This is a great mockumentary about Plastic Bags and their journey to the great Pacific Garbage Patch.
The text that goes with the video reads:
Narrated by Academy Award-winner Jeremy Irons, this “mockumentary” video, hammers home the stark reality of California’s plastic bag pollution situation.
Learn more at http://www.healthebay.org
You can make the difference.
On April 20th 2010, and oil leak was found in the Gulf of Mexico. It started with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon offshore oil drilling platform, which killed 11 crew on board the platform, and injured 17 others.
The oil spill happened just 64 kilometres from the coast of Louisiana, and is threatening the livelihoods of many shrimp farmers who live along the coast.
Also, the growing oil slick is threatening many bird species who live along the coast, and some oil dispersing chemicals may be harmful for wildlife in the area.
It is estimated that it will take years for the ocean to recover from the spill; currents may blow it into the Atlantic and a sudden growth in microbes used to consume oil could reduce the oxygen in the water.
Already, oil is hitting the fragile marshlands of Louisiana, and with scientists unable to plug the leak, more is coming.
Suffocation
Infants and young children have died as a result of playing with plastic bags. Every year, the Consumer Product Safety Commission receives about 25 reports of plastic bags-infant death.Because of the thin,airtight material,infants can easily block their mouths and nostrils with the plastic bag and suffocate.
Effects
If not carefully disposed of,plastic bags can be devastating to animal life. “DEFRA”(Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)reported that 1,678,900 tons of plastic bags do not decay easily,they stay in environments longer,causing more build-up up on the nature stay landscape than a more degradable like paper would. The Marrickville Council reports that over 100’000 whales,turtles and birds die every year as a result of plastic in their environment.
Prevention/Solution
Abstaining from plastic bag use as much as possible will reduce the chances of accidental infant death, and it will reduce the amount of plastic waste in the environment.
A plastic bag is also reusable,though. it does not necessarily have to be thrown away after a single use. Try to use each plastic bag for as long as possible.
This will help reduce the number of plastic bags in circulation.
Even if we try to limit Global Warming to a temperature scientists view as ‘safe’, we are going to lose one fifth of our world’s species. Thats 20%. Scientists have discovered 2 million species. There could be up to 30 million. We’re going to lose species we haven’t even heard of yet.
The talks in Copenhagen showed that out of the 193 countries who have said they would do it, 100 have handed in reports, and not a single country has met their target to significantly slow down the loss of biodiversity, a target set in 2002. Not a single country.
In Copenhagen, it was considered that we limit the warming by 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrialized times. That means we only have 1.3 degrees to go before we hit that. But for every degree we get warmer, we lose 10% of our world’s species. 2 degrees: 20%.
When are we going to wake up?
Here’s one of the videos that got me started against plastic bags:
Here are some worrying facts:
In South East Asia alone, we make 350 thousand tons of stretched film, the material used to make plastic bags.
In Malaysia, we produce 250 thousand tons. That means Malaysia produces more than 2/3 of the stretched film produced in all of South East Asia.
Most plastic bags are made from polyethylene plastic, which causes some problems;
The polyethylene can seep into your food, especially if it’s heated. Which means it goes into our bodies.
Also, the plastic melts. I can’t say exactly when, because, there are lots of sub sections to the plastic (imagine trying to recycle this!) such as high density plastic and low density plastic. But, they melt around the boiling point, 100 degrees Celsius.
Since plastic bags are largely a disposable item, that means nearly 350 thousand tons of plastic are thrown into the environment per year, from South East Asia alone.
Uh oh.
If anyone reads the Discovery Channel Magazine, they’ll recognize this ship. It’s the Earthrace. It smashed the world record for powerboat to circumnavigate the globe; it made it in 60 days, 23 hours and 49 minutes, 14 days faster than the previous record.
What makes the Earthrace so interesting is that, its powered by biodiesel. Earthrace wanted to draw attention to the potential of greener power sources; the captain of the boat, Peter Bethune, even donated 100 ml of his fat to be made into the biodiesel.
Now that the record has been broken, Earthrace has a new use; Japan’s whaling fleet is en route to hunt up to 935 mink whales, and 50 fin whales, classified as endangered animals. But the Earthrace, re names Ady Gil, will be waiting. The boat’s materials and paint makes it difficult to detect on radar, so Ady Gil has the element of surprise. Then, it plans to physically block the harpooning ships and blare music based on a Maori chant, enough to intimidate the toughest men. The Ady Gil is expected to spend more than 3 months disrupting the Japanese whaling fleet.
Peter Bethune expects Antartica to be a challenge, “It’s always cold and miserable, but then again, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it”.
Experts estimate that by 2100, the sea levels will have risen to up to 2 metres.
I love this map, because it shows really well what the world may look like very soon. A lot of Russia will have disappeared, as with a chunk of eastern asia.
And the world will be so warm, we’ll be able to live on Antarctica. Which is now covered by miles of ice. That is pretty worrying.
More and more signs are telling us to act; why aren’t we?
It’s like: wake up!
Perhaps you’ve heard of the meeting the Maldives government held… underwater. Because if Climate Change continues at this rate, a lot more of Maldive’s meetings will be underwater. In fact, a lot more of the country will be underwater.
If temperatures rise just 2 degrees Celsius, the Maldives will be underwater. The U.N believes that the Maldive ‘sandbanks’ could be completely submerged by 2100. That may seem like lots of time, but in fact, 81 years isn’t a whole lot of breathing space; to keep the planet at a safe temperature, we need to drop to 350 parts of CO2 per million. Right now, we’re hovering at 400. Thats bad, because if we hit 450, scientists predict we’ll have hit a ‘tipping point’.
Even now, Maldives is feeling the effects of global warming; in a country relying on the fishing industry, they have had bad catches for the last 4 years, and the rising sea water has already forced some people to move.
Maldives is receiving funding from other companies to build flood barriers around the islands, and hope to receive $10 000 000 (thats 10 million) annually by 2012.
We have destroyed 4/5 of the world’s forests. That means only 1/5 remains. I think that even by our standards, thats bad. Luckily, a recent study by GPFLR (which includes the WWF, Britain’s Forestry Commission and International Union for Conservation of Nature) showed that an area bigger than Canada could be restored. They raised the previous estimates of how much forest could be restored from 850 million hectares to 1 billion hectares. That’s 6% of all the land on the world.
The thing is, like lots of aspects on the environment, we need to act now. And we aren’t. In fact, in the climate summit in Copenhagen in less than two weeks, many people are afraid forests are going to be on the bottom of a long list of climate change issues.
But according to research, restoring forests could remove 70 gigatonnnes of greenhouses gases. Thats 70,000,000,000,000 kilograms of greenhouse gases. The problem is, more forests are being lost than there are forests being restored; in the 5 years between 2000 and 2005, we lost 7 million hectares of forest.
Here’s the question: do you make one hectare of land as productive as possible, or do you need more land?
