Chemtrails

A number of people who believe in chemtrails have contacted me and none of them are tea-party types. They are all environmentalists. The reason they have developed this elaborate conspiracy theory - that the government or somebody is spraying toxic chemicals - is that they, unlike most oblivious people, have realized that vegetation is dying...and they have no other explanation for it.

I've tried to tell them that it doesn't require a vast secret cabal to understand what is happening when we are all, everybody, openly spewing toxins into the atmosphere every time we use electricity or drive a car - particularly when scientific research has demonstrated over decades that ozone from fuel emissions is toxic to plants, especially chronic exposure to even the low, but ever increasing, background levels of tropospheric ozone. Of course as with climate change, there has been much effort and money spent to deny this and confuse the issue, quite successfully I might add.

The only conspiracy is the one we are all complicit in, to agree that we as a society are willing to accept a certain number of human deaths from cancer and other respiratory diseases, and a certain amount of degradation to the landscape, as well as a decrease in annual crop yields, in order to continue to enjoy our polluting lifestyles.

The problem with this is that trees are dying at a rapidly accelerating rate. Without them, the entire terrestrial ecosystem will collapse from a cascade of ramifications to all the species dependent upon trees for habitat and food, from microbes in the soil to birds to fish in streams sheltered by their shade - a situation exactly comparable to the bleaching of coral reefs from increasing acidity and warming, which is causing the collapse of the ecosystem in the oceans.

Catman has developed a channel of youtube videos, of songs about the environment.  Enjoy!