Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'

We need to get our heads out of our asses. I don't want to be that guy but... we either need to radically change the way we live or 90% of us just need to immediately cease to exist although I'm sure the remaining 750 million people would still find ways to sabotage our planet. 'SHTF' fiction and science fiction often turns to a pandemic wiping out large chunks of the population... that would be bad for you, for me, for most people but we aren't the only life on earth. We need to realize this, NOW. We need to grow up and start being responsible for ourselves as individuals and as a species. As far as we know we have exactly one habitable world in all of the universe and certainly only one habitable world within our current technological means. Come on people!

We're ruining this planet multiple ways for not only ourselves but nearly all other species. Nearly 40 gigatonsof carbon this year, microplastics are now in the water and air the world around and has even been found in human feces on multiple continents, at least one factory in China is using CFCs again, we're doing all sorts of environmental damage strip mining resources for our throw-away phones and MacBooks, we are depleting groundwater the world around at alarming rates, we're losing our social abilities by staring at screens, we are using an alarming amount of electricity just to speculate on cryptocurrency, we drive 100-200 species extinct on average DAILY, we wage wars over religion and oil and where an imaginary line should divide a group of people, we murder each other for sneakers and pocket change or because someone beat us in a video game, we die in internet cafes throwing our lives away on virtual characters trying to get the latest super epic bind on pickup gear while people starve to death, suicide rates rise as people feel overwhelmed and trapped and that there is no hope and that they'll have to work until they die, we chase billion dollar exits on our iPad fruit of the month SAAS app as we walk by homeless people outside of our offices, we ship produce halfway around the world to eat out of season and throw away enough spoiled food to feed every hungry mouth on the planet... we are a scourge on the earth, but we needn't be. We can sacrifice, we can make immediate changes to the way we go about things to slow the damage we are doing, to buy ourselves some time to not only stop but reverse it.

Sad thing is, the vast majority of people are oblivious or flat out don't care.

Maybe we will get lucky and some advanced species will fill our skies with their ships and temporarily take control of the situation. More likely, we'll destroy ourselves like probably countless other intelligent species that the universe has seen come and go.

It's depressing.

Are there any clean up projects going on at the major gyres shown in the article? Seems like that would be a good place to start.

losing 90% of humans still leaves 10% of humans. so 10% of problem. don't be that guy. be a guy who works toward a solution for the root-cause. i'd expect people in an it/hacker community to get that :D guess we're all 'those humans' after all eh :D

Thanos was merciful by comparison since he only wanted to kill 50%...

You know what would be more depressing? Actually a pandemic which wipes of 90% of the humanity and by chance, leaving the current infrastructure of nuclear plants, armies, satellites at the hands of untrained or a very limited set of people. If you think we(humans) are the problems, just wait till one of these get out of control and destroy the locality in which it happens. It's depressing, yes but getting rid of humans actualy isnt the solution, not after all the "changes" we have made to the planet.