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    The Abundance Myth: Our Environment In Crisis
    The Abundance Myth: Our Environment In Crisis
    The Abundance Myth: Our Environment In Crisis
    Ebook121 pages1 hour

    The Abundance Myth: Our Environment In Crisis

    By Jon Van Loon

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    There is a dangerous and erroneous belief circulating that the current exponential output in environmental research will contain answers that will save our planet. Yet every minute we destroy 51 acres of rain-forest, we consume 35,000 barrels of oil and we release 12,000 tons of carbon dioxide into our environment:
    The above belief is dangerous because it suggests that the general public can continue sitting back waiting for the skilled researchers to solve our major life endangering problems. Considering Our major problems have only developed during the less than 200 years since the onset of the Industrial Revolution accompanied by an astounding population increase from 1 to 7 billion a drastic change in most aspects of society is required. The revelations contained here-in are a must read.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJon Van Loon
    Release dateAug 11, 2013
    ISBN9781301406968
    The Abundance Myth: Our Environment In Crisis
    Author

    Jon Van Loon

    My life has been complicated by 3 factors. A severe learning disability and a bipolar condition could have easily doomed me to a troubled, non productive existence. However a prodigious unrelenting manic drive was the burr under my saddle that propelled me to unexpected achievement in academia. Of interest here in this regard was that developments in my laboratory at the University of Toronto lead me to opportunities to work, teach and live for short periods in many locations on the 6 continents over a 25 year period. During these intervals, I chose to live in local category accommodation thus maximizing my exposure and participation in parochial experiences. In contrast to the calamitous relationships dogging present world interrelationships my experiences were entirely welcoming and solicitous.I was born in Hamilton Ontario Canada. My interests include jogging and other fitness programs having run in and completed 4 marathons together with numerous 5, 10 and 20 km events. My prowess in sport to say the least was very average. Non-the-less I participated in and then later coached ice hockey both in Canada and Australia. My reward for all this activity is that I have a healthy cardiovascular system and have endured 3 knee replacement operations. Most particularly I have a passion for work related to environmental concerns. In this regard I have 120 peer reviewed research papers in Environmental Chemistry, one of which nearly landing me in jail.

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      Book preview

      The Abundance Myth - Jon Van Loon

      The Abundance Myth: Our Environment in Crisis

      Jon Van Loon

      Copyright 2013 Jon Van Loon

      Smashwords Edition

      Preface

      There is a dangerous and erroneous belief pervading the public mind that an exponential output in research presently being experienced particularly in North America, will contain answers that will save mankind from all the present and future serious problems threatening worldwide sustainability of a biosphere suitable for the continued existence of mankind. This belief is dangerous because it suggests that the general public can continue sitting back waiting for the skilled researchers to solve our major life endangering problems.

      Times have changed and in a fundamental way. The plant Earth is now grossly overpopulated both in developed and developing countries and this problem grows worse. Predicaments like Climate Change are already causing major destructive incidents worldwide. Where are these technological miracles that will reverse this trend? Making matters worse governments are in gridlock over the very basics that pervade this issue.

      In this small book I intend to attack the one dimensional notion that remediative research will eventually materialize and be accepted in some magic way by all concerned on a worldwide basis. In particular I intend to show that simplistic one dimensional thinking as is purveyed in popular best selling tomes is doomed to failure. This manuscript is peppered with personal stories that either illustrate a salient point or which although related vaguely to the topic are meant to give a short rest from the overall hard hitting message.

      Introduction

      When we think about the time frame over which we can maintain a sustainable biosphere in which mankind can live with a good quality of life are we thinking in terms of millions, 100 of thousands, 10 of thousands, thousands or hundreds of years? One thing can be predicted with certainty without drastic changes in middle and upper class lifestyle and economic, political, social etc. practices such conditions will not be maintainable for even a very few hundreds of years.

      Also let’s remember that the age of the earth is in the 5 billion year range. In round numbers and ignoring the many existing disputes Homo sapiens (us) have been around for no more than about 1 million years. But it dates back to only to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1830 and a world population of only about 1 billion, when modern man began the evolution to what we are today. So in less than 200 years and a phenomenal increase in population to 7 billion in 2012, we have raped the earth of vast quantities of resources and in doing so have caused desperate environmental problems, social and economic inequities and damage. Now this population of 7 million and still increasing, depleting resources at ever increasing rates is basically standing by waiting for technological measures to remediate the environmental mess. In this regard are any duplicitous Governments moving forward with dispatch on the most serious problems such as climate change? Most like Canada are doing little if anything significant. In this light how long does the reader think humans can possibly exist as we are presently proceeding without producing irreversible damage to the biosphere that in turn causes our destruction?

      Do you not think serious 180 type degree changes in life’s fundamentals are immediately necessary?

      Abundance will Never Happen-Opening Views

      The Incredible Naivety that Characterizes the Books like Abundance

      One dimensional, in this case technological solutions without much consideration of the multitude of disciplines, organizations-government and private, time and money consuming aspects necessary to establishing functional facilities for the technology worldwide. Naïve books Like Abundance (Abundance by P.H. Diamandis and S. Kotler Published by Free Press, February 2012) exacerbate the problem of convincing the public of the unlikelihood that a sustainable long term biosphere callable of supporting mankind is possible without fundamental changes in many of our time worn institutions including governments capable of accepting and establishing multidimensional solutions to the worlds many critical environmental and related problem that must be arrived at soon. These solutions must be vociferously demanded by the public at sacrifices to our present standard of living.

      In my view this bestselling book Abundance is very misleading to the public. That having been said I am totally convinced the authors wrote the truth therein as they understand it. Thus its conclusions represent their honest contentions. In anything that follows I am in no way questioning their veracity or their heart-felt belief in the views they present.

      Also I have no argument that the pace of technological innovation as described in Abundance is tremendous and accelerating daily. I also agree that technological developments may occur in this massive spouting of technology that may hold answers too many of the worlds pressing problems.

      Thus why do I claim that the book is naïve and misleading? Please read on.

      Notes: I intend to include in some sections below stories of events in some of the countries I worked and lived which although vaguely pertinent to the main theme of this manuscript are relevant and will help break the tedium of the main message.

      Please keep in mind that North Americans do not live in the ‘real world’ on the basis of the much less opulent life styles of the majority of the worldwide population. Because of this the disproportionately high per capita resource consumption and complex environmental damage we inflict on the majority of the world is egregious.

      Readers may wonder how I keep up with the research and developments relating to technology today being a retired academic. I have 18 computers that I have either built from scratch or rebuilt from ‘wrecks’ purchased on eBay. Each has an 8 core processor and most have solid state hard drives. I can do individual research projects on each core separately meaning that when fully operational I can do 144 separate research projects simultaneously.

      Technology as a Major Perpetrator of Today’s Major Problems

      How have we managed to dig humanity into an abundance of major world problems? Mankind consists of a large number of talented innovators of technology. The appearance of new technology is occurring at an accelerating rate. Many of these developments have been of great benefit to mankind and in this regard the medical field should be noted. Unfortunately technology also has caused serious problems.

      The world before the Industrial Revolution was largely free of technologies that caused serious pollution. Of course without technology the world at that time was plagues by problems in urban locals of pollution caused by such as untreated sewage running through the streets together with related untreatable disease. Medical procedures were crude and largely ineffective. Today despite a 7 fold increase in population the average life span of individuals in most developed jurisdictions has increased many fold together with the middle-class and upper-class standard of living. Yet still a staggering percentage the world as a whole remains caught up in poverty.

      Traditionally we divide the world into 2 camps the developed and the developing nations. The explosion in technology has occurred largely in the developed countries but its side effects have become a threat to all nations worldwide. Developing nations without the means to broadly adopt the latest technology use old dirty technologies which are also a major part of this threat. There is one large difference in the nature of the waste substances of the rich and the poor nations and that is the much more complex chemical and biochemical nature of waste substances from the former which may have consequences now and in the future that are much more serious than we now can predict.

      It is important to stress that the technological acceleration is largely confined to developed nations. Thus the good and the bad effects of this technology are first felt there-in. However pollutants that are air and water born or which transform into such become a threat worldwide. Thus those of us in the developed nations bear a responsibility to take care in the deployment of our new technology to identify harmful side effects that must be controlled and kept out of the environment. This latter problem historically and at the present has been a serious omission.

      Let’s look at the invention of the internal combustion engine to illustrate this point. Here is only one example of a technology that when it first was deployed to propel vehicular devices seemed to have only positive consequences. This engine appeared upon its inception to portend few adverse environmental side effects. The benefits of vehicles to the public seemed unchallenged.

      Fast forward to 2013 and observe what has occurred related to this invention. Together with combustion based electrical power generation and other combustion dependent technologies the internal combustion engine side effect mainly carbon dioxide has become a major source of the ongoing Climate Change problem that threatens mankind’s sustainability worldwide in the long term. Although this internal combustion engine hazard has existed for many years very little has been invented to effectively deal with the problem. Catalytic converters were developed to control some of the harmful emitted components in vehicular exhaust but not the carbon dioxide levels. Electric vehicles have existed for years but have never been a serious competitor for internal combustion engine powered devices mainly because of the lack

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