[intro music, ocean sounds]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
We all know of the plastic crisis. We know of the mid-ocean islands of plastic debris; we all know of the trashed beaches, plastic washed across oceans ashore; we all have seen the photograph of the plastic junk inside the dead seagull’s belly. We have all seen the medical warnings again the consumption of fish containing bits of micro-plastic, a threat to a pregnant mother and her unborn child.
We are aware of the still voluminous amount plastic in our household trash. If we recycle and separate, we still know the inefficiency of collection, re-cycling, and withdrawing plastic from the cycle of living. We all avoid plastic bags, yet we wrap our vegetables and meats in plastic film and trays. In truth, there is more plastic circulation through our global social system, and our personal endeavor than ever before.
We all know that what we see is just above the surface; we all know what we cannot see: the micro-beads of plastic, heated by the sun, ground by ocean movement, emitted as tire dust, films, industrial waste, synthetic fibers, mulches and fertilizers – no longer piles of rubbish, but miniscule bit of plastic washed downstream through rivers, streams, culverts, street drains, sanitation systems, and every other conduit from mountain-top to coast to the ocean’s abyssal plain as an ever-amplified stream of poison, to then be absorbed into the atmosphere, to be circulated by global weather systems again as “wet disposition” --humidity, rain, snow -- as plastic rain.
And what happens then? The plastic absorbs into our fields and reservoirs, forests and soils, into the air we breathe, into our bodies, ingested and absorbed in a cycle of detriment -- invisible, insidious, vicious, and deadly.
We think we are aware, that we have solved a problem, when we have not. Plastic is a function of oil and global circulation of that function carries plastic in worldwide distribution and lures us into an illusion that we have things under control when we do not. We have saturated ourselves in plastic poison that knows no boundaries, no statutory limits, no regulatory control, no moral distinctions, no end in sight. It is as simple, and destructive, as poisoning the world well without thinking.
What to do about plastic rain?
To solve a problem, we need first to understand its dimension, the circumference of the circumstance, the urgency of the experience and the structures for correction. Is it insurmountable? What will it take?
We ask that question too often on World Ocean Radio. And to pose the question without some sense of solution is irresponsible at best. But we also offer week after week increments of solution, of the need for new values, thus structures and behaviors to confront and address particular questions with specific answers. And we have no idea if anyone is listening. It is as if we have wrapped our individual and collective conscious in a film of unthinking. We must re-address: first, acknowledge that the crisis remains; second, to re-affirm all past behaviors to diminish and control; and third, to understand that plastic is still everywhere, stored in our forests, moving as inflammation, hormone disruption, exhalation, doing possible metabolic and reproductive harm – its own pandemic, another oil-fired world disease.
The incremental behavior shifts are known, but I fear that they are being forgotten, subsumed into anxious distraction driven by so much more. Re-commit to an anti-plastic life; recycle, even if the systems seem compromised; remind us by isolated volume of the ongoing, recuring, expanding scale; re-state plastic as dangerous as acid and ash in rain and the air we breathe; renounce plastic as you can; and remember it is primary among the many silent dangers to the environment that corrupt our future, steady and still
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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[outro music, ocean sounds]
