Harmonizing Society, Culture, and Lifestyle To Save Our Planet
Lesson 100 - Restructuring The Way We Produce Our
Foods - Part II
100.1. Introduction
100.2. Water, Water Everywhere?
100.3. Ecology And Climate
100.4. Politics Of Food Production
Article #1: Tropical Rain Forests: Earth’s Green Belt
100.1. Introduction
“The Sky is Falling!” ... or is it?
“The Sky is Falling!” ... or is it?
Once upon a time there lived a storybook character named Chicken Little, who said the sky was falling—this is about as cheerful as most of the news we’re subjected to nowadays, and if it appeared as tomorrow’s newspaper headlines, it probably wouldn’t even raise many eyebrows in comparison. (It’d make a nice National Enquirer head- line!) In gathering material for this lesson I was soon saturated with one piece of “bad news” after another—certainly no shortage of negative environmental factors to be found, and I began to wonder how I could ever present both the good and the bad sides of the story without sounding like a “doomsday prophet”! Yet, reality is made up of both sides. So, before going any further with our discussion on ecology, let me clarify what my intentions are in opening our Pandora’s box of world problems. I’d much rather be the bearer of good news, so my purpose in this lesson is a dual one: to admit our mistakes honestly and still count our blessings, the good news being that we’re finally discovering the limited scope and potential of self consciousness, and evolving to an awareness of the broader scope and potential of our collective (or universal) consciousness, i.e., what we do to others, we do to ourselves. We are creating our mutual destiny daily, and what we create also depends upon the strength of our will to live. Since negative attitudes are self-fulfilling and self-defeating, please keep your chin up when reading this lesson. Its purpose is also not to attempt to predict future events, climates, or cataclysms, but to evaluate our world as it is and could be. The question is not so much whether the sky is falling, it is whether we will let ourselves fall. If we give up hope, and throw in our cards early in the game, we give up our destiny as well. My purpose in writing this lesson is to present the rose in all its beauty and to smell its sweet fragrance, but to watch out for the thorns. I hope the lesson will inspire you and challenge you to discover, and create, a beautiful future for all of us.
When we see the reality of what is happening to all of us, the total picture can’t help but stir up many mixed emotions. Few of us enjoy speculating on potential destruction/ devastation of our planet. We want to be positive and cheerful, and would almost rather not hear the bad news at all, but there’s also a difference between the bad news given by the broadcaster with little emotion and the bad news that comes with suggestions as to how changes can be made and how we can help ourselves—the latter news is motivated by a desire to help humanity. We can listen and learn from Hamaker, for example, and should get over our resistance to confronting reality. Not only does it keep us ignorant, but avoidance of the truth does nothing to change the situation. When we have a flat tire, we know that we’ll have to fix it—a temper tantrum or flood of tears might fit the mood of the occasion, but they won’t fix the tire. It’s the same with world problems. When we’re faced with the complexity and seriousness of our total world reality, the tendency is to become overwhelmed at first. This is only natural. After grudgingly adding up all
the environmental factors involved, in our minds, we can’t see our earth’s state of health without an overwhelming sense of urgency that so much needs to be done—like looking at stacks of dirty dishes the morning after a party, only we have a lot more to clean up on earth. Where to begin? What can “just one” person do? Well, it becomes apparent what “just one” person can do if we look at the world around us—we’re already doing it now, every day, all together at every moment, and the continual combined impact of all human action/interaction at once on the globe is no small matter. What “just one” person can do (and does) amounts to a lot since we’re all doing it at the same time, and it adds up even more quickly when everyone is doing it constantly.
Our collective energy is just as capable of healing as it is of destroying. Once we imagine what we can do with this incredible healing power if our collective energy is used in a positive way, we have but to realize our fullest potential by living it. Unity and harmony will bring a new dimension of growth to our collective human energy. If we could but see the heights our spirits will reach when we build together, we would shun the depths our spirits sank to with pettiness, violence, and destruction. We would out- grow these primitive rituals—we have no use for them in our quest for a better world.
We must pass through the “crisis point”, and bypass the emotional traps that keep us from changing what we dislike, by misdirecting and draining our energy: anger, blame (of self and others), revenge, guilt, self-pity, fear, confusion, delusion, anxiety, wishful thinking, depression, apathy, and inertia. All of these traps can become obsessive; they immobilize us; and, in fact, we often confuse the emotions themselves with actual ac- tion. Strong emotions drain us physically as well as mentally, giving the impression that we’ve expended a lot of energy (we have, but it was misguided and wasted). Emotions do not act—we act—our feelings are incapable of acting on their own (aside from their mental effects). We often resort to them because they offer immediate “satisfaction”, an outlet or channel for our feelings—they become harmful when used in excess or to harm others. What is needed is action, after the reaction, not more expenditure of energy in the reaction itself. All time spent wondering “what if?” and “why?” is better used doing something or changing something, or even watching your garden grow or simply smil- ing at someone.
If we try to submerge negative images into our subconscious minds, we’ll never be able to bury them deep enough as long as they exist. Just as with the Pandora’s box, as long as the problems remain unsolved, keeping the lid shut won’t make them go away. Ostriches have devised an ingenious way of dealing with “scary things they’d rather not see”—if the enemy approaches, they merely bury their heads in the ground—unfortunately, what we don’t see or don’t know can also hurt us. If we avoid looking at our problems, because we don’t want to see the “enemy”, how will we know our enemy? We need to know the enemy in order to keep one step ahead of its grasp. Refusing to look at the world as it really is, is like our avoiding mirrors when we have a pimple—we’d rather wait until it goes away. Is that what we’re planning on doing with our world problems?
Once upon a time there was a happy ending for every story, and like breathless chil- dren listening to a fairy tale, we anticipate the book’s final moment of magic and sal- vation in just the nick of time. Are we lured by the thrill of danger that comes with our defiance of Nature, and thereby daring our life source to react to our defiance? Well be sadly disappointed when we discover that the knight isn’t coming on his horse to carry us off to safety at the last minute, and it’s time we realized that the horse has been wait- ing for us all along in an empty pasture, for it is we ourselves that are meant to be the heroes in this story. We’ve been writing this one all together, all our lives, and it’s about time we paused for a moment to read the chapter on psychic numbing. We get “tired” of bad news, try to harden ourselves, desensitize ourselves so as to feel less pain, to feel less vulnerable. This is understandable considering the harsh realities we face at times, but it is also a type of psychic defense mechanism we’ve adopted to deal with our envi- ronment—we try to “adjust” our reality to our own particular tolerance level. Whereas
we find the ostrich’s defense mechanism ludicrous, our amusement should fade when we realize we’re doing exactly the same thing with our numbing mechanisms.
Sensitivity is our best defense against numbing apathy— the less we close our eyes to truth, the more we see. Sensitivity can also help us deal with insensitivity around us—we can imagine how little an insensitive person feels because we know how much we feel, as sensitive persons. People of the strongest character, courage, honor, clarity of perception, vision, and greatest physical strength, are often the most sensitive persons around. The more sensitive you are, the more you experience in life.
A bird can’t fly until it jumps out of the nest. As we busy ourselves in our nests, rearranging furniture and curling up in front of the fire for a cozy nap, we sometimes hear the distant rumblings of change on the horizon. The thought of jumping from our nest disturbs us, but if we want to feel the freedom of spirit possible in our lives, we’ll have to take a chance someday. The light of a new dawn is breaking on the horizon. It’s a good day for learning to fly.
100.2. Water, Water Everywhere?
100.2.1 We Don’t Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry. . .
100.2.2 The Lawn 100.2.3 Landscaping 100.2.4 Other watering 100.2.5 Showers 100.2.6 Sinks
100.2.7 Toilets
100.2.8 In the kitchen 100.2.9 Laundry
100.2.10 Around the house 100.2.11 Odds and Ends 100.2.12 Soil Drainage 100.2.13 Drought
It can easily cost 500 to 2,000 gallons of water to produce a typical American meal. According to Rep. Tony Coelho (D., Calif.), agriculture accounts for 80% of all water consumption in America. It takes the use of 408 gallons of water to get one serving of chicken to a dinner able, 12 gallons for one 8-ounce baked potato, 18 gallons for one serving of green beans and 6 gallons for a salad. A dinner roll takes 26 gallons of water, plus 100 gallons for the pat of butter on it. That adds up to 570 gallons for one “conven- tional” meal. A steak alone costs 2,607 gallons of water. On the average, it takes about 1,630,000 gallons of water to feed one American for a year. (Parade Magazine, Sunday newspaper supplement, 3/25/84.)
It must be obvious that water is, indeed, a very precious resource and one that is all too often taken for granted.
Soil water has three forms: hydroscopic, gravitational and capillary. Hydroscopic water is chemically-bound in the soil constituents and unavailable to plants. Gravitation- al water is water that normally drains out of the pore spaces of the soil after a rain, and if drainage is poor, it is this water that causes the soil to be soggy and unproductive. Ex- cessive drainage, on the other hand, makes capillary water run short sooner, and plants suffer from drought. Plants depend on capillary water for their supply of moisture, so the ability of soil to hold water against the pull of gravity is important. Organic matter and good soil structure add to this supply of water in soils. Plants can’t extract the last drop of capillary water from soil since the attraction of soil materials for it is greater than the pull exerted by the plant roots. The point at which these two forces are equal is called the willing coefficient of a soil, that is, the percentage of water in a soil when water loss from transpiration exceeds renewal of the water by capillary means. Medium-textured
loams and silt loams (because of their faster rate of movement of moisture from lower depths of the root zone, and the fact that they can bring up moisture from greater depths than either sands or clays) provide the best conditions of available (but not excessive) soil moisture for best plant growth. (Rodale Press)
The following excerpts on water come from The Survival of Civilization, page 22:
“The microorganisms in a rich soil build the soil to take in rainwater and hold it in storage. The proper proportion of water in protoplasm is 90%. It is important that protoplasm be maintained as a dilute solution. Water evaporates from the leaves of the plant, concentrating the protoplasm solution. It is characteristic of water solu- tions that the water of the more dilute solution will pass through a membrane into a more concentrated solution. This force of osmosis is very powerful. It is the force that moves the water to the top of a sequoia. Water is, of course, necessary to all cells in order for them to function. Cells have a way of opening up and engulfing the very large molecules of protoplasm. Since the cells are alive and expend energy, they probably pass the I molecules or its components from one cell to another until it reaches the part of the plant where it is needed. If dry weather depletes the water held by the soil and the microorganisms to the concentration of the water in the leaf cells, all protoplasm feeding stops and growth is arrested.
“Irrigation is not the answer to water shortage problems. If all farmers irrigated, the underground water supplies would soon be depleted (as they are in the process of becoming now). The answer is to keep feeding microorganisms until the aerated zone is 18 to 24 inches deep and capable of holding all the rain that falls until the excess can seep into the subsoil and reach the underground aquifer, instead of run- ning off the surface and taking the soil with it. It will take a decade or two for roots and earthworms to deepen the topsoil significantly below plow depth.
“Nitrogen from the air is the ultimate source of most of the nitrogen in the protein compounds of the microorganism protoplasm, the solid matter of which is about 2/3 protein. It is not, however, the principal source of crop-growth nitrogen. The same is true of carbon, which is the dominant element in all organic matter. The leaves take in CO2 and give off oxygen, retaining the carbon for the necessary carbohydrate construction and for energy requirements. When the plant dies, it goes into the soil or on the soil where it is used as a part of the food supply of various soil organisms. Eventually it is all carried into the soil, principally by earthworms as they combine leaf mold with minerals ground in their gizzards to produce microor- ganisms. Their castings are almost all microorganisms, and a source of protoplasm not overlooked by the hair roots of plants. Since the rye plant has been estimated to have a root system seven miles long, it is apparent that plants can do a lot of searching for protoplasm. The root tips grow a lot faster than microorganisms can move, so the microorganisms are easy prey to roots. When in intimate proximity to the cell, the flow of protoplasm begins.
“The root cannot take in the cell membrane of the organism. The membranes are held against the root by the pressure of other cells forced against the root by the diffusion pressure between the microorganism cells and the root cells. Soon the older root cells are all plugged with microorganism cell membranes, which subse- quently turn the brown color of all mature roots. The root functions simply as a pipe, while the rapidly-growing white root tips continue to devour cell protoplasm.
“If the protoplasm of the root cells gets too dry, then the protoplasm intake must stop because osmosis requires that the more concentrated solution in the microor- ganisms must flow toward a more dilute solution in the plant cells. For this reason the root tips (which can take in soil water) constantly remove water from the zone where they are feeding, and the water is moved upward toward the leaves, keeping the cells saturated and evaporating the excess.
“The intestinal tract of all animals works essentially the same way, except that the microorganisms and their food supply are inside Intestines and the protoplasm compounds feed into the intestinal wall where they are picked up by a blood vessel system for sorting out in the liver. Excess water passes readily through the system and is ultimately evaporated from the sweat glands or extracted by the kidneys and excreted in the urine.
“Nature has used just one basic design for all the living organisms with varia- tions as required by each type of organism.”
As we said in our section on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, plant and animal di- gestive systems will readily pass water into the plant or animal, so if toxic compounds are in solution in the water, they too will pass readily into the plant/animal.
“We see, then, that the rate of production of microorganisms will be high if: the soil contains a large surface area of available elements; a large supply of plant residue for carbon and a little nitrogen; plus the nitrogen that many organisms can take from the air as the air breathes in and out of the soil with temperature changes; water and the other necessary factors from the air.”
We have seen that the key to achieving crop growth depends on a delicate balance between minerals available/absorbed, water, climate, and so on. It must be obvious by now that we cannot just “dump chemical fertilizers onto the soil at random and pour lots of water onto it,” and expect to match nature’s achievements! Irrigation is not the same as natural rainfall (i.e., rain as it should be, not acid rain) in the first place; in the second place, most water is full of chemicals by the time it flows through our taps.
100.2.1 We Don’t Miss the Water Till the Well Runs Dry. . .
We will also talk about drought later in this section and again in our section on cli- mate later on in this lesson. Barry Slogrove (ecologist) says the Southern hemisphere is suffering droughts like never before because of the transfer of cloud cover across the equator to the north—this is visible on satellite photographs. The results are felt in Aus- tralia, which has the worst drought in human history, and also in Africa, which has also suffered severe drought. The rain volume may be the same, but the precipitation patterns are different, which means that less moisture actually gets into the soil. (Slogrove also maintains the view that an Ice Age is on the way.)
In 1984, much of Texas suffered under heavy drought and in the Austin area, water use during the spring of 1984 far exceeded previous spring consumption (and exceeded peak use in the summer of 1983). To encourage public awareness of water use, the news- paper published water consumption figures daily. Voluntary water conservation was at first in effect (each day, households whose last number of their street address is the daily given number may water their lawns on that day—this amounts to watering every fifth day only). Mandatory water conservation began after three consecutive days at 150 mil- lion gallons usage. In Corpus Christi, Texas, mandatory water rationing to limit lawn watering and car washing began July 1 in this drought-plagued city. The new ordinance, carrying a fine of up to $200 for violators, was to continue indefinitely until the Nueces River watershed was replenished. (Alice, Texas, also instituted mandatory rationing in May.) Corpus Christi had called for voluntary water conservation in May, but officials said that residents didn’t heed the request.
The following tips on conserving our precious water supplies were offered by the Austin newspaper, suggestions which can be put into practice by all Americans to save water and to increase consciousness so that water won’t be taken for granted and wasted so often.
100.2.2 The Lawn
Water deeply and infrequently to get a good root structure, which can’t be achieved by frequent shallow waterings. Water long enough for water to seep down to the roots. Check soil before watering; if it springs back when you step on the grass, it doesn’t need water yet. Water during cool parts of the day, and don’t water while the wind blows, be- cause wind increases evaporation. Oscillating sprinklers are among the least efficient be- cause they spray many thin streams of water high in the air. Use sprinklers that make big drops and keep the water close to the ground. Among the better sprinklers are the smaller versions of sprinklers used by golf courses or park operators, which rotate, sending puls- es of water in a circular pattern (Rainbird makes these). Try a drip hose in odd-shaped areas. The least evaporation occurs when water is applied directly to the ground with a perforated hose or other drip irrigation method. Don’t water the gutter—arrange hoses and sprinklers so the water doesn’t run onto concrete. Even in instances where it appears the water is running off a sidewalk onto a lawn, a large part of the water evaporates. If you have an automatic sprinkler system, set the timer to operate between 4 and 6 a.m., when demand on city systems is at its lowest. Don’t scalp your lawn. Set your mower to cut no lower than 1 1/2 inches; better still, 2 inches. Taller grass holds moisture better. A rule of thumb is not to cut more than 1/3 of the height of the grass. If planting new sod or grass, prepare the soil with compost so water won’t run off (the same idea works in gardens).
100.2.3 Landscaping
Use native trees and shrubs that are hardiest in your area. Put a layer of mulch around trees and plants. Not only does this conserve moisture and keep the soil around plants cooler, but it also adds nutrients if leaves are used, have some weeds for insects and bal- ance (polyculture), but not so many that they are taking too much water away from veg- etables.
100.2.4 Other watering
Don’t use a hose as a broom, to “sweep” sidewalks and driveways, etc. Use a rake or broom. Use a bucket or a water can to water hanging plants—using a hose to go from basket to basket wastes more water than makes it to the plants. Cut down on car washing (if nothing else, for the sake of your paint job), and wash with a bucket of soapy water, using the hose only for rinsing. Put a nozzle on your hose.
For almost every outdoor job, you’ll save water by using an attachment that lets you turn the water on and off at the end of the hose rather than at the faucet. (Don’t forget to turn the faucet off when done.) Wash your car at a commercial car wash, since the high pressure equipment used by most will wash your car in less time and with less water than most people use at home.
100.2.5 Showers
Showers usually take no more than 1/2 as much water—sometimes less—than bath tubs. If you don’t have a shower, you can still save several gallons of water simply by reducing the water in your tub baths by a few inches.
You can check your use by plugging the drain during a shower and comparing the water level with your normal bath. Also, bathing and shampooing at the same time cuts water use. Take a shorter shower. Most showers use 6 to 10 gallons of water per minute. If you install a low-flow shower head, that can be cut to 2 1/2 to 4 gallons per minute, and the new shower head will pay for itself within a few months.
100.2.6 Sinks
Use aerators in sinks. Aerators which are made to screw into most standard faucets will cut your water flow. Check faucets for leaks. Even a small drip from a worn washer can waste more than 50 gallons of water a day—steady drips can waste hundreds. When brushing your teeth, turn off the water until you rinse your mouth. (Children can be helped to develop this habit while still young.) When shaving, partially fill the sink to rinse your razor rather than rinsing with running water.
100.2.7 Toilets
Cut down on the number of flushes. An old-style toilet can use five or more gallons per flush! Frankly, that’s a lot of water for a cupful of urine. Newer models use 3 1/ 2 gallons per flush or less. Cut the water level in the toilet. Fill two one-quart bottles with water and replace the caps. Put them in the tank, to reduce the water used per flush. Don’t use bricks for this, because they will crumble and possibly damage the toilet. You can also reduce the level of water with the toilet’s own equipment. Many have adjusting screws. In older toilets gently bend the float rod downward to reduce water level. Check for leaks. Add a few drops of food coloring to the tank. If the color appears in the bowl in a few minutes (without flushing), you have a leak. Common sources of leaks are that the water level in the tank is too high or that the flapper ball and other parts are worn. Some plumbing supply stores and many stores that specialize in energy conservation sell inexpensive devices such as plastic water dams which will help reduce the amount of water used in each flush.
100.2.8 In the kitchen
Don’t rinse the dishes with running water. If you have two sinks, fill one with hot rinse water. If you have only one sink, buy a small plastic tub for rinsing or gather washed dishes in a rack and rinse them when done with a spray device or by pouring water over them. Don’t rinse vegetables with running water. Rinse them in a partially- filled sink or pan. Cooking with less water, such as by steaming, saves water and retains more vitamins in the food. (Of course, we might note here that not cooking retains even more vitamins!) Those who use garbage disposals are encouraged not to cut the disposal on (with water running all the while) for every little scrap, but to let them accumulate a bit—better still is to compost your scraps, of course. Dishwashers use about 25 gallons of water per load. Not only is this wasteful, but some people don’t even fill the dish- washer with dishes each time. Any housewife who had to walk several miles for water and haul it back to the house would definitely think twice about using 25 gallons to wash dishes, that’s for sure. Some new dishwashers have cycles that use as little as four gal- lons of water, but I still wouldn’t promote the use of dishwashers. (Again, think of all the dishes and pots and pans you’ll save washing on a raw food diet ...)
100.2.9 Laundry
Use the washing machine for full loads only. Each load requires as much as 35 gal- lons of water — (some older machines actually use as much as 59 gallons). Try haul- ing that from a well. If you must wash only a few pieces, do it by hand. If you replace your machine, be sure to buy one with adjustable water levels. If you have a small fami- ly, consider a European-style, front-loading machine, which uses far less water than top loaders. If you live in a city, washing clothes, cars, etc., can be done on week-days since the heaviest demand on the water system tends to be on weekends. Check for leaks. In many older homes, the washer isn’t located in the most convenient spot, which means that leaks can go undetected for weeks. Use cold water when possible.
100.2.10 Around the house
Turn down the hot water thermostat. High settings can waste water because you turn on more cold water at the faucet to mix with the hot. Check your buyer’s guide or ask the store where you bought the appliance if you don’t understand the range of settings on the dial. (If you don’t know where the thermostat is, find out before an emergency.)
Evaluate your inside plant-watering schedule—check before watering—many plants die from overwatering as well as underwatering.
Insulate hot water pipes. The less time it takes for hot water to reach the tap, the more water you save. Check for system leaks. Turn off all faucets, then check your water meter. If it continues to run, you’ve got a leak.
Even if you don’t live in an area that is prone to drought, it would be well to adopt as many water-saving habits as possible, because water is wasted needlessly, and is being used faster than nature can replace it in many places. As we said, children can be encour- aged to develop a conscious attitude toward natural resources from the very beginning so that their conscientious habits become second nature to them—this is always easier than making the change later on in life. The next time you and your children brush your teeth, imagine that you live in a country where you must go to a distant well and carry your water home. How much water would you use in a day for all your needs? Could you imagine carrying that extra gallon or two that each of your family members lets run down the sink while brushing their teeth? It would then become apparent how wasteful this really is. Nor could you afford to carry the extra few gallons that run down the drain each time you rinse your hands, a glass, or something to eat. These all add up—if you’re fond of mental exercise, you may want to calculate your average daily household water use in gallons and multiply by 365 for a year’s use. You’ll be amazed.
100.2.11 Odds and Ends
Use dishwashing detergent sparingly. I’ve lived for months in areas where our dish- washing consisted of rinsing dishes in streams without even using soap at all, and the only available water was, of course, cold water. Since dishes were rinsed right after eat- ing, there was certainly no real food decomposition yet, and we all remained as healthy as ever. Most people seem to think they need “lots of suds”, but soap residue is un- healthy—and more suds also mean more water for rinsing. If dishes have been sitting a few days, soaking them first will help, and a pad that is “scratchy” but made not to harm dishes (such as those sold for Teflon surfaces) can be used to get them clean with very little soap.
If children want to play in the sprinkler in the hot summer, put it somewhere where the water can serve a triple purpose: water the grass, entertain the kids, and serve as their shower/bath that day. Many of us in today’s society have become so “clean” conscious that we actually shower and bathe too often for our real needs, especially if we “scrub daily with soap”. This destroys the skin’s natural oils and protective bacteria—while many people believe that their “cleanliness will protect them from germs/illness”, it is more the opposite that is true: they’ll be hardier if they don’t attempt to “sterilize” their bodies. For freshness sake, we may take a quick shower/rinse with a loofa sponge or washcloth. As children, my 2 sisters and I often took our baths all three at the same time—another way to save water.
If everyone were to develop even the minimal suggestions given above for conserv- ing water, billions of gallons of water would be saved constantly with very little effort, i.e., just by cutting wasted water use alone. Imagine the following savings:
| Gallons of Water Used Households that Gallons of water change saved |
| 59-gal. washing machine to 35-gal. one 1,000 24,000 gal. each time |
| 1,000,000 | 24,000,000 gal. each time | |
| Not running a gal. of water down the drain 50,000,000 50.000.000 gal. while brushing teeth people daily | ||
| Fixing a drip that wastes 100 gal. daily 1.000,000 people 100,000,000 gal. daily | ||
| Miscellaneous: 5 gal. of water saved daily by 10,000,000 50,000,000 gal. any change made people daily | ||
We can see how quickly this all adds up!
100.2.12 Soil Drainage
Many soils in the world have only enough water reaching the drainage layer to keep small streams flowing at intervals of 6 or 8 feet; the rest of the gravel layer has be- come infiltrated by clay, and the gravel has begun to rise toward the surface. We are in the process of losing the drainage layer on a worldwide scale. The destruction of the drainage layer has been further intensified because some farmers have installed toxic plastic drain pipes a few feet below the surface in order to short-cut the percolating wa- ter and thereby further dry up the drainage layer.
Over 25 years ago, John Hamaker dug a pond in East Texas, and along 250 cut into the base of the hillside, there were only 2 or 3 sand channels where the water was still coming down the hill—all the rest had been sealed up by clay long ago. The water simply penetrated the 8” of sandy loam, to the dense clay beneath it and drifted down- hill—an ideal set-up for sheet erosion if anyone tried to plow the land. Topsoil there eroded in heavy rains. There is a penalty for failure to maintain the drainage layer.
When lands begin to fall off in yield, they usually cease to have useful productivity in a few decades, and no amount of agricultural chemicals can bring that production back or keep it from dropping to a lower yield—at this point, the unused, fine rock material has stopped coming up from the subsoil because there isn’t anymore. During the few decades when the soil collapses in yield, the fine material is used up and the major part of the surface area of rock is gone, i.e., the availability of elements has all but ended. This is why remineralization, as discussed later in this lesson, is needed—not random chemical “fertilizer” application, which is either unbalanced and/or lacks elements need- ed for proper growth of microorganisms, and thus, plant life itself.
All underground water eventually drains into a stream bed, or lake; it then comes up in springs at a lower elevation or runs directly into the ocean. The point is that the ca- pacity of the subsoil drainage layer in any area has been geared to the annual rainfall and water penetration under natural conditions. When we alter the amount of water reaching and being maintained in the drainage layer, we are in trouble. If we decrease the amount of water by losing it to surface run-off, we will lose water and therefore sand and gravel from the drainage layer. This sand and gravel cannot be replaced. Arid soils have very little drainage layer left, simply because a drainage layer which isn’t kept full of slowly- flowing water will clog up with fine, worn-out particles which will eventually displace the drainage sands and gravels and lift them to the topsoil. The sea salts carried in by infrequent rains accumulate in the soils for lack of sufficient water to establish drainage systems and thereby flush the salts back to the ocean. When dry lands are irrigated, they tend to become water-logged for lack of drainage. The salts dissolve and are left on the surface when surface moisture evaporates. The best use of arid soils is to put them back into grass, the way most of them were when the land was settled. With remineralization, more and better grass can be grown for animals. Many remineralized arid and semi-arid lands could also be afforested with valuable drought-resistant trees and shrubs (e.g. pis- tachio, jojoba). The water left in the underground reservoirs should be reserved for peo-
ple and livestock. The refill rate of the reservoirs is much too slow to support irrigation, as shown by steadily-falling water tables in most exploited areas.
The mineral requirements to support the growth of soil organisms (hence plants) are a natural balance of the available (to the microorganisms) elements in the total mixture of the rocks on the top layers of the earth’s crust, and the natural balance of the ele- ments dissolved and suspended in sea water brought with the clouds. The mineral balan- ce of salted soils must be restored by remineralization and by allowing large quantities of plant refuse to go back into the topsoil. The plant refuse would provide the carbon requirements of the microorganisms; the gases in the air and water complete their food requirements.
100.2.13 Drought
The Ethiopian drought is a forewarning of widespread regional water crises in the 1990s that could rival the energy crisis of the last decade, according to a study by the worldwatch Institute. Falling water tables and dry riverbeds indicate a widespread overuse of water resources, and if current trends continue, fresh water in many areas may become a constraint on economic activity and food production over the coming decades. In the United States, areas where excessive withdrawal of undergound water supplies threatens its future availability include the High Plains from Nebraska to Texas; the Colorado River basin, particularly the areas around Phoenix and Tucson; the Flori- da and Pacific coasts; and much of California. The report cites statistics from the U.S. Geological Survey estimating that the Ogallala Aquifer, used for irrigating one-fifth of U.S. cropland, is now half-depleted under 2,200,000 acres of Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas. Rising pumping costs and falling well yields associated with the depletion of the Ogallala are causing farmers to take land out of irrigation. Still, most officials continue to take a “frontier approach” that looks to dams and other multibillion-dollar diversion projects as a solution, failing to see the unfortunate irony in the situation. While the gov- ernment pays farmers to idle rain-fed cropland in an effort to avoid price-depressing sur- pluses, farmers are exhausting a unique, underground water reserve to grow these same crops. The government is encouraging waste of water from the Ogallala by giving farm- ers a depletion tax break based on the drop in the water level under their land. Instead, says Worldwatch, the government should be taxing that water use.
If we continue to ignore warning signs of future water shortages, and close our eyes to the waste and overuse of decreasing water supplies, we will pay dearly for our indif- ference. We need not imagine what our lives would be like without water—we need only look at the suffering people in Africa to see the stark reality of what extensive drought can do. Television brought the starving, emaciated bodies of drought victims into our living rooms in 1984, and it is a painful sight, but one that we must face up to. Thou- sands of people have been reduced to skeletons as the drought takes its toll.
In the African country of Mauritania, not only must they cope with the severe drought plaguing 6ther African countries as well, but they must also cope with the spreading Sahara desert—one government official says the parched and rainless country “could disappear from the map in 10 years, and become only sand.” The Sahara is liter- ally pushing southward; crews along a key highway passing through 690 miles of Mau- ritania wage a daily battle with the desert, trying to keep the road clear of wind-blown sands. Crops are gone after being withered by a drought that has affected some areas since 1969, and covered by the shifting dunes of the Sahara. With two-thirds of its land already swallowed up by the desert, Mauritania now produces only about 5% of the food it needs. Cereal production used to average 100,000 tons annually, but was estimated at 15,000 tons in 1984. The government is trying to, drill holes for water in the countryside to slow the rush to the towns. Vast herds of cattle (about 80%) have died, or have been driven into neighboring Senegal for grazing (Senegal agreed to allow up to 300,000 an- imals to graze there), but now Senegal is also suffering from a drought. Although it de-
fies all laws of common sense to keep cattle in areas so dry that even human beings can scarcely find enough to eat (and many don’t), these people are raising animals because they’ve done so as long as they can remember; they don’t know any other lifestyle. (If we are tempted to pass judgment, let’s look at our own Society—we’ve certainly made enough environmental errors ourselves, wasting resources for rapid gains that result in long-term losses. Being more educated, what excuse would justify our own lack of fore- sight?) Some Mauritanians have goats, and donkeys are, of course, a necessity for those who depend on them for work. The nomadic way of life has been a tradition for many people here. In the past, during the worst times of drought, nomads moved to farming areas, then returned to their old way of life when pasture became available. International aid agencies now argue that there is no longer sufficient grazing land or water to sustain a nomadic life, and the U.S. embassy’s 1984 economic report said there was no ques- tion that Mauritania’s centuries-old nomadic way of life has been irreparably damaged. Nevertheless, those who can survive as nomads still cling to life and try to continue on as best they can. In all these countries affected by the drought, Africans struggle to sur- vive with a severe shortage of water, limited resources, and less opportunities for edu- cation than we have here. Their courage should be a lesson to all of us who have been blessed with advantages that we far too often take completely for granted. Some of us panic at the mere thought of missing a single meal, or consider ourselves unfortunate if we can’t afford a new outfit of clothes. Some of us would even feel underprivileged if we couldn’t own a yacht. As a nation of consumers, we pride ourselves on our “high standard of living”, and are dazzled by a vision of “progress” that has led many of us to become obsessed with “success”, this success being measured in terms of our wealth and possessions. Swept along in the tide, inundated by commercials in the media urging us to “buy more”, we tend to forget that what we perceive as a normal way of life here in this country is very rare in most of the world. In Lesson 53 we mentioned that our country uses more of the world’s natural resources than any other country; our “high” standard of living is more expensive than we may care to admit.
Objectively speaking, we may be accused of being selfish. How do we justify this use of natural resources? Are we using them to better the lives of all our brothers and sisters around the world, to make the world a better place for all human beings to live in? Or are we using them to add to our own comfort, and patting ourselves on the back for our technological marvels, choosing to forget that millions of people in the world are still hungry? We have a right to survive, to secure the things that we need for our survival in this world—this is true. But if we already have 6 pairs of shoes and find our- selves gazing longingly into a store window at “just one more pair” we might stop and ask ourselves why we want to have more than we need. What is it within us that keeps us unsatisfied? Why do we never seem to have enough?
We’ve trailed a bit off the subject of water here, but it is time to see ourselves hon- estly in the mirror. It is time to appreciate the things that we have, because it is too easy to forget where all these things come from if we don’t stop for a moment to realize how precious water and all our natural resources are, and to do everything in our power to appreciate them and conserve them all, before “the well” runs dry.
100.3. Ecology And Climate
100.3.1 Deforestation
100.3.2 Carbon Dioxide—Global Climate Changes—Weather Patterns 100.3.3 Warmer or Colder?
100.3.4 The Glacial-Interglacial Cycle
100.3.5 “Hope Springs Eternal”
100.3.1 Deforestation
The earth’s remaining forest cover is being destroyed by human exploitation at an almost unbelievable rate: about 50 million acres a year, or 50 acres per minute. Trees are cut down by hungry people to get fuel or a few more crops off demineralized jungle soils, and the lumber business takes its own heavy toil. Our forests and jungles must be saved. Our rain forests have been called “the lungs of the earth”, because so much of the earth’s life-giving vegetation is contained in them. The present level of carbon dioxide over “normal” levels will increase 50% in the next decade. Many jungles are now living off the minerals in the decaying wood of dead trees, but they are usually in areas of high rainfall, and if minerals are added to the decaying organic matter, the trees will increase their growth rate and be immensely valuable in taking up and storing carbon from the atmosphere.
When water evaporates, oxygen is released into the air. Photosynthesizing plants are also a source of oxygen; leaves of the trees absorb carbon from the air and produce oxy- gen, releasing it into the air. We are disturbing the whole oxygen-carbon dioxide balance of our biosphere with our unwise activity.
Volkswagen Foundation has about 300,000 acres of former virgin forest land in Brazil, that is now used for an expanding cattle export operation involving deforestation at an average 13,000 acres per year (Grainger, 1980). Weyerhauser Corporation has 6,000 square kilometers of timber concession in the fragile rain forests of Indonesia (Myers, 1979).
If the jungles are not saved, John Hamaker says we have no chance at survival, and that they cannot be saved unless croplands of starving people are remineralized. Rain forests have been virtually eliminated from most parts of West Africa, Southern Asia, and the Caribbean. The world’s forests are also affected by climatic extremes, soil de- generation, insects, diseases, worsening climate, air pollution and acid rains—fires also ravage our forests, especially in dry seasons and times of drought. As more forests burn, a cycle of destruction actually takes place, because forest fires contribute to adverse con- ditions that, in turn, accelerate the destruction of more forests. In forest fires, not only are more precious trees lost, but destruction occurs on all these levels:
- climatic stress (including record heat and drought)
- when trees burn, carbon dioxide increases in the atmosphere, so pollution—and acid rain—are increased (they’re already caused by burning fossil fuels and by auto/vehicle and industrial exhausts/emissions)
- deforestation and spreading deserts
- chronic insect and/or disease epidemics Data on tropical forest fires is scarce, but it is reported that the nutrient-poor soils and highly-carbonaceous (mineral-poor) vegetation there burns quickly when moisture is withheld for a time. Wide-scale drought and acid rains not only lead to destruction of forests; they can also lead to more tropical forest fires. At present rates of human defor- estation and desertification, most researchers say these forests are scheduled for virtual extinction in 15-30 years. The April 1961, American Forests magazine warned of the explosive fire situation building up in U.S. forest lands—this was already 23 years ago. “War Technology Comes to the Forests”, by J. A. Savage, was printed in Friends of the Earth’s Not Man Apart (December 1980), and described how the U.S. Forest Ser- vice is adapting technologies used in Vietnam to “modern” silviculture. In addition to the arborcide Agent Orange, flame-throwers and bombs of napalm-like jelly are used to
| 1964-1975 1976-1978 % Increase |
| Average # of fires per year 119.000 207,000 74% |
| Average total acreage burned per year 2,720,000 3,612,000 33% |
achieve a “clean burn” of all the “debris” left after clearcutting. With these methods, no “slash” (from the slash-and-burn technique) is left, only “charred dirt”. I assume their “clean” overlooks the damage to the environment and toxicity of the chemicals involved. In 1984, nationwide publicity of Vietnam veterans who had been exposed to Agent Or- ange revealed its effects in victims and their children; I hope the U.S. Forest Service isn’t making more victims.
American Forests (March 1969) said that in a few years all varieties of trees were dying in a tract of forest in the Adirondack Mountains, except for hemlock and tama- rack. Insects that attacked the trees multiplied greatly in the same span of time. The same thing that happened to this forest land is happening in all of the forests and jungles. The last of the minerals have come up in the forest lands, as in the croplands. Over the last 30 to 60 years, the finer fraction of used rock has been turned into subsoil, greatly reduc- ing the surface area, and therefore, protoplasm production. Because these compounds build health, and resistance to disease and insects, the trees become easy prey to para- sites. Acid rain (heavy in the northeastern states) has wiped out the last of the carbonates, resulting in excessive acidification of the soil. The lakes of that region have also been acidified. When acidity of water and soil drops below about pH 5.5, it begins to kill off various kinds of microorganisms. Only a few acid-tolerant organisms can survive, and only a few acid-tolerant trees and plants can survive on the poor quality and quantity of protoplasm which the soil provides. No amount of pesticides can stop this dying in a forest—only immediate aerial remineralization can save what’s left of it.
In September 1961, W. Schwenke presented a paper on “Forest Fertilization and In- sect Buildup”. The paper described work done in the previous nine years at the Institute of Applied Zoology at the Forest Research Center, Munich, Germany. The work was based on the observation that forest parasites had greater population density on poor for- est soil than on more fertile forest soil, and on the observation that forest soils can be im- proved by fertilization. They used 1/2 to 1 1/2 tons per acre of limestone plus a light ap- plication of NPK. This minimal soil remineralization cut parasite population from 30 to 50%. On some of the oils the effect was still observable nine years after the application. The increase in growth rate produced a value hat far exceeded the cost of fertilizing the soil. Limestone probably has a broader range of elements to support living organisms. This was shown by the observed fact that the lasting effect of the fertilization depended on the minerals that were in the soil before fertilization.
Severe deterioration of tree foliage and declining tree growth are also being observed throughout the Ohio Valley (AP news, April 16, 1984). The damage is a result of air pollution more acidic than the acid rain believed to be destroying freshwater life in the Northeast, according to a scientist who studies the valley trees. Dr. Orie Loucks said the decline can best be explained by the cumulative impact of over 20 years of stress from a combination of air pollutants. One important pollutant was the sulfate emitted from power plant and factory smokestacks. The acidity of the sulfate particles exceeds that of battery acid, he said. The major difference between the air quality of the Ohio Valley and that in the Northeast, he said, is that the sulfate content of the air is significantly higher in the Ohio Valley region (which includes Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Kentucky). For some years forest deterioration has been reported in parts of the North- east and other areas of the world—now Loucks has found that tree damage may be even more severe in the Ohio Valley, where there is a heavy concentration of coal-burning power plants that lack devices to clean emissions. The region is also believed to be he source of much of the acid rain now falling over the Northeast and Canada.
States in the Ohio Valley have been resisting legislation aimed at curbing acid rain through programs requiring modifications of power plant smokestacks, because such measures would mean higher costs for public utilities—but it’s now obvious that the cost to life is far greater in the long run. In August 1984, New York became the first state to pass a law to curb acid rain, with legislation designed to reduce smokestack emissions 30% in the next decade. State environmental officials said the cost of the program, in-
cluding pollution control devices, would add from $2.40 to $4.80 to the monthly utility bill for the consumer by 1991. Which of us would not gladly forfeit the price of a movie or a few magazines, if it would mean better air quality for everyone?
As we said, acid rain also comes from sulfur dioxide from lignite and coal-burning power plants and nitrogen oxides from auto exhausts and factories. It changes chemical- ly in the atmosphere before falling to earth, killing freshwater life and damaging crops and forests. Acid rain has destroyed fish populations in 200 lakes in the upstate Adiron- dacks (many lakes have become so acidic that no life can exist in them) and, as we said, has damaged millions of acres. Congress must adopt legislation to require a nationwide reduction of 10,000,000 tons of emissions.
Lewis and Grant (Science, 1/11/80) also present some frightening statistics. On the Colorado section of the Colorado Divide where there is very little industrial pollution in the direction of the prevailing wind, the pH of all precipitation still dropped from 5.43 to 4.63 in just three years. Neutral pH is 7.0. Hamaker says that since the CO2 curve is almost vertical at the year 1995, we can go back 20 years to 1975 for the start of the 20-year critical period (to be mentioned in a moment) and not be off by more than a cou- ple of years. The pH then must have been about 6.
Acid rain occurs “naturally” in some places—in the Canadian arctic, natural fires in exposed lignite coal beds produce tremendous amounts of sulfur oxides. These chemi- cals fall to earth, rendering nearby lakes as acidic as lemon juice. Studies of the Green- land ice cap show that acidic depositions on the earth’s surface have been rising since the beginning of the industrial age, with the greatest increase occurring since the 1940s. Central Europe seems hardest hit. Forests are dying throughout Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany. In West Germany, 3,700 acres of woodland died from 1978-1983, and 200,000 acres were seriously damaged, the most vulnerable being dense, pure stands of conifers between 20 and 40 years old that will probably not survive another 10 years (Bernhard Ulrich, German biochemist, 1983). Mr. Ulrich estimates that almost 5,000,000 acres of German forest soils are at the threshold where toxic aluminum will begin its lethal work. Industrial emissions drift from England to Scandinavia. The in- dustrial Ruhr and Rhine area in Germany affect most of central Europe, and Russia (the largest burner of sulfur-bearing fuels) is also polluting Finland. America’s industri- al Midwest helps render the rain acidic in virtually every state east of the Mississippi; much of the Midwest’s emissions join those from Canada, acidifying eastern Canada and threatening its fish and forests—two of its chief resources. In the U.S., only some of the Rocky Mountain states and parts of the Southwest enjoy healthy rains of pH 5.5 or more.
Crops and temperate zone vegetation cannot grow on acidic soils, so the large num- ber of dead and dying trees in our forests is attributable both to increasing soil acidi- ty and decreasing quantities of available elements. Dead forests burn easily with a hot fire which oxidizes large quantities of atmospheric nitrogen. Lewis and Grant found that the oxides of nitrogen were dominant in the acidic precipitation. The more trees die and burn, the more the soils become acidified and the more trees must die. There are also a number of mildly acidic gases released from burning wood. These, plus the acidic gases from volcanism (volcanic power or action), are nature’s way of bringing on glaciation. Man’s fossil fuel fires are also a big factor in the destruction.
Belgian scientist Genevieve Woillard showed that the final changeover to sub-arctic climate and vegetation (to be discussed later) took only 20 years at previous interglacial- to-glacial transitions, as recorded in the undisturbed pollen deposits of Grand Pile, France. In Woillard’s study, the change in vegetation was from hazel, oak, and alder to pine, birch, and spruce—that is, a change from warm-weather to cold-tolerant trees. But even more significant: this change is from nut-bearing trees to trees that can’t yield a proteinaceous crop. That translates to mean a decline in soil minerals to the point where there are insufficient microorganisms in the soil to grow proteinaceous trees.
It now appears that the 20 years for the change in vegetation can be shortened be- cause of industrial pollution; we are actually speeding up the deterioration process on all
fronts, by the sum total of all our environmental errors. Hamaker said: “Judging from the CO2 curve, we are actually 5 years into such a period.”(This was at the time his book was written.)
The Amazon forest is the largest tropical rain forest left in the world, but it is paying a heavy price for “progress”. Deforestation of large tracts (such as Volkswagen’s afore- mentioned tract) is causing a change in the region’s climate, something climatologists have warned of for some time. A change in the region’s water balance seems to be the result of increased runoff due to deforestation. If so, the long-predicted regional climat- ic and hydrological changes expected as a result of Amazon deforestation may already be beginning. Increased flooding is the first sign of damage to the Amazonian ecosys- tem. A heavily-deforested area has developed along the edge of the mountains in upper Amazonian Ecuador and Peru during the past 10-plus years, the result of large slices of forests being cleared for roads, housing, and other development, all of which are expos- ing the land to increased runoff and erosion. Scientists have found that runoff is increas- ing in the area while rainfall patterns remain the same; this is caused by interference in the process of transpiration—trees take up moisture that falls and send it back into the air. Now that the trees have been eliminated, the recycling process has been curtailed to an extent that the report warns “might eventually convert much of now-forested Amazo- nia to near desert.” Note: While in most areas (such as the North American Great Plains or Western Europe) most of the rainfall represents moisture blown in from the sea, about half of the Amazonian rainfall is water that is recycled within the basin. Thus, in tamper- ing with the balance of ecology in the Amazon rain forest, one tampers with its rainfall cycle as well.
Since population and farming are concentrated along the Amazon’s seasonally- flooded river margins, scientists warn that the magnitude of damage is potentially great, and say that the “rapidity with which relatively-limited forest destruction (which has since increased) appears to have altered the Amazonian water balance, suggests the need for planned development.” This is obviously an understatement—planned reforestation and remineralization are also needed to save the Amazon area, before going about any so-called “planned development”. When viewing the earth via satellite, you can literally see the moisture that swirls and sweeps outward from the Amazon area—it covers such a large area that it is seen as a giant moving form that takes on a life of its own—rapid development in the Amazon not only tampers with local ecology, it also affects areas farther away that would normally be affected by these huge, moving atmospheric sys- tems of the Amazon.
Throughout the Third World, unchecked erosion is washing away valuable topsoil. Reforestation could stop the process, aid in CO2 removal, and aid rainfall cycles—it must be a top survival priority. Because it can take years for reforestation’s results to be felt, local governments and villagers have been reluctant to take on what appear to be long-term, labor-intensive projects, but they are failing to realize what failure to do so will mean to their ecosystems.
Researchers are working on what they call a “miracle tree”, the Leucanna leuco- cephela, which is an extraordinarily fast-growing, all-purpose, self-fertilizing tree, used for both fodder and timber. Under ideal conditions it reaches a 10-inch circumference in one year.
Arbor Day began in Nebraska in 1872, when more than one million trees were planted to help prevent erosion and moisture loss in a state with few trees. Within two decades, 100,000 acres had been turned into forested preserves. Arbor Day is now a le- gal holiday in four states and is celebrated in all the states, but please don’t wait for Ar- bor Day to plant trees—do so whenever you can. Fruit trees are especially needed every- where.
Over 100 countries grow tobacco; flue-curing about 2,500,000 tons annually uses about one hectare of trees for every ton, amounting to about 12.5% of 18-20 million
hectares of trees cut yearly, which means about 1 in 8 trees is axed just for drying tobac- co! Cropland used for tobacco should be used for growing food instead.
100.3.2 Carbon Dioxide—Global Climate Changes—Weather Patterns
The increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is our most urgent problem. John Hamaker drew a carbon dioxide curve projection in 1979 and said that unless we gained control of the curve shortly after 1985, by 1990 the rate of breakdown of the environ- ment would be occurring much faster than we could repair the damage. However, in or- der to gain control by 1985, we would have had to start in 1980 to have a fully-operating program of soil remineralization, pollution reduction, and so on. As of 1985, few people took seriously what the curve was saying—nevertheless, Hamaker hasn’t given up hope for humanity’s survival, even though he’s also considered the possibility that “if we were to start to work in the next few months, we could have less than a 50% chance of suc- cess”. He’s written countless letters and says three world science organizations finally agreed to meet in 1985—he thinks action is long overdue, with “nature just beginning to show her teeth”. While we wait around for statistics and more data, the power of central- ized wealth is holding us to a system of soil destruction. World leaders, concerned with what they must do to get re-elected (if they are indeed elected), merely serve the interest of a wealthy minority that controls an economic system that is ruining our lands, keeping millions of people poor and/ or in debt, keeping our countries in debt, and threatening our very survival with destructive weapons, aggressive foreign policies, and decisions that continually compromise the quality of our environment.
The Global 2000 Report to the President was commissioned in 1977 by President Carter and finally released in July 1980, as a three-volume work of over 1,000 pages. The report’s findings aren’t represented as predictions, but as depictions of conditions likely to develop if there are no changes in public policies. Some of its findings on CO2 were:
- CO2emissionswillincreaseto26to34,000,000,000shorttonsperyear,roughlydouble the CO2 emissions of the mid-70s.
- 446,000,000 hectares (each is 2.47 acres) of CO2-absorbing forests will be lost.
- Burning of much of the wood on 446 million hectares will produce more CO2.
- Decomposition of soil humus will release more CO2. By June 1979, the percent of increase of CO2 over an assumed “normal” level of 290 ppm was about 15%. In 1985, it could be 18%. By 1990, it could be 22% (50% more than it is now). Yet we go on bringing carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere. John Gribbin (New Scientist, 4/9/81), noting the intensification of worldwide forest destruction and fossil fuel combustion, reports that the present annual CO2 increase has jumped to 2 to 4 ppm, and “is increasing rapidly today, in 1981”. (Hamaker’s CO2 curve projection could even prove conservative.) “The Role of CO2 in the Process of Glaciation”, published in April 1980, was writ- ten as a concise explanation of the glacial process which could be understood by the U.S. Congress, at a time when the CO2 problem was just being recognized by some of its members. It appears in Hamaker’s book, and refers to the relationship that has been virtually never considered by the hundreds of researchers of glaciation, starting with the first “Great Ice Age” theory of Louis Agassiz in 1837 (Imbrie and Imbrie, 1979). This excess carbon dioxide is causing what is known as “the greenhouse effect “be- cause carbon dioxide behaves like the glass in a greenhouse, permitting the sun’s rays to reach the earth, but not allowing the heat to escape. The effect is like that of a “ther- mal blanket” around the globe. As a result, some scientists think that the earth will be- come warmer, but others, including John Hamaker, say that it is now getting colder. All
scientists now agree that carbon dioxide levels are too high, and with acid rain, forest fires, deforestation, and trees dying from soil demineralization, CO2 levels continue to increase. Nature will complete her necessary cycles and go about her own self-healing processes, just as our bodies do. We’d do well to understand her cycles and healing crises better, and offer help instead of waiting for chronic illness to set in. We tend to forget that the earth is very much alive, and a living being/entity (albeit a large one!)—it reg- ulates itself as surely as our bodies do. Because we need the earth to survive, its state of health is very fundamentally—and really—speaking, as important as our own.
I’ll present both the warm and cold predictions to show how complex climate “analysis” becomes—all environmental factors interrelate to affect it. Having considered their total impact on our ecology and weather, heard both sides (warm/cold) of the story, and watched worldwide weather trends these past years, my intuition tends to believe scientists who say the world is cooling. In any case, we can’t deny that our planet is be- ing manipulated (and often assaulted) on all sides daily by millions of its inhabitants. Some of these assaults are very serious; we discussed long, periods of time that some radioactive waste materials remain dangerous in Lesson 53—this is only one example. Life Scientists know of chemical medicines adverse effects in the body. Can you imag- ine how our planet’s health is affected and weakened by millions of daily assaults on its body?
The saying “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is not just a sug- gestion on how to be “nice”. It says, in essence, that what you do unto others you do unto yourself—more and more we see how true this is. Now we must also do unto our planet as we would have our planet do unto us, for what we do to our planet, we do to ourselves.
100.3.3 Warmer or Colder?
Before continuing, let’s clarify the fact that scientists who see the world as cooling do not necessary dispute the greenhouse effect’s warming potential in and of it- self—some see a preliminary warming as part of an “energy booster” or catalyst in the Ice Age transition process: the tropics do become hotter/drier as precipitation increases farther north, but increased cloud cover and other factors, to be discussed later, lead to increased cooling conditions.
Let’s take a look at the two opinions ... warmer or colder:
In the fall of 1983. the federal government, based on an Environmental Protection Agency report, said that a “dramatic warming of the earth’s climate could begin in the 1990s because of the greenhouse effect, with potentially-serious consequences for global food production, changes in rainfall and water availability, and a probable rise in coastal waters”. The report said that “levels of CO2 in the air created by burning of fossil fuels could result in an increase of 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by the middle of the next century and a 9-degree rise by 2100, representing an unprecedented rate of atmospheric warm- ing”.
“It’s going to have a very profound impact on the way we live,” said John Topping, staff director for the EPA’s office of air, noise, and radiation. “Some of the effects will be beneficial; some will be detrimental. But our ability to accommodate them will de- pend much on our planning beforehand. Temperature rises are likely to be accompanied by dramatic changes in precipation (more rainfall in some areas, more drought in others) and storm patterns and a rise in global average sea level,” the study said. “As a result, agricultural conditions will be significantly altered, environmental and economic sys- tems potentially disrupted, and political institutions stressed.”
Stephen Seidel, one of the authors of the report, said that milder winters and much warmer summers by the 1990s may no longer be unusual. The report said the trend will occur regardless of what steps are taken to reduce the burning of fossil fuels.
The study said a warmer climate would raise the sea level by expanding the oceans and by melting ice and snow now on land. An increase of only two feet “could flood or cause storm damage to many of the major ports of the world, disrupt transportation net- works, alter aquatic ecosystems and cause major shifts in land development patterns”. The warming is expected to be greater at the North and South Poles and less at the equa- tor, the EPA said. John Hoffman, head of strategic studies for the agency, said “New York City could have a climate like Daytona Beach (Florida) by 2100”.
A major report issued in 1983 by the National Academy of Sciences said that the approaching warming of the earth “is reason for concern, not panic”. The report warned, however, that a warming trend and decreased precipitation could “severely affect” the Texas gulf, Rio Grande, upper and lower Colorado River regions; California; and other Western regions. One projection in the report shows a possible reduction in water sup- ply of nearly 50% when the full force of the warming phenomenon is felt after the year 2000. The tone of the academy warning was less urgent than the EPA’s, stressing the need for “more intense research”. However, the academy found that since (in their opin- ion) there is no politically or economically realistic way of heading off the greenhouse effect, strategies must be prepared to adapt to a “high temperature world.” The EPA re- port said that even a total ban on coal would only delay the process for a few years, and said that, because the CO2 in the earth’s atmosphere retains heat rather than permits it to escape into space, thus creating the greenhouse effect, the buildup of gas will be ac- companied by a rise of global surface temperatures, most likely in the range of 2 to 8 degrees F. These projections are roughly similar to those in the EPA report; it is expected that this rise will be accompanied by “rapid climate change, including changes in rain- fall patterns, as well as a rise in the sea level of over two feet”.
Some additional notes on the greenhouse effect are of importance:
Recent investigations have established that other man-made pollutant trace gases may increase the greenhouse effect by another 50% (Flohn, 1979; Kellogg and Schware, 1981). These gases come primarily from burning vegetation, release of industrial halo- carbons (freons), and the denitrification of nitrogen fertilizers in the soil. The Green- house Effect by meteorologist Harold Bernard, issues a strong warning that the heating effects alone will likely be devastating to humanity due to increasing climatic stress; agriculture in particular will suffer greatly. He cites increasing storminess with tornados, hurricanes, floods, searing “dust bowl”-type droughts, water depletion, and massive for- est fires if we continue on the fossil fuel route, presenting a whole bank of reasons against doing so.
The last few years have seen dramatic changes in precipitation—more rainfall in some areas, more drought in others— but these are also part of the weather forecast giv- en by scientists who say the world is cooling. Apparent warming trends could be su- perceded by cooling trends in the long run, if we are due for transition into a glacial period.
Systematic measurements of atmospheric CO2 began only as late as 1958 (Calder, 1975). Most climatologists seem fond of repeating the dangerous oversimplification of CO 2’s greenhouse effect, that is, that the earth will warm up as a result.
In a 1977 paper, Hamaker asked, “How Rapidly is CO2 Increasing in our Atmos- phere?” In 1977, a National Academy Sciences panel on energy and climate provided a frightening statistic (Charles Keeling, Science, 9/2/77). Keeling said there’d been a 13% rise since the Industrial Revolution began. Alarming is the fact that five of this 13% had occurred since 1962“. That same Science article discussed the oversimplified comput- er models of CO2’s “general warming” effect, and stated that there are some scientists who “privately suggest” that because of “complex feedback phenomena“, global cooling could result.
Hamaker says that even if the average temperature of the atmosphere is getting warmer, it is false to assume polar ice will melt and temperate zones will move toward the poles. According to Hamaker, “the experts have given us a time scale for weather
changes that is longer than we have. Many things are operating at once to affect climate. They all have long overlapping time lags so that we cannot say that this happens, then this, and then this. But the first stage of glaciation, which is initiated by a change from temperate zone to northern latitude types of trees, and by dying of tropical forests, is here now.”
Hamaker says “the theory that the world will get warmer is based on the absurd idea that the earth’s average temperature depends solely on the sun’s energy and the heating effect of atmospheric CO2. On that basis these scientists have projected a rise in temper- ature in the next century when the CO2 has doubled, so they have drawn a line tangent to the recorded curve and ending up in the next century.” He disagrees with the projection, saying that nature is clearly drawing a curve that is constantly increasing at an accelerat- ing rate of increase, and the scientists have merely decided that nature must change her ways to suit their predictions.
The time to stop the onset of glaciation is before it starts, because it starts with the destruction of agriculture. Hamaker says that we must act now, before our technologi- cal capacity to remineralize the soil is lost in the chaos of a world of starving and dy- ing nations. As we said, climatic cycles and factors may overlap, but we can identify a point in the whole climate cycle at which the temperate zone climate is destroyed and we stop eating! We can chart the CO2 content of the atmosphere and know whether we have enough minerals in soil and water. The CO2 curve is showing us that the time of no temperate zone could be approaching. We must remineralize the world’s soils and put carbon back into the earth as fast as we can to reverse the CO2 curve and bring it back to a safe level.
Hamaker says that scientists predicting a warming also aren’t taking into considera- tion the role of life in and on the soil in demineralizing it in a period of 10,000 to 15,000 years, depending on the amount of ground rock supplied by the last glacial advance, nor do they all understand the earth’s tectonic system and its role in determining the weather. The climate cycle is a by-product of the entire life system, all of which rests on the ex- penditure of atomic energy in the tectonic system. There are two energy systems which are powerful in comparison to other factors (such as sun spots, Milankovitch’s theory, or the alignment of planets in space)—the effects of these other factors may be noted, but they don’t substantially alter the glacial process—both of the primary energy systems use the energy in the atom. One is the sun and the other is the tectonic system.
The earth constantly intercepts the sun’s energy. If the energy incident to the earth at the higher latitudes is deflected into space instead of being absorbed at ground level, the total amount of energy available to warm the earth is decreased by that amount. During a glacial period the total amount of sun energy reaching the earth is decreased because the CO2 (from the tectonic system) directs a heavy cloud cover to the polar latitudes. The clouds have a very high albedo, that is, ability to reflect the sun’s rays back into pace.
The tectonic system constantly removes materials from the mantle of the earth, sep- arates the compounds containing a balance of elements useful to living organisms, and moves them into the mountains or into the atmosphere. Compounds containing elements not required for life processes are consigned to the core or are recycled to build the basic ocean floor at the ridge.
Everything on earth is totally dependent on the tectonic system; if it were to run out of fuel, the earth would be cold and lifeless like Mars. Climate is directly controlled by the discharge of carbon and sulfur oxides by the tectonic system. Now that mankind has a hand in adding CO2 to the air (and making other environmental errors), climate is al- so affected by the human factor. There is a scarcity of minerals on the land and in the sea, further contributing to the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere as more and more CO2 is supplied by the tectonic system and less and less is put back into the earth’s crust by the living organisms. All these factors overlap and affect climate. We can say that the min- erals (those available to microorganisms) and the carbon released by the tectonic system
can be monitored—and thus, theoretically, can be controlled to some extent—we still have much to learn in this area, but we can and do have an affect on climate.
The burning of temperate zone vegetation will carry huge quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere. In the zones of latitude where the sun’s rays are most intense (the equatorial region), CO2 holds the sun’s heat at the surface of the earth, increasing surface tempera- ture and providing the energy to increase the evaporation and to move the massive cloud cover to the polar regions; CO2 has no heating effect at the poles in the winter when it’s dark 24 hours a day. The warm, demineralized ocean can’t take up the CO2 as fast as it is being put into the air, and decreasing plant life and less trees also mean less CO2 is being converted. We cannot allow the CO2 increase to reach the point of no return—that is, the increase in CO2 from the tectonic system and our own input must not be allowed to exceed the capacity of the remaining forests and sea life to remove the CO2. When the minerals are too few to support enough life to hold down the CO2 level, the level begins to rise and the death of the temperate and tropical zone forests swiftly initiates the air flow pattern which brings glaciation to polar latitudes and extreme, killing heat and drought in between.
When air gets hotter, its atmospheric pressure decreases. It’s then easier for the cold air moving d own over a cold land mass to displace the warm equatorial air and force it to move poleward over the warm ocean to replace the cold air moving toward the equator. This is the normal air circulation pattern impressed on the west winds. During glaciation, when there is an extensive ice field, there is no summer because the refrig- erated air from the ice field maintains the temperature differential required to carry the clouds to the northern latitude. Thus there can be unusually large masses of hot air in the equatorial latitudes and unusually large masses of cold air in the polar latitudes. Glacia- tion, or for that matter, anything else on earth, can’t take place without an expenditure of energy. Without a buildup in CO2 and hence temperature, glaciation cannot happen.
Hamaker says that the average temperature at the start of a glacial period must be higher than the interglacial temperature, and must remain higher until the cooling effect of the ice sheets starts bringing it down, but says this won’t help agriculture: the south- ern temperate zone will have excessive heat/drought; northern/temperate zone: summer freezes and frosts; cloud cover lowers the temperature and increases the quantity of cold air which flows south over the land masses. With early cold snaps and longer, cold- er winters, the temperate zone will become a part of the subarctic zone. The summer frosts/ freezes, short-growing seasons, drought and violent storms, rapidly diminishing soil minerals, and increasing rain acidity will destroy the world’s grain crops; we can’t grow grain in the subarctic. Growing seasons have already been shortened and interrupt- ed by freeze damage. (The local areas to survive will be the few near the equator that are blessed with a constantly renewed supply of basic minerals sufficient to maintain a neutral soil in spite of the acidic rains, says Hamaker in Survival of Civilization.) We’ve already seen indications of these patterns. He says we can stand cold winters for some time, but not if they carry over into summers to destroy crops and trees. Cold waves, just a few degrees lower in temperature, can cause major crop losses in Canadian and Eurasian grain crops that are at the latitude of Michigan or farther north. Hamaker says food production in the northern hemisphere in 1980 had lost about 20% of potential be- cause of adverse weather (drought/ heat in the U.S.; cold, wet weather on the Eurasian continent; and, in the southern hemisphere the growing season started with drought in Australia, Africa, and South America). He fears that famine could begin soon, that it could be a few years away; 1978 and 1979 fruit and vegetable losses in California, Texas, and Florida, as well as wintercrop losses in 1983/84, show what could happen to crops in the years just ahead.
Anyone interested in studying the whole glacial process in more depth is urged to read Hamaker’s book—there is an entire section on the tectonic system, plus more de- tails on the role of CO2 in glaciation and many other facts and figures on the glacial process, including the period of glaciation itself. Our space in this lesson requires us to
focus more on the transition period from interglacial (warm) to glacial (cold) so that we may become more aware of signals observable during a change to glaciation.
Let’s take a look at what some other scientists who foresee a cooling have to say about the energy expenditure required for glaciation; we’ve seen that scientists agree, in general, on some information about past glacial periods and our present interglacial, but they don’t all agree on why glaciation happened. What force could bring such a change about? We’ve said that Hamaker saw the greenhouse effect as occurring differentially: the increasing temperature differential between warmer (hotter/drier) and colder (cold- er/ wetter) latitudes has taken on a life of its own and is accelerating the whole process. When the supply of minerals ground from rocks by the last glaciation is used up in the soil, this exhaustion of soil minerals by the life in and on the soil initiates a whole chain of events which results in restocking the soil with minerals and a new proliferation of life.
David P. Adam of the U.S. Geological Survey, a longtime student of glacial periods, has emphasized that to understand their causes, one must solve the “energy problem” they present. His Quaternary Research paper (1976, “Ice Ages and the Thermal Equilib- rium of the Earth (II)”) shows that an essential requirement to begin and sustain a glacial period is an increased transfer of (excess) energy towards the glaciated regions, and that energy is in the form of moisture. This is of course precipitated largely as snow, thus forming the initial perennial snowfields and subsequent ice sheets. He states that some increased energy source must therefore be invoked to sustain these vast energy transfers, yet he does not consider in his paper the fact of excessive CO2’s solar heat-trapping ef- fect as the possible “booster” for providing this increase of effective energy, which, as Adam points out, is “required to fuel a continental glaciation”.
In a personal communication to Hamaker, David Adam agreed that Hamaker’s the- ory (CO2) indeed fulfills the requirements of providing the glacial energy fuel. Yet, sur- prisingly, David knew of no one in the history of modern Quaternary research who had postulated a CO2-glaciation relationship, perhaps due to the relative state of infancy of modern CO2/climate studies, but he said there was one well-respected climatologist who had presented an explanation of the basic glacial process very similar to Hamaker’s, Sir George Simpson of Britain. He was first to point out that the glaciation that characterizes an ice age can’t come about by a general cooling of the earth’s atmosphere—because some source of increased energy is required to transport poleward the huge amounts of moisture which make up the glaciers. Most climatologists now agree, because a decrease must lower the mean temperature of the earth’s surface (especially in the tropics), de- crease the equator-to-pole temperature gradient, and distinctly lower the moisture con- tent of the atmosphere. He realized that it’s obviously paradoxical to expect fulfillment of certain fundamental requirements for glaciation (intensified equator-to-pole temper- ature gradients, stepped-up atmospheric circulation, and increase of poleward heat and moisture transfer) with a declining surface temperature, especially in tropical regions.
John Hamaker, while unaware of Simpson’s theory, was apparently the first to cor- relate the basic heating and circulation principles operating at glacial initiation with the soon-to-be-infamous” differential greenhouse effect. Other recent warnings on this dif- ferential heating effect have come from Lester Machta (head of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Air Resources Labs), saying that CO2 could in- deed cause the massive cooling cloud coverage and cooling at the poles, and from Justus (1978) of the Congressional Research Service: “If the earth’s temperature rises, the wa- ter vapor content of the atmosphere is likely to rise. A rise in water vapor would quite likely increase the fraction of the globe covered by clouds. Such an increase could cause the amount of primary solar radiation absorbed by earth to fall.” In a document pre- pared for Congress (”Weather Modification: Programs, Problems, Policy, and Potential,” Chapter 4), Justus says: “In geological perspective, the case for cooling is strong. ... If this interglacial age lasts no longer than a dozen earlier ones in the past million years, as
recorded in deep-sea sediments, we may reasonably suppose that the world is about due to begin a slide into the next Ice Age.” (p. 153.)
Hamaker says that failure to remineralize the soil will cause continued mental and physical degeneration of humanity and quickly bring famine, death, and glaciation, in that order.
The majority of the world’s people fall into one of these categories: those who are aware of problems and take action; those that are angered by problems, but talk or worry about them and don’t take action; those who just give up hope; those who trust in the system, right or wrong, problems or no problems; those who are just plain indifferent to problems; and even those who are unaware that problems exist at all!
Most people probably think that the last ice age was “a million years ago”, but the fact is, it ended only about 10,000 years ago—a few seconds in geological time. Every- thing that we know in terms of our “civilization” has taken place in that brief span of time since the earth last warmed up. The potential global climate changes that face all of humanity could re-arrange everything on the planet, and affect every living creature on earth more than any other ecological issues in question—even beyond such crucial concerns as world peace—for the issue here is whether we want to have a world at all in which to live in peace. We must make the ecological changes necessary for survival. Because most of the subsoil and topsoil of the world have been stripped of all but a small quantity of elements (by time, water, erosion, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and so on), Hamaker says man can stay on this earth only if the glacial periods come every 100,000 years to replenish the mineral supply—or if we get smart enough to grind the rock our- selves and apply it everywhere on soil that is depleted. Glaciation is an acceleration of the normal process of using evaporated water to carry excessive heat energy from warm zones to cold zones, and the greenhouse effect (of an increase in atmospheric CO2) is to increase cloud cover over polar latitudes. The clouds have a cooling effect as well as providing the snow for glaciation. The energy is dissipated in arctic space. Glaciation occurs whenever the soil minerals left by the last glacial period are used up and the plant life (forests are the major factor in CO2 control) can no longer regulate the carbon diox- ide by growing faster in response to its increase in the air.
100.3.4 The Glacial-Interglacial Cycle
The glacial-interglacial cycle was revealed by numerous workers in many fields of Quaternary research as of the 1970s. (The Quaternary is the present geological period including the Pleistocene epoch and the Holocene—recent—epoch, the present inter- glacial in which we now live). A National Academy of Sciences (NAS) publication, Understanding Climate Change (1975) says: “The present .interglacial interval—which has now lasted about 10,000 years—represents a climatic regime that is relatively rare during the past million years, most of which have been occupied by colder, glacial regimes. Only during about 8% of the past 700,000 years has the earth experienced climates as warm or warmer than the present. The penultimate interglacial age began about 125,000 years ago and lasted for approximately 10,000 years. Similar interglacial (warm) ages—each lasting 10,000 (+- 2,000) years and each followed by a glacial (cold) maximum averaging 90,000 years—have occurred on the average every 100,000 years during at least the past half-million years. During this period, fluctuation of the northern hemisphere ice sheets caused sea-level variations of about 100 meters.”
This NAS publication concludes that: “If the end of the interglacial is episodic in character, we are moving toward a rather sudden climatic change of unknown timing. ... If, on the other hand, these changes are more sinusoidal in character, then the climate should decline gradually over a period of thousands of years.” All factors considered, Hamaker doesn’t think we have that long.
Paleoclimatologists agree that the major warm periods (interglacials) that followed each of the ends of the major glaciations (cold periods) have lasted from about 10,000
to 12,000 years, and that, in each case, a period of considerably colder climate has fol- lowed immediately after these intervals. About 10,000 to 10,800 years have now passed since the onset of our present period of warmth, so the question certainly arises as to whether we are really on the brink of a period of colder climate. The 100,000-year cycle of glaciation is now recognized as occurring with regularity, so, technically-speaking, we could be due for another ice age “any time during the next 1,200 years”. As we said, though, signs that signal the changeover or transition from temperate to colder climate are already in evidence, and increasing due to our environmental errors.
Most scientists are noncommital, but those who are beginning to express concern say that these signs mean that we may be much closer to the first stages of the next ice age than anybody would like to think. Let’s review some of the signs we’ve already talked about:
We have already seen that the earth’s total soil microorganism and earthworm popu- lations have been dying back over the recent centuries and decades due to soil deminer- alization, and so the earth’s plant and tree life has been forced to die back—known as “retrogressive vegetational succession” in the literature of ecology. Deserts (now grow- ing at a rate of 15 million acres per year) are generally a final stage of this retrogression process. Our abuse and neglect has reinforced this desertification, as it has deforesta- tion. Soil demineralization (with acid rains accelerating the devastation) is causing the increasingly rapid sickening and dying of whole forests. The massive death and burn- ing of the forests is signaling the “telocratic” or end phase of our present interglacial period. Svend Th. Andersen saw the broad picture of glacial/interglacial stages and said that the interglacials were stable intervals between the glacial stages of disturbance and chaos. The vegetation had a chance to develop until the new glacial released its destruc- tive forces. He divided the interglacials (warm intervals) into four broad phases:
1. Protocratic phase. At the start of warm intervals, open forests of pioneer species en- tered—these were quickly-spreading trees and shrubs with unpretentious requirements to climate and soils. Birch, pine, poplar, juniper, and willow were most important in Denmark, Andersen’s home.
2. Mesocraticphase.Thesoilhaddevelopedahighfertility,andplantsofrichsoilsreached maximum frequencies. Immense forests covered great portions of the earth in the last mesocratic phase (from about 6,000 to 3,000 B.C.) Some of these trees, such as oaks, were reported to be often of remarkably large size; these are found preserved in now-de- generate treeless peat soils in England and elsewhere. The phase is dominated by trees such as elm, oak, lime, hazel, ash, hornbeam, and alder, growing on stable mull soils which Dr. Johannes Iversen (State Geologist, Geological Survey of Denmark), showed to eventually begin to retrogress. Iversen tried to find out at what point in the interglacial the retrogressive vegetational succession starts, and said it is “when the yearly disin- tegration of the plant debris no longer keeps pace with the fresh supply from the liv- ing plants, and consequently a layer of ‘mor’ (raw humus) is accumulated on top of the mineral soil”. “Mull” humus has a richness of available minerals; “mor” is acidifying humus. He studied soil conditions and said that, from the point approximately 10,000 years ago commonly accepted as the beginning of our present (warm) interglacial, it took about 3,700 to 4,500 years for the first of the glacially-deposited raw mineral soils of basic or alkaline pH to “mature” and then go into a gradual “irreversible” degrada- tion/depletion. Iversen says this degradation process is characterized by reduced soil or- ganisms, earthworms dying out, and by the vegetation regression that comes when soil is depleted and lacks minerals. Andersen and’ Iversen have similar descriptions of this process. In these mull soils, of roughly 6000 to 3000 B.C., the leaching of the soil salts is to some extent counteracted by the mixing activity of the soil fauna and the abili- ty of the prevailing trees and shrubs to extract bases from the deeper soil layers and contribute them to the upper layers during the decomposition of their litter. However, a slow removal of calcium carbonate will bring the soils into a less stable state, where the
equilibrium may be more easily disturbed. This leaching of calcium carbonate (lime) is shown to be so significant to the topsoil ecology because, according to Andersen, “the leaching of soil minerals other than lime will be insignificant, until the calcium carbon- ate has been removed”. With this gradual leaching, the mull forest could not maintain itself, and with the lapse of time, caused itself a depauperization and acidification of the upper soil layers, which extended so far that the dense forest receded and more open vegetation types expanded. The changeover from mineral-rich mull soils to acidifying mor soil conditions begins in the mesocratic, and with the gradual demineralization of formerly-calcareous soils, growth of impenetrable hardpans and soil life die-outs follow. This creates shallow topsoils susceptible to drought or being easily swamped; and this infertile state leads to takeover by heathlands, peat bogs, and trees with ability to survive on acidic soils—spruce, pine, birch, poplar, etc.
3. Oligocratic phase. This condition becomes prevalent in this phase, and is brought on as a result of degeneration of soils. The increasing podzolization, characterized by in- creased demineralization and acidity, continues up through the telocratic (end) phase. (Podzolization is a process of soil formation, especially in humid regions, involving principally leaching of the upper layers with accumulation of material in lower layers and development of characteristic horizons; specifically, the development of a podzol. Podzol: any of a group of zonal soils that develop in a moist climate especially under coniferous or mixed forests and have an organic mat and a thin organic-mineral layer above a gray leached layer resting on a dark alluvial horizon enriched with amorphous clay.)
4. Telocratic(end)phase.Thefinalinterglacialphaseisthetimewhenthedemineralized soils begin to be removed. The rigorous conditions at the end of the interglacial are re- flected by an increase in allochthonous mineral matter, no doubt due to increasing surfi- cial erosion.
The information in virtually every textbook on soils, forestry, or ecology leaves no doubt that the present world civilization is at least deep into the oligocratic phase. An- dersen’s work also shows that the Scandinavian lakes and soils reflect a close parallel development from basic to acidic conditions—again, many thousands of lakes there, as well as in other parts of the world, are now already acidified into lifelessness from acid rain. Rapidly accelerating worldwide erosion rates are evident; the figure in 1981 was already 6,400,000,000 tons of topsoil lost per year to erosion.
These facts, along with increasingly rigorous conditions imposed by the weather since at least 1972, very strongly indicate that the telocratic end phase may indeed have begun. As we said, the final changeover to sub-arctic climate and vegetation has been seen to have been made in only 20 years in other interglacial to glacial transitions.
What other changes come with the end of a period of interglacial warmth? From studies of sediments and soils, George Kukla agreed that “major changes in vegetation occurred at the end of the previous warm period. Deciduous forests that covered areas during the major glaciations were replaced by sparse shrubs, and dust blew freely. The climate was considerably more ‘continental’ than it is now, and agricultural productiv- ity would have been marginal at best.” George Kukla and Julius Fink studied interlay- ered soils exposed in excavated brickyards of Czechoslovakia. Seventeen major cycles of glacial loess deposition (loess is mixed rock dust and silt ground by the glaciers and swept by the winds) and subsequent interglacial soil “decalcification” (and overall dem- ineralization) over the last 1.7 million years were revealed. The interglacial soils are shown to have supported the deciduous forests native to northwest and central Europe until in some way they died off and gave way to the steppe vegetation of a chilled, wind- torn glacial desert with blowing dust. Loess always returns to cover the demineralized soils. Then, again, over the centuries, the loess becomes mostly consumed by the soil formation and development process.
The cycle of glaciation is complete when the supply of minerals ground from rocks by the last glaciation is used up and glaciation occurs again. Whereas plant life normally removes all excess CO2 from the atmosphere by growing faster as CO2 increases, it can no longer do so, since it gets its cell protoplasm from the soil microorganisms and, as we know, the microorganisms start dying too when insufficient elements are available to them.
A conference was held at Brown University in 1972 with paleontologists, sedi- mentologists, stratigraphers, paleoclimatologists, and others, entitled The Present Inter- glacial, How and When Will It End? They strongly confirmed the 100,000-year average glacial-interglacial cycle, and many stressed the fact that we should be at or close to the end of the present interglacial.
The search for causes of the Ice Age began over a century ago, and Hamaker says the answer literally lies beneath our feet: progressive soil demineralization of the earth’s soil mantle causes an eventual collapse of the global carbon cycle. The cycle is:
soil remineralization -> interglacial soil demineralization -> vegetational succession and collapse -> the glacial process -> soil remineralization
Hamaker also believes the large increase in earthquakes can be attributed to the steadily-increasing weight of snow and ice cover pressing on the molten layers just un- derneath the earth’s crust, causing shifting and slippages. He notes that the sharp rise in major earthquakes began about 10 years after the climate began to get noticeably cold- er beginning in 1940. He also predicts a steadily-increasing incidence of volcanic erup- tions, for the same reason, and suggests this has already begun in the last few years.
Glaciation usually comes at a time when the earth’s tectonic system has fired up vol- canic activity by feeding ocean floor into the continental heaters, mostly located in the Pacific “ring of fire”. Volcanic action releases larger amounts of liquified gases trapped in the molten rock. Carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide are the main gases released, and both cause the greenhouse effect, resulting in our present “100-year cold cycle”. These cycles vary in their time interval, intervals being determined by the pressure in the tec- tonic system. Carbon dioxide from decaying and burning mineral-starved vegetation is then added to these volcanic gases—together, they initiate the change from interglacial to glacial climate. Acidic gases from volcanism and burning forests can then stifle life on earth by leaching the few remaining basic elements into the subsoil. In this way the change from interglacial to glacial conditions can be made in 20 years (Nature, G. Woil- lard, 1979). Hamaker says that man may have moved the present glacial process! for- ward in time by 500 years by the continued pouring of CO2 into the air, by acidic gases and acid rain, and by forest; and jungle destruction by people seeking lumber and fuel or farmland ... the 20-year change period can also be shortened. Hamaker estimates that the beginning of a 20-year changeover period from interglacial to glacial conditions was about 1975. If this estimate is accurate, then tremendous weather changes should have begun by that time, signified by growing intensification of all storm effects, including unusually heavy rains and snows, record cold and heat, drought, hail, tornados, etc., all symptomatic of increasing temperature and pressure differentials, greater evaporation of moisture, and an overall speeding up of global atmospheric circulation.
Iversen warns us that in former interglacial epochs, the anthropogenic factor was negligible; i.e., man’s impact on nature was less dramatic than it is today.
According to Hamaker, all the requirements for glaciation are now in place and ac- celerating in intensity at a very fast pace: CO2 increases; precipitation pH moves toward intolerable acidity; earth’s soils (demineralized) can’t support a strong, healthy plant/ forest cover; the carbon of the soils and trees is being transferred back to the atmos- phere in huge amounts as carbon dioxide gases. As the primary infrared heat-trapping “greenhouse effect” gas, CO2 excess causes the sustained overheating of the vast oceans (especially tropical oceans), thus causing the sustained evaporation increase required to nourish the polar regions with the “food” of glaciers: water, snow—and keep them shad- ed from melting with clouds. This increase of glaciation is now occurring and has been
since about 1950, so, although some scientists expect a warming from the greenhouse effect, the rise isn’t being found over the last century—on the contrary, the earth seems to have been cooling in recent decades. The polar ice field is expanding and growing in northeast Canada (more on this in weather section), and pressure is rising in the tec- tonic system, indicated by the accumulation of lava flows along the ridges, and by in- creased volcanic activity. We’re in the high-pressure part of the “ocean floor feeding cy- cle”, which has occurred about every 100 years, at least for a few centuries.
It’s certainly not a good time for CO2 to rise!
100.3.5 “Hope Springs Eternal”
Scientists tell us of a glacial/interglacial cycle of 100,000 years, and say we are now about 10,000 to 10,800 years into a warm interval that can last from 10,000 to 12,000 years. Some scientists also say there is a “magnetic pole reversal cycle” of 200,000 to 1,000,000 years and that, since the last one took place about 710,000 years ago, we could be “due” for one “some time in the future”. As of 1984, there hasn’t been much talk among the general public about Ice Ages or magnetic pole reversals; if either of these possibilities do exist, even remotely, as calculated by scientists, one would expect at least some debate on these issues to have hit the national/international media by now.
There are several explanations for the apparent lack of awareness. For one thing, countless brilliant minds go into fields totally unrelated to science, so Ice Ages and pole reversals aren’t necessarily familiar to them. Then, within the field of science, scientists specialize, usually in one specific area of research, often depending on the project(s) they’ve received funds and grants for. They may be experts on one particular subject, but unfamiliar with either fields of science (even related fields) or even with other areas of study within their own fields. They may have spent years refining a certain body of knowledge and focusing on one aspect of one branch of science. This narrows down the number of experts available on any given subject, let alone that of glaciation or mag- netic pole reversal. Most scientists accept as fact many things they don’t have the time, knowledge or money to prove for themselves, relying on research done by other scien- tists to fill in the gaps. This means the number of informed people who could “accurate- ly” predict art onset of another Ice Age is quite limited anyway. Within this number of informed people there are: scientists too busy working on something else to become in- volved in speculation about an Ice Age; others uninterested one way or the other; some who have considered it, then given it no further thought; others who may have specu- lated on when it could come, but don’t want to give their opinion because they don’t want to make a mistake or prefer not to contradict scientists who think the world will warm up; others who don’t want to alarm the general public (or perhaps fear causing “mass panic” or migration?); and finally, there might be a few who are willing to make a statement. As we said, this will be a rare person, one with courage of convictions, faith in his/her calculations, enough concern about humanity to bring something of such epic proportions out into the open, and nerve to contradict other scientists’ theories, such as theories of scientists who initiated the Environmental Protection Agency report and the National Academy of Sciences report. Anyone who disagrees with them has to prove his own theory and discredit theirs—somewhat comparable to a single doctor challenging the entire American Medical Association—it happens, but this is probably considered an awesome task, one many professionals would undoubtedly prefer to avoid if at all pos- sible, having their “careers” and reputations” to think about.
Scientists and experts need more than knowledge and facts—they also need intu- ition, the ability to synthesize what they know into an overall picture from all the little random bits and pieces of information. Beyond book learning, they need sensitivity and awareness, consciousness and creativity. Educated experts often lack some of these qual- ities needed to make good judgment and a proper diagnosis. We can see, in light of the
above “analysis”, that it could indeed be possible for the general public to miss some- thing of such magnitude, even if it were true.
John Hamaker puts it this way: “It may seem incredible that up to now this work could have escaped becoming common knowledge, at least to workers in agriculture, forestry, geology, climatology, and other such immediately-related fields. Apparently the many diverse pieces of the glacial/ interglacial climate cycle ‘puzzle’ had to be gradually discovered through various disciplines over decades, before at least enough pieces were evident to be joined in a coherent picture by a trained ecological thinker.”(John Hamaker in this case.) Yet now everyone may see for themselves the truth in his synthesis.
He continues: “Congress has evaluated the CO2 problem on the basis of a consensus reached by ‘specialists’. They freely admit that they do not know what causes glaciation, yet say the average temperature must drop several degrees C before we can have glacia- tion simply because they have evidence that it does get much colder during glacial pe- riods. They ignore the fact that, historically, glaciation has alternated with interglacial periods on a roughly 100,000-year cycle and the fact that glaciation is due. Do they think that crop soils turning to deserts (due to erosion and soil demineralization, etc.), and weather catastrophies we’ve observed, are all just coincidence? They haven’t thought about soil and its relation to glaciation, nor the role of the tectonic system in the glacial process.
“The people charged with the responsibility for the CO2 problem are simply not trained to solve problems. They are trained to be observers and have done a creditable job of that. But the job of making a rational synthesis of the facts as a basis for Con- gressional action ought to have been assigned to engineers and physicists, both of whom have been trained to work with the facts and laws of Nature. The fault lies at the higher levels of education, which have neglected the necessity for interdisciplinary education and action in favor of specialization.”
The meteorologist Harold Bernard, who also warned of CO2 increases and effects on climate, wrote a chapter “We Can’t Put Weather in a Test Tube,” which criticizes scien- tists’ incorrect assumptions, inaccurate modeling techniques, and ignorance of important processes through lack of knowledge. It is clear that the interglacial soil demineraliza- tion is one such process they have ignored. The knowledge is .now freely available.
Let’s consider a parallel that Life Scientists are very familiar with by now. The con- cept of the body as self-healing and the body of knowledge found in the Life Science philosophy both follow the laws of common sense, of Nature, and of logic. We need only try it for ourselves if we want “proof”, since Truth is self-evident. We have come to accept as obvious the fact that live food (uncooked fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds) imparts the most perfect state of health possible. We have experienced our bodies’ self- healing powers and learned about fasting as a means of allowing our bodies the chance to rest and divert all their energy into healing. We have decided that medicine and herbs interfere with the body’s self-directed healing actions, and that suppression of symptoms (which are manifestations of the healing process going on) likewise interferes with the body’s innate wisdom. We have found that health is produced only by healthful living and that sickness will vanish only when cause is removed (not when symptoms are sup- pressed). That about sums it up in a nutshell.
What I’m getting at is this: if all the above is so obvious to us, why isn’t it obvious to the countless doctors and “health” professionals all over the world? Why is it obvious only to a few people? How can something be true and not be recognized by more peo- ple? All we can say is, truth is still truth, in and of itself, even if not one single person sees it. Truth doesn’t need believers in order to be true; it doesn’t need followers or ma- jority acceptance in order to be valid. Truth doesn’t have to wait for everyone to catch up. The earth was still round when everyone believed it was flat, despite what “every- one” thought. Microscopic life existed long before we saw it in microscopes; it didn’t have to wait for us to see it in order to exist. If we are sliding into another Ice Age, and
the scientists who foresee its arrival are correct, an Ice Age won’t need our approval or belief in order to be a reality, that much we can be sure of.
Of course it would be easier for our own “practical purposes if some of their cal- culations we are “off .” After all, many so-called scientific theories have fallen by the wayside throughout the years, as new knowledge superceded old knowledge. Even the “world is flat” theory fell prey to the test of time. Whereas truth is truth despite what people believe, knowledge may or may not be true despite what people believe. Even if it isn’t true, it may be paraded around as fact for years, centuries, or even indefinitely.
In the meantime, many people continue to believe what they’re told, looking to “ex- perts” for answers and depending on them for knowledge; it’s not a foolproof learning technique, but it’s often the best they can do. So, when the experts themselves make mis- takes, it doesn’t matter how big their herd of followers is—but, of course, many people are influenced by the size of the herd when choosing their beliefs. They feel safety in numbers, and prefer the comfort and “security” of a large herd. If “everyone else” be- lieves something, it must be true, says their inner logic, or if nothing else, they’d still rather be with the majority. There is an alternative to joining herds and following ex- perts: intuition. If you can trust your intuition, you are fortunate. As a free thinker, you can ask yourself what your intuition tells you about the world’s current situation, the state of our environment, weather patterns, and Ice Ages. I’ve tried to present various opinions on these subjects, but I don’t presume to have all the answers.
My intuition tells me to keep an open mind, and not to give up hope. If the observa- tions and premonitions of the scientists who see the world as cooling are correct, I for one would rather have had a hint ahead of time than be surprised at the last minute! At least this leaves us with the option to take action, and to try to survive on this planet. It’s been said that we don’t fail until we give up trying. Hope is our strongest ally—it reinforces our will to live. Without it, we are lost, for without hope, nothing matters any- more.
So, even if an Ice Age were approaching during our lifetime, we would still have hope as our “open door”. For one thing, we have the potential for change. Some people believe that there is a future that can be known in the present (often called destiny), but that, at the same time, there is still our free will—a powerful force that can change or alter “what is meant to be”. This gives us control over our “destinies” and the ability to create the lives we choose. As we said in an earlier lesson, we ourselves are responsi- ble for our states of being; we underestimate our power as individuals when we believe that random outside influences alone shape our lives. Ironically, though, there is also some element of “chance “in life that can weave its influence into what we are busily creating; while we often tend to define things in simple dualities of yes and no we ac- tually have yes, maybe, maybe not, and no. We can predict that something will or will not happen, and we can be very sure that it will or will not happen, if we are accurate. Even so, the fact still remains that, beyond our free will or any so-called destiny, there are also other powers and forces of life in the universe that can enter into every situa- tion and coincide with any variables involved, and these sometimes alter the outcome or cause slight variations between what we expect and what actually happens. For this reason, when considering the return of an Ice Age, we can still allow for the possibili- ty, however small, that something completely unpredictable at this present time—some unforeseeable factor—could still come to pass, something we cannot even conceive of or envision with our present knowledge or awareness. This is not to say that we should resort to an escapist mentality or rationalize our way out of solving our serious envi- ronmental problems by using the excuse that “a miracle could happen” as a justification for inertia—this would be wishful thinking and sheer delusion! We’re merely trying to show that everything that happens in life is affected by the intricate interworkings of many multi-faceted forces, and that this includes our attempts to predict specific global climate changes. We’ve attempted to speculate on the past and present factors pertain- ing to Ice Ages, so now we’re considering future factors, which, of course, also lead us
to the unknown. Technology and scientific knowledge that we use daily and now take for granted were unimaginable to people a century ago, so it is conceivable that some- one could still discover an energy force/source that is presently unknown to humanity, or find a new technique for cleaning and restoring the environment, or invent something that we can’t even imagine that would change our world or its course of events. We can hope that our ingenuity will prove itself once more; we’ve gotten ourselves into our pre- sent world state—maybe we can get ourselves out of our problems, as well. There is a tremendous growth in spirit evident all over the planet—we ourselves can perform the miracle of increased awareness—with a quantum leap in consciousness, we could save ourselves by realizing what must be done before it is too late.
It has been said that our strongest instinct is to survive. When I finished reading Hamaker’s book, I began to see our world ecology as a whole, and realized the impor- tance of seeing our environmental problems collectively, as they interrelate, rather than individually. There’s an old expression that comes to mind: “Couldn’t see the forest for the trees.” We’ve been looking at the trees so long that we’ve forgotten what the whole forest looks like. Few things can make us appreciate life more than the realization that it can end. The suggestion that time could run out for our planet forces us to reassess our values as human beings. Where are we going? What are we doing to our environment, our source of life? What are our real priorities? Ask anyone who’s ever been told s/ he would have “only 3 months to live”. The first thing that happens is a total overhaul of priorities, a total rethinking of what the person can still do. Time becomes more precious than ever before. Energy becomes focused as never before. Life is no longer taken for granted. I guess we never wake up until after we’ve been asleep. Let’s hope we wake up in time—it seems we’ve ignored the alarm clock already.
Even if we are “let off the hook” somehow and an Ice Age is averted or postponed, or its timing was miscalculated to some extent, we still have some very important moral de- cisions to make regarding our ability—and, moreover, our will—to revitalize the world for our continued survival on this planet, because we are still left with our CO2, soil, water, and other pollution problems, and as long as we continue to put money and tech- nological “advances” before the welfare of humanity and our ecosystem, we still have our greed to deal with. And we still have to figure out a way to keep from destroying ourselves in nuclear war.
One way or the other, we have to get together worldwide and face the problems that we ourselves have created. We call ourselves civilized, and we want to believe that we have advanced and evolved, but an honest appraisal of our collective self-portrait reveals that we are painting ourselves into a corner every time we compromise our ethics and assault Nature’s principles. We cannot hope to survive if we destroy our planet, because it is our source of life, but we must also understand that our survival is just as surely threatened by the destruction of our basic human values— love for humanity—and that we now have a profound need to revive and restore these basic values. Only by realizing that we co-exist—what we do to others (both psychologically and environmentally) we do to ourselves—can we expect to rally on the large scale necessary at this point for our survival on this planet.
It’s obvious that we’ve been born into a time of incredible challenge, so let’s meet this challenge with all our strength—and with a smile—for as always, life continues amidst the chaos. We must see the world as we want to be, as it must be for our survival, and use this positive image to create this world. The key to our survival lies in visualiz- ing and acting for our survival over and over again until it becomes a reality. Every time another individual loses hope and gives up, our survival as a group is also threatened, because the force of our collective will to live is diminished once again. Every time our basic values of faith, hope, and charity are abandoned, the quality of life on earth is tar- nished for everyone, and if we continue on a collision course with Nature, life on earth will only become more miserable. Without love, food, natural resources, and an environ- ment clean enough to support life, people everywhere would have little to live for or to
look forward to. We create our reality, and if this is the reality we choose to create, hu- manity as a whole will despair, and it doesn’t take a genius to imagine what will happen if no one cares. As surely as we need faith, love, and action, we need hope.
Fear is the lock and laughter the key to your heart.
—Stephen Stills
100.4. Politics Of Food Production
100.4.1 The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave
Since countless members of our human family are already hungry or starving, it is imperative that we find solutions now. Anyone who has ever grown a garden knows the disappointment of losing some plants, whether to a hungry forest animal or to an early frost, and seeing the work of months of tender care vanish before their eyes. A neighbor’s cows got past a broken fence once and visited my garden; every corn plant was reduced to stubble and all my salad greens were lost to their hearty appetites overnight—months of growth were gone. Anyone who has ever planted a small fruit tree and watched its slow, steady progress, knows that it takes years before fruit will be har- vested. It takes time to grow all food, and nothing can replace growing time when a crop is lost.
We may think we have enough food today, but we’ve long been pushing our luck, by pushing Nature time and time again and tampering with our environmental quality. We can no longer refuse to acknowledge and deal with our environmental and agricultural problems, and with the profound impact their combined effects have on our ecosystem and food supplies. We are dangerously out of touch with reality if we think we can defy the laws of Nature indefinitely with no consequences. We can’t just “wait for the weath- er to improve”, because the atmospheric carbon dioxide which is destroying temperate zone climate is increasing at an accelerating rate. Everyone who has ever studied the CO2 problem has warned that the result of permitting the rise of CO2 would be to alter the weather in ways which would be destructive to agriculture. Meanwhile, while our use of fossil fuels is increasing, our forests and jungles are fast disappearing. All this is a sure prescription for mass suicide.
What, if anything, are our world governments doing about all this? Our politicians should have begun programs for soil remineralization and biomass solar energy 15 years ago. We would now have major growing machinery and equipment industries related to food and fuel, and a better food supply with more mineral content. But what can we ex- pect from an elective system that lets the Farm Bureau and the corporate structure buy candidates at election time? This makes the legislature and the executive branch putty in the hands of corporate interests. The situation is the same at the federal level. Congress dispenses (out of our pockets) palliatives by the hundreds, but if we suggest solutions to problems that conflict with corporate interests, they start squeaking like mice. Ralph Nader says that 80% of the time Congress comes down on the corporate side of an issue. It really takes massive public demand to make them listen, if they listen at all.
Our ancestors came to this country to be free and independent—we are being manip- ulated by the power of centralized wealth, and our system of soil destruction threatens our agricultural and technical civilization. The devastation of the biosphere is seldom perceived as the ultimate threat to survival because, for many people and their govern- ments, this issue is overshadowed by what they imagine to be more immediate concerns: war, poverty, sickness, the energy crisis, inflation, unemployment, drought, famine, and so on. What they don’t realize is that the failure to conserve and rebuild living resources is closely linked to the worsening of these other problems.
Soil remineralization is a priority now. We were once blessed with an abundance of natural resources, but we have squandered them over the years; and we must now redi-
rect our energy, money, and resources into positive, peaceful enterprises that will benefit all of humanity and life on this earth.
We can no longer wait for our governments to “take action”—nor can we depend blindly on systems, authority, scientists, experts, professionals,, specialists, doctors, or someone else in general, for our existence and survival. We cannot wait for someone else to care about our survival—it is we ourselves who have to survive. We are respon- sible for our own lives.
100.4.1 The Land of the Free, and the Home of the Brave
We, the people, are the government. Imagine you’re a passenger in a car and the dri- ver falls asleep just as the car is heading toward a cliff. Earlier in this lesson we men- tioned some of the different types of people who make up our world. Let’s listen to what they have to say, as the driver loses control of the car:
- Those who’re unaware that problems exist: “What a fantastic view!”
- Those who remain indifferent to problems: “So what if we go over a cliff?”
- Thosewhotrustinthesystem,rightorwrong:“It’snotthedriver’sfaultthatwe’rehead- ing for a cliff—after all, his intentions were good.”
- Those who give up hope: “Too late now—I’d better cover my eyes!”
- Those who recognize problems, but are all talk and no action: “Maybe the driver will wake up in time! Whatever happens, it’s the driver’s fault—I’m not to blame!”
- Those who are aware and take action: “I’d better grab the wheel and steer for my life!” What would you do? If our leaders, “experts”, or drivers of our vehicles are asleep at the wheel, and we see the cliff coming, we’re not going to have time to “think things over”, evaluate more scientific facts, wait for the driver to wake up, or wait for a new driver. We will have to act with all the survival instinct within us, on a moment’s notice. Are we ready? Article #1: Tropical Rain Forests: Earth’s Green Belt South America Caribbean Central America South Asia Africa Southeast Asia Australia Pacific Islands Left in peace, rain forests would ring the Equator with vegetation wherever days are hot and precipitation is high. But farming, ranching, logging, mining, and roads have greatly reduced their actual range. In central Africa and Amazonia huge tracts remain largely untouched, but rain forests have been virtually eliminated from most parts of West Africa, southern Asia, and the Caribbean. In 1980 the U.S. National Academy of Sciences estimated annual loss at 20 million hectares (50 million acres). The World Wildlife Fund speaks of 25 to 50 acres a minute. A 1982 study by two United Nations agencies reported 7.5 million hectares lost each year. Estimates vary so widely largely because of different criteria. To biologists, loss means either conversion of primary forest—say, to agriculture, pasture, or tree planta-
tions—or modification, implying biological impoverishment through selective logging or shifting cultivation. To foresters, loss means deforestation—the removal of all tress.
A world survey of rain forest status appears below.
South America
BRAZIL
Earth’s largest rain forest little disturbed except for fringes of southern Amazonia and areas in the east. Small chance of major losses in the west for the near future.
PERU
Vast area covered by undisturbed Amazon forest. Farm settlement expected to be- come more extensive in next decade or two.
COLOMBIA
About one-third forested, mostly in Amazon region, some along Pacific coast. Ef- forts to colonize have been slowed.
VENEZUELA
Large tract in south barely touched. Smaller areas in north heavily cut, converted to ranches and farms.
GUYANA
Most of population lives along coast. Little threat to forest.
SURINAME
Virgin rain forest covers most of country, much protected by parks and reserves. ECUADOR
Large forests along Pacific already gone, oil exploration and agriculture encroach on
Ecuadorian Amazonia.
FRENCH GUIANA
Population lives along coast. Little pressure on undisturbed forest of interior. BOLIVIA
Not much exploitation of forests yet. But government has begun roads, farming, and
ranching.
Caribbean
Most island forests long ago reduced to remnants after heavy exploitation by dense populations. Small tracts survive, for example, in the
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, TRINIDAD AND TOBAGO, and PUERTO RICO, where a U.S. national forest protects 104 square kilometers.
MEXICO
Shifting cultivators, timber harvesters, and cattle ranchers encroach on the country’s last rain forest area on the southern border with Guatemala.
Central America
A strong trend toward cattle ranching on this highly-populated isthmus has greatly reduced primary forests, now believed to be two-thirds removed. Small areas found in the Peten region of northeastern GUATEMALA, the Mosquitia Forest of eastern HON- DURAS, parts of eastern NICARAGUA, southern BELIZE, the national parks of COS- TA RICA. and much of PANAMA.
South Asia
INDIA
Patches of forest along the western Ghats and on Andaman lslands disrupted by land- less poor, forest farmers, and logging.
BANGLADESH
Narrow belt of rain forest in Chittagong region heavily exploited by hill tribes.
SRI LANKA
Small tract on southwestern and central parts, largely disrupted by logging and slash-
and-burn farmers.
ZAIRE
Africa
Holds Africa’s largest rain forest (nearly one-tenth world total), parts of it now sec- ondary growth. Some clearing by slash-and-burn farmers in south, but vast areas still undamaged by mainly rural population.
GABON
Almost entirely forested, with exploitation just beginning.
CAMEROON
Extensive disruption of large forest areas—especially in the southwest—by timber
companies and slash-and-burn farmers. CONGO
Forests in remote northern and central regions still undisturbed. Some logging in south.
IVORY COAST
More than 70 percent of primary forest at turn of century now cleared. Rest may be gone within a decade. Timber harvesting intense. Forest farming increasing rapidly.
LIBERIA
Very little primary rain forest left due to shifting cultivation.
CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC
Rainforests in south. Little pressure from small population.
NIGERIA
Most forest disrupted by dense population and a century of logging. Small areas re-
maining in south expected to be exploited soon. SIERRA LEONE
Very few forest areas undisturbed by cultivators. EQUATORIAL GUINEA
Almost totally forested. Little loss expected.
GHANA
Little or no virgin forest remains. About half removed during last 25 years by forest
farmers. Remnants found in the southwest. GUINEA
Small area still covered with rain forest in the southwest. BENIN About three- fourths of original forests left, but heavily disrupted due to strong pressure of growing population.
ANGOLA
Small rain forest concentrated in north.
MADAGASCAR
Much slash-and-burn farming. Only fragment of eastern rain forest still survives.
Southeast Asia
CHINA
Rain forests along southern coast largely disturbed, though a few areas are protected. INDONESIA
Contains largest rain forest in Asia (nearly one-tenth world total), but much har-
vested already. Log production multiplied sixfold during 1960s and 1970s. Farmers and transmigrant settlers also eliminating large forest areas.
MALAYSIA
About two-thirds of lowland forests on peninsula heavily logged, converted to oil palm, rubber plantations. Large forests on Borneo also being harvested.
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
Largely covered by undisturbed rain forest, much inaccessible to logging companies. Full-forest harvesting under way in small areas on north coast. Half of population forest farmers.
PHILIPPINES
Large timber companies harvesting remaining rain forests, less than a third of what existed 30 years ago. Clearing by rural poor also severe.
BRUNEI
Mostly covered by rain forest, much undisturbed. Revenues from oil taxes take pres- sure off timber cutting as source of foreign exchange.
Only pockets of forest survive in Indochina, mainly in southernmost THAILAND, lower BURMA, southern KAMPUCHEA, and parts of the Mekong Plain in VIETNAM.
Australia
Fragments of primary forest remain along east coast of Queensland. Other lowland forests heavily cut for timber, sugar plantations, mining interests, and dairy farms.
Pacific Islands
Rain forests found on southeastern side of FIJI. Major areas allocated to timber companies. About three-fourths of SOLOMON ISLANDS also forested, most in terrain too steep to harvest.
Lesson 101 - Harmonizing Society, Culture, and Lifestyle
To Save Our Planet
101.1. Introduction
101.2. Life
101.3. Liberty
101.4. ...And The Pursuit Of Hapiness Article #1: “Who Is At Fault?” Article #2: Radiation Hazards
101.1. Introduction
101.1.1 Age-Old Excuses for Inertia
Now that we’ve completed the mind-boggling task of trying to Condense earth’s ecology and its millions of interrelated life processes into two lessons, we can breathe a sigh of relief. In these three “survival” lessons, I found myself in a predicament: I want- ed to be comprehensive enough to cover a wide range of environmental (and other) is- sues related to survival, but because of the overwhelming abundance of related subject matter and limited space. I was forced to “dilute” a lot of material in order to keep things from getting out of hand! I also realized that many of us are already familiar with many of our earth’s problems, and didn’t want to overburden everyone with a deluge of “the same old” negative facts—but by summarizing them and viewing them as a whole (the only real way to look at them) we see them in a new and different way.
The more we perceive the broad spectrum of reality, the more enlightened we be- come, and the more we can share knowledge with others. Heroes, like the person who happens along at just the right moment to pull a drowning child from water, are every- where—just waiting to be asked to lend a hand. There are few human instincts more beautiful than true heroism—without compassion, this would be a cold, hard world in- deed.
Because potential heroes are everywhere, just waiting to help, our task is to start asking and to know what to ask for, to spread the word among the people. We must be sensitive enough to paint the picture truthfully, and strong enough to do so without such fear and gloom that peoples’ psychic numbing mechanisms pop up to block everything out. Despite our aversion to bad news, most of us would appreciate being told we were standing in the path of an oncoming bus, and once people know they ‘re needed and what they must do, heroes will come forth one-by-one.
As destructive effects of our industrial age become more apparent, and as we see our once-pristine environment deteriorate and more deadly weapons accumulate among our green hills and valleys, places we dreamed of calling home are threatened, damaged or destroyed. We feel betrayed, and we’re grouping together more and more to protect our lives and those of our children—our very survival now depends on this cooperative en- deavor.
This lesson wraps up our discussion on survival and taking charge of our destiny, but of course by no means ends it—rather, it leaves us all with the ultimate challenge: the actual taking charge, the doing, the harmonizing of all our knowledge, faith, hope and love into a force strong enough to save our planet.
By survivalism, we mean the positive spirit of cooperation of all beings toward preservation of life. Let’s make it clear from the start that our concept of survival in no way includes those of any so-called “survivalists” who advocate stocking up on guns and/or “survival” food. Nothing could be farther from our image of survival. A self-serv- ing approach not only does nothing to help life on the planet or to clean up the envi-
ronment so all life thrives; it is also based on the absurd delusion that one can “protect” oneself in the first place in a world where life itself cannot survive. We are the earth—it is our larger form, our larger body. If we are to survive, our earth must also survive. Our goal is total well-being, for only with total wellness can the parts themselves be well and flourish.
Those who plan on guns to “fight over what’s left” would be sadly disappointed at the reality of such a world anyway, and would be like rats fighting over the last morsel of food in a cage: trapped together. Their fear and terror in the world they would create would far exceed any fear of hunger, or even death, that we could ever know. Even death in our world of life would be preferable to so-called “life” in their world of death. But let’s reserve such thoughts for last-minute realities and resorts, because we must concen- trate on survival of life instead!
If we were in a darkened room and the door were opened just a crack, the light would stream in, and even if the door were closed again, we’d never forget that light. So it is with truth. If we want to know what’s on the other side of the mountain, we can wonder and speculate, or we can climb to the top and see for ourselves. It’s more work, but well worth the effort. We don’t even have to be “experts” to see truth for ourselves, nor to ap- preciate life and contemplate its wonder, even when our “knowledge” is limited. All of us have this special gift: wisdom, instinct and intuition don’t depend on book learning!
It is not, therefore, “who” we are or how much we “know” that determine our ability to contribute—it’s what we do with our thoughts, intuition and energy that matters as far as evolution and change are concerned. If you doubt this for a moment, take a look at what some so-called people of “wealth, influence, power or brains” do with their lives and for others—and at what they do not do. Some of them merely perpetuate the prob- lems in our world.
Imagine being near a large fire and surrounded by people of knowledge, wealth, in- fluence and power. The fact remains that the only things you really need to put out the fire are water and action.
101.1.1 Age-Old Excuses for Inertia
We’ve heard them all by now. These are but a few of our favorites:
- I overslept.
- I’m too busy.
- It’s too late.
- I don’t have time.
- I’ll do it later (tomorrow, and so on).
- Someone else will do it.
- It’s Monday (Tuesday, etc.).
- It’s not my fault.
- It’s not my problem.
- Call me when it gets really urgent.
- Don’t call me, I’ll call you.
- I need time to think it over and ask the “experts” more questions.
- I don’t care.
- I don’t know how to help.
- I can’t ... 101.2. Life 101.2.1 Human Nature: The Mind and Evolution of Consciousness 101.2.2 Dreams 101.2.3 “A Penny for Your Thoughts”
101.2.4 The Life Force
101.2.5 What Time Is It? 101.2.6 “Time Is of the Essence” 101.2.7 Vegetarian Thinkers
101.2.1 Human Nature: The Mind and Evolution of Consciousness
We may observe the brain in its physical form and learn about its function, yet much is still unknown about how our mental processes actually work, leaving many unan- swered questions about our perception and states of consciousness, and how they evolve from the “convergence” and “merging” of our physical and nonphysical realities. Some of us are at least aware that a healthy body and mind go hand in hand, and that devia- tions from physical health promote deviations from mental health as well.
Some scientists say that the left side of the body controls the right side of the brain, and that this right hemisphere is closely linked to feelings; emotions; intuition; subcon- scious thought; instinct; innate artistic, musical, creative tendencies; and so on. The right side of the body controls the left side of the brain, which is linked with rational thought, analysis, conceptualization, logic, and cognitive (conscious) thought. The right relies on the left for speech; its messages are verbalized by the left. Studies of serious worriers show they have an overactive left side of the brain compared to nonworriers (worriers also exhibit a lower level of alpha-wave readings—a measure of how relaxed a person is). Scientists are still not completely certain about all the specific areas of the brain; for example, the frontal lobes are still considered by many to be the most mysterious part of the human brain. Mild electrical stimulation of other parts of the brain makes peo- ple move a finger or hand, turn their head, or see flashes of light, but it is harder for researchers to link this vast, “silent” area to particular movements or sensations. When lobotomies were performed—by the 60s they more or less went “out of style” (thank goodness)—changes later evident in their victims suggested that the frontal lobes con- trol such important qualities as self-awareness, initiative and the ability to plan to syn- thesize. The left frontal lobe seems to process information about shapes.
Eugene d’Aquili, a psychiatrist interested in the link between philosophy and neu- robiology, says that strong feelings activate a certain part of the right hemisphere of the brain (“which instantaneously comprehends wholeness”), thus boosting our minds into a “separate” reality. He says some individuals report the altered state he calls “Absolute Unitary Being” in which “time stands still,” and they see only the totality of a given situation or psychological reality, and have a sense of absolute and complete unity—of self, of cosmos—caused, he says, by the “occipital parietal region on the right practically obliterating the rest of the brain, perceptually.” He says this experience can result in a re- ligious or agnostic feeling (depending upon individual interpretation), but that everyone who goes through it is absolutely certain that the transcendent, absolute realm of things does exist. He says “since most psychiatrists and medical doctors really know very little about mystical states;” they often refer people to him. For example, he sees people who “don’t seem to have actual thought disorders, but are unbalanced by a pervasive negative feeling, in which life and the universe are seen as purposeless; they aren’t clinically de- pressed or ‘disturbed,’ but they want relief, relief from their belief that the state they’re in is ultimate reality—their misery makes them wish to be taught to think it illusory so they can survive.”
According to d’Aquili, for those who have experienced “both” realities—the reality of the daily world/objective science and the reality of transcendent unitary being—the problem is not reducing one to another, since these people say they “know” both are real, but rather to “reconcile what they perceive as two drastically different perceptions of re- ality.”
We discussed states of consciousness somewhat in Lesson 90, and may want to re- view this section briefly before continuing here. It is precisely the wrongful perception
of our physical, mental/psychological/spiritual/collective states of being as drastically “different” that has led to the intense confusion many people feel in today’s times of introspection and transition into greater awareness. Upon closer scrutiny we see that to- gether they make up our total being and are parts of a unified whole, just as night and day seem “drastically different” but are linked inseparably into one complete cycle. Until we understand and accept this concept of total unity, we’ll remain confused at our scattered feelings and find it difficult to integrate all our thoughts, feelings and experiences into some semblance of order and understanding—a sense of wholeness. Remember, inte- grating our thoughts isn’t necessarily defining or categorizing them; rather, it is allowing them to flow, synthesizing our impressions into an experience we can understand and view as a whole. It’s best to allow our intuitive subconscious much more freedom and space in our minds because our conscious thoughts so often crowd them full. There is a subtle balance to be found, and the more complicated our minds become, the more we need to find this balance for ourselves, for our own peace of mind. It’s ironic with to- day’s constantly-increasing input of news, information, people, faces and other distrac- tions, that the more dispersed we become, the more we also risk dissipating our precious life energy. Our “busy” nature can keep us out of focus if we don’t learn to deal with our accelerated lifestyles. Each of us has a different solution to juggling input and output, but we can all benefit from an overall simplicity, by learning how to get to the point of clarity so that we see the whole picture through all the layers and layers of ideas.
As we said in Lesson 90, we must also avoid becoming so fascinated with “mental gymnastics” and so involved with analyzing our conscious, rational thoughts that our subconscious intuitive messages are unable to “penetrate” all the layers to reach us! We are sometimes so swept away by our passionate desire to “expand” our consciousness that we become wrapped up in the techniques themselves and can miss obvious truths amidst all the pomp and circumstance. It’s as if we have a luscious ripe peach in front of us, and we spend hours looking for a plate to put it on so that we can eat it when all we really have to do is put it in our mouths, so simply.
We often overlook the simple things in life because we’re dazzled by the so-called complex ones. Our world of gadgets and “scientific” facts and figures encourages us to expect complexity and to seek truth with fancy equations. We’ve come to expect much ado about nothing and everything, and it’s human nature to be curious—we all learn that famous word at about age 2: why? It is probably one of the most frequently-asked ques- tions. We want to know.
Stanley Bass once said that early Life Scientists/Hygienists viewed life as encom- passing the totality of a person’s being, including the mind and the spirit, but that in the 1920s the writers began to leave out more of the inspirational, “spiritual” (meaning of the spirit) aspects of Natural Hygiene because we were entering the “scientific” age, and Hygienic doctors didn’t want to be considered “quacks” or strange people. He felt that this was a shame because it is inspiration that makes people change, more, than facts in black and white.
Although I came across his above statements only recently, from the very beginning of my writings I’ve had an uncontrollable urge to include the nonphysical realm of our minds and spirits in our discussions, not only because they are such a strong part of everyone’s being and reality, but also because once the dietary truths we’ve learned have become a habit, we still need somewhere new to go. As we’ve said, once we change to a pure diet/ lifestyle, a growth in consciousness is inevitable, so the more we understand our minds, the better off we’ll be. There is a gap or void left when we try to attend “on- ly” to our physical needs, and I’d be more than happy to try to fill it.
Curiously enough, most of us nowadays are up-to-date on political figures and movie stars, the newest car models, the latest in art or literature—whatever we happen to be interested in—but still relatively little is said (in comparison) about the psychic energy of our minds; and those of us interested in it often find a lack of information on this subject, in contrast with the wealth of facts available on television, airplane engines,
or simple arithmetic, for example. People hint at this energy, but there doesn’t seem to be much general consensus on “scientific” explanations of non-physical phenomena of the mind—psychic energy doesn’t seem to be taken for granted yet, at least not in the sense that something like television is taken for granted (although television also in- volves waves invisible to the naked eye and concepts beyond the physical reality that most of us are familiar with). The reason we have television is that people shared their knowledge until scientific concepts and technological aspects were put together. Piece- by-piece, bits of information and parts were assembled until television became a reality. Until we share our knowledge about what goes on in our minds, our understanding will remain limited. It’s only when we synthesize knowledge that patterns emerge.
Perhaps we have experienced unusual intuition, precognitive dreams or other non- physical phenomena, but don’t know who to share them with. After all, not everyone is open-minded; we may hesitate to speak about such things to just anyone. Until more of us open up and become aware that these phenomena do exist, and talk about our experi- ences, these phenomena will remain unrecognized or largely misunderstood. I doubt that the “cavemen” were already talking about tax reform, molecular biology or their blood pressure—most of the “reality” we take for granted in our lifetime has taken years to develop into its present “form.” A car would be as unexpected and “miraculous” to a primitive person as extrasensory perception is to some of us today. As more individuals come forth with their stories, our understanding of nonphysical reality will be broadened and become “second nature” to us—we’ll consider it as normal and as basic a part of our being as breathing, eating, sleeping, and so on. Over the years we’ve gained a gen- eral understanding of how our bodies work; although many people are still off-the-mark nutritionally, most of us know some basic facts about physiology—for example, if we scratch ourselves and something red appears, we know it is blood from our veins, and the thump, thump we feel on our chests is a heart beating within. We take these things for granted now, but we must admit that our bodies and their contents would be very mysterious to us if we didn’t already have these years of knowledge behind us.
It’s unfortunate that pioneers of the mind, consciousness and the nonphysical realm have been mislabelled and misjudged so often, and that they have at times even misla- belled themselves because they didn’t understand their vision or unusual insight. When- ever a person has been different from the “majority,” s/ he has often been called abnor- mal as well, if not crazy or any other number of descriptions considered “fitting” by peers. If we weren’t so judgmental and concerned with comparing ourselves to others and others to ourselves, we could use the simple word “different” as a substitute for all these other words—it’s certainly a nicer way to say “eccentric.”
101.2.2 Dreams
“You may say that I’m a dreamer,
but I’m not the only one.”
—John Lennon
We spoke of unusual dream experiences in Lesson 90, but might add a few notes
on this dimension of consciousness, since it accounts for approximately 1/3 of our lives and is obviously much more than a “sleeping fantasy.” Just as people didn’t begin to explore the ocean until they had boats, and that vast watery mass remained a mystery, so too have we been limited in our exploration of our minds and dreams, for want of a “vehicle” to take us there, or more appropriately, the understanding we need to operate a “nonphysical vehicle” in a nonphysical reality. Dreaming is but one such vehicle.
Some of us have begun to cross the boundaries already, and are becoming more fa- miliar with the mind’s “dimensions.” Others of us have arrived, but aren’t sure what “country” we’re in; some of us are still looking for a parking place, or haven’t even left “home” (our physical body) yet. Just as gifted children are often assigned extra learning projects at school when their special intelligence is recognized, and go on to advance
more rapidly than their classmates, so too must those gifted with exceptional sensitivity go into the uncharted territory of the mind long before others. Just as any mathemati- cal or scientific formula was first devised by one (or several) inventive mind(s), so too are we pioneers of the mind discovering new worlds beyond the physical, beyond the tangible things we can see, hear, smell, taste and touch. If such realities, waves and en- ergy—all quite invisible to the naked eye—didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have satellites, ra- dios, microwaves, and so on. Before these realities could be “harnessed” for our physical world, someone had to have intuition and believe in what they could not see. We must transcend our physical world and believe in things we do not see with our eyes before we can expect to understand the nonphysical realities in our world.
In a “lucid” dream, a dreamer is actually aware that s/he is dreaming, and can some- times even control or influence the dream. Most people don’t connect their waking and sleeping realities consciously, but lucid dreamers can do so. This has been verified in sleep labs by scientists studying dreaming and sleep.
Dr. Stephen LaBerge taught himself and others to wake within dreams, and believes that lucid dreaming can change the quality of our lives. (“Think of the value of being able to imagine vividly anything you can conceive of, and then to experience it,” he says. “That would free us from so many restrictions.”) LaBerge, who began as a student of chemical physics, first found references to lucid dreaming in the literature of Tibetan Buddhism—then, spontaneously, he experienced a lucid dream. As he studied the lim- ited scientific literature available on lucid dreaming, he realized he’d had such dreams as a six-year-old. After finding a “technique” that worked for him, he was able to recall about 21 lucid dreams a month. In order to prove that he was actually controlling his dreaming, he decided to send a signal with his eyes while dreaming. In the laboratory, he was wired to a complex research polygraph (a polysomnograph) and fell asleep pre- pared to send the prearranged Signal to the researcher monitoring the machine. The lucid dream came after seven hours, and he decided to give the signal. The researcher saw the recording pens move on the polygraph, and this experiment was repeated successfully many times. However, because LaBerge knew that even the paralyzed muscles of active sleep twitch occasionally, he set up the polygraph to record the electrical activity of the muscles of his wrists. Then, during a lucid dream, he clenched the left fist of his dream body four times, the right fist once, and the left twice more. The polygraph showed the pattern: he had spelled out his initials, S.L., in Morse code—lucid dreaming became a scientific fact. Recent studies show that about a third of the population probably experi- ences at least an occasional lucid dream.
La Berge says the first step is remembering your dreams. Then, when you can suc- ceed in incorporating a pre-sleep suggestion into a dream (if, for example, you tell your- self you want to see your hand in your dream and manage to do so), you have crossed the “boundary” and are able to connect both your waking and sleeping realities and states of consciousness. Those of us who don’t feel “disciplined” enough to use techniques to arrive at these experiences can be assured that if we are meant to experience them, we will—one way or the other! I’ve had lucid dreams and precognitive dreams on many oc- casions without “trying”—they just happened (probably long before I recognized them too!). Those who benefit from trying “techniques,” however, should do so.
LaBerge says dreams can be a workshop of creativity and growth. While dreams are often what he calls “repetitious melodramas” where we “confine ourselves by habit to a prison of self-limitation” (I suppose if we do so in our waking lives, well do so in our sleeping lives), lucid dreaming, he says, “presents a way out of this sleep within sleep.” For example, a lucid d reamer caught in a nightmare could choose either to escape it or to attempt to resolve the fears behind it. Neither choice is available in ordinary sleep. Many of us have experienced nightmares in which we wished so strongly to wake up that we did—these were lucid dream experiences too, because we were aware that we were dreaming at the time.
LaBerge says that lucid dreaming might also offer psychological support to the hand- icapped; while awake, the paralyzed can’t walk, but in their dreams they can dance and fly, helping them go beyond their physical handicaps in their inner lives.
As Stephen LaBerge says: “Your waking life is brief enough as it is. If a third of it must be shortened by sleep, do you want to sleep through your dreaming too?”
If we can learn to “combine” or blend our waking and sleeping realities, we have a whole new dimension open to us, a new opportunity for increased understanding and awareness. We can then make the conscious decision to go beyond our physical reality and bodies into the nonphysical realm, and potentially, find information there (as dis- cussed in Lesson 90) that we aren’t finding in our normal physical (“awake/conscious”) world. We should use every tool we can, whether it be physical or mental, to increase our awareness. Dreaming is overlooked by many of us as an option for enhancing our lives, and as the wonderful flight from our bodies’ physical boundaries that it is: a chance to feel our (spirit’s) existence beyond our physical body ...
101.2.3 “A Penny for Your Thoughts”
We also have a lot more options in our waking lives than many of us even realize. I’d like to share some excerpts with you from the May 1984, issue of Acres, U.S.A., from an interview with Dr. Phil Callahan (an internationally-famous entomologist and ornithol- ogist who was also a navigation and electronics specialist in the 1940s). Several topics were covered, one of which was a brief mention of the circuitry of the brain. When asked about thought transmission and how it might take place between husband and wife or close relatives, Callahan says:
“You have, say, a mother in the U.S. and a son, say, in Vietnam, and suddenly the son is hurt or wounded and she knows it instantly. This has been verified in war after war after war. One of the best verifications of ESP (extrasensory perception), in my opinion, is case reports of things that take place during traumatic experiences in war. The son’s electric circuit brain is very much like his mother’s—he has 50% of her circuits. Therefore, his brain puts out a lot of energy. If you can scan the earth from a satellite with 10 to the -17 watts, there is no reason why your brain isn’t putting out much more than that: In fact, your brain is probably putting out, I would guess, 10 to the -12 watts and 10 to the -17 watts is less. Yet you can make a TV picture and turn something from a satellite into a TV picture with 10 to the -17, and that is a trillion, trillion, trillionth of a watt. Your brain putting out 10 to the -9 or something like that is certainly a stronger signal and would go around the world 40 times. Of course, signals do go around the world in nature. You have what you call Schuman Resonance. Schuman Resonance is when you have harmonics from lightning bolts that go around the world at about 8 to 20 cycles, and who knows what they are controlling. You have thousands of lightning bolts all over the world, and the ionosphere above and the earth below act like a big hollow cavity. So you get these frequencies trapped in this hollow cavity, and they go around and around. You can tune in to them. Nikola Tesla did this. He sent waves around the world. He was no doubt utilizing the Schuman Resonance to do it. He was ahead of his time. Schuman Resonance wasn’t even discovered until about 15 years ago, but Tesla was doing this back in the 1890s.”
Electroencephalograms measure the activity of brain waves; it is now obvious to scientists that these waves exist and show various levels of “energy.” Many believers in thought transmission/reception probably think that it depends on the level of sensi- tivity, awareness and receptivity of the individuals involved, at this point—recognition of thought transmission/receptivity may now depend on these things, but the actual transmission/reception most likely occurs constantly, whether we are “aware” of it or
not—just as our blood moves through our veins whether we are aware of it or not, our thought wavelengths can move out through space independent of our realization that anything is happening at all! Believers have been aware of this phenomenon for ages, but many people are still skeptical; perhaps they don’t have firsthand experience with it or know someone who has—anyone who has experienced such things needs no convinc- ing. I’ve recognized (and even experienced) verifiable thought transmission/ reception often enough to be a firm believer. Even when such an event happens once in a lifetime, it will alter one’s outlook on life as few other experiences can. Truth is self-evident.
We already know we can “harness” waves that we can’t even see to make a picture appear on a television screen, or to make songs come over the radio, but some of us still doubt that thoughts can be transmitted or received. Just because we can’t “explain or un- derstand all the physics” involved—or don’t have enough awareness yet to control them ourselves to much extent—doesn’t mean that thought transmission doesn’t exist. We’ve already seen that many things exist outside our awareness of their existence. For exam- ple, microscopic life certainly existed before we saw it in microscopes!
Nowadays we readily accept the reality of TV waves, radio waves, telegraphic sig- nals, microwaves, and so on, but a century ago people would have scoffed at such ideas (or perhaps labelled their proponents as “witches”); enlightened persons might have been open-minded enough to agree that these ideas were at least conceivable or perhaps possible “in the future,” with more knowledge available. People today also readily ac- knowledge the following (and other) realities: that grooves on a record (or a thin, shiny tape in a cassette) will result in music; that X rays take pictures of things we can’t see with our eyes; that radar sensors pick up objects; that cameras “make pictures”; that laser beams can, among other things, burn holes in objects; that computer chips we can barely see will hold thousands of bits of information; that we can talk to people thousands of miles away on the phone; and that the power of the atom (also “invisible” to us) in nu- clear power has the ability to destroy our planet! How’s that for an example of immense physical power in an element so small we can’t even see it!
In our waking, conscious lives we learn what we want to learn, and advance (or de- generate) at our own individual rates; so it is with mystical dimensions. Just as an infant sitting in a car (who may someday learn to drive) is content for the time being to fidget with all the knobs, buttons and switches at random (sometimes to the chagrin of Mom and Dad), so are we when it comes to our level of understanding and awareness. We have a lot to learn, but the knowledge and insight we need to “grow up” are within us, as well as without. Remember too, that just as with any skill of any kind, abilities in in- terpreting “paranormal” reality definitely vary; some mistakes or errors in judgment are to be expected, even from gifted persons, and some charlatans can be expected as well, just as with any talent or creative ability. We’re taking our baby steps into the world of the psyche, finding out that our spirits aren’t limited to the physical realm, as our bodies are.
“Suspended in the physical, and yet, I am beyond this skin, these eyes, and cannot quite forget.”
We have but to imagine how free we can be in our spirits—we’ve only just begun. Just as a baby looks around at everything with that “so-this-is-where-I-am” look, we too are now in awe of our newfound dimension of consciousness and reality, and wonder how far we can go here. That we can contemplate life in all its marvel at all is proof enough that we are spirit—we’ve outgrown the limits of our physical state—being spirit and body, we’ve always been in the nonphysical state, even before we “realized” it.
Phil Callahan’s statement about the power of our brain waves to encircle the world “40 times” has some profound implications for us and adds a whole new dimension to our reality. Remember how many times we’ve thrown up our hands in despair to ask:
“But what can I, as one person, do to change the world?” (Again, we’ve come to realize that the truth is, we’re all already doing it now). When frustrated and overwhelmed about problems we see, we often feel “so small” in this big world, and so alone. Sometimes we even wonder if we’re the “only ones” who care. Rest assured that we aren’t—we share these feelings with one another whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Because we live in such volatile times (nuclear, ecological, etc.), the fact that we are still here at all is no small miracle. One of the things now holding the world together at this very moment (and since the beginning of the nuclear age) is our tremendous collective will to live and to survive (called our deepest, strongest instinct) radiating outward at every moment, criss-crossing the planet over and over again with its messages: we want to live in peace and tranquility. That we are still here is the collective manifestation of the dri- ve within us to evolve to new states of being, to progress and to grow, to explore our universe and minds and spirits. We are tired of wasting our precious time and lives in the futile efforts of war. Hatred, destruction, rebuilding, and starting over at the beginning again and again—we should have learned our lessons many years ago. These energy- draining activities only slow us down and keep us from the beautiful, evolved creatures/ spirits of life that we will be when we work together and give peace a chance. We’ve had enough—we’re weary of having shadows of doom and gloom looming in the back of our minds, and concerned when our children say they don’t even know if they’ll grow up.
We must never underestimate the power of our thoughts Remember, just as with the atom, just because we don’t see them doesn’t mean they have no influence on our world—thoughts carry their own energy too.
Our desire for peace spreads outward like ripples on a pond, renewed with every new thought of peace, being reinforced all over the globe by the network of souls who want to live and let live—ever-gaining strength. We should be very proud to be part of this network of light and of life.
This is why we can’t dwell on negative images of our world or future (beyond their imminent warnings), and get lost in our reactions, when it’s action we need. In dwelling on the negative, we literally radiate negativity on the negative “wavelength,” thus re- inforcing the very thing we detest. When we radiate put on the wavelength of life and positive energy, we are joined with all the forces and powers of creation.
There’s no tangible profit to be made off higher consciousness—you can’t package it or sell it, and it results in people asking all those uncomfortable questions on “product safety” or “company liability for their damaged health,” etc. In other words, it seems that one of the last things we hear about these days in the media is nonphysical reality, the evolution of consciousness, and so on (when what could be more relevant and im- portant for those of us who are restless within the limits of our physical reality?). We certainly hear enough about ring-around-the-collar, squeezably soft toilet tissue or being part of the “Pepsi generation.” People oriented in physical reality buy physical products. What’s more, if they were to become true to their consciences and become their high- est, most evolved, most moral selves, with a remarkable code of honor, they might no longer “have a price”—they might begin to care more about life and people than about things—and avoid obsession with material possessions that hinders their “non-material” growth and distracts them from higher pursuits. Why, then they might even refuse to pay for weapons that kill people and destroy life! In other words, “they might just rock the boat.”
If we could realize the strength and power—and the incredible positive force of cre- ation and love—that our minds are really capable of, now and at every moment, we would challenge corrupt and unjust systems into which we’re locked for our physical survival, and we wouldn’t be as easily influenced/manipulated/brainwashed. But as long as we’re kept running a treadwheel, trapped like hamsters in a cage, locked in debt just to survive and make ends meet to pay for our physical needs, we’ll “stay in our place,”
and many of us are too busy to find out about all our strength and potential (especially its collective force), or we’re just “loo tired to care” at the end of another hectic day.
British futurist Peter Russell thinks that we are now moving “from the computer age to the Age of Consciousness, the next step, an epoch when our minds will be linked by common goals, when humans will be creatures without ego, using their large brains to manage the affairs of the planet.” He believes that humankind is about to make an un- precedented leap in evolution, a jump beyond petty jealousy, virulent nationalism, un- bridled greed. We are to become, Russell says, the nervous system that makes the whole globe tick, a kind of benevolent planetary brain linked by common consciousness. The earth for Russell is a single organism, not just a spinning rock teeming with life, but a life form all by itself, an individual being. And we humans are going to become this organ- ism’s brain. We are already the information processors of the planet, says Russell. We collect data, build libraries, museums and satellites. Information passes through national boundaries as if they didn’t exist. In 1944 there were only three computers in the world. “Now look,” Russell says. “We moved from the Industrial Age to the Information Age with tremendous speed. Now 40 years after the first computers, we’re already starting to go beyond them, to consciousness and awareness.” Heightened consciousness, he says, is our inevitable next step. Individual consciousness will become group consciousness, and humankind will interconnect in a single vast cooperative of consciousness. “We are an evolutionary experiment,” Russell says. “And the question is, are we a good thing or not? Are we a cancer, a blight destroying the very fiber of life, or will we serve another purpose?”
Peter Russell is not alone in his vision of a living Earth. He studied theoretical physics at Cambridge University, but found himself drawn to Eastern philosophies; and when he went to India to pursue those interests, he “experienced a dimension of my con- sciousness of which I had never dreamed.”
Today, doom scenarios are popular, Russell says. “We are in a very dangerous time. But shouldn’t our large brains serve some greater purpose than self-destruction?” In his book he quotes1 inventor Buckminster Fuller: “The world now is too dangerous for any- thing less than Utopia.”
101.2.4 The Life Force
We’ve spent a lot of time discussing health and survival of life, and pondered the mysteries of our existence for some time now. What then, do we know about life itself! What is this amazing quality that can come and go, leaving an entity “alive” one mo- ment and “lifeless” the next? Just as we can see and hear, whether we know we have “optic nerves and tympanic membranes” or not, or taste even if we don’t know that our taste buds are “small ovoid neuroepithelial structures that lie between the epithelial cells that cover the tongue,” so too can we live, once the life force is within us, whether we understand it or not—luckily for us! All of our cellular groupings, organs, bones, and everything down to our Hyoglossus (a muscle that we’d better have between our hyoid bone and tongue if we plan on “pulling the tongue into the floor of our mouths” any time soon), are all part of an incredibly intricate life support system. Ask any car mechan- ic what’s involved in assembling his machine that moves through space—plenty—but well soon see that our bodily machine is infinitely more intricate. If you look at a book on physiology, you’ll see how many “parts” our machine has! Being a vessel of the life force is one thing—duplicating it, another. Genetic “engineers” keep trying, and heaven help us, for we’re trying to exercise divine power (control life) before we truly under- stand what divinity is. Yet, as are so many things, I suppose that’s “in our nature,” too. Whether we knit, garden, build, or tinker, we are all imbued with the passionate urge to create something. In any case, it might be wise if we knew more about the life force before tinkering with it too!
When someone “dies,” we say the life force “leaves the body.” This is generally agreed upon, although what happens next is still open to discussion after all these years. Perhaps one of the reasons we have a hard time getting past these age-old questions is that we’re falling back into that same old trap of “trying too hard” (in this case, thinking too much) once again. Let’s face it, we have been wondering about some of these things for a long time now, yet we still seem to get lost somewhere between the question and the answer! What’s our problem here? Aside from the fact that we often block our intu- itive channels with “logical” reasoning, maybe we’ll also see our “abstract” predicament more clearly with a “concrete” example: imagine a primitive person standing in front of a computer, wondering what it is. Whatever the primitive person can conjure up in his mind to explain or comprehend this object, with his limited resources, will still not serve to explain its function. There is a “gap.” This primitive person probably has the innate intelligence to operate a computer, but until the gap of understanding is closed, it will remain a mystery. Just as the baby in the car must learn what the gadgets are before they will become “real” to him, so too, the more we learn about our mental abilities, the more meaningful they will be for us.
We often become impatient. Here we are, faced with our human physical mortality, bills due, and a mystery: what happens when we “die”? Like angry children, we demand answers to the mystery of life, but we’re still forcing the issue and overlooking the sim- ple. We’re already in over our heads when we try to explain “supernatural” phenomena in our human terms and words. If we want to understand the life force, we must begin by realizing that it is “more” than a “human” event—intangible and invisible, it is an event of the spirit, encompassing far more than our limited human reality. Since we can’t see the life force in the first place, it would be presumptuous to assume that life dies just because a living entity “becomes lifeless.” This is pure speculation on our part. The life force itself doesn’t die when the entity “dies.”
Mysticism has always included some concept of “eternity”, eternal life, infinity. Somewhere along the line, some of our pioneer spirits found something, and began to pass it on: The story of eternity has undergone countless metamorphoses and versions throughout the ages. Some say we “go to heaven” (or, if not so lucky, to the ‘big barbe- cue pit’ in the sky?), and some say we’re reborn—but, although the accounts differ, en- lightened people from all times have clung tenaciously to some common belief in some form of eternal life, or an immortality of the spirit, with absolute certainty that there was life “beyond” the physical form, that the body is like a vehicle that is abandoned after it becomes useless and can’t take us any further.
Once upon a time, long ago, someone died, and his friends stood around in sadness and tried to figure out what had happened. One minute he was moving, and the next ... as best they could determine, this person was gone, finished, ended—and the concept or word “dead” was invented to explain this event. Thus came the conclusion that where there is “no life,” there is “death.” It sounds logical enough, and we’ve been saying it so long that we’ve pretty much taken it for granted by now, but one of the main rea- sons we say there’s no life when a person dies is because the person we knew doesn’t move anymore and bodily organs have ceased to function. The word “death” may be useful in describing an event, but the notion of death as a finite, final event might have as many flaws in it as our old world-is-flat theory or current germ/contagion theories, held by so many as “absolute” truths. Since we have a profound lack of knowledge (even after all these years) of exactly what happens beyond what is visible to the naked eye when someone dies, we’d be somewhat naive to say that nothing else happens just be- cause we can’t see it or don’t know what happens! Rather than being an end to life itself, death is just a process of change, a passage, transition, transcendence, metamorphosis, a new journey beyond the physical world of our bodies. Think about it. How can life be dead? How can life not be alive. The pioneer spirits who first spoke of eternal life saw a simple answer to the complex question of what death was: a sort of evolution—life goes on, eternally, forever, endlessly changing form. The first thing we do when we die
is change form: our body begins to decay, to “disappear,” to break down what it once built up—like a reverse-action film, it’s completing the “cycle.” The process of cellu- lar decay is one of change, change, change—of metamorphosis as the body fades from the physical world. How can we define what is obvious activity as a “dead” (motion- less) process, when this movement of molecular structure from one form to another is obviously a process of change (visible and invisible), and might better be defined as just another part of the life process itself! When the body finally disappears from our visible physical reality, we can’t say exactly what has become of its atoms and molecules, for they have rearranged and changed structure from one form into another (or perhaps oth- ers). This transformation process of life (called death) is still very much a mystery to us!
People already give us “those” looks when we tell them we don’t eat meat or cooked food. Wait until we see the looks we get when we say “there’s no real death, only eternal life and change and metamorphosis and evolution ...” Here we go again!
So, is that all there is to it? We’ve been saying this life force weaves its way here and there, as if we could be in the middle of a sentence, and ... poof! We are fortunate enough to have been chosen by the life force as “containers” for its antics, but we too have choices to make. When life asks us to dance with it, we become its partners—we help determine its rhythm within us and the melody of our duet together—life is the voice—we become the words to its song. Studies with terminally-ill patients have indi- cated that the will to live, or the lack of the will to live, do have an effect on the length of our lives, and that a person can literally “turn himself off” at some point, whether consciously or subconsciously. (Another good reason to keep thoughts positive.) If we become too tired or bored, sick, old, etc., to continue the dance, life will understand and move on. If we want to live fully, life will stay with us as long as possible, even until the dawn of our new day.
In each moment, time stands still; in each moment, from whence we came and where we are going are all caught up in an instant of eternity.
Believe in life and its force and you already, know eternity. Eternal life is with us forever in this moment.
101.2.5 What Time Is It?
We discussed the concept of time in Lesson 90 and said that it doesn’t actually exist exactly as we define it in our human terms! There, and in our above discussion, we men- tioned the eternal present: it is always now. Yesterday and tomorrow are actually “ab- stractions”: the only real time is “now.” There is no other time we exist in other than “now” (in fact, everyone who ever lived, lived “now”).
We say that moments (and time) pass from one to the next, but time isn’t mov- ing—it’s always now—it is we living beings who move. We form a living chain of beings and we call those who lived before us “from the past” and those who are yet to come “from the future” and the links of this chain of life hold us together. We can assume that everyone was living (or will live) now at the time they lived (or will)—and we who are alive now are living now—so it appears that we’re “all living at the same time—now. “Of course that seems to defy the physical imagination, to say the least, but as much as it defies logical explanation, it is at the same time somehow “logical.” It’s also interesting to note that this might shed some light on the mystery of the gift of prophecy!
101.2.6 “Time Is of the Essence”
We’ve talked about some peoples’ ability to know things from the “universal mind”—an ability that defies logical explanation and goes beyond our usual “normal” channels for receiving knowledge. Not only that, but our “normal,” traditional notion of time is also open to question when we see that some people not only know things or receive information beyond their “normal” physical/mental reality; they are even able
to know things (whether from the past or future) beyond the so-called “physical time” in which they exist at that moment. How can this be? How can someone know some- thing that “hasn’t happened yet”? What does that do to our “normal” concept of the “fu- ture,” or of time itself? One of the better-known examples of person with prophetic gifts was Nostradamus, who lived in the 16th century. He is said to have foreseen numerous events that came to pass after his death (which he also saw ahead of time). In 1568, he published the following prophecy:
Century IV, Quatrain 67:
In the year that Saturn and Mars are equally firey
The air is very dry, a long meteor (comet)
By secret fires, many places shall be burnt with heat There shall be scarcity of rain, hot winds, wars, blood, thirst and famine (when the comet shall run).
The above quote and the following excerpts are from an article “When Solar Winds Blow Havoc for Mankind” by Jim Cummins, Acres, U.S.A., January 1985, which dis- cusses the return of Halley’s comet, due again in our vicinity in November 1985, and to “stay in our backyard” until April 1986. Halley’s comet has a well-documented 76-year cycle, with records begun in March 239, B.C. Ever since this sighting, a worldwide three-year drought (and often resultant famine) has followed in its wake each time, (for details—a long list of other climatological, social and political upheavals throughout his- tory that were on the heels or in the wake of a comet—please get a copy of the above issue.)
“How can all these things be attributed to the passing of a comet? Space probes have sent back data showing that the sun continuously ejects a million tons of gas per second, moving at a radial speed of 250 miles per second, with wind speeds past the earth at some 900,000 miles per hour, and extends to about four times the distance beyond the farthest planet Pluto. (A comet travels in its orbit to several thousand times farther than Pluto.) This solar wind carries chaotic magnetic fields along with it because the gas is ionized. The magnetic fields of the solar wind ruffle the earth’s own magnetic field as it passes by, hence, magnetic disturbances affect- ing communications, etc., at the time of increased solar activity (which is cyclical). Scientists have determined, for instance, a statistical correlation between the accel- erations of Halley’s Comet and magnetic disturbances on the earth.
“The effects of the solar wind on every earthly activity, from health to markets, weather, and wars, is well-documented. The transverse motion of a comet at many miles per second across the movement of the solar wind blowing radially from the sun results in the i6n tail of the comet interacting with the high velocity of the solar wind in the same way that smoke rising from a smokestack interacts with moving air to produce a graceful billowy arch to the earth.
“Scientists now believe that each interstellar dust grain of comet stuff contains molecules of formaldimine, methyl alcohol, methyl cyanide, hydrogen cyanide or hydrocyanic acid, and some 20 others, including cyanogen and carbon dioxide. (My note here: we have too much CO2 already.) Many of the radicals they have deter- mined to be the ‘smoke’ of comets cannot be isolated in a terrestrial laboratory, and are probably created by the rapid breakdown of the parent compounds by ultravi- olet sunlight. The lingering, billowy arch of smoke falls slowly to the earth in the wake of a comet’s passing. Needless to say, no living thing on our tiny planet is made the better for it. We all breathe this cyanide: kings, presidents, common man alike think and act as though we have poison in our system (and we do) ... and we eat the plants and animals which have breathed the same deadly gases ... and the pale settles in for a season.”
As we have seen in our studies on ecology and the current world political situation, we’re already “teetering on the brink of extinction” in many ways, so we could certainly do without any “pales settling in” because we don’t need much pushing, this close to the “edge.”
“The advent of two important planets aligning at a crucial astronomical degree from the earth at the precise time that Halley’s Comet (with which Nostradamus was familiar) would make as perihelion (closest point of approach to the sun), would be an ominous occurrence, said Nostradamus, warning us in the only way he could, considering the Inquisition under which he lived. Such an event (this plane- tary configuration at the comet’s perihelion) has not happened/or over 1,000 years, but it is due in February 1986, and Nostradamus knew it!”
Here then is a verifiable example of prophecy: the dates of alignment of planets, in this case, Saturn and Mars, can be calculated and determined scientifically; the next such alignment is due in February 1986. How could Nostradamus know, in 1568, that they’d be aligned in a once-in-a-thousand-years configuration at a “crucial astronomical degree from the earth at the precise time (1986) Halley’s comet would make its perihe- lion”?
We do still have a lot to learn about the powers of our minds. Some people apparently “go beyond their physical lifetimes” in their minds or spirits, but in the sense that the eternal present covers all eternity, they really don’t even have to “go” anywhere. Ap- parently it’s because it’s always now that they can “see it now” if they have that gift of sensitivity.
It is interesting to note that gifts of intelligence, wisdom, insight, vision, enlight- enment, clairvoyance, prophecy, and so on, are obviously not limited to people of any particular “time,” i.e., they aren’t limited to so-called highly-evolved or “civilized” peo- ple, nor are they always found in persons with exceptional “conventional” intelligence (ability to learn quickly, etc.). Throughout “the ages,” there have been individuals who possessed extraordinary insight, wisdom or extrasensory perception; such persons are “timeless”—they would stand out and excel in any time period.
One such person was Pythagoras, a Greek philosopher born in 570 B.C. who advo- cated vegetarianism, among other things, as the key to expanding consciousness and in- tellect. He was already talking about things Life Scientists believe in now; he was way “ahead of” most people of his day, and even ours. He even taught; that the world was round, long before Copernicus and Galileo came along after the 1400s.
Pythagoras was a mathematical and musical genius, a sage who travelled to many other countries (as far as Egypt and India, rare for people of those times); he was accept- ed by their wise men, who shared with him secrets often not divulged to their own pub- lic, nor to strangers. He accepted women as “thinking beings,” and included them in his discussions, being unique in his times in doing so. Space here doesn’t permit a detailed account of his life and gifts to humanity; suffice it to say, he was a rare person. Because of his diet, he was said to be in perfect health at all times, and of perfect, calm, harmo- nious temperament. He had a vision of a changed society with no war, slavery or vio- lence. Had his communities of followers been left alone in peace and allowed to thrive, we can only imagine where we’d all be today! However, as is so often the case when ignorant people form the “majority,” his enemies tried to destroy his books and temples, and enslaved his followers! We’re still waiting for people to see the light that Pythagoras (and many before and since him) saw already. It seems quite obvious that the “missing link” in the puzzle of our prolonged aggressive tendencies and low-life attitudes up to now is meat-eating. Pythagoras was very specific in his admonitions not to eat meat; he wasn’t vegetarian “by coincidence”—he knew exactly what he was doing in avoiding it, and said so. Had we listened to his wisdom (and others’) we might have avoided another thousand years of human suffering and wars.
101.2.7 Vegetarian Thinkers
A March 1985 newspaper article on Einstein’s brain talked about recent studies of its brain cells: nearly 30 years after his death, Marian Diamond was looking at cells taken “from the 20th century’s most celebrated clump of human intelligence.” Before he died, Albert Einstein stipulated that his brain be preserved and used for research. “When we heard that Einstein’s brain was sitting in a cardboard box in Kansas, we saw a chance to study the most highly-evolved brain available in our lifetime,” Marian said. Dr. Janice Stevens, staff psychiatrist at the neuropsychiatry branch of the National Institute of Men- tal Health, tells a story about the time researchers at Princeton did an electroencephalo- gram on Einstein. They were measuring the alpha wave, which indicates the brain’s “idling activity.” Alpha wave activity disappears with arousal or intense brain activity. The researchers started the EEG, and Einstein, so the story goes, was calmly solving quadratic equations in his head. His alpha wave, indicating mental idling, was very high. All of a sudden, the alpha wave went flat. Alarmed, the researchers rushed in and asked Einstein what was wrong. “I hear it’s raining outside,” said the world’s greatest scientist, “and I’ve left my rubbers at home.”
I wanted to include these excerpts (italics above are mine) to show how esteemed Einstein is in the scientific world, even though the article itself was going into details on his “glial cells” and so on (he had a higher ratio of glial cells to neurons compared with 11 other brains tested, with the most significant difference found in the sample from the left lower parietal lobe, the part of the brain most involved with higher mathematical and language abilities).
Einstein is considered a great genius, and he was also a vegetarian. Literature on vegetarians includes the following great thinkers from our history: Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Epicurus, Apollonius of Tyana, Plutarch, Seneca, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Proclus, Ovid, Tolstoy, the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, Ben- jamin Franklin, Sir Isaac Newton, Gandhi, Buddha, Voltaire, Charles Darwin, Albert Schweitzer, and others; the artist Leonardo da Vinci was also a vegetarian— this list is but a sampling.
If we are interested in observing the mind and philosophy and the things of the uni- verse, well do well to observe that some of the world’s most “famous” historical figures, those whose names came down to us from the past because they were such outstanding persons in their day, were also vegetarians.
“Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places! I have since an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men will look upon the murder of animals as they now look up- on the murder of men.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal conditions on the earth?”
—Leo Tolstoy
“Only living, fresh foods can enable man to apprehend the truth.”
—Pythagoras
“It is my view that the vegetarian manner of living, by its purely physical effect on the human temperament, would most beneficially influence the lot of mankind.”
—Albert Einstein
“Animals are my friends... and I don’t eat my friends. Man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity—that of sympathy and pity toward living creatures like himself—and by violating his own feelings, becomes cruel.”
—George Bernard Shaw
“World peace, or any other kind of peace, depends greatly on the attitude of the mind. Vegetarianism can bring about the right mental attitude for peace... it holds forth
a better way of life, which, if practiced universally, can lead to a better, more just, and more peaceful community of nations.”
—U Nu, former Prime Minister of Burma
By changing our diets and lifestyles, we’ve already seen how closely they’re related to “who we are.” Very often the “personality” we think we are is totally different after these changes are made in our lives. The sum total of our diet/ life becomes us, talks through us. As we unburden ourselves more and more, we replace our former resentment of ignorant people and our contempt for their wrongful actions with understanding, even forgiveness. We have no place in our minds for wasted thoughts; they distract us and clutter our heads with more useless negativity. We have no time for holding grudges or making judgments, for our time and our lives are precious. We’ve said it a dozen times, but it bears repeating: if we truly want to free ourselves, we’ll replace all our negative thoughts with inner peace and tranquility. People who become trapped in their emotions don’t see the diet/lifestyle connection; we know we don’t have to be slaves to our emo- tions.
101.3. Liberty
101.3.1 It’s a Gift to Be Simple, It’s a Gift to Be Free
101.3.2 We Shall Overcome
101.3.3 “Reaching out to touch someone”
101.3.4 Economic Freedom: A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned?
101.3.1 It’s a Gift to Be Simple, It’s a Gift to Be Free
If we have optimism, humor, understanding, faith, hope, love, self-control and the ability to step outside ourselves into a universal, collective consciousness and into con- cern for others as well as ourselves; and if we have the desire and willingness to change (not just intent to change or idle talk about changing)—we will become filled with cre- ative energy and vibrant life force, and yes, we will be free. We will free not only our bodies, but also our minds and spirits. The more positive energy that emanates from us into the world, the more healing that will take place in the world. It keeps boiling down to the same thing: what the world needs now (and always) is love. Our positive healing energy is needed everywhere, especially in these trying times.
So, we should ask ourselves, are our world leaders working to lead us toward Utopia or not? The answer is obvious.
Are we told the truth about the link between our food and lifestyle and our state of health? No. We’re told to drink Coke, eat sugared cereals, and spray poisonous chem- icals on ourselves to “keep bugs off.” Let’s not expect to be enlightened by our “sys- tem,” for it is to the system’s advantage that the sheep stay in the herd, and not be “car- ried away” with wild ideas of freedom or notions of exceptional mental clarity or abili- ties, thus realizing their full potential as human beings. The system of centralized wealth prefers to homogenize its people into a nice, workable “arrangement” that best ensures the continued survival of its authority and power to keep things “under control.”
Funny, I was under the impression that the founding fathers (and mothers) of this country intended to govern themselves. What was that they said about government by the people, for the people, and so on?
Those of us of the technological age who’ve been spared certain survival necessities, such as having to walk miles to a well for water just to live, still have our own special challenges to meet. Our education and the media have given us more opportunity to view the broad spectrum of events and their consequences; “knowing” more, we have a deep- er responsibility to truth and to life. The more we receive from life, the more we should give back in return. And, as the saying goes, “somebody has to do it.”
It is evident that each of us must explore our own mental capacities and strengths, and find the truths that are to be revealed, for we aren’t getting enough support from our world leaders in evolving to a consciousness of world peace and harmony. It is we, the people of this planet, who must demand a release from the bondage of weapons and war, and insist that production of instruments of death be stopped, once and for all.
The slaveholders of the past didn’t just wake up one day (until forced to do so) and tell the slaves: “Okay, you’re free now.” We can’t wait for our “leaders” to “free” us. We must be free now. We are supposed to be free already, but who are the real slaves today? Every living being that is bound by the chains of war and hostility and who lives under the shadow of potential nuclear destruction—every living being on this planet, to be exact. We are being held back from our true work and kept from evolving toward our higher destiny. Ironically, here is an unusual situation in which even the slavemaster is enslaved—from now on, what happens to the slaves will happen to the slave “masters” as well. They now risk becoming victims of their own mistakes. While our “leaders” have at their “disposal” thousands of human hands ready (if not willing) for action, ca- pable of making something immense in the spirit of cooperation, what do they do? They use our energy to create a system that could destroy us all, themselves included. Now does that make any sense?
We have years of struggle, suffering, joy, birth and creation behind us already. Let’s not throw it all way! We are free to choose life. What are we waiting for?
Just as fresh air, sunshine and healthy food are necessary for nourishing our physical bodies, freedom is one of our most precious treasures to be preserved in safeguarding our minds and Spirits. We need freedom for our mental health and well-being, as much as we need air to breathe. Although we’ve made progress in some areas, human rights in the world today cannot be taken for granted by most people. Just as physical illness reflects some imbalance in the body, the sad state of affairs in human rights reflects the moral decay so prevalent today. We are told we live in a democracy, but we must be ever-watchful and vigilant of what freedom we do have, and hold on to it with all our strength. It could even use some improvement. Now that the computer age is here, we must be especially cautious of “world systems” and being numbered, catalogued and filed. The world economy is shaky; if transitions are made to a “cashless” system, ne- cessitating numbering of citizens, a word to the wise ... freedom as we know it could all but disappear in the “ultimate” system. Computers, like all our inventions, are tools—as useful or destructive as we make them.
There are three principal groups in the United States dedicated to ending human rights abuses: Amnesty International, Helsinki Watch and Americas Watch. Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1977, and has 150,000 members here and 500,000 worldwide. It also watches out for political prisoners, for the countless people suffering in jail whose only “crime” was to speak out against injustice—nonviolent peo- ple of conscience who tried to better the lives of others. A 1984 report from Amnesty International (“Torture in the Eighties”) carried meticulously-detailed accounts of inhu- mane treatment of prisoners in 96 countries, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe. Amnesty tries to publicize abuses and pressure governments guilty of human rights violations. Now that the world is so small, we all have a vested interest in global human rights, in staying awake — the fox will come when the chickens are sleeping ...
101.3.2 We Shall Overcome
More and more sanctuary movements have begun to take an active role in reaching out to refugees from other countries who are fleeing political persecution and violence at home, and they must often defy official disapproval (and, or risk imprisonment) in or- der to shelter these people. Even church members are getting involved, saying that what they are doing is providing sanctuary, a historical and religious tradition dating from the Middle Ages. Court trials have already resulted. A statement issued by Austin Quakers
said: “There is a law that binds us as one within the spirit, which cannot be made subject to laws constructed in response to national interests. We declare our willingness to pro- vide sanctuary for these, our sisters and brothers, to hold them within the boundaries of our spiritual community, safe from pursuit and prosecution by the authorities.” Another group made this statement:
“We implore immigration officials and the court system to cease in their perse- cution of innocent people fulfilling their duty as Christians, and are proud of those who lay their reputations and lives on the line to protect, nourish, and care for the poor of other nations who seek nothing more than the same opportunity our refugee forefathers sought and obtained during the past two and more centuries.”
Matthew 10:16... “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.”
26: “Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.”
101.3.3 “Reaching out to touch someone”
With the growth of technology and industry worldwide, our world cultures have been brought from the “dawn of time” to “modern civilization,” sometimes almost literally overnight, in a single jump from “primitive” times to the 20th century. Just like the pizza people, we deliver, alright—for a price. There’s a trade-off, and many souls have been “sold” along the way.
But while our businesses are arriving in faraway lands to look for a good deal on cheap labor, less safety restrictions perhaps, and so on, and arrive to buy and sell weapons and war, there’s a parallel movement going on—one most of us have been part of at one time or another: the “world traveller’s association”—the real diplomats-on-the- street of this planet. The next time we’re gazing from a hammock in a tiny, relaxed ter- race nestled among lush vegetation in a tropical country, sipping fresh-squeezed orange juice, be assured that we are actually hard-at-work, as members of the real international Peace Corps, bringing ourselves to others, drawing the world closer. People are travel- ling internationally as never before and that’s had a profound impact on world society as a whole: more and more people see each other now. Even the goatherder in Morocco gazes face-to-face into the eyes of the American family from Kansas—two worlds meet again. The more we see each other, the less we can be “strangers.”
Not only does this ever-broadening circle of international friends accelerate the quantum leap humanity is now making into collective consciousness; it also strengthens our chances globally to learn the truth more often. Whereas national leaders, newspapers or TV can (and do) lie or censor news, say what they want and try to shape everyone’s reality and conform society’s members, the fact remains that nowadays, many more peo- ple everywhere are also picking up the phone just to talk to a good old buddy or business associate on the other side of the world and they’ll ask “what’s new?”. So, stories come out here and there— much news is still shared in the “old-fashioned” way—by word- of-mouth. This international grapevine is unlike any there’s every been before in our recorded history—even gossip has gone international!
Much truth can leak through, because if there’s one thing people are famous for, it’s their ability to talk. Now that folks are chatting from Germany to Thailand to Timbuktu, a lot of truth can even leak through today’s “sophisticated” totalitarian efforts around the world to control what can be heard in the media! The net thrown out by our dictators now has many holes in it, and as fast as they can “fix” them, we can make new ones! This international network of friends protects all of us because it keeps real channels of communication open; it exists beyond the formal rhetoric of world leaders who commu- nicate to us (and each other) only what they want us to hear. This real communication
network functions on a global level and yet is still unstructured—it exists and is thriving outside “government control and regulation”—a loose network of individuals with no control from specific, visible leaders—independent.
The world community is apparently healing itself despite—not because of—government, which is the “drug” in this case that’s supposed to “cure” society. If the people “can’t take care of themselves,” they look to the government to play the role of doctor, to decide “what’s best for them,” to take the responsibility out of their hands, and the government is more than happy to do so. But even today’s tyrants will find that truth will still pop up “in the strangest places.” Just as some weeds are much hardier than domesticated hybrid plants, luckily for us, truth is one of the strongest weeds of all—stubborn and tenacious. No matter how hard a ruler might try to keep people igno- rant (and thus dependent) and uninformed, light still penetrates the darkness again and again. Trying to keep truth a secret is harder than trying to stop the tide of water at the ocean’s edge with your bare hands! Truth will surface again and again—that’s the beau- ty of it. Like a blade of grass that clings stubbornly to life in a crack in the cement of a hot city sidewalk, truth clings to us in hope of survival.
And the truth shall set us free.
We’ve already taken a bit of “license” in speaking freely of phenomena of the mind which we’re only beginning to experience, let alone understand. But lest the skeptical among us question the reality of anything in nonphysical “reality” too hastily, let’s refer to the following excerpts on the CIA’s interest and dabblings in these phenomena. It is becoming increasingly apparent that we have to guard not only the freedom we expect for our physical bodies, but also the nonphysical freedom that is our heritage as spiritual beings.
Omni (10/80) reports: Declassified documents obtained under the Freedom of Infor- mation Act (one worth all our effort protecting) by the American Citizens for Honesty in Government revealed a 20-year CIA mind-control operation that experimented with everything from hypnosis and behavior modification to psychoactive drugs (such as LSD) and electroshock, all well-documented. “Less noticed among the esoterica includ- ed in the so-called Project Bluebird (later renamed Project Artichoke, still later MKUL- TRA) was another possible secret weapon: extrasensory perception.” The agency’s dream was spelled out in an April 1952, memo: “If a number of individuals could be found in the U.S. who have a very high ESP capacity, these talented individuals could be assigned to intelligence problems. Such a problem as whether or not the (deleted) had a submarine pen could be attacked by ESP.”
It might be worth noting here that the media In the last few years has also given more attention to incidents of police departments using “psychics” to solve crimes, often with amazing success. If there were “nothing at all” to extrasensory perception, it is highly doubtful that such conventional organizations as the police department (or the CIA) would even consider such angles in the first place. Phenomena occurring out of our physical realities have been given little public attention in the media, but obviously some people know something that hasn’t been generally publicized, for evidence does exist that these phenomena are not only real, but being recognized more often, and as with everything else, are capable of being used for us or against us. This is another good reason to be ever-vigilant.
Of note is the fact that, after the early fifties, CIA documents are “mum” about ESP and PK (psychokinesis): “Perhaps the CIA dropped the idea. But perhaps it actually im- plemented an ESP cryptocracy, and perhaps the documents detailing it are classified. The latter possibility is raised (along with a few eyebrows) by this January 1952, state- ment: ‘If we are to undertake to push this research as far and as fast as we can ... it would be necessary to be exceedingly careful about thorough cloaking of the undertaking. The CIA has declined comment.”
A later newspaper article (4/18/85) announced that the “Supreme Court recently gave the CIA absolute power to keep sources of information secret, even if the sources
are not confidential and the information itself is not classified.” Congress in 1947 gave the director of central “intelligence” very broad authority to protect all sources of intel- ligence information from disclosure. The 1985 decision overturned a ruling by a federal appeals court in Washington—the CIA had said that ruling would “cripple its ability to gather intelligence because the agency would be forced to reveal sources.” The case in- volves a 1977 suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act by lawyer John Sims and Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen Health Research Group. They sought the names of individuals and institutions involved in research under the CIA’s MKULTRA project (financed from 1953 to 1966 “to counter Soviet and Chinese brainwashing techniques”). It included “experiments in which researchers administered LSD and other psychoactive drugs to unwitting persons. At least two persons died as a result of the experiments. The agency had refused to reveal names of researchers of many of the institutions involved, citing the 1947 law.”
We need to keep a watchful eye on the activities of such groups designed to “protect” our interests, for just as parents can become guilty of Mild abuse, such organizations can easily become guilty of freedom abuse! The reality that we are faced with is: every day we’re told that such things as vitamins, drugs, weapons, the government, and so on “pro- tect us,” but we’re becoming increasingly aware of the fact that what really protects us are such things as truth and freedom. Most of the other nonsense we can do much better without!
Here are more excerpts on CIA-sponsored experiments MKULTRA, from Psychol- ogy Today, “Mind Control in 1984,” by Philip Zimbardo (psychology professor at Stan- ford University) 1/84:
“MKULTRA was its most notorious covert program designed to develop opera- tional technologies for disrupting and then reprogramming an individual’s habitual patterns of perception, thought and action. Government research funds were fun- neled through universities and mental hospitals to encourage the experimental test- ing of LSD and other psychoactive drugs, as well as electroshock treatment, hypno- sis and other exotic types of direct intervention in functioning of the human mind. The program was halted not because of the outrage of the citizenry (few knew of its existence) or the ethical concerns of turning American citizens into vegetables, but because it didn’t do the job. These potent gadgets and gimmicks could surely scramble anyone’s brain, but they could not direct a person’s action in pre-deter- mined ways.”
One of the major discoveries of modern social psychology is that, under speci- fied conditions, less social pressure can produce more attitude changes:
“The most profound and enduring changes in attitudes occur under two condi- tions: when people perceive they have free choice in deciding to believe in ways that are against their values, beliefs or motives, and when the force applied is just strong enough to accomplish the task. The pressure may be as innocuous as having the experimenter in an authoritative white coat say, ‘This is an important experi- ment...’ or touch the person’s shoulder and say confidingly, ‘do me a favor.’ People want to be good sports and team players. When people can be subtly induced or se- duced into publicly behaving in ways contrary to their needs or usual standards, it produces an uncomfortable state of cognitive dissonance. The tension is particular- ly great when people believe that they chose the alien action freely, without external pressure. To reduce their feelings of discomfort, they become their own agents of self-persuasion. Since they can’t attribute the discrepant behavior to something out- side themselves, they explain it in terms of self-generated processes. ‘If I chose to do it without promise of reward or threat of punishment,’ they rationalize, ‘I must have unknowingly liked it or wanted it.’ In hundreds of studies, when intelligent subjects were induced, through means of which they were not aware, to lie, cheat, suffer or hurt someone else, they invented personal reasons to account for this atyp-
ical behavior. People devise such personal attributions to make sense of apparently irrational actions, such as eating fried grasshoppers after saying they dislike them or accepting powerful electric shocks.
Although behavior can be controlled by powerful external rewards or threats, the person controlled will not also automatically believe in the trainer’s ideology; coercion creates conformists, but not true believers. When people think an external force is powerful enough to make them act as it wishes, they often yield to the pow- er, but do not internalize the force’s ideology. Without at least an illusion of free choice, they become passive re-actors; they take no responsibility for their actions, but attribute them to outside forces.”
When Orwell wrote 1984 (in 1948), he saw the potential power an can be wielded by professionals “who intervene in people’s lives ‘for their own good.’” But, Zimbardo continues, “he did not foresee the extent and depth of that power, which is so evident in our 1984. When control is cloaked as cure, surveillance as a security service and repres- sion as a rehabilitation program, civil liberties can be set aside and cherished freedoms put on hold without arousing resistance or rebellion. When something is being done for you and not to you, it is difficult to complain without feeling the guilt of the ungrateful. Would-be mind controllers are springing up everywhere, unconstrained by Party allegi- ance. They pose more of a threat because their tactics are more subtle, their strategies more insidious and their influence more pervasive. They sell us, educate us, treat us, service us and minister to us—after first persuading us of the need to pay willingly and dearly for their product.” Let the buyer beware.
“In the end,” concludes Zimbardo, “we must individually and collectively challenge the Party line: There is indeed something called human nature that will be outraged by what is done to the least of our kind and will turn us against despots and dictators, de- monic or benevolent. We defy Big Brother.”
101.3.4 Economic Freedom: A Penny Saved Is a Penny Earned?
“When the whole property of this universe has been inherited by all creatures, how then can there by any justification for a system in which someone receives a flow of huge excess, while others die for lack of a handful of grains.”
—P. R. Sankar
Excerpts from John Hamaker’s Survival of Civilization, “Taxes, Freedom and the Constitution”:
“Fundamental change is required to save this nation from becoming a total- itarian state. Decay is evident in every facet of our society, but few understand the cause. Rightists simply blame it all on ‘communism,’ and Liberals frantically search their first-aid kits for palliatives to treat the most painful effects of the un- derlying cause. This essay tells why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and why centralization of wealth occurs.
“In the matter of economics, an exponential equation similar to population growth is destroying our economy and our democracy. It is the rot that runs through the forest. Benjamin Franklin willed $100 to the city of Philadelphia. It was to be kept at compound interest until it reached $1,000,000. The inheritance paid off in a little less than 200 years. If the million were kept at 6% compounded annually for 20 years, it would reach 3.2 million; in 40 years, 10.3 million; and in 60 years it would reach 33 million. At 3% it would be only 5.9 million in 60 years; but at 7% it would be 57.9 million. Long before Franklin’s time many people made busi- ness investments of much more than $100 and realized more than 6%. Those in- vestments which were invested in the steady money-making businesses, and passed on through inheritance, now are valued in the hundreds of millions. Today these
fortunes control capital now measured in hundreds of billions. Applying the 20-, 40-, or 60-year factors shows by inspection that the rate of increase of such vast sums has far exceeded the potential rate of growth of the economy. The growth rate of the centralized pools of wealth has exceeded the finite limits of the capacity of the economy to support it. This is particularly so now, because the growth of pop- ulation is the primary basis for the growth of the economy. The population growth must be stopped.
“One dollar can be plotted as a series of curves using a different rate of interest compounded annually for each curve and plotting time on the abscissa against fund increase on the ordinate. The result is the accumulation of a single dollar—the fac- tor to be multiplied by the amount of the initial fund to find its present value. It will be noted that the curves bend gently upward until half to one million dollars is reached. Then in a 50- to 100-year period, the curve breaks upward toward in- finitely large numbers. The number of years it takes to reach the break-point de- pends on the rate of interest (or profit). At 3% it takes about 450 years, at 6% about 220 years, and at 10% about 125 years to reach the break-point. After that point is reached, the rate of increase in funds reaches absurdly large rates of increase which have no relation to the rate of increase of real values in the economy. Therefore, the only way such fortunes can continue to increase is to expand ownership over every- thing in the economy which makes money. Because of the power of large fortunes to buy out or freeze out competition, they take control of the most stable and lucra- tive businesses. The theoretical end result is one fortune in possession of everything in the country. In practice, when a majority of people have been impoverished, there is a revolt and a wiping out of all debts. Historically, this has occurred every few hundred years, i.e., when the large fortunes in a country have reached the break- point in the curve and have transferred much of the ownership from the people to the pools of wealth. They then have the power to reach out for every real value in the economy. The more they take, the faster the process works until they have it all.
“One does not argue with the laws of nature. One either conforms or pays the penalty. The mathematics of compound interest is natural law. We are in the self- destruct stage. Our economy is at the break-point in the curve. If we continue to permit funds to accumulate, we are certain to have our economy destroyed and our people in revolt. Money, like everything else in the environment, must be recycled to prevent destructive pollution of the economic environment.
“Specifically, there is now about one and one-half trillion dollars in public and private debts. Most of these debts are owed to pools of money which annually grow by the amount of the interest (or profit) added to it. In 60 years, at an average of 7% interest, the value of the funds would be 58 times their present value. The total growth rate has far exceeded the real growth rate of the economy. The best-protect- ed funds have passed the break-point. They are well on the way to owning the entire country. Senator Phillip Hart said, ‘200 decision makers control two-thirds of all production.’ Senator Fred Harris said that centralization of wealth and the question of how to redistribute it will be the major issue of this decade. It had better be, be- cause the claims to ownership by those funds are going to try to double in ten years time. An awful lot of people and small businesses are going bankrupt. Inflation and government and personal debt will continue at high rates of increase. Super-wealth has a counterfeiting machine and a government to legalize its product. It can buy us all.
“The excessive rate of growth of large pools of money according to an expo- nential equation is responsible for virtually all the deficiencies of the present capi- talistic system as follows:
1. Theconstantgrowthoflargepoolsofmoneyinexcessofrealgrowthintheecon- omy is highly inflationary. The avidity with which the holders of great wealth seek
to multiply it leads to overexpansion of industrial capacity, overextension of credit to consumers, and vicious competition for ownership of all income-producing val- ues.
- Theinflationary‘boom’isturnedintoa‘bust’whenasignificantnumberofpeople have used up their credit, and when competition caused by overproduction has closed out the least competitive companies, further depleting consumer demand. Small savings are robbed by inflation. So great is the ever-ready inflationary capac- ity of large pools of wealth, that the cycle of boom and bust has occurred roughly every 10 years since 1840. In each one there is a transfer of ownership from those who fail to those who have larger funds subsidizing them at an exponential rate. Example: In 1935 there were 750 breweries, in 1970 only 140. The rate of bank- ruptcy and conglomeration insure that there will be a lot fewer breweries after this bust period. The power of the major funds now dominates the economy. Production has become centralized, leaving behind centers of poverty.
- Charityandgovernmentpickupthebilltofeedpeopleleftdestitute.Ifallpresent government and private debts were collected from the people tomorrow, most of us would be penniless or in debt. Almost everything in the country would be owned by about one-half of one percent of the people or the businesses in which they hold a controlling interest. Most of the people are broke. The wealth has become highly centralized. Inflation eats up the savings of older people, and they’re forced on wel- fare or social security. They’ve relied on fund growth for security. Insurance and private pension funds pay off about 40% and 10% respectively, and they pay off in inflated dollars. Social security isn’t an insurance fund. It’s a tax on present produc- ers to feed older, less productive workers forced off the job by the fixed wage, fixed 8-hour day, maximum benefits concept. If social security tax payments had been funded at compound interest, inflation of the dollar would be far worse than it is, and the government would be well on the way toward ownership of the entire coun- try. The $153 billion in private pension plans doesn’t help the 90% of contributors who get nothing back, but it sure helps the big corporations with their conglomera- tion plans.
- Because the people of this country have been largely separated from ownership of the real wealth, the pressure of the rapidly multiplying huge pools of wealth has moved toward exploitation of the people and their resources in less developed countries. To insure those investments, large sums have been spent since WWII to insure ‘friendly’ national legislators and administrators. The result has been the absurdly hopeless policy of ‘Containment of Communism.’ Meanwhile, the revolt grows within our nation.
- The forced flow of wealth from the people to the funds (directly and indirectly through taxation) reduces large numbers of people to poverty and the majority of the working force to the insecurity of having only the job (and in most cases one paycheck) between themselves and poverty. These demoralizing stresses induce crime, alcoholism, drug addiction, and other escape mechanisms to alleviate the pains, needs and wants that attend poverty. “Poverty provides little market demand. The total national product must there- fore shrink relative to actual need. This contraction means that more people enter the ranks of poverty: the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Those who still work are heavily taxed to sustain the poor. Ultimately it’s the taxpayers who revolt. “We are ruled by an exponential equation. Either we control it or we’ll join the two-thirds of the world’s population which have yielded to dictatorship for survi- val. Right now is the time to protect ourselves from the rule of centralized pools of wealth if we are to save our political freedom. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer because money ‘earns’ money at an exponential rate, whereas the economy expands directly with population and the
technical ingenuity of the people. The difference between the two rates is the mar- gin of power by which the owners of wealth impose poverty on everyone else.
“In the broad sense, taxes are government-enforced demands for a share of the consumer goods. Nothing has monetary value until human labor is applied to it. Thus a tax is forced human labor. Whether or not equal goods and services are giv- en in exchange for the tax determines whether it’s a service institution or a means of enslaving the people.”
Hamaker says we can simplify taxes and increase our freedom by:
“outlawing all taxes ahead of the sales tax (taxes collected ahead of the con- sumer goods sales tax are added to the cost of goods sold and are therefore sales taxes, i.e., claims for a share of consumer goods). The burden of taxation can’t be shifted from consumer goods. A frugal person can more easily accumulate funds to start a business if taxation is deferred to the point of consumption of goods. Only when this freedom to use our national fund of ingenuity and initiative is established can we expect to eliminate the welfare rolls and withdraw workers from govern- ment into the productive economy. Then our tax burden will be lowered according- ly and this, too, is an increment of freedom. Also, if taxes were eliminated at the production level, politicians could no longer sell loopholes in exchange for cam- paign support. This practice has resulted in establishing economic advantages for the highest bidders— farmers, for example, can’t compete with agribusiness (which can lose money on farming and make it up elsewhere in the conglomeration where tax loopholes support it). Thus the big corporations would be less powerful and the government less corrupt. These are important increments of freedom for the people.
“Within the broad definition of taxes, there are three included in the cost of con- sumer goods which government says are lawful, but which are collected by indi- viduals. When the inheritor of wealth goes to the marketplace for a yacht or a man- sion, he brings no products or labor to exchange. The same thing is true of a land speculator who does nothing to increase the value of land, but whom the govern- ment allows to collect the increased value. The same is true of the stockholder, who by the grace of government and a stock split, finds himself in possession of a share of several years of company surplus earned by the ingenuity and effort of a good working force. He brings to the consumer marketplace no value which he’s earned if it’s profit above the true market value (rightful interest) of his original invest- ment. These government-sanctioned private taxes have the same effect as govern- ment taxes: they increase demand without increasing supply and therefore inflate the price. They take units of labor without giving units of labor, which is slavery.
“This element of slavery is what makes possible the rapid conglomeration of companies and ultimately the centralization of the nation’s wealth. Man-hours of labor can be legally expropriated from, each person’s paycheck to obtain a pool of wealth with which to buy a new plant from which to hire-people from whom man- hours of labor can be expropriated to obtain a new pool of wealth, etc. When slav- ery is legalized, anti-trust laws have all the effect of a pea shooter against an ele- phant. It is these three something-for-nothing deals which, by means of the expo- nential equation, generate sufficient funds so transfer all ownership from the people to the funds. They are taxes collected directly by the property class and enforced by the government it controls.
“Taxes on savings, such as property taxes, can drive older workers with little income out of their homes, which then become properly of mortgage holders. The property tax is an excellent device for transferring ownership from the people to the centralized pools of wealth.
“Savings are stored labor. To take care of ourselves, we must be allowed to ac- cumulate the results of our labor and use it to support ourselves over unproduc-
tive periods. The government that collects property or other taxes on stored labor is patently an institution of slavery.
“Another class of taxes are those used to control imports/exports. When we have obtained economic freedom, we’re going to be able to work a 4-hour day and have a standard of living and quality of living beyond most peoples imagination. Other nations can and will obtain the same results. But it can’t be done if we try to com- pete with technically-advanced nations overpopulated with wage slaves. We must therefore control our foreign trade to protect our own progress. As other nations turn toward freedom, we can establish free trade with them and operate as a single economy with a common standard of living. We have yet to establish one peaceful nation.
“Finally, there are special-use taxes based on the principle that if government performs a service for a particular group, they should pay for it. Gasoline taxes pay for roads, but the pressure group that results from pooling such funds has not led to intelligent environmental planning. Special-use taxes are no longer practical.
“One wonders why people have tolerated these burdens for countless centuries. The answer is two-fold: Those who hold power have always been those who have access to the unearned values. They have written the laws to suit themselves. Until very recent times they have kept the people illiterate. Even to this day, all preachers and most school teachers fear to discuss the three something-for-nothing deals. It’s only because these three causes of the centralization of wealth have brought us to the brink of crisis that the great power of wealth to perpetuate itself is slowly yield- ing to the force of necessity. For two-thirds of the world’s people, these ancient pre- rogatives of rulers have yielded to the force of bloody revolutions led by ostensibly altruistic dictatorships. Hopefully, an enlightened electorate will bring these institu- tions down in this country without the loss of political freedom won with so much blood through the centuries.
“What should be done to return these values to those who produced them? In- heritance and land rent value must be collected by the government. This will de- crease the sales tax required. The privately-collected tax on the earnings of a work- ing force in excess of interest is composed of increased technical efficiency, hu- man effort, and product demand. Heretofore, this has always accrued to ownership simply because they have hire, fire and bribe control over the management. The unions now contend for this value, while the white-collar workers who had a good deal to do with the increased earnings sit or the sidelines and take whatever is hand- ed out. Instead of the single inflationary force of profit-taking, we now also have an inflationary force from union wage demands. In monopolistic or near-monopolistic necessity industries, the reaching for profit and wages is passed on to consumers as inflated price. Of necessity, less-favored industries and unorganized workers fol- low along behind. This built-in inflation can be slowed by recession. It might be stopped by depression. But after recovering, it would start up again. The dollar is depreciating at a chaotic rate because we no longer have any semblance of a free market product evaluation. In order to solve this problem, we’re going to have to re-define the commodity called labor as human beings and redefine the investor as one enjoying the privilege of investing his savings at whatever interest rate the market will currently support. We must transfer the management of each compa- ny from the ownership board of directors to the working force. This will result in companies whose size rests solely on economic factors. No group of workers will remain in a conglomerate if it costs them money to do so. The better producers will pull out, and the massive pools of wealth that now dictate to government will be dispersed among small companies. We’ll have, for the first time since man left the barter economy, free market conditions. Of greatest value is the right of a working force to earn all it can earn. Under this incentive, there will soon be an abundance of goods in the marketplace. Since working hours will no longer be bound by the rigid
(most profitable) 8-hour day, they’ll work when there is work to do and cut hours back when the demand declines. Technical improvements will be used to shorten hours instead of eliminating people from the payroll. The security (now based on the total payroll) of the individual and the company will both be vastly increased. Interest rates will decline to true market values. Since supply and demand are both relatively constant factors and the rigid artificial factors will be gone from the econ- omy, the economic cycles will cease. Small business initiated and managed by one or two persons must be permitted to operate as they have been. These are some of the creative geese who lay the golden eggs. They probe all the diverse avenues for economic development. They develop products, services, and jobs. Of necessity, they must have full control over their initiative.
“Our economic troubles are man-made. They persist to this late, day in the his- tory of civilization because greed has maintained institutions of enslavement. Even our Constitution contained a provision for the return of run-away slaves. In the in- tervening 200 years, human populations have covered and been compressed into habitable lands. The means of destruction of human life have been perfected. We are at Armageddon. Either good will triumph over evil or all or most of humanity will be destroyed.
“Every conceivable economic system except economic freedom has been tried without bringing internal peace to any nation, let alone between nations. It is time to test whether or not we, freed of our shackles, can find peace In the United States, the first step toward that end is the establishment of Constitutional basis for constructing a free society.”
Hamaker includes a “Proposed General Revision of the Constitution of the United Slates of America” at the end of his book Survival of Civilization. In conclusion he says “the capital goods and personal property must be dispersed among all the people if they’re to attain financial security and the independence of action required to initi- ate an economy of abundance to replace the present hand-to-mouth rat-race economy of scarcity. To accomplish this, 100% of both earnings and savings must be protected by law against the greed of those who hold power. The autocracy of ownership in the cor- poration must be broken to enable the people who work there to become a flexible unit of production responsive to supply and demand.”
“Politicians talk of tax reform as a matter of closing loopholes and/or confisca- tory taxes at high levels of income. It’s nonsense. If they taxed 100% over $50,000 and closed all the loopholes, it would only accelerate the process of conglomera- tion of companies. Instead of taking profit, owners would leave it in the corpora- tion where it can be used to buy more companies. The power of wealth, not spend- ing money, is the prize sought. Railroad cars, yachts, airplanes, expense accounts, pseudo-retirement plans—all have been used by corporate ownership as private property exempt from personal income tax. The bill must be paid in the price of goods in the consumer marketplace.
“Politicians talk about inflation as a political argument at election time. Not one of them proposes measures which will get at the cause by stopping the flow of wealth away from the people, and the welfare government that sustains them, to the centralized pools of wealth which new own most of us. When they try to slow the inflation rate of the exploitative economy by arbitrarily raising interest rates, the re- sult is decreasing credit transactions and throwing marginal producers out of work. So great is the inflationary pressure from government debt, national corporations, and national unions that only a serious depression can significantly slow the rate of destruction of the dollar.
“Politicians talk about unemployment at election time (between them they talk of welfare and make-work). Meanwhile, small businesses fall like dominoes at the
rate of 10,000 a year. Economists in ivory towers have told politicians that free trade is the ideal international trade system. So politicians have authorized free trade because this is what their masters (the owners of the centralized pools of wealth) want. The expropriated earned surplus of numerous corporations has been used to ship whole plants and management personnel to countries where labor is cheap. The low-cost goods shipped back to this country have eliminated numerous industries. Even the steel and auto industries are finding they aren’t competitive. There’s been a large shift from production to service industries. In the process of going out of production, our real unemployment and underemployment has soared. The phony government statistic doesn’t give the true figure. The true figure in- cludes the forced retirees over 50 and the 40,000,000 under the poverty level. The government picks up the check for everything, including the price of wars to keep the “free world’s” people and resources safe for exploitation by the controllers of our centralized pool of wealth. The government, of course, passes the bill to the people who do the work. This ‘free trade’ has become one more tool by which rich get richer and poor get poorer.
“Politicians say we can’t have a depression again. The fact is that the only thing that has held a depression in check since WWII was an expanding economic system based primarily on electronics, constant war production, and an expanding federal and personal debt load. Environmental costs here, and cheap labor abroad, move industry and capital to foreign lands where the costs can be evaded. We are fed up with the cost of war. Government and personal credit have about run out.
“Politicians have no answers because the exploitative economy doesn’t work. As long as history has been recorded, nations have failed every few hundred years. Before the industrial revolution, inheritance and land speculation were primary fac- tors in bringing all the land into the hands of a few people. Those who owned the land had the power to run the government. To protect their ownership, they raised the land rent to raise armies and build castles. When the rent rose above 50% of the crop value, revolt and redistribution of the land always occurred. As trade devel- oped, the profit system was developed and again a share of the labor was confis- cated by ownership. As governments became more complex, they, too, learned to take a share of the labor. Thus the total tax at the point of revolt made up of the per- sonal levies by ownership plus the taxes levied by the government which serves the ownership class. If we add up the total taxes in this country, we have approximate- ly 35% taken by government plus an inexact amount represented by the burden of inheritors, land speculators, and profit in excess of a theoretical free market interest on money. The total tax is probably in excess of 50%.
“In 2 centuries, we’ve been sorely corrupted by a capitalistic system which in- cluded the 3 something-for-nothing deals, which in concert with an irrational ex- ponential equation causes the centralization of wealth and power. By the simple expedient of making our capitalistic system honest, we can gradually disperse the wealth among the people. In the hands of the people, it will support an excellent standard and quality of living. It will never accumulate to sums whose rate of in- crease reaches toward infinite quantity and infinite power—and arrives at infinite weakness in that the whole system can be destroyed by a single dollar accumulating its interest for a long period of time.
“All the industrialized ‘free nations’ which now contain large fortunes and funds operating at high rates of interest have the same problem. The bonanza of productivity resulting from widespread public education has peaked. The ever-pre- sent ability of the pools of wealth to accumulate ownership is now the dominant force. Within 10 to 20 years the industrialized “free nations” will all either establish economic freedom under law or they’ll be under dictatorship. The something-for- nothing deals have brought the funds of wealth in this country to the point where they’ve caused a 60% inflation in the last 15 years. If given our economic freedom,
we can work our way out of this mess. Without economic freedom, we’re going to lose our political freedom to some form of dictatorship because the economy doesn’t work.
“It is pure fantasy to believe that this economy can last for more than a few years without redistribution of wealth. About 15 U.S. manufacturers receive a total of 88% of all business profits. About the only money-making property left to take is the land, and they are gobbling it up. We mere mortals can’t compete with fortunes which enjoy the luxury of perpetual life. Nor can the monetary system withstand the inflation of funds increasing exponentially to become so powerful that they can fix profits and prices of necessities. Taxes must inevitably keep rising to pay for the palliatives used to soften the impact of the ever-more- numerous problems which arise as our nation and its environment degenerate. The working taxpayers, who in- evitably pay for everything, will eventually want to demand radical change.
“People of rank who are saying they know nothing about carbon dioxide and acid rain aren’t stupid. They’re either lying or using evasive language. Such a mas- sive conspiracy of silence is understandable when one realizes that ‘official’ an- nouncement of our situation would plunge the world into a financial debacle. They would no doubt like to have more time to prepare an alternate financial system to replace the international banking system. The trouble is, they’ve been wringing their hands over this for a half dozen years; meanwhile our chance of survival gets weaker and weaker.”
In defending their desires for “more studies of the problems,” our leaders are stalling for time; no one wants to tell the public the truth, so by stalling, and “not looking for evidence,” they just won’t “have to admit” that evidence exists.
101.4. ...And The Pursuit Of Hapiness
101.4.1 Human Interaction: It Takes Two to Tango
101.4.2 Peace on Earth, Good Will to All . . .
101.4.3 “Where never was heard a discouraging word, and the skies were not cloudy all day. . .”
Excerpts on the Nuclear Winter, by Carl Sagan (10/30/83):
101.4.1 Human Interaction: It Takes Two to Tango
Survival has a twin called Need, and they’re always together. We learn from the start that we need more than air, water and food—we need others. Very early on, people de- pend on each other for survival; in fact, we’re all born completely dependent, as in- fants, upon someone. In Western society, a conflict often arises between our natural hu- man need for others and our “quest for independence.” We have self-sufficiency, self- fulfillment, self-knowledge, self-mastery, self-control, self-indulgence, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-assurance, self-consciousness, self-defense, self-government, self-help, self-improvement, self-interest, self-pity, self-preservation, self-reliance, self-satisfac- tion and self-respect. We are self-centered, self-contained, self-evident, self-righteous, self-supporting, self-sustained and self-motivated!
In our world of human interaction, of Give and Take, closely-related to our twins Survival and Need are the triplets Power, Submission, and Opposition, although those of us who know Creativity prefer her companionship to that of the triplets. Most human in- teraction is related to survival/need, give/take, power/submission/opposition, friendship and/or creativity. We learn by trial-and-error to assert our individuality and begin to use our “power” as soon as we realize it’s there. Along with our needs, we develop wants and expectations.
Like fire and all forms of energy and tools known to us, our pride can be either a constructive or destructive force, depending upon how it’s used. Pride can be our incen- tive and motivating passion to do our best, to excel and to reach our highest possible achievements—or it can consume us and destroy us—it can become the biggest obstacle of all on our path to our higher selves, if we let it. If we can control it and use its power- ful energy for good, we will be able to harness its tremendous force to our advantage and it will work with us—if not, it will control us (as with anger and all other emotions) and work against us, because pride without wisdom and insight is like a boat without a sail or a car without steering. We have but to look at human history to see what pride without direction, guidance and conscience has done to us—or, more aptly—undone for us. We can either indulge in our anger, false pride and other emotions, and let them grow, or we can find something better to do with our time.
Because we reap what we sow, we’d do well to spend our time in positive pursuits. When we let go of false pride, or anger, we free ourselves to do something that can help us. Negative emotions are like a big, huge wave that hits us at the ocean’s edge. If we’ve ever romped in the surf at the seaside, we know that the best strategy is to “duck and let the wave pass over us” so that it crashes onto the shore, where its force is shattered.
On the other hand, fueling our negative emotions (as with concentrating on symp- toms of a healing crisis) lends strength to them, reinforces their control factor over our lives, making us less free. When we find ourselves thinking “so and so (or such and such) makes me so mad,” we must remember that it is we ourselves who make the deci- sion on what to do with our anger. It’s ironic that we so often find ourselves thinking we don’t have “enough” time for this or that, but we’ll turn around and burn up twice the vi- tal life energy in anger or other negative emotions—most illogical! Only positive action will help us to change things for the positive. We should use our emotions for fuel, not our life energy itself.
101.4.2 Peace on Earth, Good Will to All . . .
We’ve reached a point of stagnation on a planetary level, where international re- lations are concerned. We’re all posed and “ready,” weapons-in-hand, all trying to act tough and scare each other into peace (or whatever) by threat of possible force. If you’ve ever watched two tomcats nose-to-nose, making their growning, siren-type sounds, you’ll notice that neither one wants to be the first to back down at that point; they’re now stuck at this crucial point of a “final confrontation.”
We’re like these cats, making our most impressive, mean, scary threats, and we’re so deep into it that we’re afraid to trust one another. We’ve heard all the threats and made our own, and we’ve defined ourselves as “enemies,” when the reality is that we’d still be better off in the kitchen of a Russian family than with our local mugger here at home. The enemies we fail to recognize are often more dangerous to us in the everyday sense than those we’ve been told to fear. In any case, we’ve built the wall between us, and built elaborate “defense” mechanisms for self-“protection”; in fact, as we’ve said, we’ve done such a thorough job of building weapons that our self-“defense” now threat- ens self-destruction as well. We’ve built the wall by a lack of understanding and lack of cooperation, by fear, mistrust, and refusal to communicate honestly. When we do com- municate, our messages are often confusing: we stand with a loaded gun (so to speak) pointed at each other’s noses, and our voices are saying, “hey, let’s be friends and talk this over.” No one dares to be first to put the gun down, and our history of war and vi- olence certainly doesn’t help to allay our fears. As long as we can’t believe each other and trust each other, the tension persists.
We’ve arrived at the last stop on this bus, as it were—the end of the line. It’s gone round and round in circles, and each time we’ve found ourselves back where we started; this route has had little to offer for our spiritual evolution as creatures of light. It’s time now to decide whether to get off the bus and make a transfer to a new journey, or whether
to head once again for the “terminal.” A 1984 news item said “the world will spend $1 trillion for weapons other military purposes by next year,” (according to the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency). From “less” than $300,000,000,000 in 1972, spend- ing rose to $820,000,000,000 in 1982, and was expected to reach $970,000,000,000 in 1984, thus heading for the $1,000,000,000,000 mark (I’m purposely writing these fig- ures out with 0’ s because they make more of a visual impression than the respective terms “million, billion, trillion,” and so on). The weapons industry is obviously doing a booming business (if you can pardon a bad pun) in an age where funds for positive human endeavors are so often said to be “dwindling, lacking, unavailable, or whatever.” Economies in every nation are involved in sales and purchases of these instruments of death, certainly not a wholesome foundation on which to base our economies. With nu- clear, chemical, environmental and/or biological war now possible, what we’re seeing is global weapons pollution of the highest order, and the world’s increasing violence and power struggles are symptomatic of ailing minds and spirits that result from pollution of our human values of love and cooperation, worldwide.
Studies indicate that testing of these weapons has already taken its toll on innocent victims everywhere. Thousands of civilians have filed suits in Nevada and other areas, citing that they’ve been exposed to deadly radioactive fallout. Hundreds of atmospheric and underground tests have taken place (not all even announced)—we’ve been told not to trust “foreigners,” but it becomes obvious that we can’t even trust our health, lives and safety to our own government either. As just one example of the magnitude of potential and real danger of such tests, consider the following excerpt from Hamaker’s Survival of Civilization, page 75:
“In 1972 the Atomic Commission tested a 5-megaton bomb a mile below sea level on the Aleutian island of Amchitka. The Aleutian chain is a continental heater and the Bering Sea is slowly being raised to plateau status. The underground bomb test had the ingredients for a total change in the world’s weather. Fortunately a group of senators headed by Senator Phillip Hart persuaded the AEC to stop the testing.”
An underground test in Nevada (2/81) was the “568th reported at the Yucca Flats” (northwest of Las Vegas) and the “353rd announced since atmospheric testing was stopped (by the U.S.) in 1963.” Where does all this radiation go? A May 1984 news article talks of suits by Nevada residents who say the government knew or should have known the fallout was dangerous (atomic tests from 1951-1962) and was negligent in not protecting people downwind from the Nevada Test Site.
A January 1984 news article says “the Reagan administration has been concealing an unknown number of nuclear explosions at the underground test site in Nevada, signi- fying a break with a 1975 policy of announcing all explosions.”
Hold on to your seats for this one: An official at the Energy Department said “the policy of announcing only the larger tests was adopted a year ago for convenience. There was simply no reason to announce them all. The size of some of the tests was such that they didn’t even create a ripple. Nobody could feel them off the test site. It takes a lot of work to announce each of those tests. And it was information that was not germane to the general public.” There you have it folks. Don’t fret—“what you don’t know can’t hurt you,” right? A ripple? (Just because a person doesn’t “feel” those little old cancer cells start to work in his body, doesn’t make them any less dangerous.) The article concludes in saying that since Reagan administration took office, the federal budget for nuclear ting has almost doubled, going to $388,000,000 (1984) from 201,000,000 in 1981.” Pa- cific islanders have borne much of the brunt of the nuclear age; over 200 weapons tests have been conducted in the region, and people exposed to the fallout have been plagued with high rates of thyroid cancer, miscarriage, stillbirth, leukemia and other health prob- lems. When the U.S. conducted its largest hydrogen bomb explosion at Bikini Atoll in
the Marshall Islands (March 1, 1954), hundreds of islanders, 28 American meteorolo- gists, and 23 Japanese fishermen were exposed to high amounts of radioactive fallout.
Our weapons aren’t merely stockpiled in “safe little cubbyholes for some future use”—some have already killed victims. Physicians and others have banded together to warn the superpowers of the dangers of even “limited” nuclear wars: uncountable burn victims, too many to handle, and so on. We’ve all heard the details and are well aware of the dangers. Now we hear talk of “space” stations and “star wars,” of studies to deter- mine feasibility of dumping nuclear waste in space—when and where will the madness end?
101.4.3 “Where never was heard a discouraging word, and the skies were not
cloudy all day. . .”
Scientists have now alerted the world to the latest nuclear danger: that of a “nuclear winter,” with many of the negative consequences from increased cloud cover that we’ve already discussed in reference to potential global climate changes towards colder condi- tions due to excessive CO2 and other factors.
News of March 3, 1985, was that “the Pentagon has accepted as valid a theory that nuclear war could generate enough smoke and dust to blot out the sun and cause severe climatic cooling.” The 17-page report was the military’s first assessment of the theory that detonation of nuclear bombs could cause: “a devastating nuclear winter around the planet and drop temperatures as much as 75 degrees, first in the Northern Hemisphere and then southward as the smoke spread with the wind. Land and water would freeze and cause harsh global effects unrelated to radiation hazards. The upshot, they argued, would be the extinction of a significant proportion of the Earth’s animals and plants, possibly including the human race.”
An earlier news article (1/20/85) compares the cloud cover with those of past vol- canic eruptions known to cause climate changes:
“We have established that volcanic eruptions have an effect on the climate, and enough of them happening at the same time, like exploding nuclear bombs, could have a significant effect. The most famous example of the effect of a volcano on climate was the eruption in 1815 of an Indonesian volcano (Tambora) which last- ed three months, the largest eruption in historical times, producing huge quantities of ash and dust that were carried around the world in the stratosphere. The parti- cles sufficiently deflected sunlight to produce what historians later called the year without a summer in 1816. In New England that year, there was widespread snow in June and frosts every month through the summer. Throughout the world it was unusually cold. Crop failures caused food shortages in Ireland and Wales; that’s the most famous example. It was the first time a relationship was shown between vol- canoes and weather.” (Fred Bullard, geology professor, University of Texas.)
“Average annual temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere could be lowered to well below freezing for a month or longer,” is another description of potential climatic change. Other studies think extended periods of freezing would be unlikely. Again, everyone has a slightly varying opinion in these matters, but it should be obvious after our lengthy discussion in the last lesson on carbon dioxide excesses and their relation to the Ice Age cycles—plus indications of climatic extremes worldwide—that such cloud covers (added to our current excess CO2-generated clouds) could indeed produce dra- matic changes. Here’s another description: “dust generated by nuclear explosions still could block enough sunlight to drop summer temperatures to near freezing and destroy food crops for survivors of the initial blast and radiation effects.” Bullard said recent volcanic activity hasn’t produced anything like the Tambora eruption, but has “contin- ued a general world cooling trend that started with the eruption of a West Indies volcano
in 1902. Dust and ash from the eruption of Mount St. Helens in Washington in 1980 didn’t rise high enough to enter the stratosphere or have much effect on world climate, although the dust still is circulating in the upper atmosphere. But dust from the eruption of El Chicon in Mexico in April 1982, did enter the stratosphere and is adding to the cooling,” he said. “It means,” he continues, “that frosts could come earlier than usual.” The news source then says, “Carbon dioxide from auto pollution in the upper atmos- phere often is cited as producing a warming ‘greenhouse effect’ by intensifying sunlight. But Bullard said the Earth actually is in a cooling trend because of volcanic eruptions throughout this century, generated by dust from the volcanoes in the stratosphere, and there’ve been a significant number of eruptions in the past few years to help it along. It’s really only since scientists began using computers to analyze the changes that we’ve noticed the effects.”
Calculations of the nuclear winter concept have been made independently by several groups of scientists in the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and by now, the theory (if not its details) is probably agreed upon by scientists in other countries as well.
“Into the eternal darkness, into fire, into ice.”
—Dante, The Inferno
Excerpts on the Nuclear Winter, by Carl Sagan (10/30/83):
“The results of our calculations astonished us. The amount of sunlight at the ground was reduced to a few percent of normal—much darker, in daylight, than in a heavy overcast and too dark for plants to make a living from photosynthesis. At least in the Northern Hemisphere, where the great preponderance of strategic tar- gets lies, an unbroken and deadly gloom would persist for weeks. Even more un- expected were the temperatures calculated. In the baseline case, land temperatures, except for narrow strips of coastline, dropped to minus 25 degrees Celsius (-13 de- grees F) and stayed below freezing for months—even for a summer war. (Because the atmospheric structure becomes much more stable as the upper atmosphere is heated and the lower air is cooled, we may have severely undererestimated how long the cold and dark would last.) The oceans, a significant heat reservoir, would not freeze, however, but because temperatures would drop so catastrophically, vir- tually all crops and farm animals, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, would be de- stroyed, as would most varieties of uncultivated or undomesticated food supplies. Most of the human survivors would starve. In addition, the amount of radioactive fallout is much more than expected; in long-term fallout, fine radioactive particles lofted into the stratosphere would descend about a year later, after most of the im- mediate, shorter-lived radioactivity had decayed. However, the radioactivity carried into the upper atmosphere (but not as high as the stratosphere) seems to have been largely forgotten, etc. Carrying of dust and soot from the Northern to the South- ern Hemisphere would thin the clouds some over the North, but then only making things worse in the Southern Hemisphere.
“In summary, the overall conclusion seems to be agreed upon: there are severe and previously unanticipated global consequences of nuclear war—subfreezing temperatures in a twilit radioactive gloom lasting for months or longer. If scientists have underestimated the effects and amounts of fallout, didn’t know fireballs from high-yield thermonuclear explosions could deplete the ozone layer and missed al- together the possible climatic effects of nuclear dust and smoke, what else have we overlooked? Nuclear war is now a theoretical problem for us, for it certainly isn’t amenable to experimentation! It is highly likely that there are even further adverse effects that no one has yet been wise enough to anticipate or recognize. With billi- ons of lives at stake, where does conservatism lie—in assuming that the results will be better than we calculate, or worse? Many species of plants and animals would become extinct. Vast numbers of surviving humans would starve to death. The del-
icate ecological relations that bind together organisms on Earth in a fabric of mutu- al dependency would be torn, perhaps irreparably. There is little question that our global civilization would be destroyed. The human population would be reduced to prehistoric levels, or less. Life for any survivors would be extremely hard. And there seems to be a real possibility of the extinction of the human species. It is now almost 40 years since the invention of nuclear weapons ... men and machines are fallible, and fools and madmen can exist and rise to power. Concentrating always on the near future, we have ignored the long-term consequences of our actions ... fortunately it is not yet too late. We can safeguard the planetary civilization and the human family if we so choose.”
So, if we don’t already have enough reasons for not embarking into a nuclear war of any proportion, here we have another. Nature will insist that we see the truth that what we do to her, or to others, we do to ourselves: we could literally destroy ourselves in seeking to destroy another in any size nuclear war.
War is. indeed, hell—whereas peace is heaven on earth. Ever since time immemorial it has been our dream. Now peace is more than a necessity for survival: it has become a reality that is just within our reach. With just one more burst of evolution of human consciousness, we will grasp it and hold on to it for dear life. Our most precious trea- sure—world peace—will become a reality. In protecting everyone, we protect ourselves best of all, and the best protection comes in the form of peace. Because we are all one and interconnected, we are beginning to realize that in destroying anyone, we destroy ourselves.
Einstein: ‘The bomb changed everything but the way we think.“
Our old ways of thinking of ourselves as separate and divided have become obsolete, and if we don’t change our tune soon, we’ll risk becoming obsolete with them. Our weapons systems are somewhat like a vicious watchdog that we’ve chained up to “pro- tect” us, one that’s become so mean since it was full-grown, that we’ve begun to fear it ourselves, and don’t dare let it loose or touch it for fear of its bite. As long as it’s chained, we try our best to keep out of its way and ignore it, but we know it would at- tack an innocent person, or ourselves, if it were let off the chain. Some people might feel comfortable with such a dog, while others would see that we’ve created a monster.
War is our last link with the barbarism of our past. It is “the highest form of criminal acts, grave offenses against morality and social behavior” (David Stry); “when an indi- vidual kills another, the legal systems bitterly condemn such acts, but if done in a whole- sale fashion by nations (artificial, political units), accompanied by marching bands, flags, uniforms, and propaganda, then medals and decorations are given out for bravery ...” War is the ultimate use of force. Perhaps our outmoded belief that it can “solve” any of our problems is as foolish as our belief that medical drugs can force (“cure”) our bod- ies into health. Just as health alone produces healthful living, so too does peace alone (not war and weapons) produce harmony and cooperation, an environment in which life and all its creatures may flourish.
As long as our world “leaders” keep us separate and divided, as long as they encour- age us to remain at odds with one another, they will succeed in holding us captive in warlike thoughts or endeavors. Only we can remove the final obstacle that keeps us from peaceful coexistence: this separation of human beings worldwide that keeps us from see- ing one another as human. Once we see each other as human, we will do unto others as we would do unto ourselves. Pacifism isn’t a new idea. Although we’ve reached a crisis point in international world relations, in Psychology Today, June 1983, Erikson says:
“If you study the lives of very creative people, you’ll find that at times they all have a terrible sense of stagnation. And the interaction of such opposites is char- acteristic of every stage of the life cycle ... I cannot help thinking of how nuclear weapons have done away with the boundaries of whole continents, and how, with
their threat of global destruction, they call for the recognition of man’s indivisible ‘specieshood.’
Gandhi’s pacifists marched unarmed toward their attackers.
... In order for nonviolent behavior to be effective it must be shocking—it has to shake up the violent opponent peacefully. In that situation, what is more impor- tant: That you are an Indian? That you are a soldier? That you are an officer? That you are a human being? It has to come to the point where suddenly these other peo- ple become human to you. Then you can no longer keep hitting them. Incidentally, it’s amazing how American audiences are taking to the (Gandhi) movie, and these are not intellectuals. The movie about a great man’s use of nonviolent resistance reaches people who do not belong to special peace organizations, and it makes them thoughtful. That’s why it’s such an important film. I honestly believe that it focuses on something our Judeo-Christian culture has not yet quite understood and has not used, and will probably have to face: the invention of nonviolent tactics to get out of the nuclear dilemma.
“Human beings spend an awful lot of their imagination on defining just what others they don’t care for. The danger in rejectivity, that is, the rejecting of other people, other groups, or other nations, is that it leads to what I have called ‘pseu- dospeciation.’ People lose the sense of being one species and try to make other kinds of people into a different and mortally dangerous species, one that doesn’t count, one that isn’t human. Other groups are considered to be a different species, and you can kill them without feeling that you have killed your own kind. People aren’t conscious of doing this, and that’s why it’s so dangerous. The paradox is that pseudospecieshood as a sense of representing the best in humankind binds a group together and inspires loyalty, heroism and discipline, and the very existence of hu- manity depends on the solution of that paradox. What’s important now is a convic- tion that one’s culture and ‘system’ can go on living in a world that includes one’s former enemies.”
When asked if he thinks our odds of developing an identity that encompasses the whole species are any better than they were 15 years ago, Erikson replies: “Absolutely. After all, we are one species.”
Years ago, someone used force to get his way, and so began a long history of people getting what they could, when they could, if they could, because they could, no matter how they did. We could philosophize endlessly on the moral aspects involved, but the fact remains: we’re long overdue for a change in attitude. When Christopher Columbus set sail into the unknown, he had to take a chance. Every explorer, inventor and chal- lenger of traditions has to take some risks. The Wright Brothers had to get up the nerve to take that first flight—how many of us would have found that courage? As our world shrinks in size, there are fewer new horizons left to discover, yet we’ve seen in our dis- cussions of the mind and consciousness (to say nothing of outer space), that there are many dimensions of reality left to explore, albeit intangible or distant ones. One such re- ality is that we can live together in peace, if we make the combined commitment to such a world. We’ve never even tried to explore this incredible dimension of human reality, so largely unknown to us in our history, and yet so fondly dreamed of and hoped for and sought after by so many! It’s time to really give peace a chance, to explore the unknown territory of working out differences in a new way. We have everything to gain in doing so, and everything to lose if we don’t.
Let’s finish our discussion of peace with a short story:
Once upon a time there was a big boy and a little boy. The big boy figured that he could do whatever he wanted since he was the big one. One day a little boy was walking down the road, and the big boy called out to him, saying, “who do you think you are walking down my road?”
“The same person who walks down every road,” replied the little boy, without even slowing his pace.
Well, this was too much for the big boy, of course, because people didn’t just walk down his road, especially not if they were little, because they knew what that would mean. It made the big boy angry just to think about it. In fact, the more he thought about it, the angrier he got. Every angry thought was a brick being laid in a wall just behind the big boy, but he was so busy looking at the object of his anger—the little boy on the road—that he did not see the wall that he would have to face when he would finally turn around, nor imagine how long it would take to climb over this wall once he had built it. His angry thoughts seemed like endless fuel for the fire burning within him, and he. stood in front of the little boy and refused to let him pass. “No one walks on my road,” he said.
“This is my road too,” replied the little boy. The big boy could not believe what he was hearing. He figured he’d just have to show that little boy whose road it was.
The little boy was thinking the same thing! Then he looked at the big boy, at the wall behind him, and at the look in the big boy’s eyes. Maybe there were bigger boys, boys bigger than this big boy, boys who could walk on this road without fear, boys who would challenge bigger boys. But he also saw that the anger became stronger, every time they all let it grow.
He knew laughter. Even the big boys liked to laugh, after all. He wondered what was funny to this big boy, the one whose eyes were empty of life, whose voice echoed bitter- ness, whose face was etched in lines of hardness, and whose very being seemed to defy all happiness.
“I choose to be your friend,” said the little boy, for long ago he’d chosen to become a peacemaker. Perhaps this would be a good joke for the big boy, and he would laugh.
“What would I do with a little friend? sneered the big boy.
“I am a mirror,” said the little boy, “and whoever looks into me will see himself,” for lack of anything better to say. Maybe this would be funny to the big boy—surely he knew that all roads went to the same place. Surely he knew that they were the “same person.” Maybe he would see the wall behind him when he looked into the mirror in the little boy’s eyes. Or maybe not.
Maybe the little boy could say, “look behind you!” and run by real fast when the big boy looked, well, true, it’s an old trick. A big boy might expect to see something big, though—perhaps his fears were bigger too!
While the little boy was busy pondering what strategy to use, the big boy was begin- ning to get a little bored. It wasn’t easy to fight with someone who had no intention of fighting, but he wanted the little boy to get what was coming to him—and with this last angry thought, the final brick was laid on the wall. They had now reached the moment of truth.
The little boy grasped it in an instant and ran forward toward the light. The big boy was close behind, but he ran headlong into his wall!
“Hell is truth seen too late.”
—John Locke
Article #1: “Who Is At Fault?”
Freedom Includes Our Right to a Pure Environment
Freedom Includes Our Right to a Pure Environment
Living creatures have a right to a clean environment, and everyone who pollutes it is violating this sacred right. It’s time to insist on quality, worldwide. We will all benefit if we “clean up our act.” We will all suffer if we don’t.
In scanning our environmental problems quickly, the common thread noticed is that it is impossible to “blame” illness on any one particular factor or hazard, because some side effects take years to manifest and because all bodily conditions represent the sum total of the individual’s diet and lifestyle habits. In other words, it’s as if a young child who’s blindfolded in the game hide-and-seek suddenly gets a swift kick in the behind from one of his playmates, but he doesn’t know which one. He has only a sore bottom to show for the experience. This is the ultimate legal loophole, and a rather convenient sit- uation for all the thousands of manufacturers of chemical products and other toxic sub- stances, because finger-pointing years down the line is virtually impossible. It’s a shame that what this boils down to is that some people are only honest if they “have” to be, for example if they’ll be “caught,” otherwise there’s no guarantee. Whenever you meet a person you can really trust, treasure this person, for honor is a precious human quality, and people who don’t have a price are special in our money-oriented times.
We all want security, safety, guarantees, and assurances nowadays, but the fact is that real security involves more than money, the roof over our heads, and so on—real secu- rity is ours when we are healthy, hen we have access to the truth and to freedom, when we have lends and people we can trust around us, when we have hope ... there are no price tags or monetary values to be put on real security, when you get right down to it. Security also means a clean environment, which brings us back to our question of who is responsible. Not only is blame difficult to place, but another thing we’ll soon notice is that when researchers or doctors are at a loss to explain a problem or “cure” an illness, they often seek, at least, to fix the blame somewhere (or elsewhere). Patients expect an- swers from doctors, and the public demands results from researchers. Remember when you were in school and you didn’t know the answer to one of those essay questions, but you managed to fill 20 lines of paper anyway with something less than the pertinent details and with much imagination? No one wants to come up empty-handed— if they don’t know, they’ll make something up on short notice. With all the misinformation giv- en us, blame is even harder still to come by.
Because any bodily condition is caused by factors too numerous for our doctors or “experts” to know or mention, we never get the whole story from them anyway. We’re always left with the task of synthesizing the information one way or the other.
All this vagueness also raises some serious questions about our personal freedom to have a pure environment. It’s obvious that “blaming” and “suing” aren’t enough (they don’t always change the situation), and we can’t even know who to blame or sue most of the time. We can’t bring every unseen housewife to court for spraying with an ozone-de- pleting aerosol can, we can’t sue the sun for ultraviolet skin cancer rays, nor can we sue all the motorists for increasing our CO2 levels. We can’t afford the time it takes to blame all the people responsible for the state of our world today, and even if we could spare several lifetimes to make a list of guilty persons, it wouldn’t remedy our ailing earth. So, what exactly are we free to do? We’re free to do what we can.
Article #2: Radiation Hazards
“The hazards of Everyday Radiation,” by Elisabeth Rosenthal (Science Digest, 4/84): “There is no doubt that radiation can trigger cancer. Today, Americans are exposed to more low-level radiation than ever before. We get it from X rays or while traveling in an airplane. It seeps from nuclear power plants, from the homes we live in. It rises from the ground beneath us and descends from the sky above. Some scientists say this isn’t a serious threat, but others say that if we don’t guard against further radiation exposure, we may be saddled with a cancer rate of epidemic proportions. All agree there is no such thing as ‘safe’ radiation. Many radiation-induced tumors don’t appear until 35 to 40 years after exposure; evidence suggests cumulative lifetime exposure also affects tumor growth.
“The loudest voice crying disaster belongs to John Gofman, professor emeritus at the University of California. Gofman discovered uranium 233 with Glenn Seaborg in 1941; he isolated the world’s first workable quantity of plutonium for the Manhattan Project; and so on. 1983 had an updated version of his 908-page analysis of radiation risks, Radi- ation and Human Health (New York, Pantheon books). It contains some terrifying pre- dictions. For example, Gofman estimates that if, in the U.S., we were to produce our energy fully from plutonium and could contain the substance with 99.99% effectiveness, we’d still produce tens of thousands of deaths from cancer annually. He predicts that 20% of workers in nuclear plants exposed to only one rad a year for 20 years will die prematurely from cancer. He also estimates that plutonium fallout from all the nuclear weapons testing to date will produce 950,000 deaths from lung cancer worldwide. (Ital- ics mine. Imagine what a “surprise lottery” that amounts to for so many of us.) Gorman bases his conclusions on a variety of studies, beginning with those made on the 82,000 survivors of the 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Among those survivors, at first, there seemed to be no signs of cancer. But in the early 1950s, there was a rise in leukemia among the survivors and in birth defects among their children. In the early 1960s, there was a slight rise in the number of tumors, not all of them cancerous. In 1974, the U.S. National Cancer Institute calculated that only 100 of the 82,000 survivors had died from cancer caused by radiation exposure—not a very impressive number. But, in the past decade, the cancer rate among survivors has continued to rise. It is now believed that the survivors received an average of 25-30 rads of radiation, or a mean of 28 rads, and, says Gofman, many are surprised to find that the average dose of the exposed Japanese atom bomb survivors is comparable to that received during some common diagnostic exams in American medicine.” (Keep in mind that today’s weapons are much stronger too, but it’s still interesting to note how quickly we could accumulate doses like the Japanese in our day-to-day life.) Remember, again, this is our purpose of discussing another un- pleasant item from our Pandora’s Box: because we live in these times we, as “healers,” must be aware of how all factors interrelate to influence life on earth, and that certainly includes radiation and its effects. Again, our lesson’s space cannot cover what is a whole topic in itself, but this serves to remind us to keep our eyes open (in working with people to attain good health) for the things we can’t see, such as radiation or other exposure to toxins or chemicals, as well as looking out for dietary factors in physical symptoms and manifestations of the body’s healing process. This is obviously difficult work—to assess a person’s state of health in terms of so many possible types of (invisible) exposure-it requires a good strong sense of intuition and understanding. There is no one concrete, definitive way to “compute” a person’s total lifestyle impacts—this skill can’t really be taught—although much information can be shared, and much knowledge can be taught/ learned, we must still develop this in ourselves, as best we can. If we are sensitive and sincere, we can tune ourselves in to the nonphysical world “beyond” our bodies. (Re- member, too, the admonition to heal thyself.)
Gofman continues: “In light of these numbers, and given the rising cancer rate among the survivors, the dosage of radiation given to most Americans in diagnostic x- ray exams is unnecessarily high, and if the dosage were cut by one-third, we’d avoid 1,000,000 deaths over the next 30 years.” Some scientists think he overestimated risks, but common sense tells me I’d rather overestimate a risk and be more cautious than to take chances, since no one seems to agree on definite risk factors. I for one would pre- fer not to become a guinea pig or a future statistic. Any figure given for “the number of deaths possible in 30 years” is bound to be somewhat arbitrary, whether low or high, be- cause unpredictable factors can enter into our predictions later. More important than the exact numbers of “nameless victims” counted is the remedying of problems before more victims are found.
One of the common things said by people faced with life-threatening health crises is “that you never think it’ll happen to you” or “you never realize what it’s like till it’s happened to you, or someone you know” ... Something has to “bring it all home” before
most of us realize (and or admit) it’s time to do some changing. When the roulette wheel in this “surprise” lottery spins, and you’re holding your breath that your number won’t come up, it becomes more and more evident that the statistics are not nameless or face- less anymore. We all have a chance in this one, whether we like it or not, so we may as well learn how to really play the game, instead of letting someone else spin the wheel while we wait for our number to come up “before our time.”
It’s better to be alert, awake and ever-watchful of our earth’s rhythms, sensitive to her very heartbeat itself. When “experts” disagree on a problem’s details, the advantage is that we then question their opinions. No truths are finite and stationary—everything is in the process of change, subject to constant alteration. Vigilance on our part also helps us to see through patronizing assurances lightly tossed our way by the no-risk and low- risk radiation salespersons who’d rather not rock the boat, and whose sources of funding often encourage low-risk assessments that protect manufacturers and their investments.
Gofman writes, “in a fully developed ‘nuclear economy,’ radon gas coming from the refuse left over after mining uranium should lead to 3.9 lung-cancer deaths per year in an equilibrium population of 250 million, acknowledging that this is one-thousandth the death rate caused by naturally-occurring radon,” but he also notes that the damaging ma- terial has a half-life of 80,000 years, which means it can kill for 115,400 years. There- fore, he says, a fully operational nuclear power industry would eventually cause 115,400 times 3.9 deaths—or 450,060. But these would “occur over a time frame more than 20 times longer than that of recorded history.” X rays and gamma rays are electromagnetic and are simply packets of energy. Alpha and beta rays are streams of charged, subatomic particles. When they rip into our bodies, they dislodge particles of atoms in our cells that carom about with enormous energy; these hopped-up particles behave like the proverbial bull in a china shop; they tear around, breaking bonds and chromosomes and disrupting cell reproduction—such damage may well be the initiating event in cancer.
“It took years for doctors to realize that radiation is dangerous, and there are many old horror stories as a result of this lack of understanding. Fifty years ago, when den- tists began x-raying teeth, they would often use their hands to hold the film in their pa- tients’ mouths. Many of these dentists contracted skin and bone cancer that began with lesions on their fingers. It is more difficult to collect accurate data on low-dose expo- sures, of course. Background radiation of all kinds exists nowadays.” One estimate says most Americans are exposed to an average of 0.2 rads a year, or 210 millirads. (Re- member this figure is an “average” and is arbitrary.) Of this typical individual exposure, about 28 millirads come from outer space in the form of cosmic rays (that’s at sea lev- el—at higher elevations, where the thinning atmosphere deflects fewer rays, the num- ber rises; estimates range from 2 millirads extra at 1000 feet to 70 extra per year at 9000 feet. Perhaps 50 millirads come from the natural decay of radioactive elements in the Earth. Certain areas have measurably more than others. (Leadville, Colorado, res- idents, more than 1.5 miles up, absorb 125 millirads of cosmic rays per year.) “Your home could be radioactive, too. Contractors occasionally purchase debris from uranium mines to use as filler in construction materials. Alternatively, the rock from which your house is constructed could have been mined from a quarry with naturally-high radiation. The Department of Energy is beginning a 3-year survey of 8,000 buildings that are be- lieved to deliver excessive radiation. And if you live in an area rich in radioactive ele- ments, your water could be radioactive as well. Such water spraying out of shower heads gives an ambient concentration that can approach occupational limits. Fallout from all the nuclear-weapons testing to date is said to give us each about 4.4 millirads per year (in 1963, when testing was above ground, it was 13 millirads per year). Nuclear power plants give us each about another millirad. Add almost 3 millirads of cosmic radiation for each hour you fly, because the atmosphere is thinner up there. (A flight attendant on the Boston-New York shuttle, for example, gets an extra 250 millirads per year.) Then, if you sleep next to a radioluminescent clock, add another 9 millirads per year. And some dentures are coated with a uranium-and-cirium glaze to make them sparkle. One esti-
mate figures this gives your mouth about 3 rads annually, localized. Color TVs are said to give about 0.48 millirads per year (if you watch 24 hours a day, otherwise proportion- ately less). The display screens on personal computers are the same kind of so-called ‘safe” cathode-ray tubes. Some occupations increase your risks; you absorb a-lot more radiation if you’re a uranium miner, a radiologist or a worker in a nuclear plant.” (I think we can assume most of our students aren’t.) “But the biggest radioactive boost most of us get comes from diagnostic X rays. A 1970 survey found 65% of the U.S. population had ‘at least one x-ray exam that year.’ Collectively we receive about 240 million x-ray exams annually. Ordinary chest X rays require about 30 millirads, and a single dental X ray needs 300 millirads. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a standard X ray. One radiological physicist says national studies of x-ray trends have shown, factors of variation greater than a hundred: ‘it’s extremely worrying.’ Mammography tests have been found with exposures as ‘low’ as 300 millirads and high as 3,000. A range of den- tal x-ray machines was found in a Department of Health, Education and Welfare study in 1976 to deliver 100 to 5,000 millirads. The average was one rad, or more than three times the ‘necessary’ exposure. The largest x-ray doses come from fluoroscopies, com- monly used to find ulcers, tumors and other abnormalities in the gastrointestinal tract. In a GI series, a patient drinks a solution containing barium (which X rays can’t penetrate) or gets the barium in an enema, and an x-ray machine takes series of photos amounting to as much as 10 minutes of radiation. Compared to chest films, Gofman says, barium meals are a horror show—if the doctor is particularly solicitous, the patient could have his ulcer checked every 6 months—that’s a lot of radiation.
“Few doctors or dentists even know exactly how much radiation their machines de- liver. Then, x-ray doses can be increased for other reasons; the overworked technician might juice up the radiation dose to ‘save the time’ required to mix a new batch of de- veloper.”
We must also question schemes to “dump toxic and nuclear wastes at sea,” because leaking barrels have been found (and so on—space here doesn’t permit a detailed ac- count of problems in this area, and most of us are aware of them by now). The radioac- tivity in the sea, if it works its way into the ecosystem there, will become a part of the chain from lower to higher life forms, as each larger fish (etc.) ingests a more concentrat- ed dose than the one before it. We already have a problem controlling toxic substances on land, and an even bigger problem with ethics on land or sea—when “there’s no one looking” who knows who will dump what where?
Natural hot springs can be another source of radiation. Several hundred of the world’s geothermal springs are radioactive (their waters flow through radioactive rocks), and many of these are popular “health” spas. “Visitors to Luchon, France, drink the water and inhale gas that can be 15,000 times more radioactive than normal air.” In the U.S., radioactive springs include Hot Springs, Arkansas (“low” levels), and Alham- bra Hot Springs, Montana, “with high levels that could constitute potential hazards to health,” says the U.S. Geological Survey.
The news of May 19, 1985 carries a story of “a natural environmental hazard of uncertain but grave dimensions discovered beneath the meadows of eastern Pennsylva- nia: state and federal investigators have found that many houses are contaminated with radon, a radioactive gas that causes lung cancer after prolonged exposure. Levels in some houses were the highest ever recorded in the U.S.—in one eastern county, nearly 40% had unsafe levels of radon. But the risk may be spread far beyond this semirural county. The radon is seeping up through the soil from uranium deposits in the earth be- low. Officials believe the radioactive contamination varies from place to place, depend- ing on the permeability of the soil and other factors. Parts of New Jersey and New York are also part of the Reading Prong, a geologic formation with uranium in it. Pennsylva- nia officials are telling residents that the radon does not constitute an immediate health risk, although it may pose serious long-term problems.” More houses still need to be ex- amined; one New Jersey Environmental Protection spokesman described the situation as
“an entirely new area of concern that nobody even guessed at six months ago.” A Uni- versity of Pittsburgh professor of physics says virtually every state has areas of radon contamination that might pose a health threat. “It is really a worldwide problem,” he said.
Sheldon Meyers, director of the office of radiation at the federal Environmental Pro- tection Agency, agreed that “there was no doubt radon caused cancer,” but (as usual) the exact dangers are still “not certain.” One family’s living room had the “highest radiation level found in the U.S. from radon contamination; at that level, the chances of contract- ing lung cancer over a lifetime of exposure are 100%, experts say. They moved, but a nearby neighbor was told that her house showed 2.12 working levels of radon, and that the level was “equivalent to smoking 22 packs of cigarettes a day! At twenty-two packs, “hazardous to your health” becomes quite an understatement!
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