Week 14: Environmental Health

11:33PM 5/1/2019

I’m amazed at just how quickly so many people seem to vilify the United States when talking about climate change and the environment. It’s just crazy to me that so many Americans are keen on tarnishing the reputation of their country and throw themselves under the bus for something they have little to no part in. Really. The United States is not responsible for climate change and we’re not responsible for the degradation of any global environments. We’re simply the most industrialized and prosperous nation in the world, and thus everyone else wants to tear us down for their own gain. For a country of 327 million people, easily the most populous country of the developed world, we are polluting at a remarkably low rate. Sure, we’re the second largest emitter of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses globally (dwarfed by China by the way), no other developed nation has even close to our population (considering the countries of Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, and Canada as first world) yet these countries still find ways to pump hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. These same countries then have the audacity to point the finger at America as the problem when we have an industrial base many times greater than theirs, yet still manage to regulate our industrial practices in such a way that we maximize efficiency while cutting emissions as much as we can tolerate. I don’t even know why this is a chapter in a book about health and wellness other than to spout empty platitudes and political propaganda that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny and has been debunked multiple times. I took a legitimate climate science course from the geology department and got an A, so I have some familiarity with the material and arguments presented. I’ve written multiple papers on the topic of climate change and the many components of the arguments presented. If you really take that much issue with my blog this week, you can email me for my papers if you want my full arguments with sources.

I’m so sick of seeing all the lies peddled by these groups of environmentalists or whatever that just want to volunteer the American population for extinction in the name of preserving the environment. NEWSFLASH: China doesn’t give a damn about their pollution. They literally don’t care. To the Chinese government, their industrial and economic development is more important than the health of their citizens or that of their neighboring countries, yet no one is calling them on it. The air quality in Beijing and the surrounding area (for hundreds of miles) is routinely over 400: that’s hazardous to public health and incredibly polluted. It’s literally the London Fog over there, yet the United States is the big evil polluter when NOT A SINGLE CITY IN THE UNITED STATES HAS AN AIR QUALITY RATING OVER 100. And that’s according to the EPA, so it’s not some cherry picked “denier” crap.
(https://airnow.gov/)

Honest to God, China and India are the world’s first and third largest air polluters, and I think it’s safe to say they are both much worse polluters of the environment than the US as well. The only reason India isn’t higher than us on the list is because they have a comparitively small industrial base because the majority of their population lives in abject poverty in overcrowded slums and the majority of the intellectuals and people with privilege opt to immigrate to the West rather than stay to build their country up.

Now on to the argument of overpopulation. How exactly is the planet overpopulated? How exactly have we overstripped the planet’s carrying capacity? What, people across the globe aren’t eating three 5 star meals a day so therefore the Earth can’t produce enough food? People in Africa, deserts, and other naturally water-deficient areas are having trouble getting fresh water, therefore the Earth can’t produce enough water for us to drink? It’s just ridiculous. It isn’t logical at all, it’s complete non-sense. I’m sorry, but the plights of people in other countries just aren’t important to me, and neither are mine to them. Neither of our issues effect the other at all. If people in Africa are barely getting enough food and water a day, the answer is to fund efforts to terraform the landscape from a desert and safari into arable temperate farmland, which would require, at least with current technology, a way to introduce copious amounts of moisture to the upper 2/3 of the continent while finding a way to artificially reduce the sunlight received or the intensity of the sunlight on the equator to create a temperate climate from a desert. The problems Africans face are not because of Western affluence, but rather because of the traits of the climate and the environment they live in. The US and, by extension, North America, are by absolutely no means overpopulated. In fact, the US makes up the VAST majority of the North American population, and Canada seems almost depopulated as a result. Here’s a list of the human population distribution by continent:

Look at where the population is distributed. This isn’t a screen capture of the full list, but you should be able to get my point. At the very top, Asia at over 4.5 billion people. China tops that list with a population of over 1 Billion with a newly repealed one child policy, which was repealed in an effort to re-balance the gender demographics of the population, as there are around 3 men to every woman in China. Expect their population to keep expanding when the next generation of children matures and the genders naturally reach a parity again. I believe India would be categorized under Southern Asia, which if it is, accounts for another 900 million-1 billion people. The rest of the population is distributed among Africa, which totals over 1.2billion. I hope you’re starting to get my point. Why should the US, and the West by extension, have to make an effort to voluntarily stop reproducing and set ourselves up for voluntary extinction all to save a planet whose environment has not significantly degraded globally, whose atmosphere and natural processes are more than capable of dispersing the carbon currently in the atmosphere, and whose rivals (China and India) indiscriminately pollute, emit, and reproduce while pointing the finger at us? It’s just absolutely ridiculous and I’m getting sick of debunking these same tired, emotional arguments time and time again. If anything, we should be encouraging fertility and having more kids because our country is great, we have the room and the resources, and we should be proud of our culture and propagate it to other countries.

I literally just did multiple papers on sustainability in my Environmental Geography class, and the US timber industry has been running a surplus for over two decades: that means we are planting more trees than we’re using. We have extensive regulations on industrial, public, and private emissions. We have disposal regulations and guidelines for harmful waste. We have thousands of water treatment plants across the country to produce and recycle clean water. We have extensive national parks. What more can these people ask for? Honestly. If you want zero emissions, how about you just go camp? Go live in the woods, hunt or grow your own food, build a cabin and live in it, chop down wood all day for heat, etc. Live without the internet, utilities, or any of the modern amenities you are accustomed to. Literally just go live in the 1700s. I enjoy my standard of living, am thankful for it, and am proud to be a citizen of such a successful country. These people need to check how unbelievably privileged they are to be able to raise such a ruckus and complain about non issues. They live in the most prosperous country in the world, where even our poorest are rich by global standards, and yet all they do is complain. Absolutely disgusting.

On to my health topic. This week and next week are essentially finals week for me, and I’ve dubbed it “Hell week”. I have a disgusting litany of final assignments from my capstone class and the other classes I’m taking this semester, and I’ve set my physical health back because of it. I failed my SMART goals from last week and am thus undertaking them again, this time hoping to do better than last week. I can’t wait to just get home and stop eating this crappy college food, I really think it’s killing me.

Here’s a group photo from my fraternity formal that our fraternity’s sweetheart handed out to all the graduating seniors. It was very thoughtful of her: