QSJ: Chapter 2. Existential issues.

The quest for social justice,

a fact-based critical analysis and guide to effective action.

CHAPTER 2.  EXISTENTIAL ISSUES.

§ 1.  POVERTY & PRIVATION DESPITE ABUNDANCE & WASTE.  The contemporary global capitalist social order is rife with poverty and privation despite great abundance and waste.  The following issues and facts are illustrative. 

1^st.  Inequality.  Throughout most of the world, inequality is increasing.  Whereas the rich spend extravagantly, most of the world’s people endure life-long poverty. 

♦ Income.  In 1960, the fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the fifth in the poorest countries; in 1997, 74 times as much.  By 1997, the fifth in the richest countries had 86% of world GDP whereas the fifth in the poorest countries had 1%.  ^[1] 

♦ Wealth.  The wealth of the rich continues to grow while that of the poorest 50% stagnates.   Credit Suisse reports that (worldwide as of 2015) the richest 1% own more wealth than the remaining 99%.  62 individuals own as much as the bottom 50% of all humans.  ^[2]

♦ Consumption.  Consumption spending per capita (as of 2005) in the US, Canada, Australia, and 10 countries in Western Europe ranges between $43/day in the US and $33/day in France ^[3].  While pet owners in the US report (2017) spending over $4.24/day and over $2.70/day respectively upon their dogs and their cats ^[4]; the United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] reports (based upon data from 2000 to 2012) that nearly half of the world’s people live on less than $2.50/day, and 2 of every 9 (22%) on less than $1.25/day ^[5]. 

♦ Progress?  Limited improvements occur when economic conditions are favorable, but are subject to reversal.  For examples: poverty reductions to 11% in Indonesia shot up to 37% during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s; and the ILO [International Labor Organization] estimates that there were 50 million more working poor in 2011 than prior to the world financial crisis of 2008.  ^[5]

2^nd.  Clean water & sanitation.  Millions of people suffer adverse health effects because of their lack of access to clean water and proper sanitation. 

♦ Clean water.  WHO [World Health Organization] reports that, as of 2015, some 2.1 billion people (2 of 7) obtain their drinking water from contaminated sources which result in an estimated 500,000 diarrhoeal deaths annually.  ^[6] 

♦ Sanitation.   WHO reports that 2.3 billion people (nearly 1 of 3) lack access to basic sanitation, a lack which causes an estimated 280,000 deaths annually.   Moreover, in urban areas the number of people lacking access to proper sanitation is actually increasing.  ^[6]

3^rd.  Nutrition.  The world produces more than enough food to meet everyone’s nutritional needs, but vast multitudes do not get enough to eat.  The principal cause of undernourishment is poverty. 

♦ Starvation.  As of 2015, 795 million people (1 of 9) suffer from chronic undernourishment ^[7]. 

♦ Stunting.  1/4 of all children under five were underweight or stunted in 2013 ^[7]. 

♦ Excess & waste.  While 2 of every 5 adults are overweight with 1 of 8 being obese ^[8], and while vast quantities of food are wasted in rich countries (some 30 to 40% of the food supply in the US) ^[9]; an estimated 3.1 million children die each year because of hunger and malnutrition ^[7]. 

♦ Rich countries.  Even in the developed countries, there are some 11 million people who are undernourished, generally because they lack the wherewithal to buy enough nutritious food ^[7]. 

4^th.  Healthcare services.  Throughout the world, wealthy families have ready access to quality health care.  Meanwhile, vast multitudes of poor people have little or no such access and consequently suffer: preventable illnesses, physical debilitation, and premature deaths. 

♦ Access.  WHO reports that (as of 2013): 27% of live births occur in the absence of a skilled birth attendant, 24% of women lack access to modern methods of contraception, 63% of HIV-infected individuals do not receive needed anti-retroviral therapy, and 45% of new TB [tuberculosis] cases do not receive diagnosis and successful treatment ^[10].  WHO reports indicate that (in 2015) more than 52% of all deaths in poor countries were due to “Group 1” diseases (which include communicable diseases, nutritional deficiencies, and those involving pregnancy and childbirth), diseases which are usually preventable or curable when the affected people have access to modern healthcare.  Meanwhile, only 7% of deaths in rich countries were due to those same diseases ^[11].  In most countries (both wealthy and impoverished): wealthy individuals consume more health services than do the poor, and public spending upon health services usually benefits the rich more than the poor ^[12]. 

♦ Affordability.  The richest countries, with the exception of the US, purport to make quality healthcare readily available to all of their population; and these countries do have much better health outcomes than the rest of the world.  According to WHO: 32% of healthcare spending (as of 2013) was an out-of-pocket expense; and 41% of people in the poorest fifth spent nothing upon healthcare, mostly because they could not afford it ^[10].  WHO reports that out-of-pocket healthcare expenses annually push 100 million people into extreme poverty ^[13].

♦ Resource priorities.  Healthcare resources go mostly to costly and more profitable curative care, whereas less costly and less profitable preventive care is greatly neglected.  WHO estimates that “better use of existing preventive measures could reduce the burden of disease by as much as 70%”.  ^[12]   

♦ Immunizations.  Deaths, which could be prevented by mostly very low-cost vaccinations, exceed 1.5 million/year of which at least half are children.  WHO noted that (as of 2016) the Global Vaccine Action Plan had “stalled” (meaning it was making no numerical gains) for the past few years.  ^[14]

♦ Brain drain.  In most poor countries, the number of healthcare workers is very small in proportion to population; and, in the rural areas, many people have little or no access to modern healthcare.  Meanwhile, those poor countries (which educate some of their natives as physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals) lose many of these service providers to the rich countries (which, in addition to offering higher pay and other natural advantages, often actively recruit poor-country healthcare professionals who would not otherwise emigrate) ^[15]. 

♦ Privatization.  Structural adjustment programs, enforced by the IMF [International Monetary Fund] and World Bank to ensure repayment of debt to rich countries, have generally required austerity and privatization of public services thereby impeding and reducing the capability of poor countries to provide healthcare services for their populations.  Privatization of healthcare services in Russia and other former Soviet republics has resulted in: reduced access to healthcare services, much increased incidence and mortality from tuberculosis, and an overall deterioration of health outcomes.  30 years of tremendous progress in China were followed in the 1980’s by adverse effects upon healthcare for the poor as China dismantled much of its public provision of healthcare (while transitioning toward private-enterprise capitalism).  ^[16]

5^th.  Pharmaceuticals & medical devices.  The development, production, and distribution of needed medicines and medical devices are mostly controlled by several big for-profit transnational corporations which prioritize profit over human needs.

♦ Medical research.  Drug companies spend: more on marketing than on research, more on lifestyle drugs than on life-saving drugs, and almost nothing on diseases affecting only poor countries.  Debilitating and/or deadly neglected-tropical-diseases [NTDs] afflict more than one billion humans (1/7 of world population).  Said NTDs mostly affect people living in poverty, and the economic cost to developing countries is billions of dollars annually.  Transnational pharmaceutical firms neglect the diseases of the tropics, not because of technical obstacles, but because the poverty of the afflicted populations presents a lack of profit potential.  ^[17]

♦ Patent abuse.  Even though much of the basic science and foundational research is publicly funded by universities and governmental institutions; pharmaceutical companies, which largely rely upon that research to develop their proprietary medicines, demand strict enforcement of patent privileges with respect to those same medicines.  They then price those medicines above what millions of people in need can pay ^[17] [examples below in chapter 4, § 3, 6^th]. 

♦ Deceptive marketing.  Big pharmaceutical firms have commonly used deceptive marketing ploys to induce people to buy drugs which often are not appropriate for their healthcare needs.  They also misuse research and trial findings, which are tainted by biasing financial ties between the company and the researchers, in order to get their proprietary drugs onto the market; and this has sometimes resulted in deaths and other injuries to unsuspecting patients.  Example.  GlaxoSmithKline, based upon work by 11 researchers all of whom received money from the company, touted Avandia (in 2006) as a superior treatment for diabetes; but said researchers had overlooked warning signs in the data, and “a Food and Drug Administration scientist later estimated that the drug had been associated with 83,000 heart attacks and deaths” ^[18].

6^th.  Housing.  Whereas the rich live in spacious homes; millions of people: subsist in primitive huts or rented apartments unfit for human habitation, or are altogether homeless. 

♦ Housing deficiency.  Investment in housing construction goes disproportionately to more-profitable high-priced housing for the affluent while the housing needs of the poor are neglected, because housing which they can afford is much less profitable.  According to the UN OHCHR, more than one billion people (1 of 7) are not adequately housed.  ^[19] 

♦ Homelessness.  An estimated 100 million humans are homeless worldwide (as of 2017).  Even in the richest countries, there are millions of homeless, for examples: 141,000 in France (2012); 284,000 in Germany (2012); 163,000 in Britain (2011—13); 27,000 in Netherlands (2012); 34,000 in Sweden (2011); 105,000 in Australia (2009); and an estimated 1.6 to 3.5 million in the US (2009) with 2.4 million US children experiencing homelessness within the year (2013).  ^[20]

♦ Slums.  1/7 of the world’s people live in urban slums.  ^[19] 

7^th.  Education.  Whereas the children of the rich are educated in the finest schools and universities, many tens of millions of poor children are schooled in the most primitive and inadequate conditions or not at all.  UNICEF reports as follows.

♦ Access.  124 million children and adolescents are denied the opportunity to enter and complete school.  59 million children of primary school age are not in school.  Many children never enter a classroom.  Poor girls living in rural areas have the least access to education.  Since 2011, the global number of children who are not in school has been increasing.  If the current trajectory persists, more than 60 million children of primary school age will still be not in school in 2030.  ^[21]

♦ Disparities.  As of 2013, 72% of the poorest fifth had never entered primary school.  17% of boys and 29% of girls (of school age) never entered primary school.  ^[21]

♦ Educational proficiency.  In poor countries, schools are often: overcrowded; lacking needed materials; and/or staffed by teachers who are ill-trained, badly paid, and ineffective.  38% of children leave primary school without having learned to read, write, and do simple arithmetic.  ^[21]

♦ Developed countries.  Even in some developed countries, millions of school-age children are not being adequately educated.  This is especially so in the US where: rightwing politicians push privatization schemes (to be funded from tax dollars diverted from public schools), and most public schools are largely funded by their local school districts thereby leaving schools in poor districts with inadequate resources including staff ^[22].  As for Europe, when Sweden responded to neoliberal urging by introducing a market-driven privatization of much of its school system in the 1990s, outcomes for Swedish students declined significantly in both public and private schools ^[23]. 

8^th.  Debt.  Throughout the capitalist world, the poorest people: have the most difficulty obtaining loans, are required to pay far higher rates of interest than the more affluent, and are frequently victimized by predatory lending practices which target primarily the most vulnerable people. 

♦ Sharecropper & tenant farmer debt.  Whenever smallholding peasant farmers are beset with personal misfortune and a consequent urgent need for money, they often have no option but to borrow from the local moneylender at a usurious rate of interest.  This typically leads to ever increasing indebtedness and the loss of what little land and other property the borrower had owned.  Meanwhile, landless peasant farmers, if they remain on the land, eke out an impoverished livelihood working land owned by absentee owners who require the former to pay often-exorbitant rents so that the latter can profit without doing any of the actual work.  ^[24]

♦ Microcredit.  Since the 1970s, philanthropic microcredit schemes (notably Grameen Bank) have been promoted as a panacea for uplifting the poor in impoverished countries by providing small loans to enable them to start small businesses.  Seeing opportunity for profit, commercial banks (Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, among others) and finance companies have taken over much of the business.  These loans carry usurious annualized interest rates, up to 200% (in comparison with 20% at Grameen).  Borrowers often struggle to repay the loans; and burgeoning debt loads, combined with aggressive collection practices, drive some to desperate measures which include: forcing children from school and into child labor, sexual prostitution, or suicide.  ^[25]

♦ Mortgage loans.  Mortgage lenders often exploit vulnerable borrowers (those who are unfamiliar with the complexities of mortgage loans) thru nondisclosure of: terms, conditions, and cost-saving alternatives.  Commonplace loan abuses include: inappropriate and unaffordable loans (including rising-rate mortgages), hidden and/or excessive fees, mandatory arbitration clauses, prepayment penalties, refinance prohibitions, balloon loans.  Servicing-agent abuses include: failures to forward loan payments to the lender resulting in foreclosures upon innocent full-paid-up borrowers, and failure to provide notice when foreclosure proceedings begin thereby depriving borrowers of opportunity to present timely defense.  During the 1997—2008 housing bubble in the US, major mortgage lenders preyed upon vulnerable home-buyers with fraudulent and unaffordable home loans (often using forged documents, falsified appraisals, and fabrications of income in order to qualify naïve borrowers for loans which they could not afford).  Those practices then led to a massive wave of foreclosures.  ^[26]

♦ Other lending abuses.  Exorbitant interest charges are a commonplace lending practice (widespread in the US).  Examples include: credit-card late fees, bank overdraft fees, payday loans, car-title loans, rent-to-own contracts, pawn-shop loans, refund-anticipation loans, and installment-purchase loans.  Annualized interest with respect to such loans is reported to be at rates in excess of: 18%, 300%, and sometimes even 3,000%.  ^[26] 

♦! Consequence.  With the poorest people needing to spend the whole of their meager incomes upon subsistence and sometimes desperate for loans in order to deal with unanticipated expenses, lenders require them to pay the most for the least thereby perpetuating their poverty. 

9^th.  Taxes.  Lower-income people are commonly made to pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes than are higher-income people.

♦ Taxes to pay foreign loans.  Many hundreds of millions of working people in poor countries are both taxed and deprived of public services so that their governments can make payments on burgeoning debt contracted as “development” loans (from the World Bank, the IMF, and the big commercial banks) at interest rates which the affected countries cannot pay.  ^[27]

♦ Regressive taxation.  Throughout the capitalist world, lower-income people generally pay a greater percentage of their income in taxes than do higher-income people.  The regressive taxes and tax exemptions which produce this effect include: flat-rate payroll taxes (even more regressive when capped above a certain income level); value added taxes on production; excise taxes on consumption (especially when applied to necessities which include food, medicine, fuel, electricity, transportation, and lodging); flat-rate income taxes; income-tax deductions usable only by higher-income individuals; income-tax exclusions for businesses; tax holidays for big businesses; corporate tax avoidance on foreign earnings; foreign tax havens (used only by large businesses and wealthy individuals); and so forth.  ^[28]

♦ Tax evasion.  An estimated $7.6 trillion (more than the combined GDP of Britain and Germany) is shielded from taxation in offshore accounts.  ^[29] 

10^th.  Livelihood.  Vast multitudes of workers lack the wherewithal to meet basic needs. 

♦ Unemployment.  Part of the working class is left: to serve as an unemployed labor reserve to satisfy the fluctuating needs of capital, as well as to maintain downward pressure upon wages.  This surplus labor-power is consequently wasted rather than utilized to satisfy unmet human and social needs.

♦ Working conditions and compensation.  Capitalist employers are driven by competition to seek out the cheapest available labor force so that most low-skill jobs (especially, but not exclusively, in developing countries) are beset with: hazardous and/or debilitating (and sometimes lethal) working conditions, low pay, no collective bargaining rights, no job security, no sickness or retirement benefits, and so forth.  ^[30]

♦ Displacement. In poor countries, many people, unable to earn a livelihood as farmers, take often-hazardous and minimally-compensated jobs: in mines, on plantations, or in urban sweatshops.  ^[31]

♦ Unmet needs.  A great many of the migrants to the cities are unable to find even subsistence employment and are reduced to: scavenging, begging, sexual prostitution, drug-dealing, stealing, and/or starvation.  They are also subjected to various hazards: disease, crime victimization, overcrowding, unlivable housing, et cetera.  Even in the developed countries, millions of people are denied the wherewithal to meet basic minimum needs (for food, housing, healthcare, transportation, and so forth) because of circumstances which include: disability, employee compensation below subsistence level, or no employment availability at all.  ^[32]

Ω.  Finding.  UN agencies, international development banks, and international aid organizations routinely boast of progress achieved and/or anticipated in overcoming specific ravages of global poverty.  All the while, they habitually evade the fact that private-enterprise capitalism: naturally concentrates wealth and power in the possession of a privileged few; leaves vast multitudes struggling to obtain a mere subsistence; and also leaves many to die for want of food, medical care, safe drinking water, basic sanitation, and/or other necessities for life.  Whereas the children of the wealthy enjoy lives of privilege; the children of the poor have far fewer, often no, opportunities to improve upon their impoverished condition.  As for progress, the reality is that, alongside progress with respect to some problems, there is either stagnation or actual worsening with respect to other issues.  In fact, progress has sometimes been followed by major reversals.  Although modern industry and agriculture are capable of producing an abundance of the goods and services with which to satisfy human needs throughout the world, they are mostly operated instead to produce profit and ever greater accumulations of wealth for the owners of capital.  Under such conditions, the persistence of widespread poverty with attendant human suffering is necessarily to be expected.

Noted sources:

[dated on or before 2018 Apr]

[1] UNDP: Human Development Report (1999) ~ Overview (p 3) @  http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/reports/260/hdr_1999_en_nostats.pdf .

[2] Oxfam International: An Economy for the 1% (2016 Jan 18) ~ p 2 @ https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf .

[3] computed from Worldsalaries.org: Personal Consumption Expenditure – International Comparison (2005) @ www.worldsalaries.org/personal-consumption-expenditure.shtml . 

[4] computed from American Pet Products Association: U.S. Pet Industry Spending Figures & Future Outlook (2017) @ http://www.americanpetproducts.org/press_industrytrends.asp .

[5] UNDP: Human Development Report (2014) ~ pp 19—20 @ http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/hdr14-report-en-1.pdf .

[6] WHO: drinking water (2018 Mar) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs391/en/ ;

sanitation (2017 Jul) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs392/en/ ; water-related diseases (2017) @ http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases-risks/diseases/diarrhoea/en/ .

[7] Hunger Notes: 2016 World Hunger and Poverty Facts and Statistics (2016 Dec 28) @ http://www.worldhunger.org/2015-world-hunger-and-poverty-facts-and-statistics/ .

[8] WHO: obesity (2018 Feb) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs311/en/ .

[9] USDA: U.S. Food Waste Challenge (2015 Sep 16) @ https://www.usda.gov/oce/foodwaste/faqs.htm .

[10] WHO & World Bank: Tracking Universal Health Coverage (2015) ~ Executive Summary @ http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/174536/1/9789241564977_eng.pdf?ua=1 . 

[11] WHO: The top 10 causes of death (2017 Jan) ~ p 2 @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs310/en/ .

[12] WHO: World Health Report (2008) ~ box 1 @ http://www.who.int/whr/2008/whr08_en.pdf .

[13] WHO: Universal health coverage (2017 Dec) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs395/en/ .

[14] WHO: Immunization coverage (2018 Jan) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs378/en/ .

[15] Kissick⸰ Kasey: The “Brain Drain”: Migration of Healthcare Workers out of Sub-Saharan Africa (School Health Evaluation and Research, Stanford University, 2012 Jun 06) @ http://med.stanford.edu/schoolhealtheval/files/KissickBrainDrainFactSheetFinal.pdf .

[16] Wikipedia: Healthcare in Russia (2018 Apr 04) ~ § 1 History; Healthcare in Georgia (country) (2018 Mar 22) ~ § 1 Historical Introduction, § 5 Criticisms; Healthcare reform in China (2018 Mar 28) ~ § 2 Medical Insurance Reforms. 

[17] WHO: Neglected tropical diseases (2017) @ www.who.int/neglected_diseases/diseases/en/ .  

Till⸰ Brian: How Drug Companies Keep Medicine Out of Reach (The Atlantic, 2013 May 15) @ https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/05/how-drug-companies-keep-medicine-out-of-reach/275853/ .  

Rother⸰ John: Abusive specialty drug pricing threatens healthcare system (The Hill, 2014 Jun 03) @ http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/207929-abusive-specialty-drug-pricing-threatens-healthcare-system . 

[18] Whoriskey⸰ Peter: As drug industry’s influence over research grows, so does the potential for bias (Washington Post, 2012 Nov 24) @ https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/as-drug-industrys-influence-over-research-grows-so-does-the-potential-for-bias/2012/11/24/bb64d596-1264-11e2-be82-c3411b7680a9_story.html .

[19] UN OHCHR: Fact Sheet 21 – The Right to Adequate Housing (2014 May) ~ § Introduction, § II.C. Slum-dwellers @ http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf .

[20] Homeless World Cup: Global Homeless Statistics (2017) @ www.homelessworldcup.org/content/homelessness-statistics .

[21] UNICEF, State of the World’s Children (2016) ~ Chapter 2 (pp 42—46, 48) @ https://www.unicef.org/publications/files/UNICEF_SOWC_2016.pdf .

[22] Michelman⸰ Barbara: Vouchers, School Privatization, and the Threat to Public Education (ASCD Vol 23 Nr 3, 2017 Fall) @ http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/policy-priorities/vol23/num03/Vouchers,-School-Privatization,-and-the-Threat-to-Public-Education.aspx .

[23] Fisman⸰ Ray: Sweden’s School Choice Disaster (Slate, 2014 Jul 15) @ http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_dismal_science/2014/07/sweden_school_choice_the_country_s_disastrous_experiment_with_milton_friedman.html .

[24] Barraclough⸰ Solon L: Land Reform in Developing Countries: The Role of the State and Other Actors (UNRISD, 1999) ~ Introduction (especially pp 2 & 8) @ http://www.unrisd.org/80256B3C005BCCF9/(httpAuxPages)/9B503BAF4856E96980256B66003E0622/$file/dp101.pdf . 

Pillai⸰ S Ramachandran: Certain Aspects of the Agrarian Situation and Alternative Policies (The Marxist, 2003 Oct-Dec) @ www.cpim.org/marxist/200304_marxist_agrarian.htm .

[25] Godoy⸰ Julio: Banksters Hijack Microfinance (Inter Press Service, 2012 Jul 27) @ www.globalissues.org/news/2012/07/27/14351 .

[26] Wikipedia: Predatory lending (2017 May 08); Alternative financial services (2017 Mar 29); and related articles. 

Bruce⸰ Laura: FDIC study: outrageous overdraft fees (Bankrate, 2009 Jan 07) @ www.bankrate.com/finance/investing/fdic-study-outrageous-overdraft-fees-1.aspx .

[27] FAO: Beating the debt burden (1994) @ http://www.fao.org/docrep/u8480e/U8480E0p.htm .

[28] Wikipedia: articles on specific taxes.

[29] Oxfam International: An Economy for the 1% (2016 Jan 18) ~ p 3 @ https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf .

[30] Globalization 101: Rethinking NAFTA’s Environment and Labor Agreements (The Levin Institute, SUNY, 2008 Apr 21) ~ NAFTA and Labor @ http://www.globalization101.org/rethinking-naftas-environment-and-labor-agreements-2/ .

Fields⸰ Gary S: Poverty and Low Earnings in the Developing World (Cornell University ILR School, 2011 Jul) ~ sections I & II @ http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1151&context=workingpapers . 

[31] Fitzgerald⸰ Helen: What Are the Causes of Urbanization in Poor Countries? (bizfluent, 2017 Sep 26) @ https://bizfluent.com/info-8643337-causes-urbanization-poor-countries.html .

[32] Wikipedia: Slum (2017 May 26) ~ especially § 4 Characteristics of slums, § 5 Risks.

§ 2.  PLUNDERING & POISONING IN PURSUIT OF PROFIT.  Capitalist enterprises, in their drive to maximize profits, routinely and wantonly plunder the world’s natural resources and poison the natural environment.  The effects are largely to the current and future detriment of most of humankind and of vast numbers of other living species.  The following issues and facts are illustrative. 

1^st.  Greenhouse-gas pollution.  The burning of carbon-based fuels (coal, oil, natural gas, bio-mass, ethanol) emits most of the greenhouse gases (primarily carbon dioxide [CO₂]) going into the atmosphere.  Other industrial operations emit significant additional amounts of greenhouse gases.  Greenhouse-gas pollution has put the world onto a trajectory to climate catastrophe. 

♦ Warming effects ^[1].  The overwhelming consensus of environmental scientists is that carbon pollution is causing global warming, with an expected global temperature-rise of 1.4 to 5.6 °C (2.5 to 10 °F) by 2100.  Global warming causes: 

• the melting of the polar ice sheets and resulting sea level rise (which will inundate low-lying land thereby displacing many millions of people and wreaking havoc with the lives of those and of many more);
• increased severity of droughts and wildfires in some areas and of flooding in other areas;
• increasing frequency and intensity of destructive and often-lethal heat waves; and
• more intensity and destructiveness of hurricanes, typhoons, and equivalent cyclones.

♦ Acidification effects ^[2].  Much of the increased carbon dioxide is absorbed by surface water thereby causing ocean acidification which then reduces the availability of the calcium carbonate which many marine species need in order to grow their skeletons or shells.  Ocean acidification causes:

• the destruction of the pteropods and other aquatic organisms (which are the essential food sources for fish and other sea creatures upon which many tens of millions of humans rely as a major source for their dietary protein);
• the mass die-off of those sea creatures which depend upon calcium carbonate and of those (such as many fish species) whose physiology does not function effectively in a more acidic ocean;
• the destruction by acidification (along with warming) of the coral reefs (which provide the essential habitat for 1/4 of the ocean’s species); and
• the increasing non-viability of enterprises engaged in the harvesting of adversely affected sea creatures (oysters, clams, mussels, shrimp, crabs, lobsters, and fish).

♦ Extinctions.  Global warming and ocean acidification are expected to result in the extinctions of many hundreds of thousands of species of plants and animals.  ^[2] 

♦ Obstruction.  Under pressure from for-profit companies which produce or consume carbon-based fuels, governments have resisted mandating the expeditious transition to climate-friendly energy sources. 

2^nd.  Deforestation.  Forest removal is extremely detrimental to humankind and to a vast multitude of other living species.

♦ Global warming.  Deforestation contributes about 15% of the greenhouse gases which are causing global warming and ocean acidification.  ^[3]

♦ Extinctions.  Deforestation destroys wildlife habitat thereby portending the extinctions annually of an estimated 23,000 plant and animal species.  Some of these would otherwise yield substances from which lifesaving medications and other beneficial products would be produced.  ^[4]

♦ Other destructive effects.  The absence of tropical forest canopy and retentive vegetation exposes the land to: intense solar radiation, wind, and rapid water runoff.  These forces then cause: flooding, soil erosion, silting of lakes and streams, degradation of water quality, loss of aquatic food resources, and desertification of the land with loss of soil nutrients.  ^{[3, 4]}

♦ Disappearance.  The world’s forests are rapidly disappearing with an area the size of Panamá being cut down every year.  At the current rate, all of the world’s rainforests will be gone within 100 years.  More than 60% of all forests and more than half of the tropical forests have already been lost.  Most deforestation is in service to commercial interests.  ^{[3, 4]}

• Agribusinesses remove forest to obtain land for cash crops and cattle ranching.
  • Loggers employed by forest products companies destroy the forest in order to cheaply obtain timber for lumber and paper products.
  • Land developers remove forest to make space for urban development. 

3^rd.  Wetland destruction. 

♦ Benefits.  Removal of wetlands eliminates important benefits.  Wetlands filter and clean water thereby preventing degradation of water quality.  They collect and hold flood waters thereby reducing erosion of seashores and stream banks.  Wetlands constitute barriers which absorb and mitigate destructive wind and tidal forces.  ^{[5, 6]} 

♦ Extinctions.  Wetlands provide habitat for a great diversity of wildlife.  Consequently, their removal results in the extinctions of many endangered wildlife species which depend upon wetlands for survival.  ^{[5, 6]} 

♦ Global warming.  Drainage of wetlands accelerates global warming by releasing greenhouse gases (CO₂ and methane) into the atmosphere.  ^[5]

♦ Disappearance.  During the past 100 years, 60% of the world’s wetlands have been destroyed mostly for projects to benefit commercial enterprise: agriculture, dams and canals, urban development, and peat mining.  ^{[5, 6]}

4^th.  Freshwater depletion.  Loss of freshwater is another catastrophic event now happening.

♦ Groundwater.  Over-pumping of groundwater in North America, China, India, southwest Asia, and other regions (to satisfy the demands of agribusiness and some other industries as well as the needs of urban areas) persists.  It is: lowering water tables, depleting this limited resource far faster than Nature can replenish it, and causing permanent ground surface subsidence (by more than 3 meters [10 feet] in some places).  Groundwater depletion in coastal and various other areas causes contamination of well water with non-potable saline and/or polluted water.  ^[7]

♦ Surface water.  Meanwhile, diversion of surface water for commercial and public use depletes and pollutes this invaluable resource.  Many lakes and rivers are so damaged that they no longer support aquatic life.  So much water is taken from the once-mighty Colorado River that no water at all flows out at its mouth.  Much of this water is used wastefully and frivolously by affluent consumers.  Even more is used unsustainably by commercial enterprises concerned only with near-term profit.  ^{[8, 9]}

♦ Freshwater scarcity is increasing such that the share of world population affected by severe water-stress is expected to double from 1/3 to 2/3 from 2012 to 2025.  Consequently, in the not-too-distant future, vital groundwater and surface water resources will be entirely inadequate to meet the basic needs of billions of people.  ^[8]

5^th.  Species depletions & extinctions.  Human activities are causing the Holocene extinction crisis whereby species are going extinct at around 1,000 times the rate which would otherwise be expected. 

♦ 99% of currently threatened species are at risk due to human activities: habitat destruction, global warming, and introduced species.  For-profit industrial and commercial endeavors, with minimal attention to the environmental impact, have intensified the crisis.  ^[10]

♦ In addition, there is overexploitation ^[11].  Commercial fishing has depleted fish populations.  Trophy hunters, abetted by commercial safari outfitters, have brought various large animal species to the brink of extinction.  Meanwhile, poachers obtain billions of dollars in profits from illicit trade:

• in wild animals for the pet trade; and
• in animal parts (elephant ivory, rhino horn, tiger bones, shark fins, bird plumage, reptile skins) for superstitious medicinal and virility treatments, food delicacies, fashion statements, and so on.  Past over-hunting has already driven dozens of fauna species (notably including the mammal and bird species listed in the table below) to absolute extinction. 

SOME NOTABLE EXTINCTIONS CAUSED BY HUMAN OVEREXPLOITATION
SPECIES	LOCATION	BODY MASS	EXTINCTION CAUSE & DATE
thylacine a.k.a. “Tasmanian wolf”	Australia	20—30 kg	hunted to extinction by farmers & bounty hunters (1930).
warrah a.k.a. “Falkland Islands wolf”	Falkland Islands	circa 8 kg	hunted to extinction by settlers (1870).
steller’s sea cow	Bering Sea	8—10 tons       (size of 3 elephants)	overhunted by sailors, hunters, & fur traders (1768).
moa (flightless ratite bird)	New Zealand	up to 230 kg	overhunted by Maori (1440).
dodo (flightless pigeon)	Mauritius	11.6—17.5 kg	overhunted by settlers (1700)
great auk (flightless puffin-relative)	coastal north Atlantic	5 kg	overhunted for its down (1850).
passenger pigeon	North America	260—340 g	overhunted by inhabitants (1914).
carolina parakeet	temperate N America	1.6 kg	overhunted for feathers (1918).

6^th.  Building practices.  Because of their subservience to capitalist interest groups (land investors, developers, financiers, real estate brokers, and mortgage lenders); governments permit the construction of homes and businesses on land which is vulnerable to flooding, landslides, wildfires, or other such natural cataclysm.  The subsequent and predictable destruction of many such homes and other buildings could be prevented if only rational zoning restrictions were applied.

7^th.  Antimicrobial medicine.  When first developed, antibiotics were wonder-drugs with which healthcare providers effectively treated infectious diseases which had previously killed many of their patients.  Now, because of overuse and misuse, many of the causative pathogens have evolved strains which are increasingly resistant to the once-effective antibiotics. 

♦ Overuse by patients.  Drug companies heavily promote the use and over-use of their antimicrobial products thru incentives to healthcare professionals.  Moreover, many healthcare providers, especially in countries where heavy drug-company advertising creates patient expectations that nearly every disease should be treated with some kind of drug, have catered to such misinformed patient expectations by overprescribing various medications.  Further, patients often demand antibiotics for common viral illnesses which do not respond to antibiotics.  ^[12]

♦ Misuse in agribusiness.  Commercial agribusiness has widely and massively misused antibiotics as dietary supplements to promote fast growth in food animals.  ^[12]

♦ Drug company priorities.  Scores of infectious diseases (including: staphylococcus, enterococcus, streptococcus, E coli, salmonella, gonorrhea, tuberculosis, malaria), which were previously treatable, have become increasingly antimicrobial-resistant.  Nevertheless, pharmaceutical companies choose not to invest their research and development funds into the search for badly-needed new antibiotics because they find other pursuits to be more lucrative.  ^[12]

♦ Consequences.  Tuberculosis and other infectious pathogens, which are becoming increasingly drug-resistant, already kill hundreds of thousands of people every year.  WHO [World Health Organization] estimates 240,000 deaths in 2016 from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis.  If current practice persists: physicians and patients will be increasingly deprived of effective treatments for such often-lethal infectious diseases, and the death toll will rise.  ^[12]

8^th.  Mining & drilling.  Mining and oil-drilling companies naturally seek to maximize profit by minimizing their production costs.  The methods, with which they achieve this objective, poison the natural environment and deplete freshwater sources. 

♦ Mine tailings.  Mine waste material, typically laced with poisons, is left exposed or inadequately covered so that it then pollutes the soil, the groundwater, and the nearby surface water.  ^[13]

♦ Surface alteration.  Mountaintop-removal coal mining and other surface-mining operations: pollute the air with poisonous dust; and dump rock and soil containing poisonous byproducts into valleys and/or otherwise expose it (so that it poisons surface water, destroys wildlife habitat, and also often adversely impacts human health).  ^[13]

♦ Oil spills.  Inadequate safeguards and cost-cutting negligence in oil drilling and oil transport operations have resulted in accidents (examples: Deepwater Horizon, Gulf of Mexico, 2010; Exxon-Valdez, offshore Alaska, 1989) involving massive and highly destructive oil spills.  ^[13]

♦ “Fracking”.  Massive hydraulic fracturing to obtain oil and natural gas sometimes results in: depletion of fresh water, contamination of ground-water aquifers, pollution of surface water, methane emissions, degradation of air quality, noise pollution, and seismic shocks.  ^[13]

9^th.  Agribusiness.  Commercial farming has become heavily reliant upon methods which are environmentally destructive and ultimately unsustainable. 

♦ Erosion.  Tillage methods, which leave soil exposed, result in erosion and depletion of the soil by wind and rain.  Disturbance of soil also reduces its nutrient content by releasing carbon into the atmosphere.  Fertile soil is being depleted far faster than Nature can replace it.  If this trajectory continues, soil erosion will present a huge threat to global food security within the next 100 years.  ^[14]

♦ Chemicals.  Routine use of chemical pesticides and chemical fertilizers provides billions of dollars of revenue to the firms which produce and sell this material, but it poisons the soil and the proximate water sources and then kills off the natural aquatic life.  ^[15]

♦ Animal waste.  Concentrated animal feeding operations [CAFOs] (which produce meat, eggs, and dairy): inhumanely house the animals in confined spaces; feed them with unnatural diets often infused with antibiotics; and generate animal waste which often pollutes the soil, water, and air.  Excessive disposal of said waste on land poisons the soil with harmful chemical components while run-off pollutes surface water and destroys the indigenous aquatic life.  Stored waste containments often leak and/or overflow thereby poisoning proximate water sources (including water used for human consumption) with toxins and infectious disease organisms.  CAFOs also generate noxious fumes which are detrimental to quality of life in nearby communities and sometimes harmful to human health.  ^[16]

♦ Water depletion.  Globally, agriculture accounts for some 70% of freshwater use.  Pumping of groundwater to irrigate crops unsustainably depletes this limited resource and washes pollutants into streams and lakes.  Much of this pumping occurs in areas of arid climate where it damages the soil by increasing its salinity.  ^[17]

10^th.  Industrial waste.  Unless stopped, manufactories, refineries, power generators, and other industrial operations minimize production costs by dumping their waste byproducts into the soil, water, and air.  These industrial operations are the major source of pollution.

♦ Climate change.  Industrial operations are a major emitter of the greenhouse gases which are causing climate change.  ^{[18, 19, 20]}

♦ Air.  The toxic gases, which industries emit into the air, include nitrogen and sulfur gases which combine with water vapor to create acid rain which then destroys: forests, aquatic life, and many stone markers and historic edifices ^[21].  Toxic emissions (gases and particulates) from industrial smoke stacks and from commercial and personal motor vehicles create so much air pollution that many cities are choked with severe smog ^[21].  Airborne pollutants: exacerbate asthma, cause serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, shorten the lives of those who must breathe it, and cause premature deaths of more than two million humans every year ^[19].  According to WHO, air pollution contributes to one of every eight deaths worldwide ^[19]. 

♦ Surface water.  Discharge of heated water from industrial facilities destroys much of the aquatic life in affected rivers ^[19].  Meanwhile, in the developing world, around 70% of industrial waste, including toxic chemicals, is dumped into bodies of water thereby rendering the natural water supply lethal for much wildlife and unsafe for human use ^[21]. 

♦ Soil and ground water.  Industrial facilities spill toxic chemicals onto the ground and/or pour them into (often leaky) dumps, where they: poison the soil, leach into aquifers thereby poisoning the ground water, and/or are carried by rain run-off into nearby streams thereby poisoning surface water ^{[18, 19]}.  Generators of radioactive waste accumulate it in (also often leaky) dumps which likewise poison ground and surface water.  With respect to polluted aquifers, because of the irregularity of their nooks and spaces, it is virtually impossible to remove more than a fraction of the contamination after it has occurred. 

♦ Culpability.  Those business firms, which generate large amounts of toxic waste, have generally chosen to avoid the expense which would be required in order to institute appropriate processes for the safe and responsible disposal of their toxic byproducts (chemical poisons, radioactive waste, et cetera).  ^{[18, 19, 20, 21]}

11^th.  Wastewater (a.k.a. sewage).  In much of the world, municipal governments, under pressure from business interests to minimize taxes and near-term costs, dump much or all of their wastewater, untreated or incompletely treated, into streams, lakes, or seas (where it becomes a hazardous pollutant).  The UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] estimates that globally 90% of sewage is released untreated into the environment.  There, it pollutes the freshwater upon which people depend as their water source.  In 2015, some 2.1 billion people lacked ready access to safe drinking water.  Consumption of polluted water causes 500,000 deaths annually from deadly diseases including: cholera, typhoid, and dysentery.  Nearly 1,000 children die of diarrhoea every day, mostly due to use of contaminated water.  Under the current trajectory, half of the world population will be living in water-stressed areas by 2025.  ^{[22, 23]}

12^th.  Consumer waste.   Producers and vendors of consumer goods increase their profits by promoting a consumer culture which induces people to spend and overspend in order to acquire things, many of which are designed to be soon discarded.  Consequently, those consumer-culture humans with sufficient funds (including borrowed funds) generate massive amounts of waste, while the producers and vendors give almost no concern regarding the need for its eventual disposal.  Meanwhile, most municipal governments yield to pressure for cost-cutting and low taxes by permitting much or all of this waste to be disposed in ways which pollute soil, air, and water.

♦ Incineration and landfills.  Although nearly all consumer waste could be recycled, most of it is incinerated or buried in landfills.  Incineration emits toxic fumes into the air and produces toxic ash which generally has no place to go except to the landfill.  Landfills take up valuable space and leak poisons into the groundwater.  ^[24]

♦ Litter.  A lot of trash becomes litter disfiguring the landscape. 

♦ Ocean pollution.  Much trash, including large amounts of non-biodegradable plastic, ends up in the oceans where it kills a great many animals as well as constituting an eyesore.  Cruise ships dump thousands of tons of raw sewage into the oceans.  Ships of all kinds routinely spill bilge water, often contaminated with oil and other toxins, into the seas and waterways.  Much of this pollutes coastal waters where it poisons and kills wildlife and pollutes beaches.  ^[25]

♦ E-waste.  Globally, 20 to 50 million metric tons of outmoded and/or worn-out electronic devices (computers, televisions, mobile phones, batteries, et cetera) are discarded annually.  Most of this e-waste (which contains lead, cadmium, mercury, and other toxic substances) goes into landfills.  In the US, less than 30% was recycled in 2012.  Although recycling is increasing, the faster increase of sales of consumer-electronics is continuing to grow the amount of e-waste pollution.  ^[26]

13^th.  Unused waste-remedies.  The amount of waste (toxic and other) generated by industrial and other human activity could be reduced to a small fraction of the current volume thru readily available means which include application of: technical improvements in production processes, utilization of environmentally friendly alternatives, and comprehensive recycling. 

♦ One salient example.  There is massive accumulation of non-biodegradable single-use plastic items (packaging, containers, utensils) which are discarded in trash or as litter and then persist harmfully in the environment for centuries.  Those petroleum-derived plastics could be replaced by currently-existing environmentally-friendly alternatives (biodegradable plastics [BDPs]) which are made from substances which include cellulose and starch.  However, profit-obsessed product makers and vendors persist in using non-biodegradable petroleum-derived plastics because of the current cost differentials, differentials which would be much reduced or eliminated with scaled-up BDP production and utilization.  ^[27].

14^th.  Industrial injuries.  In order to cut their costs, for-profit businesses commonly neglect safety concerns.  The predictable result is avoidable work-related injuries and fatalities.  

♦ Causes.  Workers commonly incur injuries on account of: health-impairing exposure to airborne pollutants and/or toxic substances, distraction by oppressive heat or cold, unsafe equipment, unsafe work procedures, inadequate safety training, ergonomic and/or other excessive physical stress.  ^[28]

♦ Cases.  Toxic airborne particulates and fumes injure and kill workers silently and over extended periods of time.  Mechanical accidents injure workers at an instant.  Most mechanical accidents affect only one or a few workers; but some injure and kill scores, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of workers and/or bystanders.  Such major accidents include: mine disasters, dust-related explosions, manufactory fires, toxic chemical releases, transportation accidents, and so on.  Some notable examples ^[29].

+ Grain-elevator dust explosion (1977, in Westwego, Louisiana) killed 36 workers and injured 13.

+ Garment-manufactory fire (2012, in Karachi, Pakistan) killed at least 258 workers, mostly women and children.  Their pay was $52—104/month.  Victims were unable to escape because of locked doors and iron bars on the windows.

+ Garment-manufactory fire (2012, in Dhaka, Bangladesh) killed 117 and injured more than 200 workers.  The fire started on the ground floor thereby blocking exit from upper floors via interior staircases, and there were no exterior fire escapes.  The owners had blocked addition of safety improvements as “too costly”. 

+ Savar building-collapse (2013, in Dhaka, Bangladesh) killed 1,134 and injured circa 2,500 majority-women garment workers.  The building had violated safety requirements during its construction; and, when cracks appeared, the building was evacuated.  The owners of the garment manufactories, which occupied space on the upper floors, disregarded warnings and ordered their workers to return to work the next day whereupon the building collapsed crushing the victims trapped inside.

+ An accidental release (1984) of toxic gas from the Union Carbide pesticide plant (in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India) killed and/or injured more than 500,000 people in the neighborhoods around the plant.  Over the preceding four years, multiple gas leaks and other accidents within the plant had injured scores of workers.  Multiple safety hazards included: underinvestment in safety equipment, existing safety systems turned off to save money, inoperable gas scrubbers and malfunctioning pressure gauges, employees having been punished for refusing to deviate from safety regulations, among others.  Estimates of deaths resulting from exposure to the toxic gas run as high as 16,000. 

+ Industrial accidents also include incidents at nuclear power generators with unsafe designs and/or careless operators which have produced nuclear fuel melt-downs.  Two of those, Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima Daiichi in 2011, killed or injured thousands of people and turned large land areas into uninhabitable radioactive zones.

♦ Toll.  According to ILO [International Labor Organization], there are 860,000 injury-causing workplace accidents worldwide every day (313 million per year).  Such accidents plus occupational illnesses kill 2.3 million people worldwide each year.  ^[30]

15^th.  Overpopulation.  Obviously, the global stock of natural resources is finite.  It necessarily follows that, at some level of world population, the available resources will be inadequate to satisfy the basic needs and reasonable wants of all of humankind.  The human footprint has already wreaked great devastation upon a great many other living species and caused many thousands of extinctions.  Although various groups push notions of denial that it is a problem, overpopulation is a real threat to the well-being of both humankind and many of the plant, animal, and other higher life forms on planet Earth.  Moreover, many of these purveyors of denial, especially patriarchal religious societies and allied politicians, misuse their power and influence to prevent the neediest and most prolific human populations from obtaining access to family planning aids, information, and encouragement.  Some population experts have concluded that, in order to achieve a sustainable economy and avert disaster, the world population is already much too large and would have to be reduced by at least 2/3.  ^[31]

Ω.  Finding.  The air, water, soil, and other natural resources are a gift of Nature to all of humankind and to all of the other living creatures which populate our planet.  We all have a natural right to expect this gift to be used for the general benefit of all of humankind and with due consideration for the wellbeing of other valued species.  However, because the capitalist imperative is to maximize near-term profit, for-profit enterprises routinely cut costs by using the cheapest (and generally most destructive) means allowed in extraction of basic materials from the natural environment.  They also over-exploit and waste finite resources to the detriment of future generations.  Moreover, unless stopped, capitalist production facilities dump their poisonous waste into the soil, water, and air, where it becomes destructive to wildlife, neighboring communities, and even the habitability of planet Earth.  Meanwhile, governments routinely yield to pressure from capital to make environmental protective regulation too weak to meet the need and its enforcement too lax to be effective.

Noted sources:

[dated on or before 2018 Apr]

[1] NASA: Global Climate Change (2018 Apr 17) ~ Facts @ https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ .

[2] McAuliffe⸰ Kathleen: Ocean Acidification: A Global Case of Osteoporosis (Discover, 2008 Jul 16) @ http://discovermagazine.com/2008/jul/16-ocean-acidification-a-global-case-of-osteoporosis . 

NOAA: What Is Ocean Acidification? (accessed 2017 Jun) @ www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/What+is+Ocean+Acidification%3F . 

[3] TheWorldCounts: Deforestation Facts and Statistics (2014 Apr 15) @ http://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/deforestation-facts-and-statistics . 

[4] Bradford⸰ Alina: Deforestation – Facts, Causes & Effects (Live Science, 2018 Apr 03) @  https://livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html . 

Wikipedia: Deforestation (2018 Apr 16) ~ intro, § 1 Causes, § 2 Environmental effects, § 3 Economic Impact.

[5] Romm⸰ Joe: Wetlands destruction – another climate feedback (ThinkProgress, 2008 Jul 23) @ https://thinkprogress.org/wetlands-destruction-another-climate-feedback-5011ec695440/ . 

[6] Defenders of Wildlife: Basic Facts About Wetlands (accessed 2018 Apr) @ https://defenders.org/wetlands/basic-facts .

[7] National Geographic: Groundwater (accessed 2018 Apr) @ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/freshwater/groundwater/ . 

USGS: Ground-water depletion across the nation [Fact Sheet 103-03] (updated 2016 Nov 29) @ pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-103-03/#pdf ; Goundwater depletion (2016 Dec 09) @ https://water.usgs.gov/edu/gwdepletion.html .

[8] Powers⸰ Madison: Water Scarcity (FEW Resources, 2018 Mar 11) @ httpw://www.fewresources.org/water-scarcity-issues-were-running-out-of-water.html . 

[9] Smith⸰ Linn: The Depletion of the Colorado River Basin (Planet Earth Weekly, 2015 Jun 22) @ https://planetearth5.com/2015/06/22/the-depletion-of-the-colorado-river-basin-2/ .

[10] Center for Biological Diversity: The Extinction Crisis (accessed 2017 Jun) @ http://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/biodiversity/elements_of_biodiversity/extinction_crisis/ .  

Wikipedia: Holocene extinction (2017 Jun 01); articles on the specific species (listed in table).

[11] NWF: Overexploitation (accessed 2018 Apr) @ https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Threats-to-Wildlife/Overexploitation . 

Lehnardt⸰ Karin: 60 Tragic Facts about Poaching (FactRetriever, 2017 Aug 16) @ https://www.factretriever.com/poaching-facts .  

[12] WHO: Antimicrobial resistance (2018 Jan) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs194/en/ ; Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) (2017 update) @ http://www.who.int/tb/challenges/mdr/MDR-RR_TB_factsheet_2017.pdf?ua=1 . 

Spellman⸰ Brad et al: The Epidemic of Antibiotic-Resistant Infections (IDSA, 2008 Jan 15) @ www.cid.oxfordjournals.org/content/46/2/155.long . 

Bbosa⸰ Godfrey S et al: Antibiotic/antibacterial drug use, their marketing and promotion during the post-antibiotic golden age and their role in emergence of bacterial resistance (Scientific Research, 2014 Feb) ~ Abstract @ https://www.scirp.org/Journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=43142 .

[13] Wikipedia: Environmental impact of mining (2018 Apr 11); Environmental impact of the petroleum industry (2018 Apr 13); Environmental impact of hydraulic fracturing (2018 Apr 12); and related articles.

[14] Yang⸰ Sarah: Human security at risk as depletion of soil accelerates, scientists warn (Berkeley News, UC Berkeley, 2015 May 07) @ http://news.berkeley.edu/2015/05/07/soil-depletion-human-security/ . 

WWF: Farming – soil erosion and degradation (accessed 2017 Jun) @ http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/soil_erosion/ . 

[15] WWF: Farming – pollution (accessed 2018 Apr) @ http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/pollution/ .

[16] Hribar⸰ Carrie: Understanding Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and Their Impact on Communities (© 2010, National Association of Local Boards of Health) ~ pp 1—11 @ https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/understanding_cafos_nalboh.pdf . 

Wikipedia: Intensive animal farming (2018 Apr 18) ~ § 5 Controversies and criticisms. 

[17] WWF: Farming: Wasteful water use (accessed 2018 Mar) @ http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/footprint/agriculture/impacts/water_use/ .

[18] Environmental Pollution: Industrial Pollution – Types, Effects and Control of Industrial Pollution (accessed 2018 Apr) @ http://www.environmentalpollution.in/industrial-pollution/industrial-pollution-types-effects-and-control-of-industrial-pollution/299 .

[19] Bradford⸰ Alina: Pollution Facts & Types of Pollution (Live Science, 2018 Feb 27) @ http://www.livescience.com/22728-pollution-facts.html . 

[20] EarthEclipse: Primary Causes of Industrial Pollution (2018) @ http://www.eartheclipse.com/pollution/primary-causes-of-industrial-pollution.html .

[21] History.com: Water and Air Pollution (accessed 2018 Apr) @ http://www.history.com/topics/water-and-air-pollution .

[22] Wikipedia: Sewage (2018 Mar 20).

[23] WHO: Drinking-water (2018 Mar) @ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs391/en/ .

[24] Annenberg Learner: Garbage (© 2016) ~ solid waste, hazardous waste, sewage, global efforts @ www.learner.org/interactives/garbage/solidwaste.html & links. 

Wikipedia: Municipal solid waste (2018 Apr 12).

[25] Wikipedia: Marine debris (2018 Apr 01); Environmental impact of shipping (2018 Apr 05).

[26] Electronics Takeback Coalition: Facts and Figures on E-Waste and Recycling (2014 Jun 25) ~ p 3 @ www.electronicstakeback.com/wp-content/uploads/Facts_and_Figures_on_EWaste_and_Recycling.pdf .

[27] Song⸰ J H et al: Biodegradable and compostable alternatives to conventional plastics (NCBI, 2009 Jul 27) @ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2873018/ .

[28] Wikipedia: Occupational injury (2018 Apr 08) ~ introduction.

[29] Wikipedia: Mining accident (2018 Apr 03); Dust explosions (2018 Apr 04); Nuclear and radiation accidents and incidents (2018 Apr 15). 

Wikipedia: 2012 Pakistan factory fires (2018 Apr 06) ~ § 1 Background; 2012 Dhaka fire (2018 Apr 03); Savar building collapse (2018 Apr 24) ~ intro & §§ 1—4; Bhopal disaster (2018 Apr 12) ~ intro & §§ 1—4.

[30] ILO: A world without fatal work accidents is possible (2014 Aug 25) @ http://www.ilo.org/global/about-the-ilo/newsroom/news/WCMS_301233/lang–en/index.htm .

[31] Paul⸰ Alexandra: Overpopulation (© 2018) @ http://alexandrapaul.com/activism/overpopulation/ . 

Wikipedia: Human overpopulation (last edited 2018 Apr 16) ~ (especially) § 6 Carrying capacity.

§ 3.  UNREALIZED POSSIBILITIES.  Human ingenuity has produced scientific discoveries and technological wonders which were barely, if at all, conceivable in the not-so-distant past.  Vast human and technological resources exist.  Clearly, there is no lack of the requisite knowledge and resources to eliminate the current plethora of systemic social evils; yet, the powers-that-be permit, and often cause, them to persist.  Why?  Because the utilization of resources under the global capitalist social order is determined by its imperatives and priorities.  The over-riding imperative and priority is the selfish pursuit of private profit and the accumulation of private wealth.  Powerful privileged groups profit from callous exploitation of both natural and human resources.  Few resources (just enough: to credit the powers-that-be with the appearance of benevolence, and to prevent popular discontent from turning to social revolution) are devoted to correcting social ills.  Why?  Because there is little or no profit in such endeavors while other applications of the resources can and do yield significant profits.  Conclusion: the systemic social evils, which afflict the people of the world, can only be eradicated by abolishing the capitalist social order and replacing it with one (namely socialism) in which the societal imperatives and priorities are to satisfy human and social needs.  This then must become the objective for the social-justice movements. 

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