Did you know that almost all of the media that the average American consumes – including 24-hour news stations, newspapers, publishing houses, Internet utilities, and even video game developers – are in the hands of just six media companies?

This concentration of media into the hands of a powerful few has been called a “threat to democracy and innovation,” whilst at the same time giving the average person an “illusion of choice” where there is actually very little. These corporations are under no obligation to report impartially and present consumers with the truth – they often promote what best suits their own aims and agendas.

“With the country’s widest disseminators of news, commentary, and ideas firmly entrenched among a small number of the world’s wealthiest corporations, it may not be surprising that their news and commentary is limited to an unrepresentative, narrow spectrum of politics,” writes Ben Bagdikian in his book ‘The New Media Monopoly.’

Is it any wonder then, that some of humanity’s most pressing concerns – those of rapid and uncontrolled environmental disasters, are kept out of the headlines? These wealthy and powerful media moguls have wealthy and powerful benefactors, many of whom have accumulated their fortunes from the relentless plundering of the Earth’s natural resources. These people have no interest in a greener, better educated and more empathetic world and will actively work to distract us from the true extent of the global problems that our current path is causing.

Heck, even the current administration is censoring warnings and blocking their own experts from publishing data about climate change, and don’t get me started on the situation in Brazil. What hope do we have when these powerful vested interests are intent on continuing their destructive ways?

Image credits: ClimateBen

Luckily, we still have a free and open internet (for now at least) and the truth on global warming and pressing social issues can only be hidden for so long. Climate Ben is one of many good folks online who is doing the job that the ‘big 6’ mega-media conglomerations are not, and keeping us aware of what is really going in the world.

Rather than ignoring the message while trying to shoot the messenger, Ben’s bad news is fully-sourced and backed by science, the same science that has a 97% consensus that humans are causing global warming, for example.

It’s time we free ourselves from this media bubble and begin to actively search for knowledge and answers, instead of trusting that the truth will be delivered to us on a plate! Because more often than not, it most certainly won’t. Diversify your media consumption and always remember to question a story’s source and possible motivations.

In the famous words of Fox Mulder: “The truth is out there…”

(You just gotta go find it!)

Image credits: ClimateBen

It is well-documented that the delicate eco-systems of the oceans, which cover 71% of the Earth’s surface, are being negatively affected by human behavior. We are fishing too much, contaminating even the deepest depths with our plastics, causing global warming – which is messing with things like the food chain, ocean currents and acidification, and encroaching on the last refuges of marine wilderness.

Image credits: ClimateBen

Scientists, backed by data and research, have been warning about the extent of environmental damage and the resulting biological annihilation for some time now – over 25 years in fact. The situation has become so severe that we are now in the midst of the ‘sixth mass extinction,‘ something signaled by the huge vertebrate population losses and declines that we are currently witnessing.

Image credits: ClimateBen

Agriculture has enabled human beings to become the Earth’s truly dominant species and lift us out of short, savage lives as hunter-gatherers. However, while modern industrial agriculture is good at feeding populations it is not sustainable at its current rate.

We have treated farming like an extractive industry, and now a third of the planet’s land is severely degraded. Fertile soil is being lost at the rate of 24bn tonnes a year – according to a United Nations-backed study that calls for a shift away from destructively intensive agriculture – and we aren’t getting any of it back unless we change our farming practices.

Image credits: ClimateBen

Megafauna, think species like the Western gorilla, black rhino and Bengal tiger are on the verge of extinction because of human activities leading to habitat loss, persecution, and exploitation. Under a business-as-usual scenario, conservation scientists will soon be busy writing obituaries for species and subspecies of megafauna as they vanish from the planet – we are losing them just as science is discovering their essential ecological roles.

Image credits: ClimateBen

Over 40% of insect species are threatened with extinction, with habitat loss by conversion to intensive agriculture being the main driver of the declines. Agro-chemical pollutants, invasive species and climate change are additional causes, and this loss of insect diversity and abundance is expected to provoke cascading effects on food webs and to jeopardize entire ecosystems.

So in an attempt to produce as much food as quickly and efficiently as we possibly can, we are in fact killing the goose that lays the golden egg.

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

Climate Ben believes that the “vast majority” of political commentators “seldom or never mention the Ecological Emergency,” and so uses the power of social media like Twitter to tag and link them to important articles and journals that report the latest scientific findings.

Image credits: ClimateBen

https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1056171209874948098

Image credits: ClimateBen

“Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume. The massive loss of populations is already damaging the services ecosystems provide to civilization. When considering this frightening assault on the foundations of human civilization, one must never forget that Earth’s capacity to support life, including human life, has been shaped by life itself.”

“All signs point to ever more powerful assaults on biodiversity in the next two decades, painting a dismal picture of the future of life, including human life.”

Image credits: ClimateBen

https://twitter.com/ClimateBen/status/1104689919157506049

“The inevitable has happened. Microplastics have already been found in birds and fish and whales, so it should have come as no surprise that they have now been discovered in humans. To be specific but indelicate, tiny plastic particles and fibers have been found in the stool of eight people who provided samples as part of a pilot study.”

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

Image credits: ClimateBen

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