The US Is Not "One Nation" - And It Never Was

Patrick Buchanan is an informative and interesting writer. On foreign policy, especially, he"s long been one of the most reasonable voices among high-level American pundits.

When it comes to cultural matters, however, Buchanan has long held to a peculiar and empirically questionable version of American history in which the United States was once a mono-culture in which everyone was once happily united by "a common religion," a "common language," and a "common culture."

Now, he"s at it again with his most recent column in which he correctly points out that the United States is culturally fractured, and speculates as to whether or not Thomas Jefferson"s call to "dissolve political bands" in the Declaration of Independence might be sound advice today.

Buchanan is correct in noting that the US is culturally divided today.

But, he appears to have a selective view of history when he contends there was a time when this was not so. If there ever was such a period, it"s unclear as to when exactly it was. 

Buchanan can"t be referring to the mid-19th century when Northern states and Southern states were becoming increasingly hostile toward each other. Many of these differences flared up over slavery, but larger cultural differences were there too, exemplified by a divide between agrarian and industrialized culture, and the hierarchical South versus the more populist North. The result was a civil war that killed more than 2 percent of the population. It was a literal bloodbath. 

Was that version of the United States culturally united?

Nor can Buchanan possibly be referring to the US of the so-called Gilded Age. After all, during this period, the US was flooded with immigrants from a wide variety of backgrounds, 

Historian Jon Grinspan notes:

American life transformed more radically during the 19th century than it ever had before. Between the 1830s and 1900, America"s population quintupled ... at least 18 million immigrants arrived from Europe, more people than had lived in all of America in 1830.

This hardly led to a period of religious or linguistic unity. 

Certainly Catholics of the 19th century in the United States — who were commonly denounced as being non-Christians by the majority Protestants — would be at a loss if asked to describe the way the United States was united by a common religion. 

This alleged unity would be news to the Catholics whose schools were being closed by government edict — as happened in Oregon where the state government deliberately outlawed private schools in the hope of eradicating the Catholic education system. This unity was certainly absent for the Catholics who were victims in the Know-Nothing riots in Philadelphia in 1844. 

The Mormons may have fared even worse, and fled to the wilds of Utah. Even there they couldn"t avoid the iron fist of the federal government. When disagreements flared over polygamy and territorial representation, James Buchanan sent 2,500 troops to Utah in 1857 as part of a shooting war with Mormons to force them into better compliance with federal law. 

Nor were the foreign languages of immigrants immediately stamped out as many imagine in their nostalgia. Well into the 20th century, German continued to be a widely-spoken language, with Americans of German descent demanding their own German-language schools and government documents printed in German. Many Germans actively sought to avoid cultural integration with others by demanding more taxpayer-funded German-language-only schools.

According to historian Willi Paul Adams:

[S]ome states mandated English as the exclusive language of instruction in the public schools, while Pennsylvania and Ohio in 1839 were first in allowing German as an official alternative, even requiring it on parental demand. Some public and many private parochial schools taught exclusively in German throughout many decades, mostly in rural areas.

Nor was the German lobby confined to these two states. The original Colorado constitution, for example, mandates that all new laws be distributed in German, Spanish, and English, so as to cater to speakers the three most common languages in the area. 

According to the census bureau, there were more than two-million German-speaking foreign-born United States residents in 1920, which means more than 2 percent of the population was speaking German. If the same proportions held up today, there"d be more than six million foreign-born German speakers in the US. Moreover, Germans weren"t even the largest foreign language group at the time. There were even more foreign-born speakers of "Slavic languages" including Russian, Czech, and Polish. Taken all together — out of a population of 100 million — there were more than ten million foreign-born Americans with a "mother tongue" other than English in 1920. It is likely that many of these people also knew and spoke English — some of the time. But the reality hardly paints a picture of linguistic and cultural unity as imagined by Buchanan. 

And then, of course, there is the Spanish-speaking population. As noted above, the State of Colorado was tri-lingual from the day it became a state. And then there is New Mexico where Spanish speakers prior to statehood comprised at least half the state"s population. Not surprisingly, the New Mexico constitution has always stipulated that the Spanish language enjoys special status, and that no citizen of the state may be denied any state services or rights based on being only able to speak Spanish. 

Much of this linguistic diversity was a legacy of the Mexican War in which the US annexed vast territories that included many Spanish speakers. Generally forgotten today is the fact that the Mexican border was once located a mere 100 miles south of Denver along the Arkansas River. The special status granted Spanish in the 19th century in these regions was not a result of an influx of new immigrants. It was the result of a linguistic reality imposed on the population of the American Southwest by an American war of conquest.

We might also mention ongoing ethnic tensions caused by the war, such as those caused by the notorious Land Act of 1851 which robbed the Californios of their property. And then there were decades of anti-Mexican policies in southern Texas that disenfranchised the Spanish-speaking minority there. In some cases, this led to outright violent rebellion as with Juan Cortina and his guerrilla fighters.  

So, is the cultural disunity in the United States something novel and unprecedented as Buchanan imagines? It"s unlikely. 

Any theory about unity in American history that just breezes over the American Civil War is questionable at best, and English is likely more widespread today than at any point in the last 150 years thanks to the dominance of American popular culture. 

Nevertheless, Buchanan has a point. 

There are very real divides in the US today, especially between the religious and the anti-religious, between the urban residents and suburbanites, and between leftists and conservatives. Recent data even suggests that communities are now segregating themselves along ideological lines.

So what is the answer? 

As is so often the case, the answer simply lies in decentralization. As Buchanan seems to suggest, now may be the time to "dissolve the political bands which have connected" Californians with Texans and Vermonters with Indianans. 

After all, as Buchanan notes, if unity were put up to a vote, would the confederation we call "the United States" even survive? 

Could the Constitution, as currently interpreted, win the approval of two-thirds of our citizens and three-fourth of our states, if it were not already the supreme law of the land? How would a national referendum on the Constitution turn out, when many Americans are already seeking a new constitutional convention?

The answers to these questions are not obviously "yes." 

Buchanan also correctly points out that the US does not qualify as "a nation" - at least not according to the romantic definition he uses. Buchanan quotes the Frenchman Ernest Renan who identifies at least two criteria for status as a nation: "One is the possession in common of a rich legacy of memories; the other is present consent, the desire to live together, the desire to continue to invest in the heritage that we have jointly received."

Buchanan suggests this description no longer applies to the US. He"s half right. It doesn"t apply to the US today. But unless we studiously ignore and gloss over the enduring religious, linguistic, cultural, and ideological differences that have always existed, we must admit it never really applied to the United States at all. 

Enviros Are Ignoring the Elephant In the Room: U.S. Military Is the World’s Largest Polluter

The Military Pumps Out Staggering Quantities of Toxic Waste, Water and Air Pollution and Radiation

Environmentalists are ignoring the elephant in the room … the world’s largest polluter.

Newsweek reported in 2014:

The US Department of Defence is one of the world’s worst polluters. Its footprint dwarfs that of any corporation: 4,127 installations spread across 19 million acres of American soil. Maureen Sullivan, who heads the Pentagon’s environmental programmes, says her office contends with 39,000 contaminated sites.

Camp Lejeune is one of the Department’s 141 Superfund sites, which qualify for special clean up grants from the federal government.

That’s about 10% of all of America’s Superfund sites, easily more than any other polluter. If the definition is broadened beyond Pentagon installations, about 900 of the 1200 or so Superfund sites in America are abandoned military facilities or sites that otherwise support military needs.

“Almost every military site in this country is seriously contaminated,” said John D Dingell, a soon-to-retire Michigan congressman, who served in the Second World War.

The U.S. military is the third-largest polluter of U.S. waterways.

The Washington Post noted Monday:

The U.S. military is the single largest consumer of fuel in the world.

We use a highly-polluting form of nuclear power so the U.S. military can make bombs.  U.S. military considerations also drive nuclear policy in Japan (that didn’t turn out very well) and other countries.

The government has been covering up nuclear accidents for more than 50 years.

Above-ground nuclear tests – which caused numerous cancers to the “downwinders” – were covered up by the American government for decades. See this, this, this, this, this and this.

At least 33,480 U.S. nuclear weapons workers who have received compensation for health damage are now dead.

And the country’s main storage site for nuclear waste from military production may be in real trouble.

The Pentagon is also one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the world … and yet has a blanket exemption from all greenhouse gas treaties.

The defense department also uses open-air burn pits which send a parade of horribles into the air.

Sealife is not exempt. Military sonar kills whales and dolphins.

And the military has long been a flagrant user of chemical weapons and depleted uranium … which can trash ecosystems and human health.

Defoliant spray run, part of Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War by UC-123B Provider aircraft.

Things Get Even Worse During Wartime

And then there’s actual war-fighting …

Then UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon pointed out in 2014:

The environment has long been a silent casualty of war and armed conflict. From the contamination of land and the destruction of forests to the plunder of natural resources and the collapse of management systems, the environmental consequences of war are often widespread and devastating.

The WorldWatch Institute notes:

An estimated 35 percent of southern Vietnam’s inland hardwood forest was sprayed [by the U.S. military with Agent Orange defoliant] at least once. Some areas-those bordering roads and rivers, around military bases, and along the forested transport route known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail-were hit up to half a dozen times.

***

With each spraying some portion of the trees failed to recover. Estimates ranged from about 10 percent in some forests sprayed only once to 80 percent or even more in those sprayed repeatedly. Denuded areas sometimes became desert-like, with blowing sand dunes.

***

About 14 percent of southern Vietnam’s teeming hardwood forests were destroyed ….

Vietnam’s coastal mangrove forests fared even worse: by a quirk of physiology, a single spraying could wipe out almost the entire plant community. Mangroves can live where other species cannot, at the brackish interface of land and sea, because their roots filter the salt out of seawater so that fresh water is drawn up into the plant’s leaves. The defoliants interfered with this filtering mechanism and allowed lethal doses of salt to accumulate in the plants.

Worse, the vegetation seemed utterly unable to regenerate, leaving bare mudflats even years after spraying.

***

Pfeiffer later recalled “a vast gray landscape, littered with the skeletons of herbicide-killed mangroves.”

***

A mid-1980s study by Vietnamese ecologists documented just 24 species of birds and 5 species of mammals present in sprayed forests and converted areas, compared to 145-170 bird species and 30-55 kinds of mammals in intact forest.

The Guardian notes of the Iraq War:

Sewers flowed into the streets and rivers, and refineries and pipelines leaked oil into the soil. The sanctions that followed meant little was repaired and land and cities have been poisoned. One observer in Basra in 2008 said people “live amid mud and faeces…

Childhood cancer rates are the highest in the country. The city’s salty tap water makes people ill. And there is more garbage on the streets than municipal collectors can make a dent in”.

Lutz says the images of 630 burning oil wells, torched by the retreating Iraqi army in Kuwait in 1991, advertised the inherent ‘ecocide’ of war. But this type of destruction is “the tip of the iceberg”, she says.

***

In all wars, displaced people congregate en masse without infrastructure to support their presence. Refugees turn to the environment in order to fulfil their basic needs. [i.e. they strip the land bare just to survive.]

***

“War is bad for wildlife in as many ways as for people.

***

In Afghanistan too, wildlife and habitats have disappeared. The past 30 years of war has stripped the country of its trees, including precious native pistachio woodlands. The Costs of War Project says illegal logging by US-backed warlords and wood harvesting by refugees caused more than one-third of Afghanistan’s forests to vanish between 1990 and 2007. Drought, desertification and species loss have resulted. The number of migratory birds passing through Afghanistan has fallen by 85%.

Syria and Yemen‘s environments have also been trashed by U.S.-backed wars.

So environmentalists who stay silent about imperial wars of adventure are totally ineffective.

Environmental Issues Cannot Be Separated From Issues of War and Peace

Foreign Policy Journal explains:

No matter what we’re led to believe, the world’s worst polluter is not your cousin who refuses to recycle or that co-worker who drives a gas guzzler or the guy down the block who simply will not try CFL bulbs. “The U.S. Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest U.S. chemical companies combined,” explains Lucinda Marshall, founder of the Feminist Peace Network. Pesticides, defoliants like Agent Orange, solvents, petroleum, lead, mercury, and depleted uranium are among the many deadly substances used by the military.

***

The U.S. military and its fellow polluters—trans-national corporations—treat the planet like it’s a porta-potty…with little or no opposition from the general population. In fact, the military typically enjoys unconditional support even from those who identify as “anti-war.”Keep this in mind the next time you hear the phrase “war on terror”: Our tax dollars are subsidizing a global eco-terror campaign and all the recycled toilet paper in the world ain’t gonna change that.

Project Censored pointed out in 2010:

The US military is responsible for the most egregious and widespread pollution of the planet, yet this information and accompanying documentation goes almost entirely unreported. In spite of the evidence, the environmental impact of the US military goes largely unaddressed by environmental organizations  …. This impact includes uninhibited use of fossil fuels, massive creation of greenhouse gases, and extensive release of radioactive and chemical contaminants into the air, water, and soil.

***

According to Barry Sanders, author of The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism, “the greatest single assault on the environment, on all of us around the globe, comes from one agency . . . the Armed Forces of the United States.”

Throughout the long history of military preparations, actions, and wars, the US military has not been held responsible for the effects of its activities upon environments, peoples, or animals.

***

As it stands, the Department of Defense is the largest polluter in the world, producing more hazardous waste than the five largest US chemical companies combined. Depleted uranium, petroleum, oil, pesticides, defoliant agents such as Agent Orange, and lead, along with vast amounts of radiation from weaponry produced, tested, and used, are just some of the pollutants with which the US military is contaminating the environment. Flounders identifies key examples:

– Depleted uranium: Tens of thousands of pounds of microparticles of radioactive and highly toxic waste contaminate the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Balkans.

– US-made land mines and cluster bombs spread over wide areas of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East continue to spread death and destruction even after wars have ceased.

– Thirty-five years after the Vietnam War, dioxin contamination is three hundred to four hundred times higher than “safe” levels, resulting in severe birth defects and cancers into the third generation of those affected.

– US military policies and wars in Iraq have created severe desertification of 90 percent of the land, changing Iraq from a food exporter into a country that imports 80 percent of its food.

– In the US, military bases top the Superfund list of the most polluted places, as perchlorate and trichloroethylene seep into the drinking water, aquifers, and soil.

– Nuclear weapons testing in the American Southwest and the South Pacific Islands has contaminated millions of acres of land and water with radiation, while uranium tailings defile Navajo reservations.

– Rusting barrels of chemicals and solvents and millions of rounds of ammunition are criminally abandoned by the Pentagon in bases around the world.

***

Between 1946 and 1958, the US dropped more than sixty nuclear weapons on the people of the Marshall Islands. The Chamoru people of Guam, being so close and downwind, still experience an alarmingly high rate of related cancer.

***

Meanwhile, as if the US military has not contaminated enough of the world already, a new five-year strategic plan by the US Navy outlines the militarization of the Arctic to defend national security, potential undersea riches, and other maritime interests, anticipating the frozen Arctic Ocean to be open waters by the year 2030.

***

Linking the antiwar and environmental movements is a much-needed step. As Cindy Sheehan recently told me, “I think one of the best things that we can do is look into economic conversion of the defense industry into green industries, working on sustainable and renewable forms of energy, and/or connect[ing] with indigenous people who are trying to reclaim their lands from the pollution of the military industrial complex. The best thing to do would be to start on a very local level to reclaim a planet healthy for life.”

It comes down to recognizing the connections, recognizing how we are manipulated into supporting wars and how those wars are killing our ecosystem.

Postscript: War is also bad for the economy.

Earth Overshoot: How Sustainable Is Population Growth?

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

For decades people have been predicting overpopulation would wipe out energy resources if not the entire planet. Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?

Every year the population bomb and peak oil crowd have been proven wrong. But how long can the status quo of generating growth by population explosion last?

Reader Rick Mills at Ahead of the Herd addresses the subject in a guest blog that first appeared on his blog as Earth Overshoot Day.

Earth Overshoot Day

The second half of the 20th century saw the biggest increase in the world’s population in human history. Our population surged because of:

• Medical advances lessened the mortality rate in many countries


• Massive increases in agricultural productivity caused by the “Green Revolution”

The global death rate has dropped almost continuously since the start of the industrial revolution – personal hygiene, improved methods of sanitation and the development of antibiotics all played a major role.

Green Revolution

The term Green Revolution refers to a series of research, development, and technology transfers that happened between the 1940s and the late 1970s.

The initiatives involved:

• Development of high-yielding varieties of cereal grains


• Expansion of irrigation infrastructure


• Modernization of management techniques


• Mechanization


• Distribution of hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and pesticides to farmers

Tractors with gasoline powered internal combustion engines (versus steam) became the norm in the 1920s after Henry Ford developed his Fordson in 1917 – the first mass-produced tractor. This new technology was available only to relatively affluent farmers and it was not until the 1940s tractor use became widespread.

Electric motors and irrigation pumps made farming and ranching more efficient. Major innovations in animal husbandry – modern milking parlors, grain elevators, and confined animal feeding operations  –  were all made possible by electricity.

Advances in fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides, fungicides and antibiotics all led to better weed, insect and disease control.

There were major advances in plant and animal breeding – crop hybridization, artificial insemination of livestock, growth hormones and genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

Further down the food chain came innovations in food processing and distribution.

All these new technologies increased global agriculture production with the full effects starting to be felt in the 1960s.

Cereal production more than doubled in developing nations – yields of rice, maize, and wheat increased steadily. Between 1950 and 1984 world grain production increased by over 250% – and the world added a couple billion more people to the dinner table.

The modernization and industrialization of our global agricultural industry led to the single greatest explosion in food production in history. The agricultural reforms and resulting production increases fostered by the Green Revolution are responsible for avoiding widespread famine in developing countries and for feeding billions more people since.

The Green Revolution helped kick start the greatest explosion in human population in our history – it took only 40 years (starting in 1950) for the population to double from 2.5 billion to five billion people.

We goosed agra machine’s growth and saved a billion people who birthed billions more.

Malthusian pessimism

“The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man“. Thomas Robert Malthus

Malthusian pessimism has long been criticized by doubters believing technological advancements in:

• Agriculture


• Energy


• Water use


• Manufacturing


• Disease control


• Fertilizers


• Information management


• Transportation

would keep crop production ahead of the population growth curve. Malthus’s prediction hasn’t come true because, so far, rising agricultural yields have always outpaced population growth.

Norman Borlang, Father of the Green Revolution, is on record as saying if we did everything right the Earth has a human carrying capacity of 10 billion people.

Ester Boserup, an agricultural economist says don’t worry, that population growth is the driver of land productivity – our planet’s human carrying capacity is based on the capabilities of our social systems and our technologies more than environmental limits.

Ester’s downgrading of environmental limits to second place doesn’t give me much comfort moving forward. It seems a little shortsighted.

Population

In 1950 the world’s population stood at 2.52 billion people. Today there are over 7.5 billion of us living on Earth.

Current World Population: 7,500,072,439

According to United Nations predictions humans could number 9.7 billion people by 2050, and over 11 billion by 2100.

The earth might be big enough for one billion people, four billion maybe even eight or nine or even the 10 billion as Borlang believed. But the time is quickly coming when our sheer numbers will demand more than the earth can possibly supply.

Some say that number has already been surpassed.

Ecological Overshoot

For most of human history, there is no doubt we were consuming resources at a rate far lower than what the planet was able to regenerate.

Unfortunately, we have crossed a critical threshold. The demand we are now placing on our planet’s resources appears to have begun to outpace the rate at which nature can replenish them.

The gap between human demand and supply is known as ecological overshoot. To better understand the concept think of your bank account – you have $5000.00 paying monthly interest. Month after month you take the interest plus $100. That $100 is your financial, or for our purposes, your ecological overshoot and its withdrawal are obviously unsustainable.

Humans are currently withdrawing more natural resources than our Earth bank is able to provide on a sustainable basis. How much more? At today’s rate of withdrawal, we need just over another half earth. We’re on track to require the resources of two planets by 2050.

If today, everyone on earth were to start consuming the same amount of natural resources as the average Australian we’d need 5.4 planets, an ecological overshoot of 4.4 planets.

Earth Overshoot Day

According to the Global Footprint Network (GFN) August 8th was Earth Overshoot Day 2016 – the day when humanity exhausts our ecological budget, the day when our consumption exceeded the environment’s renewal capacity for the entire year.

The rest of the year we’re in ecological overshoot and we currently use the renewable resources of 1.6 Earths.

The GFN predicts that by 2030, Earth Overshoot Day will be in June – meaning it will take two entire Earths to sustain our species’ consumption.

Loss of species

Every two years, Global Footprint Network, WWF, and the Zoological Society of London publish the Living Planet Report. The Living Planet Report 2016 (October) is an eye opener:

• 
  
  • The Global Living Planet Index shows a decline of 58% between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 14,152 populations of 3,706 species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
  
  

• 
  
  • The terrestrial LPI shows a decline of 38% 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 4,658 populations of 1,678 terrestrial species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012
  
  

• 
  
  • The tropical forest species LPI shows a decline of 41 per cent 1970 and 2009 Trend in population abundance for 369 populations of 220 tropical forest species (84 mammals, 110 birds, 10 amphibians and 16 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2009.
  
  

• 
  
  • The grassland species LPI shows a decline of 18 per cent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 372 populations of 126 grassland species (55 mammals, 58 birds, and 13 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
  
  

• 
  
  • The freshwater LPI shows a decline of 81 per cent 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 3,324 populations of 881 freshwater species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
  
  

• 
  
  • The wetland-dependent species LPI shows a decline of 39 per cent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 706 inland wetlands populations of 308 freshwater species (4 mammals, 48 birds, 224 fish, 4 amphibians and 28 reptiles) monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.
  
  

• The marine LPI shows a decline of 36 percent between 1970 and 2012 Trend in population abundance for 6,170 populations of 1,353 marine species monitored across the globe between 1970 and 2012.

The Earth has gone through five major extinction events – from the Ordovician-Silurian (350 million years ago) to the Cretaceous-Paleogene (65 million years ago), in each event 70-90% of all species died.

The Anthropocene, or the age of the humans, is considered by scientists to be a 6th extinction event. That’s real bad news long before even 50% extinction – loss of species means loss of pollinators – which is a real problem since so many varieties, and so much of our food crops rely on insects (ie. bees) to pollinate.

The revolution wasn’t really green

The modern agricultural complex spawned by the Green Revolution may have allowed us to grow more food, but dependence on this high-cost industrial input type of system extracts an extreme toll:

• Agricultural output did increase as a result of the Green Revolution, but the energy input to produce a crop increased faster – the ratio of crops produced to energy input has decreased. This is because High Yielding Varieties (HYVs) of seeds only outperform traditional varieties when adequate irrigation, pesticides, and fertilizers are used


• Green Revolution agriculture produces monocultures of cereal grains. This type of agriculture relies on the extensive use of pesticides because monoculture systems – with their lack of genetic variation – are particularly sensitive to bug infestations


• The transition from traditional agriculture to GR agricultural meant farmers became dependent on industrial inputs – not made on the farm inputs. Farmers faced severely increased costs because they now had to purchase such items as farming machinery, fertilizer, pesticides, irrigation equipment and seeds


• The increased level of mechanization on larger farms removed a large source of employment from the rural economy. New machinery – mass produced gas tractors, large self-propelled combines and mechanical cotton pickers – all combined to sharply reduce labor requirements


• Less people were affected by hunger and died from starvation – but many more are affected by malnutrition such as iron or Vitamin A deficiencies. Green Revolution grains do not have the same nutritional values as traditional varieties. The switch from heavily rotated multiple crops to mono-cropping or dual cropping reduces total soil fertility and the nutritional value of our food


• The Green Revolution reduced agricultural biodiversity by relying on just a few varieties of each crop. The food supply could be susceptible to pathogens that cannot be controlled by agrochemicals


• Many valuable genetic traits, bred into traditional varieties over thousands of years, are now lost


• Wild plant and animal biodiversity was hurt because the Green Revolution expanded agricultural development into new areas where it was once unprofitable or too arid to farm


• The 20/80 phenomenon – the rapid increase in farm size and the concentration of production among large producers means 20% of producers generate 80% of the agricultural output


• As a result of modern irrigation practices, aquifers in places like India (once Borlaug’s greatest triumph) and the US midwest have become depleted.  There are two types of aquifers: replenishable, most of the aquifers in India and the shallow aquifer under the North China Plain are replenishable – depletion means the maximum rate of pumping is automatically reduced to the rate of recharge. For fossil or nonreplenishable aquifers – like the U.S. Ogallala aquifer, the deep aquifer under the North China Plain, or the Saudi aquifer – depletion brings pumping to an end. In the more arid regions like the southwestern United States or the MiddleEast, the loss of irrigation water could mean the end of agriculture in these areas


• Green Revolution techniques rely heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, some of these are developed from fossil fuels which makes today’s agriculture regime much more reliant on petroleum products


• Farming methods that depend heavily on chemical fertilizers do not maintain the soil’s natural fertility and because pesticides generate resistant pests, farmers need ever more fertilizers and pesticides just to achieve the same results


• The increased amount of food production and foods low price led to overpopulation worldwide

I said earlier we currently use the renewable resources of 1.6 planets and that by 2030 we’ll use the renewable resources of two planets. We do that by agricultural inputs – the massive use of fertilizers, diesel, insecticides, pesticides, fresh water for irrigation etc.

Has anyone thought about the further effects on our environment of ramping up fertilizer, pesticide, insecticide and herbicide applications even further?

How about increasing use of pollution emitting fossil fuels and fresh water for irrigation to enable big agra to feed 2.2 billion more of us?

Have you thought about the effects of the existing billions of people (who don’t live even close to a western lifestyle) all wanting to live, or at least consume, like an American or Australian does? What happens when urbanization increases all the newly minted urbanites living standards and all those new consumers start to climb the protein ladder alongside the future 2.2 billion coming to the table?

It’s obvious the world needs a new farm – one the size of South Africa.

Unfortunately, the UN also says that by 2030 an area twice the size of South Africa will become unproductive due to desertification, land degradation, and drought.

Desertification

Desertification is a phenomenon that ranks among the greatest environmental challenges of our time. Unfortunately, most people haven’t heard of it or simply don’t understand it. Desertification doesn’t refer to the advance of deserts which can and do expand naturally.

Desertification is a different process where land in arid or semi-dry areas becomes degraded – the soil loses its productivity and the cover vegetation disappears or is degraded to the point where wind and water erosion can carry away the topsoil leaving behind a highly infertile mix of dust and sand.

Desertification and land degradation is a global issue with desertification already affecting one quarter of the total land surface of the globe today

Today the pace of arable land degradation is estimated at 30 to 35 times the historical rate. Desertification is degrading more than 12m hectares of arable land every year – the equivalent of losing the total arable area of France every 18 months.

The issue of desertification is not new, it has constantly played a significant role in human history, even contributing to the collapse of the world’s earliest known empire, the Akkadians of Mesopotamia.

Climate change can accelerate and intensify the degradation process.

Climate Change

When Norman Borlang made his estimate of our planet’s human carrying capacity Climate Change was not the huge driver behind his modeling as it would have to be today.

According to science the world is going to continue to get warmer, polar ice caps will melt, so will the Greenland ice sheet and most glaciers. More sunlight will be absorbed by the Earth’s oceans, causing increased evaporation. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and amplifies twofold the effects of other greenhouse gasses. With Earth’s ice gone there will be significantly less sunlight reflected back into space, vast expanses of Arctic tundra will thaw releasing unbelievable amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas twenty times more potent than CO2.

The polar jet stream has already been altered, wide swinging north-south deviations (meanders) have become the norm – deviating far from its normal path and meandering north into Canada, the jet stream brings warm air while dipping far south over Europe, the polar jet stream brings record cold and snow.

Ocean currents will be altered further impacting our climate and sea levels will rise – coastlines will be flooded forcing mass migrations inland. Freshwater aquifers will suffer from saltwater intrusion, once habitable zones will become uninhabitable.

Because of increased average global temperatures, the tropical rain belt will have widened considerably and the subtropical dry zones will have pushed pole-ward, crawling deep into regions such as the American Southwest and southern Australia, which will be increasingly susceptible to prolonged and intense droughts.

A report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that climate change will amplify extreme heat, heavy precipitation, and the highest wind speeds of tropical storms. Extreme weather events are going to happen with increasing frequency, the climate for the area you live in is, if it hasn’t started already, going to change. We are all watching and experiencing these events and changes in real time because changes that use to take tens and tens of thousands of years are now happening in decades.

Conclusion

We humans have been changing the world around us for tens of thousands of years. It’s pretty much what we do, we shape and we change the existing environment through design and then indifference to the results of our actions. One of the most basic, fundamental problems (other than the rapid depletion of our fresh water resources) we’ve created for ourselves is the impact of human activities on the land we need to cultivate for our very survival.

Our exploding population, our accelerating demand for the world’s treasures (it’s natural resources) our ‘who cares’ attitude towards pollution and habitat destruction are all increasing what were once tolerable pressures towards, and sometimes already beyond, the breaking point in ecosystems all over the world.

Are Norman and Ester right? Does population growth march lockstep into the future with technological advances keeping food production on the increase?

Were they correct in their Malthusian pessimism?

I don’t think so, but they might have been thinking about feeding you a diet of algae, jellyfish, and tofu. Bon appetite.

Are food, fresh water and climate change on your radar screen?

If not, maybe they should be.

*  *  *

Mish Comments

The comments and concerns of Rick Mills are well thought out and well presented.

In regards to Mills’ post I do not know what will happen, and since he ends with a slew of questions, he doesn’t pretend to either.

That said, Mills asks the right questions thereby providing ample room for discussion.

American Home Sale Failures Suddenly Double In Q4 2016 - Signed, Sealed, No Deal

A stunning new analysis from Trulia suggests that rising interest rates in 4Q 2016 may actually be having the desired effect of cooling home sales, despite the best efforts of Obama to keep the party rolling at the expense of American taxpayers.  Looking at homes that go from "pending" status back to "for sale", Trulia found that the number of home "sale failures" spiked in Q4 2016, to nearly nearly double the 2015 rate, with "starter homes" being most at risk.  

Nationally, sales have been failing at an increasing rate, rising to 4.3% in Q4 2016 from 1.4% of all listed properties during Q4 2014. On an annual basis, the failure rate has nearly doubled to 3.9% in 2016, up from 2.1% in 2015.

New homes and very old homes are least likely to see deals fail. As of Q4 2016, homes built in 2016 have among the lowest proportion of failed sales at 2.6%. That proportion increases steadily as age increases to an average of 5.2% in homes built from 1959 through 1969, then falls steadily to an average of 3.5% for homes built from 1900 through 1920.

Of all listings in the largest 100 metros, 7.1% of starter home listings failed in the most recent quarter, compared with 6.7% of trade-up homes and 3.8% of premium homes. For all of 2016, the failure rate was 6.3% for both starter and trade-up homes and 3.6% for premium homes.

During the last two years, the places with the most failed sales are predominantly in the West with Las Vegas leading the pack at 7.6% of all unique listings reverting back to “for sale” at least once.

During the most recent quarter, Tucson, Ariz., saw the highest rate of failed deals with 13.9% of all unique listings retrogressing. For all of 2016, Ventura County, Calif., had the highest fail rate at 11.6%, up from 3.1% in 2015.

Considering both the last two years and just the most recent quarter, Madison, Wis., has had the fewest listings fall back to a “for sale” status at 0.1% of all listings.

Not surprisingly, per Bloomberg, the highest rates of failure occurred in the subprime mecca of the American Southwest.

Meanwhile, starter homes performed the worst...

And while any number of things can cause a home sale to fall through, including lower than expected appraisals and bad home inspections, we suspect that rising mortgage rates are more likely the cause of the sudden surge in "failed sales" rather than a national outbreak of termites.  With Americans managing their monthly budgets down to the last penny, because you can "afford it" as long as you can cover the monthly payment, we suspect the 60bps rise in the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate during 4Q was just more than the fragile American budgets could bear.