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The big problem with the plastic is not the big lumps you can trawl out but the tiny particles that look like plankton, the toxic dust that infuses the sea. Difficult to detect and remove, gets into the food chain, lasts forever... depressed now.
Yeah, but if I understand it correctly those tiny particles come from the breakdown of the larger stuff.
It's good to have some information from you about how that stuff gets there. I guess I'm not convinced that an area the size of texas could be filled with plastic waste by small scale acts of mindlessness alone, though maybe it's a scale problem in my head. I think there must be people accepting responsibility for plastic waste and deliberately dumping it at sea. I don't know what's in their minds - maybe just being able to eat a nice dinner with their beloved - but in my opinion they need liberating.
I agree with you about the tiny fragments, it's clear enough. But if we were to start serious remediation of the bigger stuff - which is coincidentally easier to handle e.g. with trawling - we'd be cutting down on the amount of micro-fragments around in our future as weathering continues.
I know this stuff is really painful to consider and I'm a big fan of allowing that pain to show us how much we care, how deeply we are connected to the rest of the planet. Those uncomfortable feelings are not dangerous, they are the wake-up call of the world crying out in us. Those feelings, if we are willing to tolerate them, can lead us to the different lives which are necessary if we as humans are going to make it through this time of planetary crisis.
I've probably linked to Joanna Macy's work that reconnects before, which is where I got the training in this kind of thinking, because I was blown away by the power and passion of the activists I met who were taking this approach. She teaches that our anger shows us the depth of our passion for justice. Our grief shows us how much we love. It's all about acknowledging what we feel and allowing those depths to show us our deep connection, and then allowing that deep connection to pull us forward, knowing that we are not alone but are merely part of life speaking up for itself.
This is where the deep ecology perspective (that jmw was ridiculing me for recently) comes in handy. A forest, a planet, is not just made of trees, of molecules. We are creatures, and our inhabitation is an important part of this planet. We are part of nature, not separate from it, however much our species tries to play that running away game. We can experience ourselves as part of the planet, the part that is typing, the part that has the heart and self-reflection and leisure to grieve over the images on tv and in magazine articles. The part with a compassion as huge as our denial can be at other times.
I believe when we give ourselves space and permission and encouragement to wake up we can have a huge effect, and that we are not alone in this grief and anger. We can allow ourselves to be moved and when we are moved in truth we can change the way things are done. Our willingness to allow ourselves to be changed by our sorrow, to be stigmatized by our unwillingness to continue in the old paths of destruction, can lead us to the adventure we're called to, the path that leads into sustainable inhabitation of this planet. |
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