We should not be forced to pollute the ocean every time we eat, drink or go shopping. We need to be given a choice, a plastic-free choice. Our oceans sustain life. An abundant ocean can feed a billion people a healthy meal every day forever. But now they are being killed, filled by throwaway plastics. The equivalent of one garbage truck of garbage is dumped in the sea every minute, 17.6 billion pounds (8 million tons) every year. Plastic is everywhere in our ocean, floating on the surface, mixing in the salt water and sitting on the ocean bottom, miles and miles deep. And once in the ocean it never goes away.
Pollution
Digital Strategy of the EU is Not Green
The Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry is touted to be environmentally friendly. In March of this year the European Union launched its industrial strategy for a green and digital Europe. It is fashionable, albeit unjustified, to couple digital with green.
Climate Change and Mass Extinctions are Ecocide
We should be aware that these small percentage temperature increases, reflecting climate changer, will have disproportionately huge consequences. The 1°C, 1.5°C or 2°C increases hide extreme weather conditions; extreme heat, desertification; extremely cold, glacial temperatures; cyclones and forest fires; floods and rising seas; unprecedented drought and famine; migrations of millions of people fleeing unbearable weather conditions and food and water shortages.
Emissions: The Reality of the Carbon Countdown
We can understand better what these emissions and temperature measures and target dates mean by looking at the facts on the ground. At the end of 2019 we passed the 1°C increase threshold. The increase of 1°C in average global temperature is by definition an ‘average’ and hides the reality of extreme weather conditions.
Carbon Emissions Countdown – The Failure
These convoluted and ambiguous carbon emissions targets that have an inbuilt failure expectation of 34% or even 50% are not targets at all. Whilst being adequate for a scientific study giving the parameters within which the findings are true and to what extent, it is however highly inadequate as a policy objective.
Toxic Plastic: Stop Plastic at your Country’s Border
We are fascinated by plastic, its look and usefulness, and have totally ignored the damage it causes to our health and in the environment. Plastic is a poison. Toxic plastic waste cannot ever be effectively managed. The extent of its contamination of our life supporting Earth is catastrophic and this has finally reached global public awareness.
Petrochemical Industry – The Lies about Plastic
Plastics production is increasing exponentially when it should be decreasing. Petrochemical companies are now not only responsible for climate change but also for trashing the planet with plastic. Scientists have warned us that the planet is risking permanent and irreversible contamination by plastic as we speak.
Shipping Responsible for Massive Air Pollution
It seems that in shipping and political circles human life has a price. The estimated sixty thousand people dying worldwide from this pollution appears to be acceptable as long as we continue along the path of indiscriminate economic growth at all costs.
Cruise Liners are Heavy Air Polluters
Passengers on cruise liners could be exposing themselves to dangerous levels of pollution, according to an investigation by UK’s Channel 4’s Dispatches team that found some public areas on the ships’ decks were more polluted than the world’s worst-affected cities.
Cigarettes Kill Wildlife – Environment NOT your Ashtray
Smoking cigarettes kills 7 million people a year globally, and it scars the planet through deforestation, pollution and littering. Details of the environmental cost of tobacco are revealed in a study on the global tobacco epidemic released in 2017 by the World Health Organization (WHO).