Which button am I talking about? The button that takes us to the next level from very, very orange to screeching-disaster-looming red. Big flashing red alert for what? A phenomenal LOSS of biodiversity in the coming years. I write this on the morning of Friday 5th of June - World Environment Day - in that year (as it will soon be known) - 2020.
I was really tired when I woke this morning - traveled too far and deep in the dreamspace and had trouble fully returning . After an hour of struggling to full wakefulness despite ample green tea, conversation with my daughter, a shower and walking around the house, I decided to go and buy something sweet - feeling the need for a cookie with my industrial-strength coffee. Not having any sugar or anything sweet in the house 🤣, it meant a trip to the dreaded convenience store.
So there I was, masked up in the queue to pay. In front of me was a Thai man buying cleaning products and personal items. Listerine. Toothpaste. Protex soap - that anti-bac "smell lovely all day" stuff. Laundry soap boosted with germ fighting whatever. Antibacterial floor cleaner. And a big plastic pump bottle full of nasty (cheap) looking blue hand sanitizer. He also had Germ Clear toilet paper in his basket. I overheard him laughing with the cashier about his haul. He has a small local barber shop and is worried about not being clean enough if the authorities come to inspect. He turned towards me, smiling and laughing, and gestured sheepishly to his haul. "Co-wid!" (which is how they say it here).
So FFWD 25 mins and I am now settled on my front porch, industrial coffee in hand and feeling somewhat better and more awake after my cookie treat, pondering what I would write about for World Environment Day today. I idly wandered into the search engine to check on what is the 2020 theme for World Environment Day. And it is??
And it was like walking into a door. It hit me and I was suddenly wide awake. Very fucking wide awake.
I had a flash of the Thai man and the other 64,999,999 people currently in Thailand, all pouring their chemicals down the drains. Not just this week, but already for many months and well into the forseeable future.
I had what I call an ayahuasca moment. I was suddenly able to see from beyond this time-space continuum to the connection of all things. To the disturbance in the field we have created.
I could feel-see why we already have a sudden very-early-in-the-season Dengue Fever outbreak - cos the little mosquito-eating fishies aren't breeding the same and the mosquitoes are flourishing.
I suddenly saw algal blooms choking water lilies and lotus, as the little water critters die and fester on the bottom, overwhelming the delicate chemical balance.
I felt birds starving as the fish die.
I could smell stagnant water no longer producing watercress or healthy oxygen-giving water weeds.
I felt the earth crying as this toxic water seeped in and became part of the ground water.
And then I felt the hungry elephants roaming.
According to a new study by University of Minnesota chemist Kristopher McNeill:
"...what we found is that Triclosan, which is an antibacterial, when you put it in natural water and shine sunlight on it, it converts into a dioxin. And this is not necessarily something you'd like to see because dioxins have this reputation for being incredibly toxic". Source
Surely that's a short-term risk that will just go away when Covid-19 and all this anti-viral-anti-bacterial paranoia dies down?
When dioxins enter the food chain, they are stored in animal fats. Over 90 percent of human exposure to dioxins comes through food, mainly animal products, such as dairy, meat, fish, and shellfish. Once consumed, dioxins can stay in the body for a long time. They are stable chemicals, which means they do not break down. Once in the body, it may take between 7 and 11 years for a dioxin’s radioactivity to fall to half its original level.Source.
So we dramatically increase the level of dioxins in the water, GLOBALLY, during 2020 due to the Covid plandemic. LET ME JUST REPEAT THAT. Not just in one small country of 65 million, but globally. Poor developing nation with not enough "hygiene" products? Never mind - we will donate it to you.
Every body washes their hands, their clothes, their floors with "Germ Clear" or "Added Protection" "Keep You Family Safe." And the water goes down the drain.
Dioxins do not easily dissolve in water, so they tend to settle to the bottom and cling to the sediment. Dioxins last for a very long time in the environment before breaking down. In surface waters and sediments, dioxins can pass into aquatic organisms and eventually find their way into the food chain. Dioxins are easily absorbed by animals and are stored in fatty tissue. Source.
Great - so we'll just all be vegans since water-based plants don't store dioxins. What a happy and safe world it will be.
Plant tissues with their water-filled cells don't store dioxins. But one part of the plant DOES: the seed. A study in the Journal of Expermental Botany showed the seeds from plants exposed to dioxins were wrinkled and degraded due to the dioxins stored in the seed-oil.Source.
I had to pause my rant at this point to make another industrial level organic coffee - cos I HATE negative environmental rants and I won't publish one.
Fortified and re-caffeinated, I came up with THIS question:
And the simple answer is that eash one of us did, when we exchanged our labour and time for a chemical-containing "hygiene" "anti-bacterial" "safe" product that contributes to this problem.
It's not just triclosan. It's the chemical fragrance agents. The Propane-1,2,3-triol (synthetic glycerine).
"But I use only pure rubbing alcohol for sanitising", people argue.
Seventy percent isopropyl alcohol is sold for antiseptic use. At this concentration, it may safely be sprayed on plants to kill aphids. ... At 5 percent concentration, plant growth is stunted, while concentrations higher than 25 percent tend to damage or kill the plant. Source
There would be outrage. And blame.
But who to blame? WE are choosing to buy this crap, and use it.
Stop BUYING it. Stop USING it.
Choose a safe, plant-based, natural, ethyl alcohol hand sanitizer if you are required to use one at all. Carry it with you.
Install a bidet and choose only toilet paper that has NO CHEMICALS & NO FRAGRANCE
STOP with the antibacterial floor and bathroom cleaners
Make your own natural toothpastes and powers
Make your own herbal-natural mouthwashes
Make your own laundry detergents or use soap nuts
Covid-19 will go down in history as the tipping point for a lot of things. I hope it goes down as the time we all woke up.
Next full moon - a month from now - why not forget the sagey-altar-kirtan-moon facebook-selfie full moon experience, and quietly walk down to a dark river and simply-ceremonially pour some home made rejuvelac or EM into it instead? And simply sit quietly, pondering - and praying - for Mother Earth and ourselves.
The probiotic rejuvelac or EM won't take away the dioxins - that horse has bolted and we WILL have to live with those consequences. The probiotics for our waterways will simply support plants and animals to be a little more resilient. Never made rejevelac? Here's How. I promise to post tomorrow about making EM - Effective Micro-Organisms - to help build soil and support the health and diversity of micro-organisms in our waterways.
Feeling overwhelmed at the enormity of what we have collectively done these last months, with our insane neurosis about "clean" and "germ-virus free". But determined to be relevant, and an agent of change.
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