Power Play

                                                                                            written 22 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 29 June, 2025

 

            There has been a sharp increase in electrical power demand, driven by data centers, AI, and cryptocurrency.  The current US administration, and the billionaires it represents, are pushing to expand power produced from nuclear and natural gas, being more profitable and centralized.  But at what cost?

            Nuclear power is already some of the most expensive electricity on the grid.  In the US, 18 percent of our electricity comes from 92 nuclear reactors, averaging 1,000MW capacity each.  America was the first nation to develop commercial nuclear power, so our reactors average 42 years old, but the design life of these plants is 40 years.  Aging reactors are more prone to failure.  

            The president plans to increase nuclear power by a factor of 4 by 2050, which requires constructing a new large reactor every few weeks.  Current costs are about $7.5B each.  Historically, reactors have taken 5-10 years for construction, and often run over time and over budget before completion.

            Uranium is a finite fuel.  Russia supplies over 90 percent of the uranium used in the US, a questionable source for essential power.  In addition, the most productive, affordable, global uranium reserves have already been depleted, guaranteeing future price increases.  

            Natural uranium is mostly composed of two isotopes, 99 percent U-238, which is fairly stable, and 0.7 percent U-235, which experiences radioactive decay.  Reactor fuel must be "enriched", increasing the percentage of U-235 to 3-5 percent, an expensive, energy intensive process done in only one domestic location.

            When uranium fissions, it produces heat and fission by-products.  When only 5 percent of the U-235 has been consumed, by-product contamination makes the fuel uneconomical to operate, and the reactor must be refueled.  This so called "spent fuel" is extremely radioactive, and so far, no domestic commercial disposal site has been established. 

            The current nuclear hope is based on Small Modular Reactors (SMR), which will be mass produced, and supposedly cheaper to build.  While many plans are in play, and billions have been committed, no commercial units are operating yet.  The designs use different cooling, and are promised to be safer.  However, the Fukushima reactors failed in a way that was promised could "never happen", shifting from a $40B asset to a $1T liability in days, and the cleanup is optimistically expected to take a century.  Despite any differences, SMR's will consume a finite fuel resource, and produce radioactive waste, both unaddressed issues.

            Combustion of natural gas generates 43 percent of US electricity, with the advantage of coming online quickly as "peaker plants", helping provide grid stability.  But these thermal systems require time to come from dead cold to operational temperatures, so must be kept hot, and staffed throughout the day, even if needed for only an hour.  A new combined cycle turbine, which uses steam most efficiently, is produced in only a few places, and the global supply chain is congested, due to increased demand and TACO tariff uncertainty, so prices are higher, and delivery takes more than three years.

            Operation requires combustion of natural gas, which has varied in price by a factor of three over the last few years, depending on global demand and instability.  Currently, 40 percent of US production of natural gas is from our Permian shale fields, which has reached peak production.  Natural gas will increasingly be imported.

            This can be by pipeline as a gas, or by ship when super cooled as liquified natural gas (LNG), which is twice as expensive.  Canada is our only source for importing through pipelines, but our president has driven a wedge between the US and our northern trading partner.  About 20 percent of the world's LNG is shipped from the middle east through the Hormuz Straits, a narrow choke point between Iran and Oman.  

            Electricity generated from natural gas requires expensive hardware, with highly variable fuel costs, totally outside domestic control, which will only increase over time.  As I write, the Israeli attack on Iran last week increased natural gas prices 14 percent, but shipping was still proceeding.  The president attacked today, and Iran has voted to blockade the Straits, which could double prices immediately.  Stay tuned!

            Solar arrays with storage are relatively cheap to install, and can be decentralized.  The power they collect is free, without producing socially destructive waste.  Because this threatens control by the power elite, electricity costs will increase as the US becomes increasingly irrelevant, in a world slowly moving toward sustainability.  

          

 

Local Power Projects

                                                                                            written 15 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 22 June, 2025

    

            A new grid scale solar array is being constructed near the north end of Redemeyer Road, east of Ukiah.  This 4 megawatt array is owned by Renewable Properties, which builds and operates solar systems in 14 states.  The Ukiah array has been in the planning and permitting stage for several years.  Construction is close to completion, with all the panels and their single axis tracking systems now installed.  Interconnection to the grid has yet to happen, but the power is already contracted to be sold to Sonoma Clean Power.

            Averaged over a full year, this facility will produce about 16 megawatt hours of power each day.  To put this into perspective, the output is about 5 percent of Ukiah's daily load, or 1 percent of Mendocino county's daily load.  This is the largest array in the area, but relatively small compared to arrays in the Central Valley, which are 25-100 times larger.

            The next largest array in the valley is at Mendocino Community College, which has had a 1 megawatt array in operation for over 15 years.  The daily solar power curve peaks mid-day, and is out of synch with the College power load, which extends long past sunset.  When operating, the array powers the load at the moment and any excess energy is sold back onto the grid.  This has supports about half of the College's daily power consumption, and evening power is purchased back from PG&E.  

            A month ago, the College added a 750 kilowatt hour battery to the system.  This allows some excess energy collected during the day to be stored for use in the evening.  It is expected this will now support about 70 percent of their load.  A recent energy audit at the College indicated equipment upgrades which would reduce their load by about 20 percent.  After the upgrade, their array and storage will be close to supporting their entire load.

            While the Redemeyer and College arrays are the largest in the Ukiah valley, three campuses of the Ukiah Unified School District have 250 kilowatt parking lot canopy arrays.  Several businesses have large rooftop solar, such as Factory Pipe, Raley's, Walmart, and Costco, to name a few.  About 160 homes and small businesses within Ukiah have rooftop solar.  While all this helps support our local power consumption, it is just a start, compared to what is needed.

            For example, Ukiah Electric could do what the College did, and install hardware to help support their own electrical load.  The City would require a much larger array, but any size array would help.  NCPA, the agency which contracts to provide the City with power, has already told the City to begin planning to produce at least 15 percent locally.  This would need more than 10 megawatts of array, using as much as 40 acres of land.  There are locations within the City limits, and the possible annexation would add more real estate opportunities, but the City is compact, and space is limited. 

            Another viable option is to begin adding more local storage into the City utility mix.  Even though Ukiah charges the same retail rate throughout the day, the wholesale power delivered in the evening is as much as 10 times more expensive than mid-day.  Since long lasting grid scale batteries have become commercially available, it is now cheaper to store mid-day solar power to use in the evening.  Furthermore, the solar production in Ukiah is unevenly distributed throughout the system, and some circuits get overloaded mid-day.   Strategically placed storage would eliminate that issue.

            It may seem foolish to suggest moving toward local power resilience, given the current political stance from the Federal government.  The party dogma is climate change is just a "Woke fad", and every effort to even monitor the situation, let alone begin to deal with it, is being shut down.  To my mind, this is an insane denial of reality, which guarantees suffering.

            The insurance crisis will get only worse as long as the underlying cause is ignored.  Disbanding the Federal Emergency Management Agency won't stop hurricanes, fires, and floods, but everyone impacted will be worse off without coordinated help.  Shutting down the weather service doesn't change what happens, but people are less prepared for what is coming.

            At some point, foolish denial is inevitably broken by reality.  The more we can do locally, despite the denial, the better off we will be in the long run.

Massively Connected

                                                                                              written 8 June, 2025

                                                                                        published 15 June, 2025

     

            In 1999, Thomas Friedman wrote "The Lexus And The Olive Tree", describing the fundamental global shifts after the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union in 1991.  Decades of rigid geopolitical economic structures disappeared, and the new reality was dominated by the rise of computers, the Internet, and cell phones.  Where before, all transactions operated within the confines of "which side are you on?", now everyone was functionally connected to an unprecedented degree.  Since the book was written, this connectivity has accelerated with the introduction of the first iPhone in 2008 and now artificial intelligence (AI).

            With Internet access, information can be drawn from around the world and be communicated with almost anyone.  Business can be conducted from anywhere that has access to shipping, and financial transactions can take place anywhere.  This connectivity has given rise to web businesses that have driven long standing brick and mortar companies into bankruptcy, and allowed the migration of viable economies from urban densities to more rural communities, as long as web access is adequate.

            The economic advantages of being connected have spurred countries to open their economies to the world, bringing in foreign investment, which can increase the standard of living.  Countries that remain disconnected, supposedly protecting their local advantages, fall behind.  Disconnection comes from inadequate Internet bandwidth and availability, lack of accounting transparency, limited rule of law, and corrupt political systems.  Unfortunately, America is becoming more disconnected under our current administration.

            A measure of the rapid change is computer processing speeds.  Since the Berlin Wall fell, consumer computer processing speeds have increased by over 100 thousand times, and super computers are a million times faster than that. All transactions are happening much more rapidly.  In minutes, you can arrange a car loan through your phone, from anywhere.  Profits in the stock market can come by placing a server a few feet closer to the node, getting bids microseconds faster than the competition.  

            Friedman is a free market booster, so his book mostly describes the benefits from this new connected, free market, globalized world, but does identify some problems.  Monetary wealth is the only measure of prosperity that is valued.  Short term thinking dominates, destroying the natural world.  Extreme economic inequities are on the rise.

            Global finances are no longer managed and controlled by a small group.  People all over the world participate, forming what Friedman calls the "Electronic Herd", which swirls around the planet, chasing the maximum profit of the moment.  Being a herd of individuals, mob mentality prevails, dominated by incomplete information.  It can flood into countries, turbocharging the local economy, but can be spooked, and rush out in a flash, leaving economic wreckage behind.  

            In the connected economy, a crash in one corner of the planet can trigger global upheaval elsewhere.  The 1997 Southeast Asian crisis began in Thailand, affected other countries in the region, spread to Russia and its neighbors, and then to Latin America.  Chasing profits selling mortgage backed securities in the US, using increasingly risky loans, eventually caused the 2008 economic crisis, which shook the world.

            This massive interconnection is real, an expression of the basic unity described in both spiritual metaphysics and quantum physics and cannot be avoided.  But our culture, historically based on the illusion of separation and exclusive gain, is under assault because actual connection has never before been such a dominant paradigm.  

            As a result, we are vulnerable to the limitations inherent in the human species.  Many people are responsible and ethical, while others are corrupt and traumatized, but all have access to the whole world.  Along with the benefits of connection, we also suffer from cybercrime, hacking, fraud, polarizing social media, and massive disinformation.  News sources used to be held to journalistic standards, but now anyone can be an influencer, and AI makes fraud easier.  Instead of a few channels of information, we have millions, and information overload is everywhere.

            Rather than accepting all our information from "outside", perhaps we can begin to cultivate information from "inside".  Inspiration is how our personality experiences the "aha" clarity coming from our internal connection with being alive.  Everyone already has that access to some extent, but intention can enhance our receptivity.  Balance may involve deliberately stepping away from outside information addiction, and instead cultivate practices of quiet, stilling the external noise, to hear the soft internal voice of wisdom, which is our birthright.

 

Compared To What?

                                                                                              written 1 June, 2025

                                                                                           published 8 June, 2025

 

            In any conversation about the climate crisis and solutions to deal with it, someone often complains "it costs too much".  But rarely does the discussion consider "compared to what?"

            To restate the basics, for several centuries our global energy system has been powered by combustion of fossil fuels, which has slowly changed the atmospheric chemistry, making it more opaque to infrared energy, trapping more heat.  As a result, Earth is becoming less habitable for humans, and economic stability is threatened.  The solution is twofold: complete economic decarbonization (stop adding to the problem), and carbon dioxide sequestration (returning to an atmosphere we know supports humanity).

            The first part requires a complete redesign of our global energy system, with cost estimates of about $60 trillion, which is indeed a lot of money.  But compared to what?  The global economy already spends $7 trillion on fossil fuels each and every year.  However, the cheapest reserves, those easiest to access, have already been burned up, so this annual cost will keep increasing, even if sufficient new reserves are developed.  

            In contrast, renewable energy is free, already being delivered to the planet, so the cost involves only the hardware to collect and store that free energy.  Decarbonizing with renewables would change from a constantly increasing energy bill to a fixed cost infrastructure.  Investing in renewables avoids inflation by prepaying decades of energy costs.

            Of course, the trillions involved in the fossil fuel industry create massive economic inertia to keep things as they are, since the current economic winners will probably not be the renewable energy winners.  But the economics are pushing toward change.

            While fossil fuel development will only get more expensive, further exhausting finite resources each year, solar systems are getting cheaper, because improved manufacturing continues to drop the per unit price.  In the last fifty years, solar panel prices dropped from $100/watt to $0.50/watt, while gasoline prices increased from $0.20/gal to $5.00/gal.

            Ukiah School district installed canopy solar arrays in three location in PG&E territory, at a cost of $3.00/watt.  Over the 25 year life of the system, that will produce electricity costing $0.10/KWhr, one quarter the current cost of the cheapest PG&E power.

            The large upfront cost is a problem.  However, this is just a financial distribution issue.  The explosive shift from horses to automobiles in the early 1900's was the result of bankers extending auto loans to more people.  As more global monied interests see the profit in renewables, the shift will accelerate.

            However, if you still think it is too expensive to make the renewable shift even to save money, then consider the cost of doing nothing.  More extreme climate is already here, and getting worse.  When a community is destroyed, like Paradise, CA, the Big Bend area of Florida, or the storm flooded areas in the east, it can take more than a decade to get back to where they were before the disaster.  US economic losses from extreme climate (drought, floods, heat, cold, fires, and storms) are already approaching Pentagon funding levels, with unaccounted increases in health and grocery costs.  

            Extreme wildfires and damaging storms have made affordable insurance problematic in California and Florida.  Consider what will happen to real estate, banking, and local governmental property tax based funding, when large areas become "uninsurable", which is projected to happen within a decade or so.  

             These economic hits are the result of just the gradual heating from the changing climate.  Abrupt, nonlinear changes have also been identified, which would break our economy and our entire food production system.

            The global GDP is over $110 trillion, and the economy is brittle, vulnerable to disruption from unexpected disturbances.  What is it worth to avoid having the economy collapse?  By spending extra money now, we can avoid, or at least mitigate, the consequences of apparently low probability events.  This is the reason for property insurance.  This is the reason for upgraded seismic engineering in earthquake country.  

            There is no solution without dealing with the underlying cause.  There is no possibility of avoiding events when you refuse to even acknowledge they exist, which is the current insane policy of the Federal government.  What is the wisdom of ignoring reality?

            So, when you hear someone complain that it is too expensive to address the climate crisis, ask them if they like paying high energy prices.  Ask them want kind of planet they want for their grandchildren.

Some Things To Think About

                                                                                            written 25 May, 2025

                                                                                          published 1 June, 2025

   

            Capitalism lowers costs to provide more affordable products.  Labor has long been viewed as a cost to be reduced.  Using machines, and now robots, which are fixed cost hardware, productivity increases, making human workers redundant.  Some large factories have more robots than humans, and the ideal is no human workers at all.  But we live in a consumer economy, which grows by encouraging people to buy ever more goods and services each year.  With fiscal concerns demanding a lowest cost economy, and fewer people are employed to make what is consumed, can the economy support any customers?

            Can a multi billionaire be expected to know anything about our life?  Does our standard of living depend on others being impoverished?

            A robust economy needs long term investments in infrastructure and manufacturing.  For example, the housing market is based on the 30-year mortgage, often at a fixed interest rate.  The US economy has been relatively stable for decades, so the US dollar has been a global standard where people around the world can invest reliably.  The chaotic turmoil of extreme tariffs, changing weekly with the whims of our leader, brings that economic stability into question.  Do we benefit if the macho economic bullying of the rest of the planet sinks the US dollar?

            Should a political office be for sale to the highest bidder?   Is public corruption OK if it is blatant?  

            Most people of color have directly experienced racist discrimination, or know others who have.  Most women have experienced misogynistic sexism, or know others who have.  Most white men are ignorant of this experience.  Does that ignorance explain their arrogance?

            Is money constitutionally protected speech?  Are corporations really people, with rights over actual humans?

            Ideal capitalism assumes all the costs in producing a product or service are reflected in the price.  But economic reality includes "externalized costs", which are not factored into the sale price, and wind up being paid by other people, who may not be included in the transaction, and may not know the costs for decades.  This may be intentional fraud, or the result of ignorance, but the costs get paid eventually, which distorts the entire society.  How can we know if the best deal is really the cheapest price in the moment?

            Is it OK to make money selling a product that poisons people?  Is it better if the people being poisoned don't know about it at the time?  Is it more acceptable if taxes are paid?

            We have seen explosive changes with the rise of computers, the Internet, and smart phones.  How we communicate and do business has radically changed, driving some businesses to extinction, speeding the pace of all transactions.  People now have unprecedented power in their pocket, with access to the information from around the world, and the ability to communicate with anyone almost anywhere.  The underlying unity of the world is manifested materially.  But that connection has also spawned global scams and frauds, massive disinformation campaigns, and the rise of cyber terrorism by criminals and hostile nation states.  Can we be connected without being ripped off?

            Which is more important, competition or cooperation?  Which is more important, breathing in or breathing out?

            Our existing global economy is only possible with relatively cheap energy to power production and transportation.  But we have already consumed the most affordable fossil fuels, and are moving too slowly to renewable sources and living on our global energy income.  As more people consume more material while living on a finite planet, how does it end?  Are humans no smarter than beer yeast, explosively populating, eventually dying in their own waste? Will extraterrestrials show up, bottle our atmosphere, and sell it for a good time somewhere else? 

            The rest of the world is going green.  Why should they listen to the ignorant scold in the White House?  What happens when America is left behind?

            Boosters claim the free market is best for the economy.  But short term gains are more valued than long term gains.  The first hostile takeover was a relatively sustainable lumber company.  Then harvest rates were tripled, completely clear cut in a few years, workers were laid off, and the company was then sold off in pieces.  Such processes are now a global.  What happens when the entire planet has been clear cut, and shut down?  

             Money is a concept, but life is an experience.  Which is more valuable?

The Trump Slump

                                                                                            written 18 May, 2025

                                                                                        published 25 May, 2025

  

            Growing up in San Diego, I watched lots of surfers.  Being in the right spot, at the right time, moving in the right direction, the world gives a great ride.  Being in the wrong spot, or at the wrong time, or moving in the wrong direction, you could get pounded, broken, or even killed.  This metaphor for life shows the benefit of awareness of the whole system.  Being in harmony with life is beneficial, while being out of harmony is painful.  This is true for society as well.   

            We are into our fifth month of painful disharmony at the top of the Federal government.  Many people still believe what they are being told.  Multiple pronouns are the problem.  Immigrants are the problem.  Foreign alliances are the problem.  Courts are the problem.  Government is the problem.  Billionaires know what's best.

            But people are having second thoughts.  The economy stopped growing, and is now contracting.  Locally we have already seen cuts in fire safety, mental health, food aid, and education.  The uncertainty of tariffs makes business decisions riskier.  Core costs vary widely.  Anything imported is more costly.  Commercial shipping into the US west coast has plummeted.  Food and gasoline prices jumped higher.  Tourism, a key to our county economy, is slowing down.  Some results from US threats to Canada.  Some is due to the general caution, as disposable income shrinks with rising prices.   

            Geopolitical risks are growing.  America is no longer a trusted partner in defense, as we threaten to invade our neighbors on a presidential whim.  America is no longer trusted economically either, as established trading relationships are destroyed and our credit rating has been downgraded.  The role of the US dollar as a global reserve currency has been slowly eroding for decades, but is now very much in question, as erratic behavior at the top brings everything into question.  The winner here is China, which has been actively working to replace the dollar in the global marketplace.

            Based on our leader's actions, there is question as to whether he is working for a foreign government, or just for his own corrupt gains, or is demonstrating progressive mental decline.  For another government to gain advantage, or his personal wealth to be relevant, Earth has to remain habitable for humans.  Furthermore, the issues of gender identity, immigration, economic upheaval, and geopolitical gains, are age old struggles which take place within the underlying assumption of a habitable planet.  But the climate crisis, if left unaddressed, is making Earth uninhabitable for humans.

            Therefore, to my mind, his absolute rejection of any consideration of the climate concern is an act of mental insanity.  A sane person entertains the possibility their opinions might be wrong, or at least incomplete.  Instead, we see a rejection of any mention, let alone investigation, that the climate is rapidly changing.  Every department in the National Science Foundation, which funds basic research in many fields, is being shut down.  National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which funds weather research and reporting, is being decimated and parts of the country no longer have 24-hour weather information.  Studies that monitor the physical reality of our climate are being closed down.  

            Assessment of the risk the changing climate poses to the financial and building industries has been abolished.  But the insurance industry knows it can no longer use past events to reliably predict future risk.  Even the fossil fuel industry knows "drill, baby, drill" is bankrupt, and has acknowledged that global oil production has peaked, becoming less affordable, even if available.  

            This denial of information is in addition to defunding the modest domestic attempts to stop adding to the problem, which worked to shift energy production from combustion of increasingly scarce resources to collecting the free energy already falling on the planet.  The US used to lead the rest of the world, but we are out of harmony with reality, essentially choosing to invest in buggy whips in response to the automobile revolution.  This leaves China in a position to become the global leader in production of solar panels and EV transportation.

            Reality eventually overwhelms insanity, and so we wait to see how it unfolds.  Will we soon experience a recession, or even a depression?  Will politicians become courageous?  Will it take civil unrest?  Or a massive climate disaster?  Or a critical mass of awakened consciousness?  We are all in this together, and must stop pretending otherwise.

 

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

                                                                                            written 11 May, 2025

                                                                                        published 18 May, 2025

 

            Production of the WWII atomic bomb was "need to know", limited to physicists and engineers for security.  The two fission bombs immediately killed about a quarter million Japanese.  The enduring health effect of nuclear radiation on the survivors was unexpected, since few biologists had been involved in the project. 

            When matter comes apart in fission, energy releases in four forms in addition to heat: gamma radiation, and beta, neutron, and alpha particles.  Electromagnetic gamma radiation is massless, with deep penetrating power, damaging cells and DNA throughout the body.  Beta particles are high energy electrons.  The small mass is less penetrating than gamma radiation, but damages living systems through ionization and impact.  Neutrons, 2,000 times more massive than beta electrons, can also be "captured" into the nucleus of other atoms, creating unstable isotopes, which decay radioactively over time.  Alpha particles, four times more massive than neutrons, with a larger electrical charge than beta particles, have reduced penetrating power.  An outer layer of dead skin is sufficient protection, but once ingested into the body, damage is intense.

            The US postwar investigation of radiation health impact focused primarily on the effect of the bomb's gamma radiation, and considered just the immediate death and injuries data, but radiation exposures were overestimated due to few solid measurements.  The report set a standard for radiation damage, defining "safe" levels of exposure.  There were no long-term studies of damage resulting from internal exposure to radioactive material from breathing, drinking, and eating, which can occur with low exposure building over time.  This report conveniently shielded the growing nuclear industry from responsibility for those health effects.  Radiation can't be seen or felt, and the long-term damage can't be tied to one specific exposure: the best kind of externalized cost.

            Two nuclear industries thrived after the war: production of nuclear weapons and nuclear electrical power.  Weapons production evolved to plutonium production from irradiated uranium, and each nuclear power plants uses tons of enriched uranium annually.  Both industries require extensive handling of radioactive material, producing thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste products.  The government, and the corporations selected for plant construction and operation, had economic incentive to disregard "unproven" health dangers for their employees, or the civilian communities surrounding and downwind from the production sites.  The limited gamma radiation data from Japan was accepted as justification for avoiding further investigation, so people and property were contaminated for decades.

            Over time, people began to notice chronic health issues and word slowly leaked out.  In 1979, Three Mile Island brought radiation concerns to the public.  The nuclear industry response was, and still is: there is no risk, people are experiencing psychological radiation trauma, not real health issues.  There were no radiation monitors at the plant.  With no quantitative evidence of contamination, corporate denial was hard to refute. 

            In 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Russia brought radiation contamination to worldwide attention.  Soviet disregard for human nuclear exposure was as extreme as the Americans.  Awareness of the explosion only came when nuclear plant workers in Sweden set off detectors as they were heading into work.  The Russians didn't tell their own citizens, even those eventually evacuated from the irradiated areas.  In the US, Chernobyl forced the government to address the decades of contamination emanating from the Hanford plutonium facility in Washington state, and actual production ceased in 1989.  Over the last 35 years the Hanford "clean up" has cost $65 billion, with an estimated total cost of $600 billion by 2086, which may be optimistic.  This will just clean up the plant site, without considering the contaminated surrounding land, ground water, or citizens. 

            Only time makes radioactive material safe for living systems.  Some material is lethal longer than humanity has lived.  No real "cleanup" is possible.  Radioactive material must be removed from contact with living systems, and there is no place to put it.  Radioactivity accumulates as it moves up food chain, concentrating in humans in specific areas, such as breast milk, the gonads, and bone marrow.  This causes chronic fatigue, depressed immune systems, tumors and growths, cancers, hormonal imbalances, genetic mutations in offspring, and death.  But the people who make money spreading this stuff are never held accountable for the consequences.

            Chronic diseases are on the rise.  Cancers now strike young children.  Human fertility is declining.  Our economy has saturated us with chemicals, bits of plastic, and radiation.  Might there be a connection?