“We’re drowning in a sea of garbage with a three million ton waste dump twice the size of Texas floating 1,000 miles off the West Coast called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.”

Professor Paul G. Miller, Colorado State University

Humans consider the planet’s oceans their private toilet.  On average, they dump 8,000 pieces of plastic litter into the oceans and seas every 24 hours.  The U.N. Environment Program calculated that 46,000 pieces of plastic litter float on every square mile of our oceans.[28] 

          Millions of Americans scoff at the idea that overpopulation causes any detrimental effects to our land, water and air.  If they knew more, they might speak out and lead the “Charge of Enlightenment.”   They would push for change based on knowledge instead of emotions or past models.  They might thrust aside anachronistic paradigms that no longer work in the 21st century by applying new concepts for present conditions.

          Meanwhile, the August 1991 issue of  Life Magazine, titled, “Shark Alert!” reported, “The age-old struggle between man and shark has become a killing frenzy.  We slaughter 100 million sharks every year, driving many species to extinction.”

          Sharks prowled the seas for the last 400 million years.  But now, the predator has become the prey.   The Agger Trading Company in New York purchases shark fins where they are dried and resold.  Hong Kong alone buys over seven million pounds each year for shark-fin soup. 

          Fast forward to the March 2006 issue of Mother Jones News, titled, “Last Days of the Ocean.”   Researcher Julia Whitty wrote, “One of the biggest culprits is long-lining, in which a single boat sets plastic line across 60 miles of ocean, each bearing ganglion lines that dangle at different depths, baited with 10,000 hooks designed to catch a variety of species.  Each year, two billion long-line hooks are set worldwide primarily for tuna and swordfish—though long-liners inadvertently kill far more other species that take the bait, including 40,000 sea turtles, 300,000 sea birds and 100,000,000 sharks.”

          Not only that, fishing trawler captains cut loose thousands of miles of drift nets that get snagged on reefs.  Those nets continue killing uncounted numbers of marine life by the millions for however long the plastic monofilament lasts: in a word—almost forever.  Experts decry the practice of driftnets as ‘clear cutting’ under water where everything suffers destruction.  Ecologists describe it as “raping the oceans with no moral or ethical responsibility.”

          Whitty continues, “Fishing fleets in the Gulf of Mexico have dropped the white tip shark population 99 percent since the 1950s, driving that species into virtual extinction.  These sharks are thrown dead or dying back into the ocean; these unwanted species make up at least 25 percent of the global catch, as much as 88 billion pounds of life eliminated, for no reason, annually.”

          If you consider the figure of 100 million slaughtered sharks in 1991, annually, up to 2006, that’s 15 years to slaughter 1.5 billion sharks for their fins for human soup.  If you add in 300,000 seabirds annually, that’s 4.5 million seabirds killed in those 15 years.  That’s over a half million sea turtles killed for nothing.

          Whatever life remains in the Gulf of Mexico suffers from what is called a ‘dead zone’ which is an area of ocean filled with human chemicals so toxic that few fish species can withstand it or reproduce.  A deadly conveyor belt known as the Mississippi River delivers nitrogen-laced, chemically active fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides by the millions of gallons hourly, twenty four hours a day.  Latest research shows a 10,000 square mile dead zone beginning at the mouth of Old Man River.

          These examples represent humans’ unspeakable power to devastate their ecosystems.

          “Close to 50 hypoxic dead zones fester on the coasts of the continental United States,”  Whitty reported.  “The situation is far worse in Europe, with 14 persistent dead zones that never go away, and almost 40 others occurring annually, the biggest and worst being the 27,000 square mile dead zone in the Baltic Sea, which equals the landmass of North Carolina.”

          The most sobering news, from my perspective, stems from human chemicals poisoning coral reefs.  Because of climate change and chemicals injected into our oceans, the exhaustive study in 2004, “Status of Coral Reefs of the World” showed 20 percent of the world’s reefs so badly damaged they are unlikely to recover and another 50 percent teeter on the edge of extinction…15 percent of the world’s sea grass beds have disappeared in the past 10 years, depriving marine species of critical habitat.”

          “Likewise, kelp beds are dying at alarming rates; 75 percent are gone from Southern California alone—victims of the demise of sea otters that regulate populations of kelp-eating sea urchins.”

          Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimated that oceans absorbed 118 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide since the onset of the Industrial Revolution.  Today we add 25 tons daily.  This exhaust stems from 84 million barrels of oil burned worldwide each day.  That doesn’t take into account the gas, wood and coal burned all over the planet—daily. 

          “This mitigation of carbon dioxide changes oceanic ‘ph’ levels,” Whitty said. “Coral reefs plagued by so many stressors will almost certainly vanish.”

          A quick trip west of San Francisco during our nuclear expansion in 1945 showed the U.S. government dumped 400 barrels of radio-active waste 20 miles off shore.  A recent PBS report showed all 400 barrels ruptured with their contents dissolved into the Pacific Ocean.  Can you imagine what other nuclear countries have done with their radio-active waste?  Is it any wonder tuna, salmon and other marine life test chemically positive and our children should not eat fish because their small bodies can’t tolerate the doses deposited inside marine tissue?

          As if our adult bodies fare any better!  Read Dr. Sandra Steingraber’s book, Living Downstream, for a sobering understanding of our chemically contaminated world and its cancerous consequences.

          In Alaska, polar bears struggle and drown with vanishing ice pack because they must swim too far to gain the ice.  Worse, toxic chemicals plague the ice bears.  Researcher Marla Cone wrote, “Polar bear cubs already harbor more pollutants in their bodies than most other creatures on the planet.  Mother polar bears store a lifetime of chemicals in their fat and bequeath them, via their milk, to their young.  Several hundred of the industrialized world’s most toxic chemicals like PCBs and organo-chlorine pesticides such as DDT have transformed the Arctic into a chemical repository.  The chemicals magnify in animals each step up the food chain leaving polar bears, killer whales and other predators highly contaminated.”

          Today, in the Gulf of Mexico, leatherback turtles have declined 97 percent in the past two decades.  They feed on jellyfish, but today, shrimpers can’t draw their nets into the boats because millions of  25 pound jellyfish make it impossible to retrieve nets.

          On top of this ‘tip of the iceberg’ report, you may appreciate that climate change causes horrendous storm activity in our warming oceans, so much so, hurricane scientists call for a new category greater than Katrina’s category 5.  They expect category 6!

          If you noticed the fall hurricane season in 2008, Gustav, Ike and others lined up like bowling balls swirling toward the U.S. coast.  With larger population centers, more people suffered disasters.

More tidbits to consider:

*  Cruise ships produce 30,000 gallons of sewage and 19 tons of garbage

    daily which is dumped into the oceans in defiance of international laws.

*  U.S. Congressman Richard Pombo (R-CA) has accepted over $23,000.00 

    in foreign junkets to help him weaken federal laws protecting fisheries  

    and marine life.

*  Gorton’s Seafood has killed 2,700 whales against international laws in the

    guise of “scientific research.”

*  Toxic PCBs are regulated by the FDA.  However, the FDA allows such 

    high levels of cancer-causing PCBs in farmed salmon that, if they were 

    present in wild salmon, the EPA would restrict consumption to one meal 

    per month.

*  Chemically caused cancers kill millions worldwide annually.

          “Sewage-treated and untreated runs into the ocean from municipal and industrial plants, polluting water with bacterial waste, chemicals and metals,” said Jane Kay, ecologist.

At what point in the thinking process does one’s entrenched paradigm need excavation, lest a person or company or society bequeath on future generations a problem that proves both irreversible and unsolvable?  Tell me there is no moral and/or ethical question as to this kind of killing spree by a cognitive species upon defenseless, non-cognitive fellow creatures!

          Can Americans change course to a more viable and long-term sustainable future?  If we continue our hyper-population growth, the answer is: no!  As I noted in the first chapter of this book, you can’t see a tsunami until it hits.  As you read this information, it dawns on you that you couldn’t see any of what you have just read, but it happens at an accelerating rate of speed—all caused by population overload. 

To take action:  First and foremost, join www.numbersusa.com and become one of nearly a million Americans making impact with pre-written faxes and phone calls to change immigration policies toward a stable future. Bi-partisan and highly effective.

Second, join www.thesocialcontract.com for up to date information via the Social Contract Quarterly. Exceptional publication to keep you informed.

www.fairus.org ; www.vdare.com ; www.alipac.us ; www.firecoalition.com ; www.cairco.org ; www.limitstogrowth.com ; www.capsweb.org ;  www.populationmedia.org ; www.worldpopulationbalance.org

Visit this site for a rendition of Colorado Governor Lamm’s speech: “How to Destroy America”

http://usawakeup.org/HowToDestroyAmerica.htm

Please visit Annie Leonard at www.storyofstuff.com for a compelling and highly interesting 20 minute video concerning our high consumption, highly wasteful and unsustainable society.  She educates and provides avenues for you to make a difference.

Visit this web site by Chris Martenson: http://www.chrismartenson.com/environmental_data 

In Colorado: visit www.soprisfoundation.org for information how you can network with like-minded folks to create a more sustainable future for Colorado and other states. 

View CNN’s “Planet in Peril” with Anderson Cooper and Lisa Ling:

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/planet.in.peril/

BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA:  D.C.:  (202)224-2854 comment@whitehouse.gov

Books to read:  “The Long Emergency” by James Howard Kunstler

                         “Peak Everything” by Richard Heinberg

                         “Too Many People” by Lindsey Grant

Become a member of “Frosty’s Press Agent Corps” whereby you volunteer a few hours to send out emails to top TV and radio hosts to offer top speakers on America’s overpopulation crisis driven by unending immigration.  Email frostyw@juno.com and receive two informational letters showing you exactly what to do.

 Roy Beck's "IMMIGRATION BY THE NUMBERS" is the single best educational appreciation of America's future if we allow ourselves to add another 100 million people. Just click on this site for the most sobering experience of your children's future.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4094926727128068265&q=roy+beck&hl=en

Roy Beck gives a graphic presentation of our fate if we continue to allow legal and illegal immigration to swamp this country. If you have children, you will be particular unnerved at their fate. I know Roy Beck personally and his integrity and knowledge stand at the top. Pass this web site 14 minute video far and wide across America to educate everyone you know. We either stop this human tsunami or the future of this country will be much like Rome's. We must, as a nation and a civilization, move to secure our country from this massive, unrelenting population overload from a line that never ends. This will be the most compelling 14 minute video of your life.

Once you see it, go to my web site for action items www.frostywooldridge.com and join www.numbersusa.com to become a weekly faxer of pre written letters and join the phone calling teams.

 Bob Woodruff of ABC asked input from all citizens concerning the future of our planet.  Go to www.earth2100.tv for a sobering reality check as to what we face and to what I have been writing about for the past 20 years.  Our ‘window’ to change to a balanced population and non-polluting energy diminishes every day we listen to irresponsible media and thus ignore the blatant symptoms manifesting all over America and the planet.

From: Frosty Wooldridge 

This three minute interview with Adam Schrager on “Your Show” May 4, 2008, NBC Channel 9 News, addresses the ramifications of adding 120 million people to USA in 35 years and six million people to Colorado as to water shortages, air pollution, loss of farmland, energy costs and degradation of quality of life.  In the interview, Frosty Wooldridge explains the ramifications of adding 120 million people to the USA in 35 years. He advances new concepts such as a “Colorado Carrying Capacity Policy”; “Colorado Environmental Impact Policy”; “Colorado Water Usage Policy”; “Colorado Sustainable Population Policy”.  Nationally, the USA needs a "National Sustainable Population Policy" to determine the carrying capacity of this nation for the short and long term.  Wooldridge is available for interviews on radio and TV having interviewed on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and FOX.

Go to:  www.frostywooldridge.com  and click on “Audio/Video” tab

Frosty Wooldridge has bicycled across six continents – from the Arctic to the South Pole – as well as six times across the USA, coast to coast and border to border.  In 2005, he bicycled from the Arctic Circle, Norway to Athens, Greece.  He presents “The Coming Population Crisis in America: and what you can do about it” to civic clubs, church groups, high schools and colleges.  He works to bring about sensible world population balance at www.frostywooldridge.com