ecology

"This study demonstrates how far we have come in not just quantifying the manifold problems surrounding plastics, but also in identifying and evaluating potential solutions," said Dr. Roland Geyer, Professor of Industrial Ecology, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at UC Santa Barbara.

Tanton kindles a small fire of twigs inside a metal pitcher, while expounding for the camera about ecology and overpopulation.

When Tanton blended ecology with eugenics and immigration, he was digging up the two-century-old principles of Thomas Malthus, who first theorized that human population growth would lead to poverty and suffering.

Tanton’s belief that mass immigration would supplant white America had one particular focus: He saw it as a threat to the country’s ecology and ultimately to the consensus among environmentalists about preserving the purity of that ecology.

Now, politicians, newscasters, podcast hosts and white nationalists were picking up his ideas about pollution and scarcity, immigration and global warming, that fit their agendas, swirling them together with historical tropes about ecology and racist thought and conspiracy theories, not sure, necessarily, where the ideas had come from but eager to trade on their currency.