The Kankyou Mondai.
The kankyou mondai indeed. Just exactly what is the kankyou mondai? Sure, one hears, "Kankyou ni yasashii," this and, "Kankyou ni yasashii," that at least a dozen times each day. In fact few care to think about what the words mean. The words are trite. The words are limpid vacuous platitudes, empty devoid of meaning. They are so essentially lacking in substance that mouthing them can not contribute to one's character. The terms kankyou and environment, for both English and Japanese represent a convenient semantic contrivance. This semantic device successfully diverts human attention from the problem for which the terms are used. How clever. One could use mass extinction crisis. Or ecolgy crisis. Or how about overpopulation crisis? Instead of using an appropriate expression which accurately describes the problem, humans simply select a vague empty term like kankyou mondai, environmental problem. As a result the nasty aspects of the reality of the crisis are trivialized out of human consciousness. Humans are so clever. Humans themselves are not, "Kankyou ni yasashii." Humans can avoid this admission as long as they carefully select the terms they use in speaking about the ecological crisis they create.

The ecological crisis provides examples whereby it is manifestly self-evident that humans as the overpopulated dominant species are causing enormous damage. The ecology of methane is an example which clearly shows that humans in large and unsustainable numbers are causing unavoidable damage. The damage is done simply by virtue of the existence of overpopulated humans. Whereas in the past Descartes had said, "I think therefore I am," a contemporary Descartes might have said, "I live therefore I create methane." At present for the overpopulated human species as a whole, humans live, therefore they cause ecological damage, a significant and growing portion of which is due to methane.

Where does methane come from? Human overpopulation is increasing. That is why methane is increasing so significantly. One of the most serious aspects of human overpopulation is the concommittant increase in the atmospheric concentration of methane. 80% of methane generation is anthropogenic, that is due to humans, in its origin. 20% of anthropogenic methane is from fossil hydrocarbons. 80% of anthropogenic methane is biogenic in origin. One might think that increases in methane concentration would come from industrial sources. Instead four-fifths of the the methane increase comes from agriculture, agricultural waste by-products and from human refuse and waste products. Humans produce large amounts of methane simply by virtue of the fact that they exist in large numbers. It is an unavoidable product of their existence. Humans live, humans grow plants and animals for food, humans eat, humans consume, humans defecate, humans create refuse. As a result of living humans create methane. By a four to one margin the methane created as a result of normal living activities comes not from industrial activities but from daily routine activities. If you eat, methane will have been created in several ways. And carbon dioxide will usually have been created simultaneously. Remember land cleared for agriculture contributes to atmospheric carbon dioxide in a variety of ways. If you eat meat, you create methane and methane will have been created both before and after you consumed the meat. If you eat plants methane will have been created both before and after you will have consumed the food. Especially if you eat rice, the sacred food of Japan and other Asian countries, you will have created lots of methane. If you grow "environmentally friendly" organics, you create methane. Your newspaper subscription contributes methane gas to the atmosphere in several ways. Vegetarians contribute methane. Is vegetarianism more efficient? Reread Laws of Ecology, specifically Law Nine, Law Ten, Law Thirteen, and the third Law of Human Ecology.

Methane does not come predominantly from industrial plants like the one pictured. Methane comes rather from a combination of the activity of ubiquitous anaerobic bacteria and the daily activities of humans. You may wish to eliminate the bacteria. Be careful what you wish for. You may get it. And in this case, if you got it, life would be pretty much over on the planet. Why not just accept reality and solve the easily solvable problem? Or are your eschatalogical fantasies just too seductive?

Are rising concentrations of atmospheric methane a significant problem? It is indeed a significant problem. And the increase, like the human population increase, is geometric, compounded at 1% per year. "The heating effect of the atmospheric methane increase is approximately half that of the carbon dioxide increase (Dickinson and Cicerone 1986, Ramanathan et al. 1985). Continued increase in atmospheric methane concentrations at the current rate of approximately 1% per year is likely to contribute more to future climatic change than any other gas except carbon dioxide"
ciesin.org/docs/004-032/004-032.html

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Adapted from Jonathan Weiner, The Next One Hundred Years.

Big Jon puts it this way:

"The more we grow the more we change the atmosphere. This lesson is inscribed in the very icecaps. Compare the rise of our population, as recorded by the demographers, and the rise of methane gas, as recorded by the polar ice sheets. The two curves have been rising in unison for six hundred years, since the first years of the Renaissance. The solid line represents people and the dots represent methane. Why should the number of people on the ground and the number of methane molecules in the air have exploded in parallel? Because people generate methane by so many different kinds of disturbances in the atmosphere. Each new rice paddy in China, chopped tree in England, ruminating cow and goat in India, garbage dump in Mexico, and leaking natural-gas pipe in Texas, makes methane. People have a methane effect and methane has a greenhouse effect. So people have a greenhouse effect."

The End of the Oil Age , by Dale Allen Pfeiffer, July 30, 2003
Current civilization is founded upon an abundance of cheap energy derived from hydrocarbons. Hydrocarbons not only run our transportation; they provide the power for all of our technology. Take a moment to think about your immediate home environment. Not only do hydrocarbons take you to work and to the grocery store; they are used for virtually everything around you. Your home and your furniture were built using the energy of hydrocarbons. If your chair has a metal frame, that metal was forged with hydrocarbons. Your carpet and your polyester clothing are products of hydrocarbons. All of the plastics around you are derived from hydrocarbons. Even this journal was printed and delivered using hydrocarbons. The very value of the money in your wallet is pegged to oil.
Go to the refrigerator (powered and produced via hydrocarbons) and take out any food item. Every single calorie of food requires ten calories of hydrocarbons. This is the blessing of modern hydrocarbon based agriculture with its natural gas based fertilizers and oil based pesticides. The human population on this planet currently exceeds 6 billion. Without hydrocarbon based agriculture, it is estimated that this planet could only sustain 2.5 billion people."
globalresearch.ca/articles/PFE307A.html

You're no industrial behemoth, right? So what?
Get up next morning. Shower. Shampoo. Shave. Pick one or all three. Have a bowl of rice, veggie salad, some coffee, and a slice of toast. Or hash browns, bacon, eggs, pineapple slices and a cool glass of orange juice. Or maybe you opt for a quick bowl of instant oatmeal with sliced bananas, milk, sugar, and toast. Scan a newspaper. Scan email. And off to work. Guess what jelly bean? You've started your contributions to methane and GHG. You've helped extinctions happen. And you're just getting warmed up.

What will we do? An upper limit is well within sight. We are at six point two billion and counting. The absurd upper limit of ten billion will not be reached without the finalization of absurd levels of mass extinctions. Alternatives to our fossilized entropic dowry for synthetic chemical products upon which advanced industrial societies are based are insufficient. Somewhere between now and eight billion or so humans will have chosen conservative reproductive responsibilty or Armageddon. Either one is sustainable. What about a new paradigm?
The future? The future is now.