Why are we allowing our planet to be destroyed?

Photo by Chris Jordan
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/midway/#CF000313%2018x24

Climate Change Deniers try very hard to spin scientific data in such a way as to acquit mankind as being the cause of any negative impact on this planet. We can eliminate the scientific data and thus the spin by rearranging the terminology slightly demoting Climate Change to a sub-set of Global Destruction.  In a past blog post Global Destruction I outlined how the widespread destruction of our planet is readily visible to anyone who cares to look. I used a few examples, such as the 5 Ocean Gyres, Mountaintop Removal and Coral Reef destruction. The photo on the left is a graphic example of wildlife destruction directly attributable to our careless disrespect for this planet and it's inhabitants. Do we need some fancy scientific study to understand this? I think anybody even young children gets what's going on here! Chris Jordan did a photo essay titled  Midway: Message from the Gyre showing the results of Albatross ingesting plastic at Midway Atol. He is currently working on a film of this project and the trailer can be viewed at Midway Trailer.

Large corporations are taking engineering principles and resources to scales that would boggle the mind just a few years ago. Of major concern are the extents that energy companies are resorting to squeeze the last remaining petroleum reserves out of the bowels of our planet using extraction methods that threaten the very existence of some of the last pristine areas on the planet. There is no concern for depleting world resources at an exponential rate but rather the attitude is, we can keep making the same mistakes as always and just find faster and more extreme methods of sucking the dregs of the fossil fuel reserves. Rather than ask, what are we doing wrong, and how can we change and correct the course we are on? It’s just easier to “keep on keeping on” and patch it all up thru technology.  This ensures there is no disruption of the oil and the money that fattens the pockets of the greed barons and the puppet politicians that green light any and all absurdity. It seems that this kind of ignorance is not only born out of greed but also the religious doctrine that teaches the earth is just a temporary playground to be abused at will, and mankind will be rewarded with a new hallucination complete with pearly gates and unlimited voluptuous virgins with perpetually spread legs!

Who's Watching Earth?

Representative John Shimkus of Illinois insists we shouldn't concerned about the planet being destroyed because God promised Noah it wouldn't happen again after the great flood. He made this comment in March 2009 speaking before a House Energy Subcommittee on Energy and Environment.   Speaking of the Artic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) Ted Stevens, former senator from Alaska, held up a blank white sheet of paper equating that to ANWR and calls the refuge "an empty, ugly place". Perhaps it's time to require people seeking public office to pass some kind of IQ test and demonstrate some rudimentary understanding of science.

Geo Engineering:

Now a new battalion of John Henry Hammer Heads have joined the mad fray under the delusion that the planet can be saved (and a lot of money made) thru geo-engineering. Again, the attitude here is screw fixing what’s broke, were so smart, nothing is impossible to accomplish.  This would not be so worrying if these ego maniacs were just small fry bozos with no authority to act. However big money brokers are hatching hair brained schemes and convincing lots of folks of their sincere dedication to saving the planet. When considering the large energy companies, there is an illusion that they are somehow regulated by governments and held responsible for their actions. Careful analysis of the BP spill will totally debunk that notion. It seems more likely the US Government agencies such as the EPA are regulated by BP rather than the other way around.

So if the large energy companies operate more or less regulated by themselves, what about the rogue geo-engineers? Russ George an American businessman illegally dumped 100 tons of iron sulphate into the Pacific Ocean off of British Columbia in 2012. The result was the formation of a 10000 square kilometer artificial plankton bloom visible from satellite as high concentrations of chlorophyll. The intent termed ocean fertilization is for the plankton to absorb carbon dioxide and sink to the ocean bed. Hey people these are our oceans, how dare some reckless megalomaniac pull off dangerous experiments as if he alone owns the ocean. Is this just the beginning of eco terrorist geo-engineers joining forces with the already out of control and unregulated energy companies in a mad dash to speed the demise of the human race? It’s surmised that 98% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. I’m sure mankind is the only species ever that has worked intentionally and unflinchingly to join that list!      


Is There Any Hope? 

Although I’m pessimistic about the human race rescuing itself considering the destructive behavior that has gone unchecked for years. The question is what can be done right now to quell the on-going damage and perhaps start to reverse this spiral to oblivion! In 1969 the United States successfully landed people on the Moon. This triumph culminated in an unprecedented National effort to do the impossible. It took a National commitment, a ton of money, the will of the people and many hard years of work to reach the goal. We need a new commitment, a new goal, not a National goal but a World Wide goal as we are in a World Wide crisis. We currently have 5 ocean gyres or garbage patches in our oceans, 2 in the pacific, 2 in the Atlantic and 1 in the Indian Ocean. The Patch is characterized by exceptionally high concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge, and other man made debris. This is imposing a massive infection of the oceans and all supporting life.  These gyres are physical, they have size and depth, and content. They need to be gone! The gyres are but one large assault on our oceans and our planet. If we are to survive as a species the major environmental damages need to be addressed now. Let’s see what an effort to clean up the gyres might look like.

 

Gyre Removal Project:

No study to my knowledge has been done to address the clean-up of the garbage patches at this time. So I’ll taking a wild first swing at what such a project would look like considering all of the pre-project studies have not yet been done or even fanaticized about yet. My projection is based on my engineering experience and the belief that any dream that can be conceived, given enough resources and money can be created and brought into existence. Using engineering for good, not destruction, instead of trying to counter the destruction as some insane mindless flailing geo-engineering this approach say let’s fix what we broke and return it to its pristine original before man condition.

It’s important to set a date to accomplish this goal, let’s start by setting 10 years as the target time.

This needs to be a World Wide effort with as many countries as possible participating and sharing the weight of this endeavor. Every country should have an equivalent department like the US’s NASA and all these worldwide organizations would be organized into an efficient, effective, long term entity to clean the oceans, both of garbage and acidification!

More than likely the ocean clean-up project will be the most ambitious, costly, complicated and far reaching engineering endeavor ever accomplished by human-kind! I can envision the largest floating vacuum cleaning type vessels ever conceived sucking debris from the gyres, separating and isolating the plastic particulate to be recycled into green beneficial products. Then again it may look totally different but whatever is necessary to disappear the gyres needs to be fast-tracked now! It’s encouraging to see grocery store shoppers finally stripped of plastic bags and now outfitted with re-usable bags. It took the people of the state of California for example to ban plastic bags in places such as San Francisco, San Mateo County and San Jose. I wonder about the integrity of such corporation such as Safeway that waited for a law to ban plastic bags, rather than take the initiative themselves and had the bags banned years ago. At any rate it is the small steps such as these where we as a people can make green progress on an individual basis. To effectively clean-up the ocean we need to stop adding material to the garbage pile, so plastic bag bans are a step in the right direction!  A recent study just concluded after 22 years by Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) found prodigious amounts of plastic debris and other debris in the Monterey Canyon. Fifty percent of the garbage found consisted of plastic bags. I would bet most of them are from the large chain retail outlets found all over the world.

It's time we question our own apathy and put the brakes on corporations and individuals driven by insatiable greed on a collision course to earths destruction and the elimination of life on this planet.
Who owns this planet? Nobody owns earth, we are caretakers entrusted to protect our planet for future generations of all life forms.