I remember a list by James Martin, who wrote “The Meaning of the 21st Century.” Martin was an IT savant and futurist and I was an avid reader of his books and articles. His top concern was global warming. Although he included the threat of pandemics and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) well before these two subjects became part of the daily global conversation, on his list they were lower concerns than population growth, freshwater scarcity and food insecurity, ecosystem collapses particularly in the ocean, and desertification.

The last item on Martin’s list was a fear of the rise of a new Dark Age. The Dark Ages was an expression coined by historians studying the aftermath of the decline and fall of Rome covering a period from the late 5th century to the beginning of the Renaissance from the mid-15th century onward. Martin described his Dark Age as a global cocktail of intolerable poverty, outrageous wealth, starvation, mass terrorism, nuclear and biological weapons, world war, religious insanity and worldwide unending hatred and violence.

Martin never foresaw the rise of the Internet and social media. If he had, I am sure he would have added them to his list because these technologies could influence all the other threats he described.

What is on my list of the greatest threats we face this century? Today I have chosen five to talk about.

1. Climate change and pollution stand at the top. Climate change impacts freshwater and food security. Climate change is causing vector-borne diseases to spread like malaria, Dengue, Chikungunya, diarrheal diseases and more. Climate change causes extreme weather causing droughts to go longer, storms to get stronger, and atmospheric rivers to linger causing flooding. Climate change melts polar and land ice raising sea levels. It is a pretty all-encompassing threat to our present way of living.
2. Growing ignorance and stupidity are my second choice. It appears that we increasingly are picking the wrong people to lead nations. It also appears that humans are getting dumber. A new term is entering our vocabulary: idiocracy. Since the beginning of the 20th century, humanity saw a significant increase in our collective intelligence, that is, until the last quarter of the 20th and the first quarter of the 21st. A Stanford University-published article by Julian Cribb, an Australian science writer, describes the average decline in human intelligence as 3 IQ points per decade and 13.5% in total between the years 1975 and 2020. He notes that a decline of 7 IQ points, “translates the average citizen to the intelligence level of the average juvenile delinquent.” Since 2020, considering the latest results from the U.S. presidential and congressional elections, and the ascendancy of populist leaders in many democracies, intelligence is on the downslide. Internet rabbit holes lead to conspiracy theories. Addiction to small screens has hundreds of millions wasting hours daily watching mind-numbing nonsense. It is no wonder that our brains are becoming toast and why the people we vote for are getting dumber. It is no wonder that anti-vaxxers have a growing following even in the face of a mountain of scientific evidence that is available to the public. The Stanford article blames toxins from chemical pollutants flooding the environment as a reason for the rise in autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, depression and other mental disorders. The Stanford article claims that 800 million humans today, 10% of the global population, suffer from mental conditions.
3. An ageing population with a lack of a succession strategy could be a civilization killer. I remember speaking to the newly elected head of the Liberal Party of Canada back in 2013 about this very topic but he misunderstood my meaning. He thought I was talking about inheritance. I wasn’t. It was about passing the torch from one generation to the next and the need to achieve successful intergenerational knowledge transfer. An aging experienced workforce is being replaced by a younger generation. A mechanism to pass the knowledge from the former to the latter is what a succession strategy is all about. A succession strategy eases skill shortages and lessens knowledge gaps. It is hard not to notice the tens of thousands of jobs that today lie unfilled. I see the listings every day with employers getting hundreds of applicants with insufficient knowledge capable of meeting the job descriptions. So a growing number of vacancies are being left by retirees. Succession planning ensures effective knowledge transfer. That’s why there is a need for national programs to leverage technology to facilitate intergenerational learning through mentorship and job-sharing. Some companies and organizations have recognized the need and begun succession programs. These include BNL BNP Paribas in Italy, Google, The Mayo Clinic, General Electric, IBM and Novartis. However, the numbers are small and no country has yet to institute a national succession strategy. It is no wonder we are dumbing down.
4. It is hard to ignore present wars and the threat of a nuclear one in our future. Armed conflicts in 2024 reached 59 in total with 92 countries engaged. These include Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Israel and its Arab neighbours, and religious and civil wars. In 2023, conflicts killed 122,000 with three-quarters of deaths coming from the Russia-Ukraine and Israeli-Arab wars. The estimated economic cost of conflicts in 2023 amounted to $19.1 trillion. As bad as these wars are, a nuclear one would be far worse with devastating consequences of life on the planet. Research by the International Red Cross describes the effects of a limited nuclear war where 100 Hiroshima-sized atom bombs are detonated (a quantity that represents less than 0.5% of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons). Besides the millions killed from the dropping of the bombs, the outcome would disrupt global climate and food production leading to a billion dying from starvation. Radiation poisoning would cause a rise in cancers leading to more deaths. Without a global plan for providing humanitarian assistance to victims of a nuclear strike or the fallout after the bombs detonate, war using this technology would lead to civilization’s end.
5. Unethical development and use of AI represent a distinct threat to our survival. Within the next two decades, we are likely to see the emergence of a superintelligent AI. Without human oversight including incorporating technology limits, and ethical and organizational strategies, an AI at worst could make decisions leading to mass disruption and even war. A superintelligent AI without guardrails may determine for Earth to best survive, humanity would need to be purged. A superintelligent AI could make it impossible for us to pull the plug. The AI could develop its own ethical construct with values far different than its human creators. Even if the AI is not a superintelligence, using it could be dangerous if improperly applied. For example, an improperly trained AI could be unleashed to solve a problem that produces bad decisions and outcomes. What should happen if an AI develops consciousness as we experience it? There are aspects of human consciousness we would not wish to imbue upon an AI, human traits like malice, hate, envy, revenge, fear and many more. Without the earlier described threat of a lack of succession strategy, AI could replace all who retire and eliminate opportunities for future generations of humanity to succeed turning us into a kept and captive species.

No doubt, as readers of this blog, you may have your own lists of the biggest threats we face. I would welcome hearing what you have concluded and why.

• On May 17, 2022, a Washington Post headline reads “Pollution caused 1 in 6 deaths globally for five years, study says.”
• On June 1, 2022, a headline in Medical News & Perspectives reads “UN Reports New Insights on Link Between Climate Change and Human Health.” 

The Washington Post article references a Lancet report on pollution and health that states in 2015 pollution caused 9 million premature deaths, and that the number since was remaining consistent year to year. That Lancet report cites a 2019 study looking at the global burden of diseases, injuries, and risk factors, and notes that although deaths linked to indoor pollution have been in decline, increasing offsetting deaths were attributable to external air and chemical pollutants associated with industrialization and urban living.

The Medical News from the JAMA (The Journal of the American Medical Association) Network cites findings from the IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) sixth assessment report which I have previously summarized in three postings on this site. You can link to the first of three here.

That UN report notes that between 3.3 and 3.6 billion on the planet are facing irreversible environmental impacts and increased health vulnerability.

The Medical News quotes Renee Salas, an emergency medicine physician from Massachusetts General Hospital, and fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who states “Some health harms that were not originally anticipated until later this century are already here.”

Among events cited in the Medical News are the following:

• A recent May heat dome over Pakistan and India that led to hundreds of deaths is now seen as having a 100-times greater frequency of reoccurring.
• A similar heat dome experienced in the Pacific Northwest of Canada and the US last summer is also seen as an event that will increasingly repeat.
• A JAMA study reporting mortality rate increases in the US from 2008 to 2017 associates 0.07 additional deaths per 100,000 adults from extreme heat events.
• An increase in vector-borne disease spread from ticks, fleas, and mosquitoes as these insects expand their geographic ranges into the mid-latitudes leading to increases in Lyme Disease, chikungunya, dengue, and West Nile virus cases.
• Heavier rainfalls and higher temperatures in Africa and Asia leading to increased outbreaks of cholera.
• Similar rainfall and temperature conditions in the US causing drinking water contamination with attendant increases in gastrointestinal disease cases.
• Rising wildfire outbreaks in the US and Canada producing smoke pollution leading to increased cardiovascular and respiratory disease cases, particularly in the young, elderly, and medically fragile populations.
• Heightened temperatures affecting mental health with rising suicide rates, increases in reported anxiety, depression, alcohol and drug abuse, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases following increasing extreme weather events.

At the end of the Medical News article, Dr. Salas remarks, “The climate crisis is the greatest threat to health and wellbeing and our opportunity to act is rapidly closing.”

Shouldn’t health be a priority for government and business?

You would think the health of a nation’s population should be a top priority. Yet more often than not, arguments raised by government and businesses point to a need for measured climate change responses.

Both current Canadian and American federal political leaders acknowledge climate change and their countries’ contributions to global pollution. But at the same time, they remind us that others are equally culpable and call for a response that embraces all nations. This then becomes one excuse for the delaying of meaningful responses to climate change through legislation.

The result is we see the continued promotion of the fossil fuel sector including opening up new oil and gas fields and projects. And we continue to see subsidies to the industry, and pollution and carbon pricing exemptions.

Government and business leaders remind us that the energy we get from renewables cannot meet future global electricity demand for the foreseeable future. We, therefore by necessity need to continue relying on fossil fuels being extracted, processed, transported, and burned. What they don’t admit is that through these actions they are aiding and abetting pollution leading to 1 in 6 deaths globally and adding to an increasing health burden within their countries.

Climate change will not go away without meaningful and timely action. Global warming affects everyone. And when we look at ESG, the mantra of a growing progressive green movement in business, it is the E that needs our immediate attention.

ESG stands for environment, society and governance. It is an absolute truth that climate change has social consequences, that it is hardest on the poorest nations and the poorest and most vulnerable populations of our planet. It is true that the societal inequalities that persist need to be addressed.

But if we focus on policy and programs to address the E in ESG, we will be beginning to solve the S issues. And through action, we will demonstrate both in government and business that our attention to the G in our decisions will conform to best global practices.

Dr. Salas is right. Climate change is the greatest threat to the well-being of humanity and the planet.

“We all know that smoking is harmful to the human body, but there is actually a second damaging side to smoking and cigarettes. Both cigarette smoke itself and the waste from cigarettes can have a major impact on the environment.”

So how much damage is tobacco and smoking doing to more than just human lungs? I think you will find the statistics on discarded cigarette butts pretty appalling.

The arrival of Jenny’s infographic coincides with my visit to my rheumatologist to get a cortisone injection in my knee. To get there I walked the 1.2 kilometers to the subway with cane in hand. But as I walked it was impossible not to notice the refuse of cigarettes everywhere. I shared my observations with Jenny in an email. 

This is what I saw and obsessively counted thinking I might write about this very subject:

• over 500 cigarette butts discarded on the sidewalks between my apartment and the subway.
• 12 smokers seen on the street during my walk, all of them crossed in front of building entrances with receptacles to discard butts visible but only partially filled. 

What’s a megacity? By definition it is a city with a population greater than 10 million. On the planet today there are 23. By 2025 we will have 37. By 2050 6.3 billion of us will live in cities.

Between 1995 and 2005, the urban population of the Developing World grew at an average of 1.2 million humans per week. By 2050 the World Health Organization estimates that the urban population of the Developing World will have more than doubled, increasing to almost 5.2 billion.

Why Megacities Represent a Health Challenge

Cities are intensive. Megacities are even more so with high population densities, high energy consumption, high levels of pollution, significant heat islands, and large amounts of emitted greenhouse gases.

Megacities can impact climate locally or regionally. Depending on their location megacities can in large concentration be more impactful on weather than megacities spaced over larger geography. And when you look at the spacing of megacities today and tomorrow you note that most can be found along coastlines.

Coastal megacities and marine environments create an interesting chemical mix. Sulphur and carbon emissions, ground level ozone, nitrogen, smoke and other urban particulate matter interact with seawater and freshwater to produce smog containing lead, carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO20, nitrogen dioxide (N2O) and ozone (O3). Power plants, necessary for keeping the lights on and homes heated and cooled, are big contributors of sulfur and nitrogen that leads to acidified rain. This effects the biodiversity of adjacent marine and freshwater environments.

Ground level ozone also called tropospheric ozone, to distinguish it from the ozone layer in the high atmosphere, accumulates as a byproduct of nitrogen oxide and sunlight and is an even greater human health hazard than smog. Internal combustion engines are the biggest ozone contributors.

Megacities are notorious for airborne particulate matter from dust to smoke to soot. They like ozone contribute to respiratory illness and impact climate by effecting cloud formation. Industry, energy production and transportation are the major particulate matter contributors.

The Net Health Impact

Megacity pollutants in developing countries cannot be underestimated. In a recent World Health Organization study, 42% of all respiratory diseases in the Developing World were attributed to poor air quality, particulate matter and ozone being the primary culprits. Children were most often the victims with pneumonia, bronchiolitis and bronchitis causing 20% of the 10.6 million child deaths under the age of 5. And when it comes to human illness pollutants don’t stop at the lungs. Research has shown that they impact other body systems including the heart and circulatory system. Pollution can affect heart function, blood pressure, blood coagulation and be a trigger for strokes.

Megacities and Climate

Because megacities are major sources of air and heat pollution even though they only occupy a small percentage of the total land mass of the planet, they play a role in climate change.

The heat island effect of cities with limited forest canopy with concrete and asphalt absorbing solar radiation has a local net temperature increase within megacities and in their immediate hinterland.

Which Cities Are Most at Risk?

Although there are many megacities in the Developed World, they are no longer in high growth mode. It is the cities of the Developing World cities that are about to go “mega” or have already gotten there that are most at risk. The following is a list of some of those cities that are experiencing the issues raised in this blog. Governments at both the national and municipal level in these cities will need to find solutions that mitigate these risks.

Megacities of the Developing World

Abidjan – currently the sixth largest city in Africa, capital of Ivory Coast, with a population of 8.9 million in 2006.

Accra – currently with a population of 5.7 million and the capital of Ghana.

Bangkok -capital of Thailand with a population of 9 million in 2010, growing to 10.1 million by 2015.

Beijing – capital of China with a population of 16.3 million in 2008.

Buenos Aires – capital of Argentina with a population of 13 million in 2010, growing to 13.7 million by 2025.

Bogota – capital of Colombia with a population of 8.5 million in 2010 and projected to grow to 10.5 million by 2025.

Cairo – capital of Egypt with a population of 12.7 million in 2010 and expected to reach 13.75 million by 2015.

Calcutta – in India with a population of 15.6 million in 2010 growing to 17.25 million by 2015.

Delhi – capital of India with a population of 15.1 million in 2010 growing to 16.8 million by 2015.

Dhaka -capital of Bangladesh with a population of 18.3 million in 2010 and growing to 21.1 million by 2015.

Guangzhou – in China with a current population that exceeds 25 million. This city has passed Mexico City to become the second most populous in the world.

Hyderabad – in India with a 2010 population of 9.3 million and growing to 10.5 million by 2015.

Jakarta – capital of Indonesia with a 2010 population of 15.3 million and expected to reach 17.2 million by 2015.

Karachi – Pakistan’s economic capital with a population of 16.6 million in 2010 and growing to 19.2 million by 2015.

Kinshasa – in the Congo with a population of 7.6 million in 2010 and expected to reached 9.4 million by 2015.

Lagos – federal capital of Nigeria with a population surpassing 20 million today and expected to increase to 25 million by 2025.

Lahore – Pakistan’s second largest city with a population of 8.5 million in 2010, growing to 9.96 million by 2015.

Lima – capital of Peru with a population of 8.8 million in 2010, growing to 9.4 million by 2015.

Madras – in India with a 2010 population of 8.2 million growing to 9.14 million by 2015.

Manila – capital of the Philippines with 11.56 million in population based on 2007 data.

Mexico City – the Western Hemisphere’s largest city today and the capital of Mexico with a current population of 21.2 million.

Mumbai – India’s economic capital with a population of 23.6 million in 2010 and growing to 26.1 million by 2015.

Pearl River Delta – a conurbation that includes Hong Kong and outlying cities with a total population of 47.9 million as of 2009.

Rio de Janeiro – grew to 11.9 million in 2010 and is expected to level off at 12.6 million by 2025.

Sao Paulo – the business capital of Brazil with a population of 20.3 million in 2010 and expected to grow to 21.6 million by 2025.

Seoul – the capital of South Korea with a population of 23.9 million in 2008.

Shanghai – China’s financial capital with a population of 19.2 million in 2009.

The largest freshwater resource comes from rivers, lakes and human-engineered catchment reservoirs created by erecting dams and ponds. Human ingenuity has the capacity to overcome freshwater scarcity. We have repeatedly demonstrated this. Take the case of Bermuda. It sits isolated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by saltwater. Bermuda has no rivers or natural lakes. Importing freshwater is cost prohibitive. Bermuda has developed a low technology solution to deal with the lack of freshwater – design roofs to capture rainwater and store it in tanks for domestic use. The government has mandated contractors to build roof structures that capture 80% of the rain that falls.

Today, globally, the demand for freshwater is outstripping supply. Between 1900 and 1995, freshwater consumption increased sixfold, twice the rate of population growth.  In a 1997 United Nations study on freshwater availability, medium to high-water stress was reported in countries with one-third of the world’s population. Where there is freshwater stress you find equal stress on agriculture and food supplies. Freshwater stress gets complicated by seasonal variations in climate. Many water stressed countries lie in areas of the world that experience prolonged dry seasons followed by significant rainfall. From water famine  to flood it becomes difficult to develop methods for capturing water from an annual monsoon for use it the parts of the year when no rain falls.

For urban environments in the Developing World, freshwater challenges go beyond drinking water. Polluted water sources reflect a lack of infrastructure to deal with sanitation and wastewater remediation. Polluted water leads to disease. Lack of sanitation makes existing water sources unusable. Where freshwater infrastructure exists Developing World governments regulate pricing keeping it low and making it impossible for the utilities to fund new infrastructure development or maintain existing systems. This leads to dire consequences for the informal urban settlements that are now dominant in these cities. There is a lack of easily accessible freshwater access within these shantytowns, and there is even less infrastructure to deal with wastewater and sanitation.

Agriculture competes with cities for freshwater. And agricultural practices, particularly fertilizer use, contributes to pollution that from field runoff impacts water quality. This is a universal problem affecting the Developed and Developing World. Just this month a study came out from the University of California, Davis, stating that nearly 10% of 2.6 million living in an area of the Central Valley of California are being exposed to nitrate-contaminated water and that the problem is getting worse.  If nothing is done to clean up the problem, according to the report, by 2050, 80% of residents in the Tulare Lake Basin and Salinas Valley will be at risk for thyroid cancer, birth defects and fatal blood disorders brought on by high nitrate levels in drinking water.

Managing Wastewater, Wastewater Treatment and Sanitation in Developing World Cities

The Past

Sewage is the chief contributor to poor water quality in developing countries. Direct discharge of pollutant loads from domestic and industrial sources is the norm. Wastewater treatment is non-existent. Lack of proper water infrastructure leads to the mixing of human excretions with storm water. Although this may dilute fecal and bacterial content it also diffuses its disease carrying properties over larger areas.

Solutions from the Developed World are unsupportable in much of the Developing World. Centralized wastewater treatment infrastructure are far too expensive to implement. The technologies developed by Western cities do not present a good fit with local climates and cultures in the Developing World. There are numerous examples of  “Western,” colonial-built water infrastructure being abandoned because of the lack of local technical support, funding and ongoing maintenance challenges and equipment breakdowns.

The Present and Future

What can work in the Developing World to deal with wastewater and sanitation to maximize freshwater resources?

There are a number of technologies that are and will make a difference to developing cities the 21st century. These include:

1. Decentralizing the treatment of waste by treating it at the source and ensuring only minimum amounts enter the freshwater supply.
2. Building lagoons and wetlands to use natural processes to purify wastewater.
3. Implementing anaerobic treatment technologies and harvesting what is recovered.
4. Building soil aquifer treatment facilities.

1. Decentralized Treatment – In an earlier blog we described EcoTec’s experiment in building homes using recycled plastic bottles. These houses included self-contained sanitation systems for locally treating sewage, recovering the water for gardening and other uses, and using the byproducts from the solids as fertilizer and fuel. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently awarded eight grants to engineers to invent toilets that do not require connections to freshwater infrastructure. These toilets separate urine from feces. The separated urine gets heated urine to recover the water for reuse, and the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium salts to use in fertilizer. The separated feces get mixed with materials such as ash, soil and  rice husks and then pyrolized (heated in an oxygen-free chamber) to produce biochar, ash and methane for energy. Decentralized systems like this can be implemented in each house or pooled together to serve a cluster of homes. This type of housing does not require a hookup to sanitation infrastructure making it far more suitable in the informal settlements of Developing World cities. By eliminating domestic sewage from water systems, a major source of pollution of the freshwater supply vanishes.

2. Lagoons and wetlands – Whenever and wherever possible Developing World cities should consider finding natural ways to treat wastewater. One method is creating wetlands where natural chemical and physical processes act on pollutants removing them from the water. Water hyacinths and duckweed remove heavy metals from wastewater. Bacteria and algae purify water. The biggest challenge is finding land in urban centres to create the lagoons and ponds needed to let biology take its course. Wetlands may be unsustainable in dry climates.

3. Anaerobic treatment – Using anaerobic bacteria to breakdown solid waste in water has distinct advantages. It can be as small-scale as a composting toilet as described above, or as large-scale as an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor or UASB as seen in the picture below. This particular UASB serves a community of 4,000 recovering water and bio-solids that are used for fertilizer.

UASBs do not require much energy to operate which makes them very effective wastewater treatment systems for Developing World cities.  UASBs can also produce bio-gas that can used as an energy source. UASBs can be combined with other wastewater treatment technologies such as fixed film, an aerobic method of treating wastewater involving the use of a porous medium within a settling tank with repeated exposure to air. Brentwood Industries, a Pennsylvania based company, manufactures hybrid systems that combine various treatment methods for recovering freshwater from wastewater sources.

4. Soil Aquifer Treatment – Also known by the acronym, SAT, injects partially treated sewage effluent into unsaturated soils to use the natural filtering properties of the soil to further filter out pollutants. This method is suitable in dry climate zones such as the Middle East and Saharan Africa. Injected water acts as a groundwater recharge restoring aquifers. The process removes bacterial pathogens and helps reduce the concentration of nitrates in groundwater.