Is it weird that this headline makes me think of Jon Bon Jovi?
Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
101–110 of 166 posts
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#102Just for comparison 6kg of plastic in a 60 ton animal is the same as 6g of plastic in a 60kg organism (or a little above one teaspoon of plastic ingested by a teenager).
I find it baffling, that parent comment made just a comparison without giving any opinion, and pretty much every sibling comment is telling them they are wrong... lol.
Fascinating how people project their opinions onto others and argue with them. Parent even got called a moron and told to eat a plastic bag xD
Pretty much every one assumed that on a human scale weight it's not that much, though still wrong.
I wonder what's the name for this behaviour.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#103So you're saying whales can be used to conveniently filter plastic from the sea?
How many whales do we need to deploy to get an entirely clean ocean?
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
To anyone reading this, no a billion people don't shit on the streets of India. India is a young democracy bursting at the seams, education is probably the most important challenge it faces right now and my hope is that it alleviates a lot of these issues. To your point about plastic bags, many many people are cognizant of the ill-effects of plastic bags in India. Many of my friends actively try to avoid it. It's jus…
What does being a young democracy have to do with how clean people are? Are you arguing that only people who have lived under a democracy for hundreds of years recognise how important it is not to shit on the streets or fill rivers with rotting corpses and plastic? Also, I'm not even sure education can fix this. Nature made turds foul-looking and smelly so everybody knows to stay away from them. If Indians can't even…
Have you been to India ? No one does this in the cities, it's a problem in the villages where the govt. hasn't built enough toilets (due to corruption or plain neglect). The current govt. organized a program just to counter this, how effective this program is up for debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_mission
Any problem, including education about safe hygiene practices, is massively difficult at scale. Educating people in the rural areas will solve this problem, but when it's many millions it can be slow so more innovative methods need to be thought of.
Even in the US there is a rise in the "anti-vaccine" crowd. A topic that is supposedly so-obvious that everyone should be against it. Yet, education at scale is an important solution to protecting kids against anti-vax parents.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#105We 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,…
It's not gonna happen, most people still don't grasp the stakes at play nor how they are contributing in the worst ways possible.
On one side you have sometimes a bit too righteous vegans getting their third child, going "I'm saving the planet by teaching my children the right way to live!"
On the other side, you have nationalist sentiments going "I need to get as many children as possible or else our ancestry is dying out/our people are being replaced by foreigners!".
Throw in a good bit of religious anti-contraception and abortion sentiments, heavily propagandized among the poorer parts of the world, and the end result is still the same: Unchecked population growth due to large parts of humanity still seeing procreation as some kind of quantity contest where everybody wants to become the next Genghis Khan [0].
At this point, the only thing I'm unsure about is how far we gonna take it before nature is gonna cull the herd globally, but I seriously doubt we'll ever make it past the 10 billion before that's gonna happen.
[0] https://www.nature.com/news/genghis-khan-s-genetic-legacy-ha...
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, there are things you can do. Earth Strike is one such very recent phenomenon that has organized that directly addresses failures of capitalism that is and has caused environmental collapse. They have direct demands (unlike Occupy that had none). They have direct action days already organized (January 15, 2019 ; April 27, 2019 ; August 1, 2019 ; September 27, 2019). The group already has international interest a…
And what do you intend to do via your Direct Action? No clue in the links you've given.
This org was formed 2 weeks ago. Many of the things are still up in the air, along with what exactly to do and how to go about it.
However, actions are being considered as: marches, protests, strikes, walk-outs, and non-violent protest based actions.
I know a similar group Extinction Rebellion blocked all major 5 bridges in London, over the same goals of Environmentalism.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…
You don't think that a forced, mass sterilization is morally horrendous?
I am not a humanist. World population has doubled in my lifetime, and when you weigh the tremendous pain and destruction that has caused and will cause, 3 billion extra lives that will witness (or their very close descendants) an unprecedented mass extinction/collapse event due their own sheer weight, I'm not sure that rampant uncontrolled population growth is not the thing that is morally horrendous. Just look what humans have done to this planet in 30 years. Insect populations down 75%, mammals down 60%, the Great Barrier reef is half dead, extinction rates are 1000x normal, habitat loss, trash in the oceans, global warming, climate change, microplastics, mass pesticide use, fuck....it's hard not to view humanity (at least in relation to literally all other life on Earth) through a very, very dark lens.
Yeah, given all this I don't think it's morally horrendous that most people would not be allowed to have kids. They can do literally anything they want with the rest of their lives, but FFS don't have kids.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Regardless, I struggle to be emotionally invested in a situation where I decide 6 billion people die. 6 billion people will die. Heck, 7.5 billion will die. Everyone dies. The question is not when, but how, and how do they live their lives. I think we should pursue a solution not of genocide, but one of mass sterilization. We should choose about 100 million people from all over the Earth that will represent the gen…
Good luck sterilizing people against their will.
TBH I know it's a crackhead plan.
But then again I'm not sure this generation is all enthused about having kids. It costs a lot (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cost-of-raising-a-child-parents...), and if there were economic incentives that encouraged volunteering, that might actually get takers.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think that a forced, mass sterilization is morally horrendous?
I am not a humanist. World population has doubled in my lifetime, and when you weigh the tremendous pain and destruction that has caused and will cause, 3 billion extra lives that will witness (or their very close descendants) an unprecedented mass extinction/collapse event due their own sheer weight, I'm not sure that rampant uncontrolled population growth is not the thing that is morally horrendous. Just look what…
So you see humans through this dark lens, but advocate for these same humans to decide who gets sterilized, then carry it out forcefully?
I don't see how this happens at all. Dystopian military force? And if someone tried, it'd be a major conflict.
Re: Dead sperm whale found in Indonesia had ingested '6kg of plastic'
#110Over the past few months I have been trying to figure out a solution for environmental issues in developing countries (like India where I'm from). Conclusion is, because of the democracy, the change is not possible from inside, some external force has to be there. Here governments take decision for the short term because they have to please the common (& uneducated) men for the next election. Hence the agenda of envi…
> And most importantly, large & impactful countries like US and China shouldn't waste their time on petty issues like trade-war & focus on big issue here! Agreed with much of what you said, but this is a bit irrelevant for Indian environmental policy, no?
Not really. The attention span of the people with the legitimacy to push through painful reforms is limited. The bureaucracy is just people doing their job. If there's no pressure from above they will take the path of least resistance and minimize personal risk, i.e. keep the status quo and cover their asses.