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

Totally and absolutely agree here.

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

Also totally agree here

And here's some real thought experiment stuff I've been doing. So basically, should we continue this (unchecked population, unsustainable resource depletion), something has to give right? That's an absolute fact. Our pace of reproduction and resource use simply can't go on forever, and that's where things will get interesting. Will later generations (think 1,000 years+) have adapted a bit better? (E.g., in the future polluting the ocean for example is a crime on the scale of kidnapping or something similar).

I mean the fact at the end of the day is, this can't be sustained. Something is going to have to give in the way we live, eat, have kids, etc (and by we I mean all earthlings, I'm aware that the US reproduces at a fraction of the rate of emerging/frontier countries).

It's a really interesting problem with no clear solutions

Though the majority of the plastic comes from people in Indonesia and China chucking it in the river. Those countries really need to stop that with old fashioned things like littering fines and sticking it in landfills. Plus recycling etc naturally.

We have no issue eradicating mold that enters our homes, bacterial infections, viruses but people don't hesitate to create 800,000 something tons of plastic a day that mostly ends up in the trash, we don't mind pumping 40 gigatons of carbon in the atmosphere, we don't mind over fishing, depleting soil, throwing out food that we couldn't be bothered to eat, buying electronics designed to be thrown away after 1-3 years, etc.

We're already wiping out billions of people. We're just making it slow and painful. Cancer rates are increasing decade after decade, climate change is a very real thing that is going to start getting noticeably worse, we're one decent crop failure away from sparking a regional or even world war.

I'm not advocating we gather up 9 out of every 10 people and euthanize them, but it would be more humane than the myriad of slow and miserable deaths we are setting ourselves up for.

The next several decades are going to be quite interesting, and almost certainly not in a good way.

As a species, we have to wake up. We have to get the majority to not only acknowledge the issues we immediately face but to actually try and work on slowing and ultimately reversing them.

We have freemium apps raking in millions and millions of dollars a day but we''re painfully under-funding attempts at renewable energy and carbon sequestration and sustainable manufacturing.