Part 9: Plastic onslaught of our streams, river, lakes and oceans; deadly, ugly, immoral
“Plastics will prove the worst, most insidious invention of humanity. Plastics kill everything and anything in their path on all four corners of the planet. Plastics kill without violence, without warning and without provocation. Plastics float, sink and never break down. Of all of humanity’s folly on this green planet, plastics take the trophy for man’s inhumanity to all other life on Earth.” FHW
Part 9 of this series cannot help but sicken your sense of humanity’s moral and ethical decay on this planet. Not to mention its outright denial of reality. This plastic onslaught stands alone as the worst invasion ever perpetrated on all other creatures on Earth. While I respond to many religiously righteous people and many people who think they know what they talk about—I am chagrined at the arrogance of those who defend unlimited human growth in the face of our accelerating carnage, slaughter and butchery of the natural world around the planet.
Marco Torres, March 26, 2013, wrote in www.PreventDisease.com :
“Overpopulation is a radical and dangerous myth promoted by elite and international societies. The unproven notion, as Malthus believed, that higher wages and welfare should be withheld from the great unwashed because he believed that these two factors would allow the poor to survive and exponentially breed, thus compounding the overpopulation problem.
“Overpopulation is a misnomer. A problem that exists only in dramatically erroneous theories that are not mathematically based. It is simply one of the most flawed concepts right up there with global warming. The theories are based on myths, not science or accurate statistical correlations or causation principles.”
In reality, Malthus said, ““The power of population is so superior to the power of earth to produce subsistence to humanity that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.”
Those of us that possess greater understanding can only shake our heads at the insanity of humanity’s folly. To take Malthus several steps further into the accelerating nightmare of overpopulation on this planet—let us address the 80,000 human made chemicals our species injects into the land, air and water 24/7. How does Torres speak to that nasty reality? Answer: he ignores it. How about the most insidious aspect of humanity’s inventions—plastics? Torres ducks out along with all pro-growth advocates. They never deal with the undercurrent of human devastation on this planet.
This Part 9 of the series may sicken you even more than usual. The 10 minute video below illustrates the deadly reach of humanity as its plastics attack the bird life on Midway Island, seemingly so far away from human encroachment, that such an onslaught of human-made rubbish couldn’t reach it. But it does, and the avian and marine life suffer excruciating deaths from having their guts loaded with every form of plastic tossed out into the oceans without any responsibility whatsoever.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10151444416028934&set=vb.121736167844852&type=2&theater
Now that you’ve seen this sickening video of our disregard of the natural world, how do we account for ourselves as a species? How do we change this ugly, nasty and deadly assault on Mother Nature?
You saw the lethal plastics invading the guts of the birds, but what about below the ocean waters? Let me tell you with my 50 years of scuba diving around the planet, it’s even more deadly. We kill off 100 million sharks annually for the past 25 years—documented by Julia Whitty in OneEarth Magazine. The carnage below the water equals anything and more above the water.
Turtles eat Styrofoam so much so; they cannot submerge to find their food. Dolphins and whales get caught up in drift nets to the point of strangulation, suffocation and horrible deaths. The tiny plastic pellets (nurdles) by the billions upon billions now infect the ocean food chain. Even that horror cannot be seen in the film, but it operates everywhere in the oceans.
Almost 10 years ago, the popular TV talk show host Oprah Winfrey exposed the 100 million ton plastic floating garbage patch the size of Texas desecrating an area of the Pacific Ocean. The “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” covers all other oceans of the world with an average of 46,000 plastic bottles and debris floating on every square mile of ocean water. That plastic kills millions of creatures above and below the surface.
Did the world press come to the rescue? Did the president of the United States and leaders of all other countries in the world call for a world .25 cent deposit/return law to stop the deluge of plastics entering our natural world? Did ordinary citizens take action to make it happen in free countries? Did Pepsi, Coke, Coors, Budweiser, Kentucky Bourbon, KFC, McDonald’s, Burger King, Chipotle’s, Pizza Hut, Toys R US and other top beverage and plastic-selling companies stand up to demand deposit/return laws for all their products. Did CEOs of Ford, Chrysler, General Motors, Kroger, Publix, King Soopers and Safeway make any attempt to stop plastics from entering the natural world?
Answer: not a single damned pathetic one of them stood up to promote a plan to stop the destruction of our oceans. In fact, I know one of them personally, Peter Coors of Coors Brewing in Golden, Colorado where I live. He personally used his millions to defeat container-deposit laws in Colorado in 1974 and 1988. I asked him why? He said to me in a letter, “It’s only an 8 percent waste stream….”
When you take 8 percent and apply it to trillions of plastic containers, you come up with the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch.” I call Peter Coors a “pretend environmentalist.”
Thus, the onslaught of our oceans rips at the foundation of all of life. To think that we stand ready to add another 3.1 billion of our kind within 37 years. And guys like Marco Torres tell us that human overpopulation remains a myth, a charade and a misnomer. To that, I conclude he continues breathing but remains “intellectually vacant.”
Frosty Wooldridge is a Population-Immigration-Environmental specialist: speaker at colleges, civic clubs, high schools and conferences. Facebook: Frosty Wooldridge. Facebook Adventure Page: How to Live a Life of Adventure: The Art of Exploring the World. Www.HowToLiveALifeOfAdventure.com. www.frostywooldridge.com
