Category: Rants

I sincerely hope you read this. This is positive and gives me hope for the future.

I happen to see a heading on the Internet the other day – “5 reasons it might be OK to be optimistic about our oceans” and, because I usually end up shaking my head and swearing at the ninnies who continue to pollute and destroy our planet, this title made me click through and read the article.

Now it’s early days, but it looks like the oceans just may come back from the brink of destruction where they were heading. Of course, we really do have to do something about the plastic. Which segues nicely into what I’d like to say about plastic

There was no plastic when I was growing up. Of course, plastic had already been invented. The original in 1907 being Bakelite made from combining formaldehyde and phenol. But plastic, as we know it today, wasn’t around in such mass – e.g. plastic bags, plastic wrap, bottles, storage and all the disposables e.g. cups, utensils etc that are such commonplace.

Now I’m really not THAT old – didn’t you know that the 60s are the new 40s? – (Yes I’ve taken 20 years off instead of 10 … sue me!)

So the pollution of the plastics in the ocean started in the 1970s and still continues today. You only need to look at The Great Pacific Garbage Patch which is a soupy collection of marine debris – yup, mostly plastics. These garbage patches (which are elsewhere besides the Pacific) are almost like floating islands. So if we could only clean these up, which, I might add, there are some amazing inventions out there that need to get the funding and get put in place and all will be good.

But, getting back to the article. Countries have actually taken the ocean’s health on board and are doing something about it. It appears that 13% of oceans saw a decrease in human impact between 2008 and 2013, and Ocean health improved 1% in the last year. Apparently, there was an International Agreement in 2010 that challenged countries to protect 10% or their land and 10% of their oceans.

Just look at what Obama did – In 2014 he created 490,000 square miles of protected ocean around US islands in the Pacific then in 2015 David Cameron (the British PM back then) created the largest contiguous ocean reserve around the UK’s Pitcairn Islands in the southern Pacific — 322,000 square miles of ocean safe from seafloor mining and commercial fishing.

Then, go figure, N.Z. created a sanctuary around the Kermadec Islands spanning 620,000 sq km. Obviously, Simon Bridges had nothing to do with it seeing as how he allowed mining in the dolphin sanctuary!

But, all this leads me to think, maybe there’s a world of “I can do better” going on – even Mozambique has gone up 8 points in the Ocean Health Index – a point scoring system.

If you want to read the full article the truck on over to Ideas.ted.com

It certainly brightened my day.