Are we fat because of man-made chemicals? That is what a recent documentary, screened on Canadian television, and picked up across the world wide web, asked.

The programme, which has gained attention across the globe, is part of environmentalist David Suzuki’s The Nature of Things series. It looked at the scientific evidence showing that chemicals in the environment may be programming us to be fat. And this programming begins before we’re even born.

It’s true that, as a society, we eat too much and don’t exercise enough. But scientists around the globe have begun looking beyond the obvious causes, in part because of weight changes in a group that can’t chew, let alone jog: babies.

It begins in the womb

Infant obesity has risen more than 70% in just 20 years. You can’t blame babies for unhealthy lifestyles or not going to the gym often enough. The scientists suspect that, starting in the womb, man-made chemicals may be triggering changes to our metabolism that result in life-long weight gain.

The documentary, Programmed to be Fat?, tells the stories of three scientists whose unexpected findings led them to follow the research of Paula Baillie Hamilton, a curious doctor in Scotland, baffled by her own inability to lose weight.

For three years she pored over existing research on environmental chemicals and finally published a key study in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine in 2002, linking endocrine-disrupting chemicals to the obesity epidemic.

The scientists came across the paper while puzzling over their own research results.  None of their studies were about fat, but they had two things in common – they were all researching endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and they all ended up with unusually heavy lab animals.

A 21st Century problem

Endocrine disruptors are all around us – in plastic, in cans, in the water we drink, in the food we eat and the cosmetics we use. They’re not supposed to be in our bodies, but they are there just the same. And if the science is correct, the implications for human health are profound.

Now, scientists are going beyond animal research to human population studies, testing the theory that fetal exposure to man-made chemicals is a key reason for our global obesity epidemic.

The idea that chemicals can make us fat may sound strange, especially since most of us have been brought up on a calories-in/calories-out approach to weight control. But in spite of the fact that the media continue to categorise the finding that something other than food could influence weight gain as ‘new’ and  ‘controversial’, the science is copious and compelling and as Dr Baillie Hamilton’s own research shows, goes back many years.

Beyond chemicals

It also goes beyond just exposure to chemicals. In 2006 I produced an in-depth investigation into the chemical link to weight gain for the Ecologist magazine. This was followed in 2008 by my book The 21^st Century is Making You Fat.

The book broadened the scope of the problem beyond chemicals and into other aspects of modern life that work synergistically to make gaining weight easy and losing it hard.

These include exposure to environmental chemicals lack of sleep in a 24/7 culture, the huge number of pharmaceuticals we take, the rise of allergies and stress. It also took into accounted the pervasive influence of the diet industry a multibillion pound moneyspinner that encourages unhealthy yo-yo dieting – which has been shown to encourage rebound weight gain.

A global epidemic

Globally the prevalence of overweight and obesity has increased steadily since 1970. The World Health Organization has declared overweight as one of the top 10 health risks in the world and one of the top five in developed nations.

According to recent estimates, some 7% of the global adult population is clinically obese, the number of  people globally who are overweight – estimated to be 1 billion – now equal the number who are starving.

Obesity has serious long-term consequences for health. While it is not an immediately lethal disease itself, obesity plays a role in triggering or worsening a number of chronic, sometimes serious diseases and conditions Including hypertension, high cholesterol, heart disease, type-2 diabetes, gall bladder disease, asthma, mental health concerns (e.g. depression and low self esteem), and joint and bone disorders.

Being overweight or obese can also contribute to many problems in women’s reproductive system like prolonged or heavy periods, menstrual pain, delayed ovulation, PMS, infertility, amenorrhea, fibroids, tumors of uterus, breast cancer, endometrial cancer, ovarian cancer and uterine prolapse.

These days to even ask the question ‘why do we gain weight?‘ may seem ridiculous. Everyone knows we gain weight because we eat too much. It’s a simple equation, isn’t it? So simple in fact that people who fail for one reason or another to lose weight must either be greedy or lazy or a diet cheater.

But the scientific fact is diet regimes have a shockingly high failure rate. In fact, depending upon how one reads the medical literature, conventional medical diet strategies have a success rate of only between 3 and 7%.

Do the math. This means that conventional weight loss strategies have a failure rate of between 93 and 97 %. Surely, there is something more complex to the current epidemic of obesity than simply eating too much, or not exercising enough.

Chemical calories

In The 21^st Century is Making You Fat I list a number of ‘chemical calories’ that we all need to watch out for. These are:

Bisphenol-A (BPA)

An oestrogen mimic used to make clear, hard, reusable plastic products; it is also used in the manufacture of polymers, fungicides, antioxidants, dyes, polyester resins, flame-retardants and rubber chemicals, and some dental resins.

Organochlorines

This group includes the pesticides DDT, chlordane, aldrin, dieldrin and heptachlor and the now banned industrial lubricants PCBs, as well as dioxins and chlorophenols. High levels of organochlorines have been found to alter metabolism in the body and essentially stop us losing fat.

Organophosphates

Organophosphate pesticides, such as malathion, dursban, diazinon and carbonates, constitute 40% of all pesticides used. These chemicals are mainly utilised inside buildings, as opposed to in agriculture. They are neurotoxic (harmful to nerve tissue) and hormone-disrupting.

Phthalates

These hormone-disrupting chemicals are produced in large volumes and are commonly detected in ground water, rivers and drinking water, as well as in meat and dairy products. Around 95% of phthalate production over the last few decades has been tied to the PVC industry. Phthalates can be found in many plastics and consumer products – everything from hair spray and nail varnish to plastic water bottles and T-shirts.

Polybrominated flame-retardants

These are added to many products, including computers, TVs and household textiles to reduce fire risk. They are also found in baby mattresses, foam mattresses, car seats and PVC products. Office workers who use computers, hospital cleaners and workers in electronics-dismantling plants are at particular risk from these chemicals. Polybrominated flame-retardants are estrogen mimics and can also affect the thyroid.

Carbamates

Including aldicarb, bendiocarb, carbaryl, propoxur and thiophanate methyl, carbamates are used extensively in agriculture, forestry and gardening. They are suspected hormone-disrupters.

Organotins

This group includes tributyltin (TBT) and the mono- and dibutyltins (MBT, DBT). These chemicals have many applications, including as stabilisers in PVC and catalysts in chemical reactions. They are also found in glass coatings, agricultural pesticides, marine anti-foulant paints and wood treatments and preservatives. Organotins are damaging to the thyroid and immune system and potential hormone-disrupters.

Benzo[a]pyrene

A common food pollutant that belongs to a family of chemicals known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). It is derived from coal tar and enters the atmosphere as a result of incomplete combustion of fossil fuels. In animals it has been shown to cause weight gain in the absence of any detectable change in food intake. It is possible that other PAHs may have a similar effect.

Solvents

Neurotoxic chemicals that include xylene, dichlorobenzene, ethylphenol, styrene, toluene, acetone and trichloroethane are commonly found in human blood samples. They are necessary for a wide range of industrial processes and are found widely in adhesives, glues, cleaning fluids, felt-tip pens, perfumes, paints, varnishes, pesticides, petrol, household cleaners and waxes.

Cadmium

This is principally used as a protective plating for steel, in electrode material in nickel-cadmium batteries and as a component of various alloys. It is also present in phosphate fertilisers, fungicides and pesticides. Cadmium in the soil is taken up through the roots of plants and distributed to edible leaves, fruits and seeds and is eventually passed on to humans and other animals, where it can build up in milk and fatty tissues. Cadmium is neurotoxic and a potential hormone-disrupter.

Lead

Professions that put their employees at risk of exposure to this neurotoxin include lead-smelting, -refining and -manufacturing industries, brass/bronze foundries, the rubber and plastics industries, steel-welding and -cutting operations, and battery manufacturing plants. Construction workers and people who work in municipal waste incinerators, in the pottery and ceramics industries, radiator-repair shops and other industries that use lead solder may also be among high-exposure groups.

Conventional science, as Programmed to be Fat shows, is slowly catching on to the notion of chemical calories. A few years ago a groundbreaking review by a panel of eminent scientists was also published in the International Journal of Obesity that attempted to explore the ‘roads less travelled’ in obesity research and suggested at least ten additional factors for obesity that have nothing to do with the usual sins of gluttony and sloth.

The authors concluded that the tendency to focus on calories and exercise (what they called the ‘Big Two’) as the sole cause of obesity, has:

“…created a hegemony whereby the importance of the Big Two is accepted as established and other putative factors are not seriously explored. The results may be well intentioned, but ill-founded, proposals for reducing obesity.”

Their conclusion was that the influence of the Big Two on the global obesity epidemic is “largely circumstantial” relying as it does on broad surveys rather than ‘large randomised studies.

In an effort to broaden the debate, the authors suggested that since being overweight or obese was a modern problem perhaps it causes also had their roots in some aspects of modern life.

And this was borne out by their comparative review of the available research that pointed to toxic chemicals, sleep debt, medication and even air conditioning, as possible contributors. Their conclusion was that even if some of these causes have only a small effect, they may interact with each other and with other factors in ways that greatly magnify their individual effects.

In a recent interview in the Ecologist Paul Baillie Hamilton noted: “The powers that be need to wake up to the fact of what the worst chemicals are, the scale of the problem out there, the level of contamination in food, water and household products, and different chemicals in the carpet that have been banned in other countries but are used here.”

In the meantime investigations like Programmed to be Fat? help to get the debate out in the open and one day this may well lead to more effective ways of tackling weight gain than the misery of trying to starve and punish ourselves for failing at something that may no longer be entirely within our control.

• This article first appeared on NYR Natural News.
• Pat’s previous post on AlterNet is here.

This is a unique moment in our history. Everything is changing. Everyone is worried, everyone is overwhelmed, everyone is confused. Everyone wants answers. But if you want answers you have to ask questions, and asking questions is a skill that many of us – overfed on the bounty of the ‘information age’ – have largely lost.

The global Occupy movement is showing us a deep, collective desire for change. At the moment it’s on the leading edge of that energy, just out of reach of articulation and grappling with what it is, what it stands for and where it wants to go.

Chances are, even if you haven’t pitched a tent outside a bank in your city, you may be grappling with the many of the same concerns.

Albert Einstein is generally credited with saying “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” You’ve probably heard that one a lot lately. But in order to start thinking new thoughts we have to start asking new questions.

Whether we are aware of it or not, we ask ourselves questions all day, every day. “Can I sleep another 15 minutes?”; “What do I want for breakfast?”; “Can I make the 8.15 train if I leave now?”; “I wonder if he/she will go out with me?”; “Should I have worn a different outfit?”

The busier our lives get, the more short-term the answers we seek become. In fact, a lot of the questions we ask ourselves are designed to get us through the next hour or so. They don’t require much in the way of time or a considered response; they don’t tax us too much but rather just keep us ticking over. There’s nothing wrong with that by the way; we all have to live.

But the world is an increasingly complex place and we are all personally, and as citizens of the planet, under increasing pressure to make sense of an awful lot all at once.

To ask a different question is to begin a personal quest. Questions have a way of creating momentum, of moving us forward. Questions define and refine our thinking and our philosophy of life; they are the basis of our search for the truth of things.

The art of asking a good question goes right back to Socrates who believed that there were six types of useful questions. These were for: conceptual clarification, to probe assumptions, to probe rationales, reasons and evidence, to question viewpoint and perspectives, to probe implications and consequences, and to question the questions themselves.

Now would seem a good time to put some Socratic teaching back into our schools, to help arm our kids with the tools they need to face the future with confidence.

If it all seems a long way from ‘what should I have for breakfast?’, it probably is. But don’t despair. There are lots of ways to shift focus. Most of us already know about taking a breath and counting to ten – even if we don’t always practice it! Finding time each day for mindfulness and reflection – a space to ask for help and guidance – is also beneficial. Therapy helps. Journaling does too. A friend’s shoulder to cry on does as well.

There is also a unique web-based project called Infrequently Asked Questions. The project features two virtual decks of cards with more than 100 questions each. The CultureShift and InnerQuest decks prompt the user with the kind of questions each of us needs to ask when we find ourselves on the threshold of a new challenge – whether personal, cultural, technological or philosophical.

They work like Tarot in that we often draw the cards to us that we need – even if their meaning is not always immediately apparent or the answer immediately obvious. But unlike so many ‘oracles’ which offer easy answers and benign reassurance, the IAQ decks are firmly grounded in the notion that we already know the answers. Accessing them requires only that we ask the right questions.

The IAQ decks exist to promote reflection and critical thinking and to give us an opportunity to consider our opinions and beliefs, feelings and assumptions more deeply.They can help us break out of difficult conceptual frameworks both personally and collectively.

For example, almost everything we are exposed to has some sort of cynical sell behind it.

A concept like family, for example, is used by every group trying to get some leverage. Protecting the family (personal or collective) is used as call to action for the environmental. But it is also used as a reason for war, a reason for staying in a damaging relationship, a reason for covering up everything from child abuse to illegal, unethical behaviour in the corporate ‘family’, and an excuse for the hard sell of billions of dollars worth of useless, even harmful antibacterial hand washes for your kitchen and bathroom.

Asking the right questions breaks through the cynicism of these frameworks and helps us get closer to what is really going on. It provides the tools for us to think about our issues and challenges, both personal and collective, in less conventional ways.

Questions are a manifestation of curiosity and curiosity builds awareness, appreciation, and understanding. They make the mind active rather than passive, make us attentive to new ideas and open up new worlds and possibilities.

IAQ is a game – but it also has a serious purpose, because the time has come for all of us to get more curious about what’s going on inside and outside of our own lives.

• Pat’s previous AlterNet post is here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

What do the protesters want? A fairer world! When do they want it? Now! What ideas have they got and what are they willing to do to in their own lives to make it happen? Erm… author and campaigner Pat Thomas on what it takes to create a vision of a fairer future.

We live in a world desperately out of balance. A world with problems seemingly so severe and out of control that to stop and think about them is to risk intellectual and emotional paralysis. So we take the issues apart in small ways to help us cope. We complain to let off steam. But very often we fail to follow the path to the actual solutions necessary to drive change forward.

Depending on who you listen to the Occupy Everything protests are either a revolt against the greed of the 1% or against the enforced austerity in the lives of the 99%, all brought about by the incompetent, lazy and self-interested handling of the global banking crisis. Generally speaking the protests are now being called ‘anti-capitalist’.

It’s undeniably good to see people finding their voices and I know so many people who see the current raft of ‘occupy everything’ protests as a sign that the public is finally becoming radicalised, finally finding its power and vision.

I want desperately to believe that this is so. But every instinct I have tells me it is not. The occupy everything protests are not the end of the conversation, they aren’t even the first word. They are the tentative first breath we take before uttering that first word. There’s a long conversation that still needs to be begun.

No more short-cuts

On the one hand, being in the full glare of the media helps to publicise the event. On the other it focuses attention on a ‘movement’ that doesn’t know where it is going and barely knows what it’s about yet. This is a double edged sword – one that threatens to cut the knees out from under the ideas that (hopefully) are forming before they can even begin to reach the surface.

All that media attention demands some kind of coherent statement. I watch the protesters, who gather together with the right instincts and the best intentions and with the best will in the world I still am unsure what it is they are asking for. Where do they want us to go from here? Or are they just hoping someone else will come up with something soon?

The protests did, of course begin began as a call to action from Adbusters, a Canadian-based culture-jamming, anti-consumerist organisation skilled at making its point in short, sharp, and often very funny lampoons of modern culture.

In my less charitable moments I wonder if have we got so used to taking intellectual shortcuts, so used to believing in the ‘power’ of the media and social networking that we can’t even organise a coherent form of human activism – beyond making a clever poster or webpage – anymore. Have we got so used to texting and tweeting that we can neither think nor express ourselves in more than 140 characters?

If someone like myself, who has worked for social change for most her professional life, who has a sympathetic ear and soft heart for direct action can’t penetrate the actual vision of the crowd, how will it reach the entrenched fat cats against whom the protesters seem to be pitting their anger?

Beyond blame

Enthusiasm is great, but eventually it will need to be backed up by substance, depth and focus.

Our inability as individuals to make sense of and to tackle head-on the depth of the messy world that all of us – including the protesters – have co-created seems baffling until you see it in the context of our modern information culture.

It is not simply the overwhelming volume of information that is comes at us each day. More it is the lack of reference points, the absence of a framework to help an average person make sense of the problem, locate their roles and responsibilities within it – and imagine something new – that is holding us back.

Blaming others is easy. Acting from a well-developed sense of responsibility, and awareness of the alternatives, takes a lot more chutzpah.

We want change. We want fairness. But what are we willing to give up for it? Can we let go of the perceived benefits of the capitalist system: cheap food, cheap petrol, affordable aspirational goods like big screen TVs and iPhones, cheap flights, air conditioning, car culture, cheap t-shirts, fast food, and plastic anything.

And this is the problem. We still seem to want the capitalist system to continue providing all the usual benefits, but we want it to be fairer – and this is just not possible folks.

If we want the world to be fairer then we have to acknowledge that the current system, which breeds inequality and poverty, is unfair, has always been unfair and will continue to be unfair. As with all things in nature, something has to die before something new can be born.

We need to acknowledge this fact, to acknowledge our grief at the changes that need to happen, and find strength of purpose in constructing a different future. Inarticulate anger, such as was so apparent during the London riots, won’t get us there. It’s the psychological equivalent of Red Bull and vodka.

Eloquent advocates

Whether you are camping on the pavement somewhere in the world or not, when it’s your turn to speak what will you say? Because if all you can say is “It’s not fair – he has more than I do” then you have lost your argument. If you continue to polarise the debate –”us”, “them”, “1%”, “99%” – you’ll be too busy fighting the same old fundamentalist, shoot-em-up politics to find an actual solution.

What I would say to the protesters is it’s time to do your homework. The information is out there. Be humble enough to accept that many of you are only just catching up with people who have spent decades working through these issues and put forward all kinds of alternatives – from the radical to the reasonable. Let their work inspire you.

Here’s a few resources to help. The list isn’t exhaustive, but it’s enough to get any would-be critic of capitalism going.

What’s the alternative to money?

Time Banks, LETs Schemes, local currencies … if you don’t know what these are it’s time to find out.  To get a general overview of the range of alternatives to the way we look at currency, consider this useful resource list.

What’s the alternative to the growth economy?

Begin with the work of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy which believes that perpetual economic growth, is neither possible nor desirable. Growth, especially in wealthy nations, is already causing more problems than it solves. SSE asks why money, a public utility, that serves the public as medium of exchange, store of value, and unit of account, be largely the by-product of private lending and borrowing?

What’s the alternative to free-trade?

Free trade might help keep the price of your of t-shirt down but it is also the reason why there is so much inequality in the world. Globalisation has dramatically increased inequality between and within nations, even as it connects people as never before. About half of the world’s population lives on the equivalent of what two dollars a day would purchase in the US. The world’s 358 richest people have more money than the combined annual incomes of countries with 45% of the world’s population. Is there a way out?

Fair Trade guarantees fair wages and decent working conditions and prohibits child and slave labour, but it still keeps us dependent on s0-called luxury goods from afar – and keeps developing world producers locked into a marketplace where they grow food for others instead of themselves.

Tobin Tax is named for Nobel laureate and Yale professor Dr. James Tobin. It discourages speculative currency trading with a small tax on all international currency trades.  Since the trades are international, the Tobin Tax would be collected by an international agency. This agency would then establish a trust fund with the money collected to go toward development issues of international significance. The Tobin tax is endorsed by organizations such as the AFL-CIO and the World Council of Churches. the European commission has recently proposed and EU-wide Tobin Tax. Proponents of the tax in the EU say it could generate 57 million Euros per year to be put to social causes. The UK rejects the plan.

Autarchy is a system in which a country attempts to become self-sufficient, eschewing all trade with foreign markets and making do with whatever goods the national economy can produce. Related to this is Protectionism which attempts to bolster a country’s production against other nations using restrictive taxes and tariffs. Protectionism has been attacked by free trade proponents as creating job loss and higher prices.

Radical economist Herman Daly, Emeritus Professor at the University of Maryland, School of Public Policy and former Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, proposes another way: Regulated Trade. According to Daly the opposite of free trade is not autarchy or no trade, nor state trade nor total monopolisation of trade. The opposite of free trade, which is deregulatory, is trade which is regulated in the national interest by governments involved.

This is just one element of the Steady State Economy that Daly has been talking about for decades. His ideas extend into an overhaul of the tax system – questioning what should be taxes and how the money should be spent – and the thorny issue of  whether a ‘fair’ economic system can sustain full employment (Daly thinks not).You can read a Grist article on Daly here. His selected essays are available as a Google book here.

Daly also contributes a regular blog, The Daly News for the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (see above).

If the idea of a system that can’t sustain full employment scares you, consider the new economics foundation’s (nef) proposal for a 21-hour working week. According to nef’s report 21 hours – Why a shorter working week can help us all to flourish in the 21^st century a more equal distribution of working time would have clear environmental benefits. Moving towards a standard of 21 hours could help to redistribute unpaid as well as paid time – for example by making more jobs available for the unemployed and giving men more time to look after their children.

What about interest-free money?

Around 97% of all ‘money’ now in circulation is this so-called ‘Debt-money’ (i.e. computer-generated, interest-bearing, for profit ‘credit’), some people, somewhere – be they individuals, families, communities, companies, countries – always have to be in debt (and interest-bearing, grinding, miserable debt) Thus, for capitalist economics to ‘function’, the misery of debt always has to exist. The prevailing debt leads to interest leads to inflation system hurts everyone – rich and poor alike, people and planet. According to the Campaign for Interest-free Money, interest paid on loans is a crucial factor in maintaining social inequality. The campaign has lost a bit of momentum in recent years. Maybe it’s time to reinvigorate it?

Challenging the concept of ‘ownership’ of goods

Rethinking our economic model doesn’t begin and end with money. It also requires a reorganisation of our manufacturing processes, and a re-envisioning of the relationship between objects and consumers and indeed a redefinition of ourselves as something other than consumers.

The Ellen MacArthur Foundation, with input from Michael Braungart, founder and director of Environmental Protection and Encouragement Agency (EPEA), has some inspiring things to say about an economy based on services rather than goods, and on a future where we don’t own goods but lease them instead. You might want to check out what Braungart’s former partner William McDonough has to say on the subject as well.

The resurrection of the commons?

The commons is a new way to express a very old idea – that some forms of wealth belong to all of us, and that these community resources must be actively protected and managed for the good of all. From blood banks to sidewalks, from herbal medicines to public libraries, from green open spaces to the Polar ice caps, from your genes to the local library, these things and more have been privatised for the profit of the few and to the disadvantage of the many.

A commons-based society refers to a shift in values and policies away from the market-based system that dominates modern society, especially over the past 30 years. The foundation of the market is narrowly focused on private wealth, while the commons is built upon what we all share. Read more about the concept of the Commons here.

Finally you might consider getting hold of a copy of the book The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. It’s a fantastic examination of the way that income inequality is the root of pretty much every social ill – murder, obesity, teenage pregnancy, depression and even premature death. And if you care to look at it from the other side, from a business point of view, try Umair Haque’s The New Capitalism Manifesto: Building Disruptively Better Business. For a great dissection of the ‘growth’ myth you’ll want to read Richard Heinberg’s The End of Growth: Adapting to Our New Economic Reality and investigate his and his colleagues’ work at the Post Carbon Institute.

It is up to every one of the reasonably well off well educated, middle class people who seem to be making up the bulk of the protesters – and commentators – to do better than that. To be eloquent, thoughtful spokespeople for their own needs but also for the needs of those who can’t afford to take a day or two off work to join the party. They also need to be effective advocates for the future and that role is easier to fill if you are standing on a foundation of good information.

• Originally posted here.
• Pat’s previous AlterNet post is here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

Firstly dear reader, my apologies. This is a long one. But when it comes to ‘tuna ranching’, there is just so much to say.

A new report from Umami Sustainable Seafood Inc – a US-based seafood company and the largest supplier of sashimi-grade bluefin in the world – says that for the third year running natural spawning of captive bluefin Tuna has been recorded at its research and production facility in Croatia.

The report has been picked up by the press in a kind of lackadaisical, non-critical way. And if the champagne corks aren’t exactly popping, well maybe it’s because, what can we really say about it? Hurrah! Tuna can now get all the same diseases and cause all the same environmental damage as salmon!?

I would not presume to understand all that the business of aquaculture entails. I do, however, understand the environmental damage, to the sea and on land, that is being caused by that industry. Adding yet another big fish to the pond is not going to make things better.

Conservation International has recently endorsed the business of fish farming in its report Blue Frontiers – Managing the Environmental Costs of Aquaculture. And this sounds like an important endorsement, until you look a little closer at Conservation International itself, which earlier this year was accused of corporate ‘greenwashing’ after a senior employee was secretly filmed by undercover reporters discussing ways in which the organisation could help an arms company boost its green credentials (check out the story and the film here).

The revelation didn’t surprise many. Conservation International’s corporate sponsor list reads like a who’s who transnational corporate baddies (see also this 2003 article) and includes the likes of Cargill, Monsanto, McDonald’s, Starbucks, BHP Billiton and Coca Cola (though this is a story for another day…)

Back in the wide blue ocean, it may already be too late for the bluefin – and we have yet to see what the impacts of losing a major predator of the ocean will do to shift the entire ecosystem of the sea. Thus I understand the urgent desire to protect the species. And yes, I know, I know, I know. The assumption, ad nauseum, is that environmentalists like myselfare all a bunch of airy fairy hippies who want to give the world a hug but don’t really understand the intricacy of the science or the awesomeness of the technology behind it all (Mark Lynas, et al take note). Forgive me, but what a load of hairy old bollocks.

The hindsight of countless generations shows that when you mess with Mother Nature you will get burned. It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when’ and, of course ‘how badly’.

So before anyone gets up to celebrate the miracle of breeding Northern bluefin in captivity let’s consider just for a moment what is known about what has euphemistically become known as ‘tuna ranching’…

It may already be too late for the bluefin – and we have yet to see what the impacts of losing a major predator of the ocean will do to shift the entire ecosystem of the sea. Thus I understand the urgency to want to protect the species.

But let’s begin at the beginning. Why are the bluefin becoming extinct? Is it because of an essential lack of fish farms? The answer is no. Bluefin and other sea creatures are under threat because of an unsustainable global fishing industry where drift nets that would span comfortably from London to Brighton (about 60 miles) scour the sea, clearing it of every living thing. Tuna in particular have been over-fished to feed a luxury market, such as that which exists in the Orient.

It is the market that is destroying the tuna and I am most certainly sceptical of market solutions to save these animals because such solutions will always be driven by the need to preserve the market more than a need to preserve the species.

I cannot think of a single instance in which the ‘market’ has brought about intentional positive change for the environment or for people. The globalised ‘market’ is in fact a major stumbling block on the road to a sustainable society. Business by its very nature takes a small picture, short-term view.

(A businessman I met recently told me that one reason why techno solutions, and therefore market and political solutions, to our environmental problems are always presented in 20 year timeframes is that 20 years is short enough to be attractive to investors, but far enough away that nobody worries to much about the details of whether something will actually work – another story for another day…).

Umami’s news release says that it has made a significant investment growing over 1,000 young tuna into mature brood stock at its aqua farms in both Mexico and Croatia. This is likely the world’s largest brood stock holding, with the eventual goal being to release hundreds of millions of fertilised eggs and fry back into the wild every year.

Sounds phenomenal until you realise that on average a female bluefin tuna can produce 6-10 million eggs in a single spawning season. The number depends on how mature the fish is; a 5 year-old female can produce an average of five million eggs per year, whereas females aged 15-20 years can carry up to 45 million eggs. So allowing these fish to reach full maturity would contribute more to repopulating the ocean.

And even if all these eggs were to hatch, they have only about a 3 per cent chance of making it to become a 6cm-long fry and a 0.1 per cent chance of growing to a saleable size and be sold in markets.

So why release these eggs into the wild?  Is it because we want to see the bluefin live freely in the wide wet ocean the way it is meant to, or is it because the fish produce too many eggs to be utilised in captivity anyway, or is it so we have a chance to go on hunting and selling them in ever increasing numbers? Some people believe the ‘why’ doesn’t matter. I disagree. The ‘why’ is everything, especially with market-based solutions, because it explains the true nature of the commitment. The moment the market wobbles the corporation is free to opt out or change its business plan entirely.

Bluefin tuna are among the most highly valued fish on the planet. In a market where a large fish of a high grade can fetch upwards of $100,000 the market value of the fish cannot be considered an incidental issue; it is central to the thinking behind the technology that will be used to breed them in captivity, and the way that the fish are harvested, penned, fed and, in most cases, drugged.

In many ways ’breeding programmes’, for large pelagic carnivores in particular, are a distraction from the real issues of over-fishing. And they can be a very expensive way of not solving a problem. In addition fish farming is a form of intensive farming as prone to causing environmental devastation and illness for the animals as its land-based equivalent.

Attempts to breed tuna in captivity are decades long and have been largely unsuccessful. Because the market is so lucrative tuna breeding has become a kind of Holy Grail of aquaculture.

Umami’s Croatian enterprise notwithstanding, there are still many problems to overcome when it comes to captive breeding of bluefin tuna.

In spite of their great size and apparent aggressiveness, bluefin are an unusually delicate fish, both physically and psychologically. There are currently two ways to raise them in captivity. One can harvest them from the wild and mature them in captivity on tuna ‘ranches’ (a practice that is accelerating the species’ extinction), or you can try to breed them in captivity.

The first option may seem easy but bluefin apparently bruise easily because of their delicate scales, and their gills take in little oxygen compared to other fish, so they have to swim continuously to breathe – even while asleep. Farmed fish breeders often trumpet the fact that captive fish use less energy swimming and therefore this energy can be directed into growth – I hate to imagine what swimming less in captivity might do to  a tuna’s metabolism). Transporting them to pens – after they have been scooped up by giant nets – means many die in the process.

Tuna in cages suffer the same problems as salmon. No matter how ‘well controlled’ the stock densities are there is no way such densities can be considered a normal existence for these animals. The fish can become stressed and are likely to become immune compromised and more vulnerable to lice infestations.

Like salmon, bluefin are large carnivorous predators used to having vast oceanic territories to roam in. The cues they receive from this nomadic existence are, in part, what trigger the breeding response. Tuna are also long living creatures that are hardwired to need this vast territory in order to remain healthy. The problems of farming salmon are multiplied greatly in tuna because tuna are that much larger than salmon.

Tuna can take up to 12 years to reach sexual maturity, compared to about three years for say catfish (another common  aquaculture fish), and getting them to breed outside their natural  habitat is difficult. The early experience of breeders in the US and  Japan found that even if the fish could be encouraged to spawn inside a pen and even if the eggs hatched, the fry usually died after a few weeks.

Another major stumbling block of the development of breeding programmes appears to be that life in a floating sea cage or giant tank apparently does not provide the right environmental cues to tell the fish it is time to breed. In the absence of natural cues most breeders use drugs (hormone supplements), though this appears not to be the case with the Umami fish. The drug treatment that mimics the gonadotropin-releasing hormone the fish would normally secrete to trigger the urge to breed, but that does not make it natural. A drug is a drug is a drug.

Recent science shows that breeders can use drug implants to get bluefin to produce eggs in captivity with some success.

However the flaw in this approach is that it assumes that it is some inherent flaw in the fish that it will not breed in captivity.  The experience with human hormone treatments such as the Pill and HRT (exogenous oestrogens that are listed by the International Agency for Research into Cancer, IARC, as known carcinogens) shows the devastation that such drugs can cause humans. It is inevitable that they will eventually have consequences for the fish and because our worldview is so unbelievably narrow the ’solution’– and here I am taking my lead from land-based intensive farming – will probably be to drug the fish with something else – again on the basis that the fish simply is responding in a flawed way to its captive environment.

The delivery of the hormone treatment to the fish is even more aggressive than for salmon, delivered by divers shooting time-release implants into the fish with spear guns.

What is more, in trying to get captive tuna to spawn reliably every year, tuna ranchers may be working very much against the fish’s natural rhythm. We don’t really know whether the assumption that adult tuna spawn every year, is correct. Experiments in captivity challenge this assumption, suggesting that spawning by an individual might occur only once every 2-3 years (see this Oceana report). What is the effect of enforced spawning on the fish’s health and well being?

Not only is the hormonal profile of the captive fish manipulated, so is its diet with high doses of nutrients in a form that the fish would not normally take in the wild. The use of supplements is less to do with the health of the fish and, as a recent study in the Journal of Aquatic Food Product Technology suggests, more to do with the need to maintain the colour of the flesh of the slaughtered fish over its shelf life, thus improving its market value. Nutrient supplements used in this way, to alter the biochemical profile of an animal, are also essentially drugs.

The natural life of these fish can be measured in decades however farmed fish are considered suitable for slaughter for sashimi at 3-4 months. In modern tuna aquaculture once the fish reach this age they are slaughtered. Again it is hard to see how this process of growing them to slaughter them is considered sustainable for the bluefin population as a whole.

Like salmon, tuna are carnivores they require a high-protein diet that can only be met with a mixture of soya (rainforest destructive and usually genetically modified) and other fish (things like pilchards and mackerel, thus hoovering and decimating the populations of smaller fish from the sea. The fish meal industry in Peru and Chile is responsible for some of the worst examples of unsustainable fishing practice and also destroys the lives and livelihoods of local people (see this video report). The fish that are being fed to the captive tuna by the way are good healthful fish that could be fed to humans as a much lower price than luxury tuna.

The feed/conversion ratio for tuna is appears to be very high. Salmon take 3-4 kg of food to produce 1kg of extra weight. Tuna require 25-20kg of extra food to produce an extra kg in weight. Let’s put that in perspective a bluefin tuna in captivity requires eats 20 times more fish than it eventually produces.

Fish in captivity are generally overfed to produce that extra and very valuable kg which fetches a higher price at market. Good for the seller but feeding fish to fish can never be sustainable. It is my view that is  aquaculture is to be sustainable as a source of food for humans then we  need to concentrate on inland fish such as carp which convert their fish food – which no human would ever want to eat – into weight gain just about at a one-to-one ratio.

The tuna farming industry appears to be growing in spite of the fact that there is little to no study of its environmental impact. It is likely that where major tuna populations are kept in cages, opportunistic species (such as lice) will follow and proliferate nearby and could in theory spread to wild populations. If the fish tuna are overfed there is also more waste from the food and the animals’ excreta which needs to be taken into account in any  sustainability profile.  Even all this does not take into account greenhouse gas emitted by fish farming, the production of feed meal and the transport of the fish to the customer.

Tuna cages are also often sited in strategic parts of the ocean, for instance where warm currents run. They may interfere or alter in some way the running of those currents and because of their high market value local fisherman may be prohibited from fishing in those otherwise fertile areas, thus impacting local economies. This has already been seen in the tuna farms in the Mediterranean.

In breeding tuna in captivity we are doing something inherently unnatural – shrouding it in the language or methodology of science does not make this any less true; and there are always unintended consequences to such endeavours. (For anyone interested in more it’s worth reading the Greenpeace report Challenging the Aquaculture industry on Sustainability – the concerns raised in it are real and valid).

For all the reasons above, and with the full awareness that somebody somewhere will inevitably call me a hair-shirt-wearing, tree-hugging, fish-kissing, cave-dwelling luddite for asking this question, I still can’t help but wonder: in terms of resources spent and resilience gained, wouldn’t it be better to see the money being ploughed into captive breeding programmes put into ways of restoring the entire ocean ecosystem?

• Originally posted here.
• Pat’s previous AlterNet post is here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

Look beyond all the theatre of the US debt crisis, and there is opportunity in disguise, says Pat Thomas

Amidst all the hand-wringing about the US debt crisis, there’s been very little space given to whether the system that everyone is trying to prop up is actually worth saving. America, like most of the affluent West, is built on a foundation of infinite growth. And yet worshipping at this altar is a significant reason why the US has borrowed more than it can afford to repay, bringing the country to the brink of bankruptcy.

As Congress continues squabbling like over-tired sugar-saturated kindergarteners, Americans are rightfully afraid that the party really is over, that the ‘American way of life’ is dying, and that this death brings with it a future where an easy sense of entitlement and rampant consumerism and economy based on endless growth is over and where we will all need to apply more appropriate limits. This feels like death, and yet it is a basic tenet of life that something has to die before something else can be born.

The US debt crisis could actually be an opportunity disguised as a crisis. But sadly, there seems to be little enthusiasm for such revolutionary thought, let alone action, to reshape the economy. Instead the likely outcome is an anti-climactic compromise aimed at maintaining America’s triple A credit rating whatever the costs; one that will be used to ‘prove’ that the system works, but which in reality is propping up something that is morally wrong, culturally devastating, spiritually toxic and, of course, environmentally disastrous.

In contemplating this last point the immortal words of comedian Woody Allen, addressing a class of graduating students come to mind:

‘More than at any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.’

It could be a prayer to almost any of the difficult choices we humans are currently faced with, but seems particularly pertinent to a debate about economic growth. For many economists the choice is simple: we grow or we die. And at first glance it would seem ridiculous to suggest that in pursuing perpetual growth we are in fact hastening the death of our species. And yet that is exactly what we are doing.

The promotion of a growth economy is predicated on many alleged benefits: greater longevity, better health, greater prosperity and more leisure time. Few of these stand up to closer scrutiny. We would, for instance, be hard pressed to show that longevity is a direct result of economic growth; though economic growth has certainly benefited from a longer-living, and thus longer-spending, population.

We may not be hit by plagues anymore (though as climate change bites even that may not be true for much longer); but we are suffering from more chronic diseases – many of which are environmentally mediated – than ever before and our longer-lived population requires much more healthcare – once again, a real boon for the economy. As for greater prosperity, according to the UN, 80 per cent of the world’s wealth is concentrated in 20 per cent of the population, and survey after survey shows that in order to maintain our precious standard of living we are all working longer hours than ever before. So much for leisure time.

The big picture of the consequences of economic growth and its view of the natural capital of the planet as a collection of resources to be exploited for the benefit of Homo economicus is pretty distressing. To be environmentally literate is to be acutely aware of the all-pervading and often malign influence of the growth economy:

• Our fossil fuel and mineral resources are rapidly depleting
• Personal and institutional debt is spiralling out of control
• The rates of ill health – both physical and mental – is rising
• Divisions between the rich and the poor are wider than ever before
• Our topsoil disappearing and with it the land’s ability to produce nutritious food
• Our fresh water supplies are drying up
• Clean air, untainted by pollution, is a now distant memory
• Fish stocks in our oceans are at critically low levels
• The population has increased beyond the point where the planet’s resources can support it
• And most humans in the developed world define themselves as consumers first, and people second.

Although it can be hard to accept the growth economy as anything but benign, the truth is that economic philosophy is dangerously out of sync with nature and with the human psyche and is doing untold damage to both. What is more, in a world where growth is the only goal, everything is open to exploitation.

The mantra of ‘growth’ has become a kind of mental monoculture. Many businesspeople and economists can’t see any other point of view and don’t really want to. And yet every argument that we make in favour of growth falls down at the feet of one simple fact: the resources upon which growth depend are running out.  In fact the only thing we seem to have in abundance these days is people.

Indeed, in my lifetime the population of the planet has doubled and the current economic paradigm relies on there being an increasing number of people in the world, to buy an increasing amount of stuff. The belief system of economics also says that we need perpetual growth to produce full employment for all these people and thereby avoid economic collapse.

It’s a vicious circle the consequences of which have been population explosion and an ever-increasing draw on natural capital. With regard to raw materials, nature is a closed system. So the natural capital on which our economic system depends will always be limited.

There is only one Earth. At current rates of consumption, and with the population as it stands globally, there are about 1.9 hectares of productive area per person, but the average ecological footprint is already 2.3 hectares. So we currently require one and a half Earths to live sustainably. The largest footprint belongs to citizens of the United States, who use up 9.6 hectares each. Five Earths would be needed if everyone in the world today consumed at that level.

Currently people in China use somewhere around 1.4 hectares per person. However, if world population continues to grow unchecked, and if people in China and India start consuming at US levels, it is estimated that we would need 25 Earths to satiate everyone’s desires.

In essence, there are simply too many of us using too much, too fast. And yet economics continues to demand unlimited growth. The only logical conclusion of this is that an economic system based on growth in demand and consumption is one that is designed to fail and must eventually come to an end, either through human design – let’s be generous and call that ‘choice’ – or through natural disaster.

You won’t hear any politicians talking this way because the way we have allowed our economic system to become structured is such that any drop in demand triggers market panic and the political nightmare of mass unemployment. Instead we continue to prop up the existing system through drops in interest rates, massive increases in credit card debt and home loans, tax cuts, huge federal deficits, bond sales and public and private borrowing from other nations. In other words we arrived at a place where we simply shuffle money (and debt) around in order to maintain the illusion of growth.

As radical economist Herman Daly is so fond of reminding us “Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist.”

And in the midst of all this craziness, this belief in a growth economy makes serious efforts at energy conservation, protection of natural resources and limits to population growth increasingly problematical. And the problem is not merely technological; it is cultural in the deepest sense.

Starting two centuries ago, our species embarked on this path of unprecedented growth, founded on a temporary subsidy of cheap hydrocarbon energy. Climate change is a side effect of fossil fuel consumption, and can now be seen as the most critical symptom of our growth binge. But unless we address the core of the problem, other symptoms will soon overwhelm us, even if we manage technically to resolve the dilemma of carbon emissions.

Addressing the core of the problem means letting go of growth; it means engaging in a period of controlled societal contraction, characterised by a stable or declining population consuming at a per capita level far below that currently taken for granted in the industrialized world.

For anyone who understands the ABCs of ecology – that is relationships between population, resources, and the carrying capacity of the planet – nothing could be clearer.

And whilst some people propose sustainable growth this, of course, is something of an oxymoron. Even at a small rate of steady growth – say between 2 and 3 per cent a year – we will eventually see a doubling of the economy in around 25 years. The price of that growth is a doubling of our use of resources and a doubling of our waste and pollution. On this trajectory our economy could have quadrupled by 2050. Contrast this with the 2006 Stern Inquiry into the economics of climate change, which made it plain that by the middle of the century we must reduce CO₂ emissions by up to 80 per cent, and even the comforting concept of sustainable growth becomes untenable.

However painful it is to imagine, and however difficult it is to implement, a new economic paradigm is urgently needed. And whilst detractors will say that this necessary restructuring will lead to the collapse of the economy, this is patently false. The economy, as most of us experience it, has nothing to do with economics. Economics is a philosophical structure that connects only intermittently and accidentally to the physical reality of the planet we inhabit and even less often to economics of everyday life which involve the mustering of wealth for human sustenance and well being.

This amazing miracle of a planet, the only home any of us will ever have, the only known place in the universe that can support life as we know it, is dying. And you may well ask: how did we get here? What choices did our parents, grandparents and great-grandparents make that led us to this point.

The answer is they chose to believe and participate in the ‘miracle’ of economic growth. The fact is, the economic system requires more than money and natural capital to prop it up. It also requires our cooperation. Ultimately it is not our money but our beliefs and expectations, our habits, memories and desires that give power the current economic system.

If we are going to save the planet then we need to abandon the fantasy of infinite growth and begin the real and valuable work of engaging with an economy that will genuinely benefit both people and planet.

• Originally posted here.
• Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

Scientists say that strip mining the moon will reward us with cheap energy. Pat Thomas sees the dark side of their moon madness.

What do you see when you look at the moon? The romantic sees an opportunity to steal a kiss and dance a little closer. An astrologer may see the symbolism of the Earth’s constant companion, the shadow to the Sun’s light, the yin to its yang. A woman might see the waxing and waning of her own physiological cycles. A biodynamic farmer might see a cue about when to plant, cultivate or harvest. A businessman may see a landscape to exploit for future profit and a scientist a novel energy source to be harvested.

Amongst all of these, it is the extraction of energy in the form of helium-3 (He-3) that seems to be attracting the greatest media interest at the moment.  He-3 – an apparently ‘cleaner’ fuel for nuclear fusion reactors that is almost unavailable on Earth – is purportedly abundant in moon rocks.

As a result, more 40 years after the first moon landing, a second race for the moon is under way and the international competition is intense.

NASA’s Vision for Space Exploration sees American astronauts back on the moon in 2020 and permanently staffing a base there by 2024. The US space agency has neither announced nor denied plans to mine He-3, and according to a 2007 article in Technology Review it has nevertheless placed advocates of mining He-3 in influential positions.

Russia, China and India are now all part of the race to get hold of the moons He-3. So are Germany and Japan.

Reconquering the moon, of course, is a beginning rather than an end in itself. It is a gateway for the exploitation of resources on other planets, to help us continue fuel our lifestyles here on Earth.

According to a recent report in the Ecologist the surface of the moon is encrusted with many different kinds of high-energy particles. Many of these, including He-3, can be extracted through heating Moon rock and collecting the gas.

“Millions to hundreds of millions of tonnes, I should think, is readily accessible,” says Matthew Genge, lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering at Imperial College London, “You can strip mine the Moon and you can cook out the Helium-3.”

There is probably more than a little bluster in such plans and pronouncements. The timescales of this new frontier of exploration – about 20 years – is also telling. It’s amazing how many of these promised so called techno-fixes for our planet always seem to be achievable within that time scale of about 20 years: close enough to interest investors, far enough away to drop to the bottom of the priority pile of average citizens who are just trying to get by in the here and now.

Whenever a government or scientist says something like that it usually means they haven’t got a clue when or if it might happen at all.

And while it is not surprising that powerful nations are looking to exploit potential resources on the moon – it is disturbingly short-sighted.  All around the world we witnessing angry protests over the convergence of crises we are facing in climate and the economy. At heart both of these problems is the thoughtless exploitation of our own world, and the belief that resources, be they animal, mineral or vegetable exist purely for human benefit and profit.

Most of our exploitation of the Earth has been able to advance on the premise that the damage is taking place far away, outside our usual borders and methods of accounting for ourselves, for example in developing countries and amongst people and cultures that we never have any contact with. Out of sight, out of mind.

If we feel entitled to be so careless with our own world, how much less cautious we will be with another one? What kind of stewards would we be for somewhere 384,000 km away?

The moon may well hold many mineral resources, but we still have to get there and back to make use of them.

Given that the earth’s mineral and petroleum resources are rapidly running out, that we have according to many analysts already passed reach peak oil (that is, the point when is production starts to irretrievably decline), how do these all-powerful government agencies propose to fuel the rockets which will fly to and from the moon, and the machinery that will need to function on the moon and on earth in order to exploit these resources? How much energy will it take to support, feed, shelter, and keep warm, the people who will have to perhaps live on the moon and oversee operations? How much energy will it take to process these resources – and what amount and kind of waste do they generate?

Does the moon need protection? Yes of course it does – from human stupidity which is already in evidence all around us on the Earth.

What is driving this particular boy’s own adventure into space is the desire to keep our current and very wasteful lifestyles afloat. To make sure we can keep all the lights on, whether we need them or not; to keep driving our cars less than a mile to the shops; and keep filling up our homes with useless crap that we don’t need and that we end up throwing out or trading in within a year.

Unless governments – and consumers – address this outrageous waste of modern life, and the way that our entire economic system thrives on that waste, there won’t be enough moons or planets to keep us going.

The most altruistic reasons are put forward for mining the moon – a sustainable future for all.

But lunar prospecting could cost as much as $20 billion over a decade.

Wouldn’t this money be better used as a contribution to helping wipe out debt and to even out the gaps between the haves and have nots here on earth? In 2009 Oxfam reported that the amount of money spent on bailing out banks globally – around $8.4 trillion – could end poverty around the globe for a half a century.

There is no indication that our financial institutions have learned anything from banking current crisis except that whenever they act irresponsibly the government (using taxpayers’ money) will be there to bail them out.

If world governments truly cared about providing for a sustainable future they would use the money to wipe out debt and to fund vibrant local (as opposed to global) economies in both the developed and especially the developing countries.

Instead of buying out of season ‘fair trade’ goods from countries where people are so busy feeding Western supermarkets that they can’t feed themselves, we should be funding greater self-sufficiency, especially when it comes to food, throughout the world.

The money we spend on trying to create a ‘lunar economy’, could  be spent on returning the world to a solar economy – less dependent on oil and non-renewable resources and more dependent on solar and other renewable resources to help us fuel and feed ourselves. It could be spent on re-educating people in the concept of one planet living, helping them to feel valued for who they are rather than what they own and to reorder our economic goals along the lines of a steady state economy rather than one based on endless growth.

Mining the moon is seen in some political and scientific circles as visionary. But the vision is critically flawed. It’s being touted around in an effort to maintain business as usual and an arrogant sense of ‘no limits’, when deep change is what is really required.

From a symbolic, emotional and psychological point of view our emotional and psychological relationship with the moon is an ancient and valuable thing. In the current flurry of scientific can-do-ism it might at least be worth asking the question how might we fundamentally change that relationship when we turn the moon into a huge open cast mine?

Like all the wild places from which we draw inspiration and solace and a greater sense of our place in the vast universal scheme of things, the moon is valuable in and of itself. It feeds our spirits, inspires our stories, rules our tides, and lights our darkness. It deserves our protection.

• Originally posted here.
• Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

The one size, one shape, one skin tone monoculture that dominates our ideas of beauty is a cultural poison. The only antidote is to recognise that beauty is a journey, not a destination, says Pat Thomas.

Spring is here. The birds are singing. The trees are blooming. In stores across the country a colourful array of swimsuits has cropped up. Never a comfortable time for me.

As much as I love swimming, and walking and climbing, my own inner ‘beauty critic’ is never entirely silent, even when I am immersed in nature.  The birds in my beloved local park don’t care that my hair is dirty, or that my bottom seems to be taking on a life of its own. But I still do.

So it was with some dismay that my worst fears were confirmed by new global research which found that for most females the inner beauty critic has already arrived by the time she is 14 years old and continues to erode her self-esteem as she ages. The research, the Real Truth About Beauty, was commissioned by Dove.

Dove of course is the brand behind the Real Beauty Campaign, launched in 2004, which featured lots of gals of different shapes and sizes (within a popularly ‘acceptable‘ range of course, and not an ounce of cellulite or a ‘bingo wing’ in sight) in their impossibly white undies.

The campaign came as close to cause marketing as any beauty company has ever come, and pioneered the use of real women in advertising. Critics said it was likely to be counter-productive because the marketing messages in the beauty industry are supposed to be aspirational and the images it gives us to aspire to unobtainable. It is the resulting frustration and dissatisfaction that absolutely drives beauty products sales. We all believe that the next product will be the one that actually delivers – even though it never is.

Some cruelly suggested it would define Dove as a brand for plain, fat girls. But they were wrong. Dove’s sales increased and the campaign started a global conversation about what constituted a beautiful body was. The momentum of that conversation even reached fashion industry (and probably went some way toward helping Gok Wan build his current empire). In 2006 Spain outlawed size zero models on its cat walks. In 2009 Glamour magazine twice featured ‘plus size’ model Lizzi Miller; 5’11” 185lbs and proud of her little paunch. Miller is actually a size 12-14 – and only in Glamour would this be considered a ‘plus size’. Still, it’s a start.

This week Dove has announced that it is ditching the Real Beauty Campaign and its emphasis on self-acceptance in favour of a more conventional campaign called Body Language which will instead talk about how Dove products make you feel confident and attractive.

Same as it ever was, I guess.

This still leaves room for a substantial ongoing conversation about what beauty is and how we go about discovering it, in ourselves and others.

My grandmother would have said beauty is as beauty does. Indeed this phrase has long served as an inspiration to women – and a warning that no matter how lovely you might be on the outside, you can never be beautiful if you are cruel, or crude, if you harm others, or are filled with greed, envy and hatred on the inside.

Less than a century ago, in 1913, Webster’s dictionary defined beauty as “properties pleasing the eye, the ear, the intellect, the aesthetic faculty or the moral sense.” Today the default definition of beauty has narrowed to a shocking degree, the result of decades of focusing only on what is pleasing to the eye.

The Real Truth About Beauty survey isn’t the first, and won’t be the last to show that from a very early age girls and women show a high level of dissatisfaction with their bodies and their looks. This dissatisfaction comes largely as a result of the fact that, for a very long time, what it is to be beautiful, even naturally beautiful, has been defined by the media, by Hollywood and by the globalised beauty industry.

On an emotional/psychological level, to be beautiful is to have the power to provoke profound feelings in others – and how many of us can say we feel naturally confident of our powers in this regard? So we look for something we can buy to give us that power. We look for external cues that tell us what is beautiful and desirable, what qualities will make us admired and loved, what attributes will give us the power to seduce and enchant. But these cues are constantly changing because the industries that provide them rely on the dissatisfaction of average individuals and the unrequited desire to achieve an idealised form of beauty to stay in business.

But things are shifting. For women in particular there is a slow evolution that seeks to redefine beauty in a way that is more natural and holistic, and more reflective of our needs, emotions and perceptions. One that leaves behind static, one-size-fits-all philosophy and embraces a broader appreciation of beauty that includes a world of diverse human beings of all ages and cultures mixing together.

This is also taking us away from synthetic, mass produced beauty products which rely on ingredients made from polluting and increasingly scarce petrochemicals, to those made from safer and more sustainable natural substances. Indeed, many moons and several dress sizes ago, it was an interest in such things that sucked me into the world of environment and sustainability.

On the surface of things increasing interest in natural beauty, which is mirroring an increased sensitivity to our environment, seems a positive even inspiring cultural shift for women; a valuable alternative to the plastic beauty which so many of us have grown up with.

Concern for what we put in our bodies, and the corresponding shift to a diet of more natural and wholesome foods has spilled over into concern for what we put on our bodies too. It is hard to feel healthy when one subsists on a diet of refined and highly processed ‘junk’ food. It is also hard to feel beautiful when one uses ‘junk’ beauty products, made using synthetic chemicals that are known to disrupt the body’s hormonal or nervous systems, cause cancer, provoke allergies, or be harmful to your unborn baby.

As we become more aware of the damage than humankind has done to the planet, it has become clear that trashing the planet in the name of vanity simply isn’t beautiful.

There are, however, difficulties to overcome. In using any kind of cosmetic, women seek transformation; and the promise of the ever-changing, transformative powers of nature is particularly seductive. Beauty products promise transformation, natural beauty products promise natural transformation.

In natural cosmetics women seek to capture the glow of the sun, the fragrance of flowers, the colours of the earth and sky and to make these natural things our own rather than accept our own individual roles as part of nature’s beautiful diversity.

Nature, of course, thrives on variety and it is this variety we respond to when we perceive the natural environment as beautiful. The marketplace, however, loves conformity. Thus the beauty industry’s view of the future continues to focus narrowly on the promise of youth.

Even as a leading edge of women are moving away from this beauty monoculture, the industry continues to pour countless millions into producing ‘facelifts’ in jars containing amongst other things, ‘natural’ human hormones, and ‘natural’ stem-cell injections as a replacement for Botox.

There are signs, however, that our increased identification with natural world is influencing the future of beauty in a more positive way.

An earlier Dove Global Beauty Survey found many women wanted to see the idea of beauty expanded from the narrow physical aspects of beauty that currently dominate popular culture, to include emotional qualities, character and individuality.

Indeed it is our personalities, our character, the individual lives we have led, and the depth of our relationships that may form the most important component of a new understanding of beauty.

According to the authors of one study, interconnectedness and co-operation – examples of which can be found in abundance in most nature systems – play a vital role in what attracts us to each other: “The value of potential social partners depends at least as much on non-physical traits – whether they are cooperative, dependable, brave, hardworking, intelligent and so on – as physical factors, such as smooth skin and symmetrical features” At the end of their paper, the scientists offer this beauty tip: “If you want to enhance your physical attractiveness, become a valuable social partner.”

Although ignored by academia for many decades, recent studies into body image and attractiveness confirm that our perceptions of beauty are complex and also have a profound effect on our health and well being. For instance, there is data to show that people who can accept their bodies and natural features live happier and healthier lives. In one 2008 study of 150,000 US adults, scientists found that negative body image resulted in chronic stress, which caused a decline in mental and physical health.

Likewise the notion that youth equates to beauty can no longer be sustained in a world where the population is ageing.

Compare the look of a Botoxed or surgically-altered face, with skin stretched and pulled and pinched, to the crows-feet one might accumulate by smiling and laughing with beloved partner, family and friends and the words of Eleanor Roosevelt come to mind: “Beautiful young people are accidents of nature, beautiful older people are works of art”.

Industry data shows that interest in youth potions and invasive surgeries falls off after the age of 45. Older women, it seems, are more interested in looking good for their age than looking eternally young. They also seek beauty care – for instance through massage or having a facial – as therapy for the inner self, to promote a sense of well-being, and not just for their appearance.

The sum total of all these cultural shifts is that we can begin to envisage a future where beauty is perceived as a life long journey, rather than destination. As an act of becoming that mirrors the slow, natural process of creating the mountains, valleys and forests from which we draw such inspiration. As something that requires not so much an act of force, but the confidence to stop trying to force the issue

Now and in the future older women will have a vital role to play as examples to help younger women to feel confident in who they are and how they look, and to respond less to societal expectations of beauty and femininity.  It is this kind of mentoring that could help young girls silence their own inner beauty critic.

It’s an uphill battle, I know, but one we must engage with because, the beauty monoculture is a cultural poison that is plainly and quite literally driving women crazy. And really, there is some truth in the belief that no nation can rise above the health – emotional, mental or physical – of its women.

• This article was first published here.
• Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

I should have loved the Wayseer Manifesto – which aims to unite those of us who stand outside the mainstream into a powerful, creative movement. But its macho posturing left me cold and unsettled…

Once, in a former incarnation, I sat in a room full of pregnant women. I was facilitating a workshop on the practical, emotional and spiritual aspects of home birth. During the course of the afternoon it became apparent that many of the women felt keenly just how outside the system their thinking and their actions were and how disapproving so many of the people around them were. I asked, half joking, “How does it feel to be a freak?”. As we began to explore the F-word in more detail half the women in the room burst into tears.

I saw my own life experience being mirrored back to me.  “Don’t be such a dreamer”. “You’re being impractical”. “You romanticise everything”. “What do you mean you ‘just know’?”. “That’s not the way we do things”. “You’ve got to learn to fit in”. “Don’t be so sensitive”. “You just have to develop a thicker skin”. My mother told me, repeatedly, that I would never have a husband because I was too clever.

I’ve lived with it all my life. I know, as these women did, that the very traits that society says are my weaknesses are actually my strengths. In fact, I sometimes think that women, living in what is still such a macho society, know this best of all. We either believe in ourselves, love ourselves, or we die a slow, agonising pseudo-death which leaves us walking around in the world with nothing holding us up but that thicker skin so highly prized by the patriarchy.

So why did I feel so mad when I watched the new video, Wayseer Manifesto by author Garret John LoPorto?

This ‘manifesto’, aiming to unite the freaks of the world into a powerful creative movement, was posted without comment on one of my favourite websites just to see what everyone’s reaction would be. It’s an alternative web community so most of the reactions were from the same dozen people who always react in the same old way “Fucking brilliant” “Just what I needed” “WOW!”.

One newbie waded in saying it seemed more like Bono-like proselytising, reminding everyone that the main purpose of the video was to sell the book and that the video would probably end up being the template for the next Apple or Nike advertising campaign.

In fact, it has already been an Apple ad.

Said newbie was given short shrift by the ‘community’. So was I when I made a small joke about the length of the video being incongruent with holding the attention of a community of people with ADD/ADHD, bipolar, schizophrenia, OCD, dyslexia, narcissism, Asperger’s, anxiety, depression, risk-taking and sensation seeking tendencies and addictive personalities. Some of them may well watch it 20 times in a row and decide that LoPorto is their new guru, but some might lose interest or feel overwhelmed or decide to go off and make their own video after the first couple of minutes.

Garret LoPorto, it turns out, is an advertising exec/inventor whiz kid who, like many of us outsiders, has come to the conclusion that when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. So he has chosen to focus on the strengths of his own Attention Deficit Disorder rather than its weaknesses, and encourages others to do the same.  It’s a good plan. I like that he advocates dealing with mental illness through something creative, something other than drugs. But at the same time I’m not sure a high-octane, fast-cut video is the best way to sell the message to what is a very specific crowd with very specific needs.

What is more, not all outsiders have a mental illness. Not all are unable to function in the world. Some of us simply choose not to participate. Some of us just think – and therefore act – differently.

The protests in Wisconsin and Ohio and the ongoing upheaval we are seeing in the Middle East makes us all ache for change – a change of thinking, a change of direction, a change of scenery, of values, patterns and narratives in our lives. We want it and we want it now, with the ease of a mobile phone upgrade.

Not only that, the way this unrest and upheaval has been framed in the media makes us think that change is fast – and linear and lasting. It isn’t. Anyone can throw a stone or hold up a banner. Anyone can make a video about how crap their life is and how misunderstood they are and post it on your tube, anyone can tweet about revolution. Real changemakers are, by their nature, a rare thing. They are often very insular and their influence like water on stone; drip-drip-drip until the shape of a thing begins to change.

As influenced as we are by media it is all too easy to be sucked into an uncritical assumption that if someone says something loud enough and long enough and makes a flashy video where his own face is intercut with iconic footage of John Lennon, Albert Einstein, Bob Dylan, Mohammed Ali et al, he must be saying something profound. Time will tell.

Meanwhile the clock ticks and the water drips…I’m still trying to figure out what made me so mad.

I think it was the idea that 90% of society is wrong and we – the 10% of the population who for whatever reason see things differently and have to endure being called crazy for it – are right. The truth is creative, crazy geniuses need some sort of anchor or structure for their great ideas to take form, otherwise all you get is the crazy without the creative. Every crazy fucker who ever had a crazy idea for change, had a wife or a mother or mentor or an agent who held the rest of their life together – who did the dishes and paid the rent and reminded them to eat and bathe once in a while – so they could be totally free to think big thoughts and buck the system.

I think also it was the way that the Wayseer Manifesto – underneath the feel good message and the glamorous presentation – was promoting EXACTLY the kind of exclusion behaviour and derision of others that has caused so much damage and pain to those of us who stand outside the mainstream. Is this the new tribe, the new generation, the leading edge? Or is it just “Meet the new boss…same as the old boss”?

If the continual environmental disasters and political upheaval we’ve been witnessing over the last few years tells us anything it’s that none of us is immune, that the personal is political and vice versa and that we are all in this together. When the next nuclear meltdown happens, when the next wave (real or symbolic) sweeps over us, it’s not going to care who is a ‘freak’ and who is ‘straight’. Screwed is screwed. Dead is dead. We have to find a way to stand together or we fall alone. And to be part of the group whilst maintaining personal integrity and resilience – and the confidence to be whomever you might be – requires tough inner work and feminine receptivity, not slick superficial sloganeering and macho posturing.

This article was first published here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

© Pat Thomas 2011. No reproduction without the author’s permission.

How completely insane is it to bring CAFO-style animal farms to Britain? In the face of accumulating data that intensive factory-style livestock production is cruel and polluting, the US is beginning to seriously question the wisdom of this type of farming. So, asks Pat Thomas, why on earth would the UK want to adopt a system that is proven to be damaging to the health of people, animals and the planet?

“Let me put it this way” says Miyun Park, Executive Director of Global Animal Partnership “you can smell them before you see them.”

Park has firsthand experience of the concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFO’s, that dominate American livestock production and has real sympathy with the battle currently brewing in the UK over whether or not to bring these intensive animal factories, which house thousands of animals, to the UK.

Three such facilities – an 8000-cow dairy farm at Nocton, Lincolnshire, a 3000-cow unit at South Witham, Lincolnshire and a 2800-sow pig unit at Foston Derbyshire – have been proposed, though due to strong local opposition, none have yet been approved. New plans have also been announced for a 1000-cow dairy farm at Leighton, near Welshpool in Wales where the cows would be kept inside for 250 days of the year.

Their sheer size is mind-boggling. The South Witham farm would be 50% larger than the UK largest existing herd of 2,000. The dairy farm at Nocton would be the largest in Western Europe, four times the size of the UKs’ largest herd and 66 times larger than the average UK herd of 120 animals. Once the litters of the sows are factored in, the pig farm at Foston could contain up to 20,000 animals at any one time, making it the largest in the UK.

According to Park there are numerous problems associated with CAFOS. High on the list are overcrowding, poor animal welfare, overuse of ‘routine’ antibiotics, and the potential to become breeding grounds for diseases such as swine and avian flu as well as E.Coli and Salmonella. There is also the problem of waste.

“To put it in perspective, the US Environmental Protection Agency has done some comparative figures which show that a single large feeding operation can generate as much waste as a US city. For example, a large farm with 800,000 hogs could produce over 1.6 million tons of manure per year, which is one and a half times more than the annual sanitary waste produced by the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with a population of almost 1.5 million. Likewise, a beef cattle operation with 3,423 head cattle can produce more than 40,000 tons of excrement annually, more than the nearly 38,900 tons generated each year by the 57,000 residents of Galveston, Texas.”

She notes that even a smaller operation of 700 dairy cows can create about 17,800 tons of manure annually; more than the approximately 16,000 tons of waste generated each year by the 24,000 residents of Lake Tahoe, California.

To put these US population figures in to UK perspective:

• 1.5 million is the combined population of Birmingham and Liverpool
• 57,000 is the population of Dartford
• 24,000 is the population of Newton Abbott

The waste is a problem not just because it smells bad but because of its effect on the environment and human health. The US experience is also that when it rains, the runoff from the ‘lagoons’– large open lakes of excrement which lie adjacent to CAFOs – can pollute neighbouring land and poison groundwater supplies.

On hot days in the state of Iowa, home to some of America’s biggest hog farms, emissions of noxious gases from these lagoons produce a thick layer of pollution that hangs in the air. Local residents have dubbed it “shitsmog”. Like vehicle emissions, this smog can significantly raise the risk of asthma and other respiratory problems in those who breathe it in.

The businesses behind the UK’s proposed CAFOs suggest that the waste can be turned into valuable fuel (biogas) through anaerobic digestion facilities on site. But it isn’t that simple. Large scale biogas generators require a great deal of energy to run and the jury is still out on a) whether the energy generated is significantly more than the energy used to produce it; b) whether biogas from manure results in less overall pollution; and c) whether, once built, biogas generators become part of a closed corporate cycle that actually encourages even more intensified livestock production in order to ‘feed’ them with manure and make them profitable.

The decision to intensify meat production in the UK is seen as a purely economical one. On CAFO’s, where the animals rarely or never see the light of day and are fed artificial high protein feed to fatten them up fast, meat can be produced cheaply and quickly.

But weighing up the merits of any activity solely on economic grounds can distort its true impact. This seems particularly true for CAFOs. The philosophical and ethical question of whether or not animals should be killed for food may be complex and personal, but the damage caused by factory farming is much more clear-cut and well documented by science. For this reason, according to Michael Pollan, author and producer of the film Food Inc, some in America are beginning to question whether the risks outweigh the benefits.

“It’s ironic” he says “that just as the US is finally beginning to wake up to the environmental and public health hazards of factory farming, they are spreading to other parts of the word. Antiobiotic-resistant diseases such as MRSA has been linked to CAFO production, as has water pollution, genetic mutation of downstream amphibians and economic hardship for the farmers involved, who get trapped into predatory contracts and inescapable levels of debt by building these facilities.

“But the larger ecological absurdity is that putting animals into CAFOs takes an elegant ecological solution – animals on farms recycling nutrients for the crops while the crops feed the animals – and neatly divides that solution into two new problems: a waste problem in the CAFO and a nutrient deficiency on the farm.”

Pollan touches on something that rarely gets mentioned: the impact on the local community. Whilst the proposed UK facilities boast they will create jobs and revitalise the community, this simply isn’t the US experience. Says Miyun Park: “These are not farms, they are industrial production facilities, and as such they highly automated, and compared to more diversified farms require fewer humans to work in them.”

According to Park the likely financial rewards for the corporate owners of CAFO facilities are not mirrored in the local community. “More often than not these facilities direct money out of the community, through their buying practices, for instance for animal feed, and the services they use. They also devalue local land. In fact, in 2003, due to the negative impact on communities, as well as the health risks the American Public Health Association, the largest public health association in the world, passed a resolution urging State and Local governments and health agencies to impose a precautionary moratorium on new CAFOs “until additional scientific data on the attendant risks to public health have been collected and uncertainties resolved.”

She notes also that when the Appraisal Institute, an international association of professional real estate appraisers, studied the impact of CAFOs in July 2001 it found that the use and enjoyment of the nearby area, as well as the resale value of properties, declined by significantly, in some cases by 50-90%.

These, of course, are local effects. But the impacts of CAFOs extend far beyond the local community.  CAFOs demand massive amounts of soya – a key ingredient in high protein animal feed. Most of this comes from huge soya plantations in Latin America. To grow all this animal feed vast areas of biodiverse land have to be cleared and replaced with monocultures of soya, some of which are genetically modified and all of which are water intensive and make liberal use of pesticides and fertilisers which further damage the surrounding ecosystem.

According to Friends of the Earth senior campaigner Vicki Hird:

“If current rates continue, soya farming and cattle ranching will destroy 40% of the Amazon rainforest by 2050.  And it’s not just wildlife at threat from deforestation – forest communities are being pushed off their land and carbon emissions are contributing to climate change.”

Our increasing demand for cheap meat and dairy, says Hird, is presenting us with a choice about the future of farming that goes beyond animal welfare:

“Our current industrial farming system is wreaking environmental destruction and creating more greenhouse gas emissions than all the transport on the planet. These mega livestock unit applications demonstrate the lengths to which farmers in Europe and the UK have to go in order to make a living. The choice isn’t between industrial farming and ‘old fashioned agriculture’, but between environmental destruction and a modern, planet-friendly farming system based on local food needs.

When it comes to CAFO’s in the UK, it seems we really do need to start thinking globally and acting locally.

Pat Thomas

What can you do?

Support the Friends of the Earth Sustainable Livestock Bill

Support the Compassion in World Farming campaign against intensive dairy farming

This article was first published here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.

Rumours of the death of print journalism may be premature. Ask me what’s making me feel hopeful this week and it has to be the way that print journalism seems to be rising phoenix-like from the ashes, and showing how valuable and important it is in a free society, says Pat Thomas.

As a journalist and editor I’ve had the unhappy experience of working with people who believe that print is dead. They’ve misunderstood, or maybe they never understood, how powerful longform and investigative journalism can be in provoking change, provoking thought, provoking outrage in some cases. There is a belief that we don’t need newspapers or magazines anymore because all the information people need is already somewhere on the internet.

In this respect, so I am told, the world wide web is setting us free. And while I am a big user of the web, and I appreciate the public access aspect of it and the speedy connections with other people and countries, the fact is that information on its own is completely worthless. Doesn’t matter how explosive the information potentially is, a handful of seemingly disconnected facts scattered around the millions of websites that are available to us, lost amongst the dross of me-too postings on twitter and facebook, have the power to change absolutely nothing. It is total nonsense to assume that just because something is in the public domain that the public will somehow be interested or able to graze the net and get what it needs. I sometimes think that the increasing amounts of data on the net are the electronic equivalent of junk food. Lots of data/calories but little actual intellectual/nutritional substance.

Providing that substance is a journalist’s job. It is an art, a craft, a calling even. You will hear a lot these days about the deskilling of society – it’s a particular bugbear of the Transition Town movement. But this deskilling is not just about manual skills like fixing a leaky pipe or making your own clothes or jam, there is a loss of research skills, a kind of intellectual lethargy that comes with being over-fed with data.

Some people have gone as far as to say that journalism has failed in its duty as the fourth estate to keep politicians and big businesses in check and instead has become their advocate, and that in this new era the online world is now the fifth estate, the great leveller.

Well the media has failed lately – no doubt about that. But so has the online community which provides a largely random experience of news and data, devoid of context. This of course isn’t helped by the rule that says you must never write anything longer than 800 words on a blog post or in web article. A rule, by the way, which largely works in favour of the sleazy, the dishonest, the liars, the corporate and political sleight of hand that is always trying to pull one over on the public.

So what a joy, first a few weeks ago, to see General Stanley McChrystal, the most senior US military commander in Afghanistan, brought down by a 9000 word article in Rolling Stone. The longform journalism of the piece brought colour and life to an insane and disorganised war, highlighted the military’s lack of loyalty to and faith in and respect for the commander in Chief President Obama and his staff. It made it clear that with huge internal rifts like that no one could claim to be ‘in charge’ of operations and the likely outcome, to paraphrase McChrystal, is that this war will never look taste or smell like a win.

Then in the last week or so the Washington Post, itself becoming a victim of the ‘print is dead’ mentality, published a fantastic piece, or rather set of pieces, the result of two years of investigative work on the failings of US intelligence community post 9/11. Virtually all the data on which the story was based was in the public record. It took experienced journalists to put it into context and help readers understand how it all fit together and why it was important.

Somebody had to crunch the numbers, to explain why the security services have become a lawless paranoid nation-within-a-nation – with some 850,000 people, more than 1½ times the population of Washington DC, having top security clearance. It’s a costly enterprise full of duplication of effort and waste, publishing some 50,000 intelligence reports a year – so many that most are routinely ignored. The counter-terrorism world is populated by private companies more beholding to shareholders than to the public and as a result has become incapable of fulfilling its primary function effectively, and as a result incapable of protecting the likes of you and me.

And this bonanza has continued with the WikiLeaks information dump. OK not quite a journalistic endeavour, but an impressively organised helping hand for any journalist who has the gumption to dig into it. Critics have argued that the WikiLeaks documents showed us nothing new. We know that there have been civilian casualties, we know that the Government has worked tirelessly to cover these up. But this criticism sounds like sour grapes to me.

Dig through the documents even a little bit and you find inconsistencies that drive you crazy: how is it possible to storm into a village and have a 100% kill rate of so called hostiles and yet claim no civilian casualties? It isn’t. And taken as a whole, what the 91,000 pages of documents seem to amount to is a self deluding daily diary that attempts to rewrite the reality of the war to make it more palatable. Wherever you live if your country is involved in the continuum that is the Iran/Iraq/Afghan war your taxes are being used to fund this exercise. In the US that amounts to $1 trillion so far – that’s the cost of killing 100,000 civilians in those countries (the official estimate times it by 3 or 4 and you may get close to the real numbers).

I had a publisher say to me once: “It’s only 1000 words, how hard can it be to write 1000 words?!”. Too which I say it depends on the words. And the writer. I’m one of those journalists who would have routinely had 20,000 words of backing evidence to support my 1000 or so words, which is why I was able for so long to be directly critical of major corporations and household brands, to expose the human health hazards of chemical pollution and never once be sued. I call it being thorough and being thorough takes time, passion and intelligence and self belief – qualities we need a whole lot more of in our profession.

The challenge today for any media, but particularly for journalists, is very clear: how do we make information matter?  How do we stop the terabites of information taking up space on the web from becoming just so much background noise. And I am greatly looking forward to the future when the penny drops on those arrogant, ignorant publishers – the ones who deify short-termism – that print is not dead, it is just evolving. It’s in the process of reinventing or maybe rediscovering itself as a vital independent fourth estate, in partnership rather than in competition with the electronic media, and as a force that is good for something so much more than tittle-tattle and celebrity gossip, with the power to punch through secrecy and deception. And of course this is going to come with inevitable vociferous debates on ethics, the law, and the public right to know. So there’s interesting times ahead and I say bring it on – and watch this space.

This article is a transcript from the audioblog ecoreflections360, which provides extended commentary on those stories that I found most meaningful and interesting amongst those which I have tweeted during the previous week. You can listen here.

Pat’s previous AlterNet post can be found here.