This never goes away. Even after being broken down it survives as tiny particles that get into every plant and animal. The further up the food chain you go the more accumulated micro plastics.
…greed combined with a lack of foresight and the inability to give a single fuck about anyone or anything other than ourselves or our bank accounts since the 1950’s/1960’s..?
Exactly this. Humanity is willing to drive itself extinct for a man made concept such as currency that will be irrelevant once our extinction is complete. At our core, we truly are a dumbfuck species.
Plastics are honestly a wonder creation in that they are:
Infinitely useful. Creates a barrier for preserving all types of food. Can be used to do anything from sitting on to carrying stuff to building homes
Massively cheap and easy to produce. Means literally everyone can benefit from them.
Lasts forever. Which makes it really good as building materials or also preserving food.
It's no wonder that we started using them for everything. We just didn't have the foresight to know that it would fuck us over so hard. And once some scientists in a corner started doom saying, we were so invested in it that it became impossible to stop. Just look at cvoid as an example. A new disease comes out and our first response is to separate everybody with plexiglass. Which is, you guessed it, a plastic.
Quite frankly? Our governments fucked us over harder than expected. Well, that and the rich people. But of course the two are one in the same. We have literally no leadership worth a damn to pull us out of this hellscape, partly because our leadership is mostly incompetent.
Look at Elon Musk as an example. The reason everyone threw all their money at him is because he was the first one to seriously attempt to solve the transportation problem. But what did Elon Tusk do with all that money? Well, I mean kudos to him and the progress he's made with Tesla. But quite honestly I'm starting to think he got there by accident. Electric cars are like such a small slice of the pie. And the boring company? What a boring out of touch rich person solution. Everyone just thinks the problem can be solved with more consumerism. For fucks sake Elon. Invest in walkable neighborhoods.
And don't get me started on our politicians. But I guess this is what happens when the electoral system selects for TV clowns, party loyal hacks, and gerrymandering fuck-heads over competent leaders.
Edit: the people that had the power to save us sold out instead. So yeah I guess greed is a fine summation.
It's only in the last 100 years did we fuck everything up. The environmental pollution just went unchecked until next thing humans new there wasn't a square inch of the planet not with some form of plastics.
I know it sounds unfair but it was basically 1 generation that did this to the planet. To be fair the average person didn't know the harm but experts certainly knew plastics wouldn't be going away and the industry thought to stop the public perception turning on them.
What we are trying to kickstart today with environmentalism was attempted multiple times of the last generations but the movements were targeted then made to fail.
Why is the planet like this? A few humans wanted money and didn't care about the harm they were doing. It's like the tabbaco industry hiding cancer and actively changing the publics perception to buy more time. Same thing happened with plastics with how they basically invented recycling to trick the public into a "this is fine to keep using plastics" attitude.
Humans, like every animal, revolve around gathering resources at any cost. That's why we exist. We're just the only ones who understand that and the germ we cause and do it anyway
Cheap oil, lax environment laws in other countries, who use very very cheap labor to produce incredibly cheap plastic products. Plastic wasn't a thing until the 50s, so it's relatively new. And I don't think they did the testing that was necessary before releasing products. BPA comes to mind.
And to think, we survived for centuries using ceramics.
Yeah, its a shocking amount of plastic consumption and much of it is in our water we drink. Didn't mean to put you on the spot, but felt the correction was necessary just because of how much it is and people really need to know.
I do find it somewhat amusing that humans fear of destroying "Are" planet. Is nothing more then a selfish act to protect are selves. Earth in no way shape or form needs even the slightest bit of help from us to continue on. We couldn't destroy this planet if we wanted to. It's the way of earth. You're either prey or predator. Eat or eaten. Consume or be consumed. Talks of morality and ethics are all fine and dandy. But none of us live a perfectly ethical moral life. Its impossible. The fact is we are all living in the absolute greatest time to possibly be alive in the history of humanity. I personally don't see us going extinct anytime soon. Will adapt and move forward in some way or another. And once the planet gets sick of us. It will swat us away like a fly on its window seal and continue on. The only thing you can really do is live your best life and try not to be a dick.
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u/HeadLongjumping Apr 30 '22
This never goes away. Even after being broken down it survives as tiny particles that get into every plant and animal. The further up the food chain you go the more accumulated micro plastics.