse, insect loss 3 times worse, the amount of ecosystems shifting to a new biome would be almost 2 times worse (a biome shift being for example a shift from a forest to a drier tundra), a decline in marine life 2 times worse, coral reefs are projected to decline by 70-90 percent with warming greater than 1.5°C. and with an additional half degree of warming more than 99 percent coral reef losses are expected, etc.

  • It would take 180 years to mine enough copper to create infrastructure for even one generation of global alternative energy. People mine the easiest areas first, and many metals are getting scarcer.

  • Currently it’s a 20 terawatt economy yearly. It’s estimated with alternative energy it could be maybe 10-12 terawatts (Simon Michaux, PhD in engineering and materials, professor and consultant with the government of Finland).

  • Michaux suggests there’s a 5-10 year window before even more serious economic decompensation occurs due to metal shortages. (He said that around 2024. It’s already happening.)

    I have the bibliography on a longer form of the State of the Earth, which I will add later.