The Environment Reflects Our Health

Climate change, deforestation, ocean acidification, fresh water disappearing, expanding deserts, peak oil, and land and water pollution found throughout the world. These are the many environmental problems that we face today and probably for many years ahead. And these issues are not just isolated to the natural world around us, but are apart of us and reflect our own state of health. This is what policy makers do not consider in the debate over environmental issues. Problems of pollution and loss of natural resources give us a view into human health as well.

• The symbiotic relationship thats been occurring between fungi and plants for millions of years benefits the soil and other organisms around it. In fact, the success of organic agriculture can be determined by how well the beneficial mycorrhizae is maintained. Avoiding the usage of fungicides and heavy fertilization is the best way to do this. Mycorrhizae is important in maintaining nutrient levels and water uptake.
• Climate change is possibly one of the biggest threats to human health of the last thirty years. Increasing temperatures could cause infectious disease to become more prevalent while natural disasters will become more commonplace in many parts of world. This reflects our addiction to oil and the consumerism culture that was born of the fossil fuel revolution nearly a hundred years ago. With this revolution came an age of nuclear weapons, globalized power, processed food, synthetic chemicals, disintegration of community, medical-industry complex geared towards sick management instead of prevention, and industrial farming that further degrades environment. Of course, the usage of fossil fuels gave us a comfortable "first world" lifestyle free from dirty conditions, but at the same time it contributes to the downfall of quality of life in terms of true happiness and health.
• The fresh water tables are becoming dangerously low in many parts of the world with dry areas most afflicted. This is another part of climate change as the glaciers melt on top of mountains slowly killing local fresh water supplies.
• The practice of natural gas drilling has lead to numerous problems for residents living in areas where the fracking is happening. Local water supplies is contaminated with reports of it actually catching fire when a match is lit under the tap due to high arsenic content. These dangers are very similar to the ones of strip mining practices in the Appalachia region. The top of a mountain is literally removed to reach the coal underneath with the leftover debris being left to pile into valleys below where its organic sediments contaminate water and land. Though these practices provide a source of energy to power our homes and cars they are both highly unsustainable in the long-term. We can't continue to pollute water supplies without causing great harm to ourselves.
• The field of biotechnology got its first real technical start in the 1980s with the invention of recombinant human insulin and it would later go on to be used in gene therapy, stem cells, and eventually crops. Now it should be noted that biotechnology is not inherently bad or wrongful, in fact there have been truly life-saving and useful medicines to come out of this field such as insulin and organic transplants. However, the overuse and abuse of such technology has spawned frankenfoods that have potentially unknown and bad affects. Genetically-modified crops put into food products came to the market in the early 1990s with little research. Ever since then rates of allergies and autism have gone up to levels never seen in previous generations.
• This probably fits in with the first one, but nutrient depletion of the soil is becoming a big problem on our fields. Peak soil, similar to peak oil, goes hand in hand with nutrient depletion as the soil is stripped bare and left to erode away. Soil erosion is what contributes to the high nutrient loss from crop fields. Industrial farming practices leave a field bare after taking the harvest out and overgrazing while organic methods are more sustainable in that they practice crop rotation and cover crops. Planting a winter grain like hardy Rye in your field or comfrey in your garden helps to keep the soil and nutrients in place. Simply adding back organic compost and animal manure (such as chicken manure) every year to a growing area replenishes the soil. Also allowing tap-rooted plants like common weeds (example: dandelion) can literally "mine-out" nutrients from lower soil layers. But the overuse of herbicides in industrial growing kills these beneficial tap-root plants. Soil erosion also exacerbates the problem of water loss as bare soil can't hold water as well as soil held in place by plant roots.

Some of the above problems are too far gone to actually fix and in some cases inevitable, but if we change our thinking to more long-term and less reductionary we can get a better handle on the issues facing us today and in the future. Today, too many times corporations are running the environmental show by giving us a cheap short-term fix thats meant to make them rich and leave us emotionally/spiritually empty in the long run. Its time to get alternative energy and local food systems into the mainstream and get globalized money out of politics and economies. We need to work within our own economies to build humane infrastructure and communities. Of course, many groups are already doing this as can be seen by the peak oil movement, ecovillage planning, permaculture principles, and local food movement that encourages organic and biodynamic farming methods.