Dead zones are reversible:

The Black Sea dead zone, previously the largest dead zone in the world, largely disappeared between 1991 and 2001 after fertilizers became too costly to use following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the demise of centrally planned economies in Eastern and Central Europe. Fishing has again become a major economic activity in the region.

What can we do? Eat fresh, local, organic products! We have to end this vicious cycle!

Imagine picking up the morning paper, coffee cup in hand. You open it and see nothing but good news. The headline story tells of a cat rescued from a tree. No stories about decaying social systems (social systems, like fruit, begin to decay after creation). No accounts of problems caused by increased wealth --- no disruptive social changes, no new pollutants (replacing the old ones, like from burning coal and horses in the streets). No wars.

Would this be a good thing? No. It would mean that you died and are now in heaven. Resource scarcity, climate change, war, social instability ... these represent the condition we call "life." For thousands of generations humanity has confronted these problems as we climbed from scavengers to become the dominant species on this planet.

But what about the pollution of our environment, brought about by industrialization and increasing wealth? This is largely a myth in today's developed nations, and a passing phase in the emerging nations. Consider life in the capital city of an emerging nation...

The city itself is overwhelmed, engulfed by changes with which it has not learned to cope, and which are scarcely understood. Some were inherent in the trebling of the population, some consequences of industrialization. Particles of grime from the factory smokestacks produce impenetrable smog which reduces visibility to a few feet ... Much of the city stinks. The city's sewage system is at best inadequate and in the poorer of neighborhoods nonexistent. Buildings elsewhere are often constructed over cesspools which, however, have grown so vast that they form ponds, surrounding homes with moats of effluvia. ... And the narrow, twisted streets are neither sealed nor asphalted. People lock their windows, even in summer, but they have a lot to keep out: odors, dust...

This is London circa 1880 (a slightly altered quotation from William Manchester's biography of Churchill, The Last Lion).

These ills were not cured by elevating the consciousness of its people, but by increasing their income. Wealth has changed London in the first half of the twentieth century as it changed Singapore in the second half (In Ian Fleming's 1955 novel Moonraker, MI6's secret agent 0011 vanished into the "Dirty half-mile" of Singapore; today Singapore citizens consider US cities as crime-ridden holes compared to their well-run city-state).

But at least in the simpler times of Victorian England they lived closer to nature. Their food was less-processed, what we call "organic", since the modern agrochemical industry was yet unknown, with its artificial preservatives, colorings, and other adulterants. In fact this meant (again quoting Manchester) that...

The groaning tables on Victorian Christmas cards groaned beneath platters of food that would be condemned as unfit by modern health officials.

In one sense the people of Victorian England lived even closer to nature than those in modern China and India.

In 1842 a royal commission found that the average professional man lived thirty years; the average laborer, seventeen. By the year of Churchill's birth {1874} about fifteen years had been added to these...

Pushing back on the many doomster nightmares is like pushing back on a cracking dam, as these stories multiply -- driven by our fears about the future of our rapidly changing world (just like fears in the 1950's of world conquest by the commies, or the even more bizarre -- to us -- fears of our 19th century ancestors). Past progress provides many Americans with little confidence about the future.

As an exercise we can examine one doomster fear, seeing the complex reality under the simplistic agitprop (like any mass movement, these have a heavy political component). Since Peak Oil suffers from over-exposure, the new hot doomster meme is Peak Water. Like peak oil, this is a valid concern grossly exaggerated by the media.

Water is scarce in several ways.

• Poor people lack clean water. Lacking clean water, adequate food, and basic public health infrastructure defines poverty. (Most of America's poor have clean tap water, obesity is their most common illness, and excess consumption of drugs/alcohol their greatest public health problem. Real poverty, the third world kind, is of a different nature).
• Poor nations tend to seriously pollute their water, unable either to afford primary sewage treatment or to enforce regulations on agricultural and industrial emissions.
• The above two factors are exacerbated by rapid growth in population and/or industry (e.g., India and China).
• Both rich and poor nations suffer groundwater pollution from agricultural chemicals. Farm interests have political power in many developed nations exceeding the numbers of farmers or farmings economic role (largely due to "rotten boroughs", like the outsized representation of heartland states in the US Senate). This is, of course, a far more serious problem in emerging nations (see this story about India).
• Water demand exceeds supply in many areas, even in developed nations, usually due to mispricing it. The demand for under-priced goods almost always exceeds the supply. Aquifers (large ground water reservoirs) are being drained -- much like global oil reserves. (such as the Ogallala Aquifer under the Great Plains)
• Water is physically insufficient in a few areas (e.g., Saudi Arabia, a desert with one of the fastest growing populations on Earth).

None of these appear terminal for either humanity or the global ecosystem. Most of these will probably work themselves out.

• Growing wealth will allow fantastic reductions in pollution by emerging nations, even greater than seen in the US and Europe during the past 50 years.
• As water becomes scarcer, political and pricing mechanisms in developed nations will force more rational use and continually reduce pollution.
• Exhaustion of aquifers will force development of other agricultural resources (e.g., currently idle land, aquaculture), or changes in diet (e.g., Americans eating less meat, which would improve our health).

If there is interest in this topic, future posts will discuss the water crisis in more detail.

Thanks to GI Wilson, who suggested this subject and provided many links to valuable information about it.

Please share your comments by posting below (brief and relevant, please), or email me at fabmaximus at hotmail dot com (note the spam-protected spelling).

For more on this subject

"Keeping It Clean", Chemical and Engineering News (23 April 2007) -- Note the concern about arsenic contamination of drinking water. A real but hardly a new problem, since arsenic occurs naturally in the Earth's crust. For more on arsenic see this USGS publication.

Peak Oil Doomsters debunked, end of civilization called off 

Here is the full archive of articles about Peak Oil.

Posts about good news for America

1. Good news: The Singularity is coming (again)  (8 December 2007) — History tends to look better over longer time horizons.
2. Some good news (one of the more important posts on this blog)  (21 December 2007)
3. Some good news (one of the more important posts on this blog)
4. A crisis at the beginning of the American experiment  (27 December 2008) — Looking at the problems looming before us, it is easy to forget those of equal or greater danger that we have surmounted in the past.  
5. An important thing to remember as we start a New Year  (29 December 2007) — As we start a New Year I find it useful to review my core beliefs. It is easy to lose sight of those amidst the clatter of daily events. Here is my list…
6. Is America’s decline inevitable? No.  (21 January 2008)
7. Let us light a candle while we walk, lest we fear what lies ahead  (10 February 2008) — Need we fear the future?
8. A happy ending to the current economic recession  (12 February 2008)
9. Fears of flying into the future  (25 February 2008)
10. Experts, with wrinkled brows, warn about the future  (2 May 2008) — Experts often see the future with alarm, seeing the dangers but not benefits. That gets attention, from both the media and an increasinly fearful public. Both sides feed this process. It need not be so, as most trends contain the seeds of good and bad futures. This post considers two examples.
11. Peak Oil Doomsters debunked, end of civilization called off  (8 May 2008)
12. Good news about the 21st century, a counterbalance to the doomsters  (9 May 2008)
13. An effective way to support our Troops: help the Blue Star Mothers of America (8 June 2008) — There are ways to support our troops, actions more effective than a bumper sticker on your car.
14. There is no “peak water” crisis  (19 June 2008)

Click here for all posts discussing good news about America's future.

First, let's examine the Montreal Protocol. Methyl Bromide is the most serious ozone-depleting chemical still in widespread use today. In 1996, about a third of the methyl bromide applied worldwide was used in the US; today, as other countries have moved faster to ban methyl bromide, the US is both the major user and the major producer of this highly toxic soil fumigant. Our government says it is critical to the continued production of strawberries, tomatoes, and peppers, without which the American economy and way of life would totally fall apart. Tell it to the organic growers, guys. The US continues to drag its heels on ending methyl bromide use, asking for (and being granted) extension after extension, while US producers are stockpiling several years' worth of supply in their warehouses, violating the treaty, which mandates manufacturing more only when the current supply is used up. It's true that production and use have dropped significantly, (though American use has not declined as fast as use elsewhere in the world) but recent observations note that the Antarctic ozone hole not only is not healing as fast as had been expected but is larger than it's ever been, and that US methyl bromide use is largely to blame for this. Screw the Aussies, pass the strawberries.

Now, let's look at the Stockholm and Rotterdam Conventions. Stockholm's initial aim is to ban aldrin, endrin, dieldrin, chlordane, DDT, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, mirex, and toxaphene, PCBs, dioxins, and furans—phew. what a nasty mouthful!

The Stockholm Convention also sets up a review board to consider banning other chemicals. Two of the ten that it currently is considering are lindane and PBDE, a flame retardant that has been used in baby clothes. The Republican-dominated US congress has been reluctant to pass legislation to enforce these bans domestically—the only legislation introduced on the subject so far would have ended states' rights to have more stringent standards than the federal government and virtually insured that the bans would not be enforceable in this country. Those family values people—gotta love 'em—putting corporate profits ahead of poisoning babies. Wealth is evidently the primary Republican family value.

In typical fashion, Bush announced plans to work for ratification of this treaty on Earth Day 2001 and has done nothing for it since. Now that the election is looking tight, he may trot it out again...but it's more likely that he'll whup out a war against Iran and intern enough of us dissidents for “providing aid and comfort to the enemy” to swing the election his way again. Gotta watch out for that ol' “October Surprise.” Karl Rove...what a sense of humor...gotta love 'im. But, I digress....

OK, from Stockholm to Rotterdam. According to Kristin Schaffer, writing for Foreign Policy in Focus,

The Rotterdam Convention... is a complementary treaty(to the Stockholm Convention) providing important controls on international trade of highly toxic chemicals. It requires that any country importing pesticides and certain other hazardous chemicals must be informed of bans or severe restrictions on those substances in other countries. This gives a receiving country the option of refusing shipments of chemicals listed under the treaty on the grounds that they may be harmful to the environment or to the health of its population.

What the Bush junta has done with this is indicative of its venality. The US asked that, in order to be put on the restricted list, a chemical would have to be banned in both Europe and North America. Europe is much more conservative about chemicals than the US—they have adopted what is called “the precautionary principle,” meaning that if there is a possibility that something will cause damage, they ban it. In the US, on the other hand, we run on the profitability principle, meaning that as long as the chemical companies that support the Republican Party are making a profit from a pesticide, it will not be banned, even if it's causing obvious damage. This is at the heart of these negotiations, make no mistake—the US is one of the leading pesticide producers in the world-- we exported 1.7 billion pounds of poison in the three years 2001-3 alone, and about a sixth of that was chemicals whose use is banned in the US. The kicker here is that, having effectively sabotaged the treaty, the US has still not ratified it.

The world remains safe for American pesticide makers. Doesn't that help you breathe easier? (Wheeze)

But, according to a report from England's Hadley Center, there will be less need for agricultural pesticides in a global-warming tweaked future—because there will be less land suitable for agriculture. The report predicts that, conservatively, about 30% of the planet will become unsuitable for agriculture, about twice the area now in that condition. This will come about largely due to increased severity of drought in areas already suffering—such as Africa, parts of Asia, and the upper midwestern parts of the United States...gee, that's one of the major breadbaskets of the world, isn't it? And one of the US's few remaining sources of export income?

No wonder the Bush junta is acting like a bunch of desperadoes—they know the situation is desperate; from their selfish, sociopathic perspective, the best course of action is “every man for himself and devil take hindmost.” Meanwhile, the Democrats continue to try and reason with this crew...you might as well try and reason with Hannibal Lecter about his dinner plans....and, by the way, satellite photography revealed that this summer, for the first time in recorded history, there was open water all the way from Spitzbergen to the North Pole. The word for the day is, “tipping point.”

music: Jane Siberry “Bound by the Beauty"