||| FROM ELISABETH ROBSON |||
We are told there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In my own journey coming to terms with and accepting the reality of ecological overshoot, I’ve been through all five stages, some multiple times (denial was short-lived and a one-time experience—once you see it, you can’t unsee it).
Over the years, I have learned there’s actually a sixth stage to grief: gallows humor. It’s so insane that we humans think we can keep this way of life going—the way of life we call business-as-usual—I have to laugh. That’s the humor part. And yet of course it’s not funny at all because the attempt to keep business-as-usual going is destroying the foundations of life on Earth. That’s the gallows part.
While I find myself revisiting anger, depression, and acceptance fairly frequently, I try to stay in the gallows humor phase of grief when I can, because then at least I’m laughing some of the time.
This morning I laughed when I read a news article from August 21, 2024 about a new study that found our brains now average about 0.5% plastic by weight. Previous studies on micro- and nanoplastics have found these plastics in “human lungs, placentas, reproductive organs, livers, kidneys, knee and elbow joints, blood vessels, and bone marrow.” The researcher conducting the study wrote “it is now imperative to declare a global emergency” to deal with plastic pollution.
Ya think?
In my opinion it’s long past that time. Yet I don’t hear any world leaders declaring such an emergency. And so, this story made me laugh, because humanity will continue producing plastics; that’s business-as-usual.
I did the math: if plastics accumulate in our brains at the same rate as the plastics industry is projected to grow over the next few years (about 4.5% per year), our brains will be 5% plastic in 52 years. My guess is it’s not possible for any living organism to survive with that much plastic in the brain, but who knows (this is a one-time-only experiment!). If business-as-usual continues, I suppose we’ll find out. So will the many other beings on Earth who are also breathing and ingesting plastics and have plastics in their brains, too.
I laughed because I wondered what it will take for humanity to sit back, take stock, and change direction.
A 70% decline in wildlife populations in just the past 50 years isn’t enough. I find that non-reaction to a wildlife holocaust bizarre, but recognize that most people don’t think much about wildlife or that we can’t live without them. Industrial agriculture and human development have reduced wildlife to a mere 5% by weight of humans and our livestock, and we continue to destroy habitats the world over at unprecedented rates.
Yawn, says the public.
Species are going extinct at 1,000 to 10,000 times the normal extinction rate. Those who study extinctions say we are in the sixth mass extinction on Earth, caused by us, primarily because of industrial agriculture, deforestation, and fresh water pollution and depletion. Species extinctions are not events that impact just one species; every species fits into the web of life and when a species is low in population or goes extinct, that affects all the other species who depended on that now-gone species, and the ecosystem of which that species was a part. Biosphere integrity is declining rapidly. This too, isn’t enough to stir change, despite that we are human animals and cannot live on a planet without flourishing ecosystems. And there’s nothing funny about extinctions.
We’re bored, says the public.
I haven’t been laughing at the many stories of catastrophic flooding that have been in the news of late: Connecticut in the USA, Germany, Afghanistan, Oman, Uruguay, Argentina, Indonesia, France, Brazil, the UK, and more have all experienced devastating floods in recent weeks, with many people losing their homes and lives. But I have been laughing that hardly anyone notices that for each degree of global warming, the atmosphere can hold 7% more water, so at our current 1.65C above pre-industrial global average temperature, no wonder there is such flooding. The news dutifully reports each incident; we all ooh and ahhh over the strangely compelling videos of cars floating down main streets and people being rescued by boat, and then continue on with our day.
What’s on Netflix? says the public. (Perhaps a good disaster movie.)
What will it take? If plastic brains, a wildlife holocaust, species extinctions, and catastrophic flooding don’t wake us from our stupor, I honestly don’t know what will. I suppose I’ll have to wait to find out.
In the meantime, I’ll try to keep laughing.
I share the author’s grief and stunned disbelief that humanity is driving the bus of civilization straight off an ecological cliff, and while this predicament-of-our-own-creation is indeed dire for (this) civilization, I think someone must have gotten their decimals in the wrong place in regard to plastics-in-the-brain. 0.5% of a typical 3 lbs. human brain would be a quarter of an ounce. And forgive me, but I am extremely skeptical that there is the equivalent of two Lego blocks inside my hat brim. (I get it that the point is there shouldn’t be ANY plastic in any of our tissues, but exaggerations don’t help.)
From The Guardian: “In one of the latest studies to emerge – a pre-print paper still undergoing peer review that is posted online by the National Institutes of Health – researchers found a particularly concerning accumulation of microplastics in brain samples.
An examination of the livers, kidneys and brains of autopsied bodies found that all contained microplastics, but the 91 brain samples contained on average about 10 to 20 times more than the other organs. The results came as a shock, according to the study’s lead author Matthew Campen, a toxicologist and professor of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of New Mexico.
The researchers found that 24 of the brain samples, which were collected in early 2024, measured on average about 0.5% plastic by weight.”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/article/2024/aug/21/microplastics-brain-pollution-health
From the paper in NIH: “… the human brain has the second highest lipid content in the body, with only adipose tissue being higher; brain MNP concentrations are comparable to recently published Py-GC/MS data from carotid plaques, which are also a lipid depot. Furthermore, the brain receives a high blood flow, approximately 25–30% of the cardiac output, and has a tremendous metabolism…. we postulate that the exponentially increasing environmental concentrations of MNPs will analogously increase internal maximal concentrations, which is corroborated by our finding that total plastics mass concentration in brains increased over 50% in the past 8 years.
“…we have high confidence that MNPs selectively accumulate in the brain, with the majority being nanometer-scale, shard-like particulates. … The parallels between the present data showing an increasing trend in MNP concentrations in the brain with exponentially rising environmental presence of microplastics and increasing global rates of age-corrected Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, given the potential role of anionic nanoplastics in protein aggregation, add urgency to understanding the impacts of MNP on human health.”
If you look at the Planetary Boundaries framework (https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/planetary-boundaries.html) you can see one of the boundaries far transgressed is “Novel Entities”. Along with Biosphere Integrity, that is the boundary most transgressed. This includes pollution like micro- and nanoplastics.
We consume about a credit card’s worth of plastic every week–breathing, eating, drinking. It’s not surprising some of that would end up in our brains. That stat is over 2 years old at this point, so perhaps it’s 2 credit cards worth at this point, I don’t know. If you’d like to know more about microplastic pollution I recommend A Poison Like No Other by Matt Simon.
Back in the 1970’s the Limits Growth team projected societal collapse around mid-21st century if humanity kept pursuing economic growth without regard for environmental costs. They produced four scenarios, and the one we are tracking most closely is BAU2, or “Business as Usual, 2”. This projection found runaway pollution as one of the many causes of collapse. As I wrote in the third part of my series on Ecological Overshoot last fall, their projections have been reproduced and confirmed twice since with updated models. Obviously models are just models, but it doesn’t bode well.
Thank you for adding this piece of the puzzle. I too walk around wondering whether to laugh or cry at the insidious craziness of the times that we are living in and the direction that we, as a species, are going. “Gallows humor” is an apt description of the ludicrousness that surrounds us everyday in regards to the politics that guides us as a county, a nation, and a world.
And to think, considering the current trend, that “our brains will be 5% plastic in 52 years.” That’s gallows humor right? Get it? I mean, none of us are going to be around in 52 years… and I mean, “none of us.”
Well, I guess it could be worse… and it’s gonna be.
Unfortunately, in chaos is opportunity.
Trying to stem the tide of profits and economic growth over human health and well-being has been a losing battle for many decades. A balance, where the social contract equals the economic myth seems little more than a philosophical rendering of a Utopian society. The business of America is business—remember? The corporate temple is a macro issue unwinnable from our little nests here on Orcas Island. As a result, the money-first tidal waves have grown larger each year. And while laughter is a good medicine, it does not address the degradation of the islands as place to reside. Fostered by greed, our once-tranquil islands have turned into a smorgasbord of signage and bogus festivals. A place where green-washing is common; a place serving ego and economics, we can all see the coming years here on the San Juan Islands as trip down Vegas-lane. Then there is the environmental damage we will be forced to cope with as our withering political, judicial, and information dispersal systems continue to be pummeled by the term, “But does it make economic sense?”
To Hell with that.
So how do we fix it?
The first step in coping with the unfortunate future approaching us is strengthening our community. Strengthening our community is about commitment to the community, its people, and our physical conditions. It is also about decisions and what drives those decisions. We have a mistaken belief that the roots of community health are a combination of economic and environmental concern. The roots of community health are far more ephemeral. It is that feeling you get in your gut that your neighbors are your friends, not your enemy. It’s the feeling that our community leadership is committed to the community, not power, not ego, not their own monetary enhancement.
In a small community change can come from the top or the bottom, but first we will have to recognize and agree on a change we want. One step at a time, please. The issue here on Orcas is right in front of you. Our community is in chaos.
But unfortunately, in chaos is opportunity.
Well said, Dan. I would add that FORTUNATELY, “in chaos is opportunity!”
As Octavia Butler put it so well:
“All that you touch
You Change.
All that you Change
Changes you.”
A fear of change leads to clinging to the past and a longing for “the good old days”, which, if we are honest, weren’t really that good except maybe in our highly selective memories and nostalgic Jimmy Stewart movies. Change IS scary, but it is also inevitable. Since there is no point in trying to resist change, surely the only reasonable response is to try for a personal “dynamic equilibrium” in the midst of ongoing, continuous change? All we can do is attempt to shape the changes happening in our lives and find a way to embrace the continual little adjustments that dynamic equilibrium demands of us.
Following up on Beth’s reply referencing the Limits to Growth (1972) (https://ia802201.us.archive.org/9/items/TheLimitsToGrowth/TheLimitsToGrowth.pdf), the only scenario that didn’t end up crashing the global population was the one where total world population stopped growing in 1975. The global population in 1975 was about 4 billion. Today it is about 8 billion. (source: https://ia802201.us.archive.org/9/items/TheLimitsToGrowth/TheLimitsToGrowth.pdf)
What’s not included in this stat is the per capita ecological footprint of those 8 billion, which is much higher than it was at the time the book was published.
The obvious solution is downsizing (dramatically), which has the same challenge as the mice who were gathered to talk about the cat. In this case, we humans are both the mice and the cat.
Downsizing will happen. It just won’t be pretty. As Churchill noted, “Americans will always do the right thing, only after they have tried everything else.” In this case, “the right thing” will most likely occur when it is too late to matter.
Who has enough of a stake in the future to change behavior? The ubiquity of plastics is a good example. On the basis of which our society (and almost every other society today) operates, economics and convenience control, and our short lifetimes assure our exit before anything could, if it eventually does, becomes unbearable. We all have our reasons and those reasons are to us more important than the tiny benefit we could provide to the world knowing that others, who also have their reasons, will more than cancel the benefits of our efforts. Those who seek to become examples of behavior are termed arrogant. And so, many who would contribute to corrections in many directions decide, “If you can’t beat’em, join’em.”
This results is a perverse form of community, one that willingly heads downward while running on overdoses of economic and fast-paced life patterns. Can we do better? It will take governmental action using effective tools and financial incentives (or avoiding additions costs on those who comply). This is an everybody or nobody proposition to do better than what the few brave individuals can contribute..
“…in chaos is opportunity!” That’s what the vulture capitalists say.
There’s two types of change– the natural, inevitable kind, and the kind that’s forced down your throats… for money. The former is unavoidable, while the latter is, or rather at one time, was avoidable. It’s also harmful to children and other living things. In fact, if one reads the article closely they’d understand that “it’s killing us.” Let’s face it, unless you’re making money off of it, extinction is not for the faint of heart.
It’s funny (gallows humor funny) that when you issue a statement relative to change and a longing for “the good old days” in the same sentence, that nostalgia is the very concept that is pushed the most by San Juan’s growth and tourism machinery. But you already knew that. “Come and see a place that’s still like the place of your childhood.” “Come to a place that still has trees, waterfalls, deer, and cows and sheep.” “Don’t forget to pick up your copy of the San Juan Islands Relocation Guide when you get on the ferry.”
Or, reading from my just arrived Visitors Bureau tourist map, “Come as you are.” “Love it like a local.” “Getting here is half the fun.” “Sparkling blue waters, deep green forests.” “Set your mind to island time… year round.”
They’d better hurry cause it’s changing quickly… and not for the better.
And, lest we forget ourselves, the map also reminds us,
“BOOK EARLY. Ferries, accommodations, and tours can fill quickly.”
“AVOID MID-DAY CROWDS. Visit popular trails and attractions early or late for the best experience.”
“OUR TEMPORATE CLIMATE, island time philosophy, and friendly locals are welcoming to all.”