Rethinking Malthus: human macroecology and the Anthropocene

Read why chemical companies are backing the 'Chemical Safety Improvement Act' at the Environmental Working Group's Enviroblog.

Recall the 2005 secret Cheney energy task force. Koch Industries had millions of tons of waste chemicals like formaldehyde and benzene that the Environmental Protection Agency was pressuring them to destroy. A plan was hatched by Bush Interior Secretary Gale Norton to skirt regulation and force the EPA administrator to allow the pumping of these volatile chemicals into oil shale.

From an EPA press release, 05/29/2013, contact Molly Hooven:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today proposed two rules to help protect Americans from exposure to the harmful chemical formaldehyde, consistent with a Federal law unanimously passed by Congress in 2010. EPA's first proposal limits how much formaldehyde may be emitted from hardwood plywood, medium-density fiberboard, particleboard and finished goods, that are sold, supplied, offered for sale, manufactured, or imported in the United States. The second proposal establishes a third-party certification framework designed to ensure that manufacturers of composite wood products meet the TSCA formaldehyde emission standards by having their composite wood products certified though an accredited third-party certifier.

There is no time limit Bob Perciasepe can serve as the agency’s acting administrator which means he can stay on as long as Gina McCarthy's nomination is held up by the earth hater party.



Wetlands are being destroyed for cropland, livestock demands on water supplies dwarf the needs of cities, global biodiversity is threatened, Arctic ice packs are disappearing, humans are breeding less nutritious food and pesticides are killing native pollinators.

According to Joseph Burger—University of New Mexico PhD student and key player in the development of human macroecology studies—at its core, human macroecology is “the statistical study of exchanges of energy, materials and information between humans and the environment across spatial scales, from local to global and temporal scales, from years to millennia”. Macroecology considers the human species as functioning within the constraints of the natural world, rather than being uniquely divorced from natural resource limitations. The trends that this research continually unveils—massive overexploitation of resources at an unsustainable rate—are very serious. [The Emerging Field of Human Macroecology, Anne-Marie Hodge, Scientific American, May 28, 2013]

Rewild the West.