There has been much argument about whether global warming is caused by industry and human behaviour, or by the natural rhythms of nature, but the ecological tragedy of the Great Pacific Plastic Gyre (or Garbage Patch) is undoubtedly a wholly human creation. A gyre of plastic and plastic particles revolves in the Pacific Ocean, destroying the lives of myriad birds and other marine creatures (as big as Texas? as big as Hawaii? estimates depend on the size of plastic debris you are looking at), and it originates in our stores and houses. Plastics are the main products of the petro-chemical industry, which is considered to be the source of global warming. Every time you buy anything in a bubble wrap, anything (from candy to pet food) in a plasticized pouch, any plastic toys, rakes, ladders, shelving, boothbrush, razor, bowls, media equipment ... you are enabling climate change and chemical pollution. The Pacific Oean plastic garbage patch originates, for one example, in those big plastic Santas and snowmen that presently sit in people's front yards. (Remember when a Christmas tree and one string of lights was considered enough?)
Isn't it paradoxical that many people purchase plastic life-sized lit-up deer for their Christmas displays, yet also call for the killing of the real thing? Will we one day have emptied our neighbourhoods of all wildlife, only to live among replicas of what we have lost?
Here's a good Christmas ritual: refuse the plastic monstrosities (if you have already bought them, unfortunately there is no way to get rid of them: they were made in labs, not in nature, and nature cannot process them through her cycles of growth and decay); instead take greens to the freezing deer who live in the parks and green spaces around you. And rejoice: the divine has been incarnated once again, in all the beautiful animals and trees we live among.
No comments:
Post a Comment