No One Can’t Ever Be A Part of The Ecological Problem

The problem that I would like to address is marine pollution, the discarding of nonbiodegrable plastics, medical and industrial waste, and other harmful material directly or indirectly into the seas and oceans. This waste coalesces in areas like the oceans’ gyres which are gradually, revolving currents typically between or near continents, forming the various great garbage patches, and the islands within or bordering the gyres.

While the specific time of when major marine pollution began probably cannot be discovered, at least most of it coincides with the Industrial Revolution in modernity. For Europe and the United States, their revolutions began as early as the late 1700s to as late as 1870 depending on the country, periods of which there certainly weren’t the national and international treaties and regulations to control for pollution, whether air, land, marine, etc., as there are today. China and other, developing nations, through their ongoing industrialization, demonstrate that, even with these treaties and regulations, this is a major source of their own air and land pollution and their contribution to marine pollution. As of early 2015, China, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and the Philippines accounted for half of nearly eight million tons of plastic waste produced every year in recent years. China solely contributed 3.5 million tons per year. In comparison, the United States, the 20th largest plastic polluter and the only industrialized western country in the top 20, contributed 77,000 tons, less than 1% of the total. Before the introduction of treaties and regulations, it is reasonable to believe that the rate of marine pollution could have been worse for at least some part of this time.

With so much plastic in the oceans, facts such as as many as 90% of all seabirds having plastic in their digestive systems unfortunately are not that surprising. That’s up from a previous study that concluded that this applied to 29% of seabirds. This consumption happens because the seabirds mistake the plastic for fish eggs, their main food source, and it’s not just small pieces of plastic. Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) scientist Britta Denise Hardesty even has found an entire glow stick and balloons in just one short-tailed shearwater bird. It can be worse for birds depending on the islands that they inhabit. University of Hawaii researchers discovered that Laysan albatrosses roosting on Kure Atoll, a small island in the middle of the Pacific, consumed almost 10 times the amount of plastic as the birds of Oahu, Hawaii. Other harmful sources include fishing equipment such as lines, hooks, and light sticks. It’s not just seabirds either. For example, in January 2016, 29 sperm whales beached on the shores around the North Sea. A necropsy revealed for the 13 that beached near Tönning, Germany, that their stomachs included 13-meter-long fishing nets and 70cm of car plastic. They had mistaken them for squid, their main food source. Partly because plastic has been found in the ocean’s deeper layers and on its floor, potentially all parts of many marine ecologies are affected.

This partly is what I also was alluding in an earlier post when saying that we expect someone else, namely our descendants, to clean our species’ messes for us. I recognize that I am and have been a part of this problem, and I attempt to mitigate it by recycling more and consuming less of the very products that could end up in the oceans if disposed of improperly. Not everyone is doing even this, and even if everyone did, it probably would not be enough. Not everything is recyclable. Even some recyclables may never be recycled because of the logistics. China, the main, global importer of plastic waste, stopped accepting plastic imports on January 1, 2018. It’s scary and saddening that nearly all countries cannot even recycle most if not all of their own paper, plastic, aluminum, etc. Cleaning up what does get discarded in the oceans is important, but I wonder where this waste would go. Landfills, which ultimately have finite space because the Earth is finite, can be problematic themselves for humans and animals, and burning waste has immediate side effects on the air and surrounding life. We’ll have to see some more advances in packaging to rectify part of this. Just the research and development that hopefully would lead to a solution would temporarily decrease company’s profit margins and increase the prices of products. Could the world soon take such steps to be able to better the environment?

It’d be nice if the chances of this were high, but many people are suffering. They have their own problems, often financial, that they have to worry about. For example, America’s middle class is no longer a majority. It’s dying. There are good reasons why Americans are about $4 trillion in debt which includes automobiles, credit cards, and student loans. 70% are in debt, and 78% are living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s understandable that even if they cared about animals and the environment that they would want to focus on improving their own circumstances beforehand. Such logistics may be difficult to accomplish.

By abstaining from having children, I at least can be content with two, main points in respect to this. I spare my descendants from any related suffering whether direct or otherwise, including fears of unknowns like this, and I spare animals and their descendants from the additional suffering that in some way would be worsened by this act. My conscious willingly will not allow it, and I believe my abstinence is fair to those subjects. As an Earthling, I’ve been aware of my fellow Earthlings suffering also, in unfair ways in many cases like this. To be clear, I’m not necessarily advocating for something like an herbivorous lifestyle because such an argument actually would be a type of straw man fallacy in this context. Various life naturally are carnivorous or omnivorous for sensible, biological reasons. That which concerns me about us with respect to other life, some of which are our prey, is that, unlike other predators, we’re not giving many other species the chance to live healthily on an ecological scale, and we know it.