This is My Forties

*** I wrote this back in 2019 for the blog I write for my job, but never published it because I was worried it was too political. Now I feel like everything going on with COVID is exactly the "excruciating event" that might launch us all into action about these broken systems that hold all the power One of the biggest challenges to being sustainable is not having reusable/refillable options for everyday products. TerraCycle teamed up with UPS and several top brands to create a completely closed-loop container system called Loop. I started to feel excitement about it and then I realized something... why is this MY responsibility? I am not a billionaire, millionaire, nor do I have any power. Why is this gigantic mess something I am supposed to pay to fix? Does this even fix it? No. It's creating a new system of revenue out of trash, which is the only way capitalism will ever handle pollution. I don't trust most solutions that require a new product. Granted, ...

I am going to march with my fellow scientists on April 22nd, and for many great reasons. Here are a few. It was discovered in 1929 that lead was poisonous in paint ... however, lobbyists fought science on it until 1978 when it was finally banned. It killed thousands of people, mostly children. They blamed it on parents. They said science wasn't proving without a doubt that lead was bad. They wanted to force laws on science that are incredibly restrictive and unreasonable. They are doing this now with our food and our environment. Food corporations spend billions of dollars lobbying to keep themselves in business by encouraging the government to use old or unsound science (that was bought and paid for) instead of the hundreds of well-researched and articulated studies done by independent laboratories. They employ lawyers to whittle down scientific studies... lawyers. Not scientists. They argue over syntax, not content. Their main goal is economics, not health. It is...