Scars to our Earth

Yesterday in science class, I was inspired.  I was simultaneously shocked.  We watched a short film about climate change and more specifically, concentrations of plastic in our oceans.  I cannot find the video right now, but I found a snapshot of it on YouTube, called The World’s Plastic Addiction.

The positive sides to this short documentary we watched in class illustrated the efforts people have made towards improving the sanity of our oceans. It focused on the efforts of The Ocean Cleanup, talking about how this amazing of people calculated ocean currents and gathered data about where the plastic buildups in the ocean are. They installed miles of fencing to encompass the area that the ocean currents carried the most plastic to, and installed a central conveyer belt that would bring the concentrated plastic to a facility where it would be processed.  

The Ocean Cleanup.  Conveyer belt and surrounding areas with plastic.

Yet the video provided data that left me in consternation.  I still ponder how it is even feasible for all marine life to have some type of plastic in their systems [the video actually shows a dissection with scientists finding plastic in the systems].  Many fish have plastic in them and most birds are predicted to have consumed plastic.  The plastic is caught in their systems since it is indigestible.  It may leak hazardous chemicals into the animal’s system, which kills it.  The saddest, and scariest, part to this all, is that when we consume seafood, it is possible that there are chemicals from the plastic still in the fish.  I feel we may almost be endangering ourselves.  

I am part of the Young Voices for the Planet group at school which goes to show my passion for our environment.  This year, I have primarily focused on improving my school’s energy consumption and finding alternative methods for gathering energy that are more efficient and environmentally friendly.  Achieving “net zero” has been a goal for me.  However, yesterday in science, I was brought upon a different topic: marine life.  

This only reinforces my perception of the many ways the Earth sustains us.  Humans are given the power to dream…in fact, we can dream all we want, but in order for our dreams to even possibly become reality, we must help our Earth sustain us.  There are so many ways our Earth sustains us, yet equally there are cornucopian ways in which we are scarring our Earth.  We are harming temperature, ecosystems, oceans, leaving space junk, burning fossil fuels, poaching, using too much plastic, littering and the list goes on ceaselessly.  We are leaving an impact on our planet, though it’s not always a positive one; we are scarring our Earth.  

I believe change starts small.  It starts with people, then families, then households, then schools, then neighborhoods, then cities, then districts, then states, then countries and hopefully, this growth will spread to other places around the world and become more universal.  Protecting our environment is too often overlooked.  The real issue is that people are not directly seeing the effect of leaving our messes.  It is does not appear to be happening…climate change fails to make its appearance in people’s day to day lives.  Sometimes, people deliberately distance themselves from the issue, some believing they are matters for the next generation to attend to.  But I disagree.  I believe we are the generation that the previous one was talking about.