The Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the world we live in

April 20, 2014 by Joshua
in Awareness, Nature

For some reason my blog has gotten tons of hits to my post on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, “Secret silly confession.” I don’t know why, but it put it on my mind so now I’m going to write about it more.

Also I recently read a would-be humor piece poking fun at people who care about the environment, implying they’re just following trends, want to act holier-than-thou, don’t know what they’re talking about, or undermine what they say by also polluting.

I’ll grant many people fit those descriptions, but that doesn’t mean everyone does or that their perspective has no merit even if they don’t as individuals. From my perspective, the issue is not how other people think about us or trends. Polluting means hurting people. Dirty air and water, mercury in the environment, and so on hurt people. The main difference between driving when you can ride your bike and blowing cigarette smoke in a baby’s face is that the latter is more direct. Otherwise both cases involve you creating pollution that ends up in someone else’s face.

This blog is about awareness as much as anything else. Below are more pictures of our world that we created for ourselves. I’m not saying good, bad, right, or wrong, just that it’s there and like that in places. At one time not one human lived in a polluted environment. Later some did but most didn’t. Now most people live in polluted environments.

Nature didn’t make itself like this without us.

I found the pictures below searching on “people living in garbage.” There were thousands of pictures like this. Where do you think all the garbage in the pictures came from if not people like you doing things like you do?

But what can you say? Plastic is cheap, disposable is more convenient, the system is too big for even a determined group to change it, and you can’t stop people from having more children, right?

You can still take responsibility for your own actions.

garbage2 garbage1 garbage3 garbage4 garbage5 garbage6 Honduras_landfill_Sept_28 people-living-in-a-garbage-dump-in-cambodia_35376 people-living-in-a-garbage-dump-in-cambodia_35378 people-living-in-a-garbage-dump-in-cambodia_35387 people-living-in-a-garbage-dump-in-cambodia_35403

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