The Good Old Days!
Hi there, my name is Ronnie Tutt,
CEO MaxLife Global Management.
Founder of THE ECOBIOTOS COMMUNITY™
I’m now approaching 74 years of age and on reflection
‘The Good Old Days’ were in fact ‘The Good Old Days’!
I say this in regards to the condition of planet earth!
Back in the early 1950’s there were no such topics or discussions regarding global warming, climate action, climate apartheid, sustainability, and the 6th mass extinction event. Now they are common terms and indeed very real!
How did this come about?
This is how I see it…
The global human population reached 8.1 billion in early November 2023 from an estimated 2.5 billion people in 1950. That’s a massive increase of 5.6 billion in just 70 years! Many scientists think Earth has a maximum carrying capacity of 9 billion people. Mother nature (our planet) will then not be able to feed us all.
I was a very young boy back in the 50’s. The streets were empty of cars, there were hardly any car owners. Nowadays every street is jammed packed with the smelly polluting machines. The car was then a ‘low impact’ environmental concern. Today (2023) there are over 1.45 billion cars currently on the world’s roads, yes that’s 1.4 BILLION (corporate profits dominate the industry). Gas guzzlers, electric, hydrogen powered, makes no difference, still raping the planet of its minerals and destroying ecosystems all in the name of corporate ‘profit’.
We’ve gone from Minimal car-planet impact to MAXIMUM car-planet impact in less than 70 years!
Car manufacturers…
they are major destroyers of the environment, our planet!
Another 74 million cars will be made and sold this year (worldwide 2023).
The rise of the car is one link in the ‘Global Warming’ chain to human, species, and ecosystems, extinction.
Retrospect: My dad did the right thing, he never owned a car, he used his trusty old
push bike to get around, he used the train occasionally, we took coach trips for holiday breaks!
The next extinction ‘link’ relates to the
expansion of ‘Shops and Shopping’.
Back in the early 50’s there were just small-town centre shops, no large supermarkets, shopping malls, or the like.
In residential areas local shops could be found in the surrounding streets and were the main source for shopping. I call these ‘home shops’ as they were actually part of someone’s home. The front room would be converted into a shop. These would be green grocers, butchers, barbers, sweet shop, news agents, etc. My father was a ‘cobbler’ (shoe repairs, shoe maker) and had his own shop in the front room of our house. Machines, banging, and the smell of leather and glue were part of our daily lives. Not too healthy, but the business did have the element of sustainability.
What came next?…the rise of the ‘New Town’.
In the early 50’s (after World War 2 destruction) new developments (New Towns) were built to provide housing and with them came the first ‘Shopping Centres’. A multitude of shops built in one convenient shopping zone. This step alone increased the speed of ‘planet destruction’ tenfold. Today Mega-malls and huge shopping outlets continue the ‘maximum consumerism’ ethos.
Enter Freddie Laker (early 1970’s)…and cheap air travel for the working man!
Two examples are Milton Keynes & Crawley Town. To make matters worse, in Crawley they built an airport on local farmland and it became what it is today, Gatwick Airport (55 flights per hour, busiest single runway airport in Europe). A noise and air polluting monstrosity that encourages air travel and thereby accelerating global warming (Co2 emissions). Living on the south coast I only have to look up into the sky to see hundreds of ‘chem trails’ from planes heading to Europe and beyond on a daily basis.
Along with travel agencies (making travel glamorous) air travel was now transformed into something everyone could afford and use. Frequent flyer discounts, free flights, off-peak prices, long haul, short haul. Jump on a Freddie Laker DC10 aircraft and get whizzed away to Barbados!
Freddie Laker became ‘Sir Freddie’ for his contribution to the governments tax coffers. The effects on the environment and global warming were never taken into consideration. Laker airways went broke (he purchased his fleet of DC10’s and wide body planes instead of renting them) and ceased operations in 1982.
But…the next cheap flights hero was waiting in the wings. Richard Branson and his Virgin Airlines.
22 June 1984, Virgin Atlantic operated its inaugural scheduled service, flown between Gatwick and Newark using a leased Boeing 747. The cheap flight, cheap holiday era was well and truly underway. Once again, the environment took a back seat as ‘profits for shareholders’ became paramount. Virgin Airlines still operates today.
‘Budget’ airlines were then introduced. This again increased air travel for working class folk.
There are now over 5,000 airlines worldwide!
The total worldwide fleet size currently counts 28,674 aircraft!
Air Travel:
Environmental damage caused is immense!
Note: Heathrow Airport in London, about 1,300 combined take-offs and landings every day, is the UK’s largest and busiest airport as well as being the busiest airport in Europe and the seventh busiest in the world based on passenger traffic.
‘ADVERTISING.’ The root cause of global warming!
The next extinction ‘link’ relates to the rapid rise of ‘ADVERTISING.’
Advertising is the root cause of global warming with the promotion and rapid expansion of ‘Consumerism’ and ‘Shopping Mania’ (Addiction).
Advertising specifically encourages the ‘Shop Til You Drop’ mentality that started in the late 70’s and continues to this day. Today you can even get ‘stuff’ without having sufficient funds to pay for it. They’ll give you 6,9,12 months to pay for it…and people actually do this! With extortionate interest fees this results in debt creation, reliance on credit, lifelong poverty.
How many ads have you observed in your lifetime? We‘ve gone from being exposed to about 500 ads a day back in the 1970s to as many as 5,000 a day today. Advertising is such a potent psychological weapon that an entire field of study has been devoted to uncovering how advertising affects consumer behaviour, and this research is ongoing. Profitable companies are those that can influence people via advertising!
The arrival of commercial television AND colour tv!
The catalyst for ‘Consumerism and Environmental Disaster’.
Back to the 50’s…black and white tv, just 2 channels, BBC 1 and BBC 2. No real tv advertising at this moment in time. Newspapers and magazines plus door-to-door flyers were the norm (JUNK MAIL).
In 1955 commercial television in the UK became legal. ITV (Independent Television) first began broadcasting in 1955 on Channel 3 in the London area. By 1973 there were 15 separate Channel 3 licensees. Colour tv was introduced in the UK in March 1967. (My brother got a colour tv before me!)
Today, there are more than 450 channels
spread across different networks in the UK alone!
Shopping channels – The attraction – The addiction
Teleshopping channels excel in showcasing products through expert demonstrations. Skilled hosts or presenters guide viewers through the features and benefits of each item, invoking emotions, providing insights to assist and influence the decision-making process.
QVC. It broadcasts to more than 350 million households in seven countries!
HSN, an initialism of its former name Home Shopping Network, is an American free-to-air television network owned by the Qurate Retail Group, which also owns catalogue company Cornerstone Brands.
For the sake of the planet…these channels should be banned from tv!
Market Places
The best-known examples of marketplaces are Amazon, eBay, and the Alibaba shopping platform.
Amazon receives over 5 billion site visits each month while eBay attracts around 1.7 billion. Alibaba serves approximately 1.31 billion annual active consumers. New platforms are appearing all the time.
Myself…I personally do not watch tv any more. I decided to leave the tv rat race 2 years ago and it was one of my better decisions (principle of no news is good news). Trying to avoid the non-stop advertising campaigns on the Internet is still a bit tricky though!
Try it for yourself…give up tv for 7 days…while you’re doing that why not eat ‘clean’ for 7 days as well. If everyone did this globally it would help put the brakes on global warming and planet devastation (e.g. amazon forests) and you’ll feel re-energized and ready to ‘rock and roll’.
Where does all this ‘Stuff’ we buy come from?
The culprit is CHINA…No surprise here! A large percentage of your house furnishings, products, toys, equipment, tools, tech stuff, pretty much everything! And most of it is engineered with ‘built-in obsolescence’ which means the only guarantee that sticks is that the product (e.g. washing machine) will definitely break down and need to be replaced. The replacement machine will have the same ‘built-in obsolescence’ features. Good for Profits, BAD for the planet!
During the last five reported years the exports of China have changed by $1.12T from $2.22T in 2016 to $3.34T in 2021. The most recent exports are led by Broadcasting Equipment ($231B), Computers ($192B), Integrated Circuits ($158B), Office Machine Parts ($101B), and Telephones ($53.9B).
$ 3.4 Trillion, that’s an awful lot of ‘STUFF’!
AVERTISING: IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING!
The exponential growth of online advertising can be traced back to the year 2000 when Google launched its AdWords advertising service. Since then, digital marketing has seen and huge increase and Google has managed to grow its advertising revenue every year for the past 19 years and made over $134 billion in 2019 alone, just from advertising.
Facebook launched its own advertising services, which allows advertisers to target users and audiences based on a range of demographics and information. Shortly after launching, Facebook’s ad revenue hit over $69 billion in 2019.
Today’s consumerism lifestyle is dictated by adverts running on tv, radio, online, and offline…it’s constant, never ending, in your face, advertising is everywhere!
And they are all chanting the same 2 mantra’s…’Shop-Shop-Shop!’…‘Eat-Eat-Eat!’
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Advertising promotes consumerism.
Humans are now ‘Shopping and Eating’ addicts.
North America, Europe, and most ‘westernised’ countries now have the same shopping layouts: large shopping malls, fast food outlets which offer mainly processed or junk foods (Pizza. Chocolate. Chips. Cookies, Ice cream. French fries. Cheeseburger. Soda, Crisps, Pies) loaded with addictive ingredients e.g. salt, sugar, msg, caffeine. No regard for consumer health or the environment, only profits.
Fast Food Addiction and Obesity
If you consume high amounts of energy, particularly found in high fat and high sugar foods, and do not use all of the energy through physical activity, much of the extra energy will be stored in the body as fat.
Here are just a few ingredients in fast food that can trigger a food addiction: msg (It’s commonly added to chips, frozen dinners, fast food, instant noodles, and many other processed foods to enhance flavour), fat, high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, refined carbs and sodium (they all disrupt the body’s cycle of insulin regulation). Don’t forget those health wrecking preservatives and antibiotics that are pumped into processed meats / foods / canned goods.
In the 50’s…60’s…70’s…80’s…there was no such thing as ‘OBESITY’. Today it’s commonplace with a whole new industry built around overweight people with one objective…making money!
The health problems associated with obesity are well documented, diabetes, heart conditions, joint and back problems, anxiety, depression, lack of self esteem to name a few. Pharmaceutical companies prefer people to have health problems…it’s bigger profits for shareholders!
In the ‘Good Old Days’ junk food was not available so therefore obesity was not a problem. The only exception I can think of is the occasional visit to the sweet shop (sugar = junk food). The only fast food available to my family was the ‘fish and chip shop’ which was our preferred meal on a Friday night.
So the moral of my short story?
There is a process going on here for Planet Resource Destruction & Human Extinction.
Only a handful of powerful businessmen run the world (Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Xi Jinping, and a few others) with politicians being mere puppets. These men are interested in only one thing…building their empires, making more money, making bigger profits! “Profits Before People” being their doctrine.
If we keep doing what we’re doing…the planet will be totally depleted of vital minerals and elements within a few short years. Ecosystems destroyed never to be seen again. Water polluted; Air polluted. The cycle to extinction is moving at an unprecedented pace, electric cars are not the answer. NO cars is a more realistic alternative. Healthy lifestyles must replace Unhealthy Lifestyles, and the ‘Shop Til You Drop’ mentality must be replaced with a ‘Shop 4 Extinction’ mentality.
The ‘destruction to extinction’ process is increasing in speed!
Planet Resource Destruction: Diminishing or loss of ecosystems = loss of habit = loss of species = increase in carbon emissions = increase in global warming = increase in climate change = irreversible.
Human Extinction: Increased population + Increased advertising = Increased consumerism = Increased consumption = more shopping = more eating / food = obesity = ill-health = unsustainable = extinction.
So if we all keep doing what we’re doing we’ll keep getting what we’re getting and the predicted 6th Mass Extinction event will take place sooner rather than later.
The planet will survive but without the existence of the self-destructing human race!
