At long last, I reveal that my friend Henry asked me about how to clean the oceans. I responded by saying that if humans disappeared for 100 years, the oceans would be virtually clear of human garbage. To truly clean the oceans, we must change our habits. We must stop engaging in anxiety-driven behaviors, such as relying on single-use plastics and maintaining a disposable mentality. This mentality has developed as we've become domesticated animals trapped in a consumer society where everything is packaged and labeled. Humans must wake up from their slumber, expand their consciousness, and become enlightened. If only a few million people achieve this, they can influence the entire world to change. Someone needs to step forward and say, "Wake up, humanity, and collectively we can change."
There are different types of polluters in this world. Let’s start with children. Children pollute because they are ignorant or unaware of what they are doing.
Anxious polluters are the most common type. These are everyday people just like you and me. Because we are managing all the anxieties we have in life, we are often in a subconscious state of mind. We can’t really see what we’re doing. Maybe we feel entitled to behave in any way we want because we think the Earth is here solely to serve us. Our emotions are all over the place, and we are no longer in the present moment. Our breathing is shallow. In this state of mind, we only do what is convenient for us. We hate to be disrupted. We hate to have to wait. Often, the more successful we get and the more we can pay to avoid waiting or discomfort, the more easily agitated we become by any type of inconvenience. Imagine having to pick up a plastic bottle that you are leaving on a beach.
The next kind of polluter is much more aware. They would never leave things in a park or on a beach. They would even go out of their way to pick up someone else’s trash because they respect nature and it bothers them to see litter. They know that littering is the dark side of humanity. However, this type of polluter may still use single-use plastic not from choice but because it is everywhere.
The worst polluters are those who knowingly cause damage, often driven by financial motives. For example, if a retailer of produce offers plastic bags to customers, are they not in conflict with the laws of nature that govern how they obtain their produce in the first place? There are even more egregious polluters, such as oil companies, energy companies, and chemical companies.
On a slightly different vein are companies that destroy nature, which in turn affects the planet's ability to clean itself through the exchange of gases. Companies that tear down oxygen-giving trees and those that mine for precious metals and other resources knowingly scar the land and cause terrible damage. Businesses that fish the oceans to the brink of extinction, slaughterhouses that cause unspeakable suffering, and companies that run pipelines under or near freshwater supplies all hold significant power.
So much of our packaging for the goods that we buy in supermarkets, clothing stores, department stores, toy stores, delis, fast-food places, take-out restaurants, and home shipping businesses is loaded with materials that will either remain as pollution on the planet for a very, very long time, or break down into elements that intoxicate wildlife or other aspects of the planet, and possibly make their way back into our food.
This means it will get back into some creature's body, maybe your children’s, maybe yours. After several generations of disposing of plastics all over the planet, microplastics are now in the food system. I will not specify a specific amount because I’m not sure that the science is reliable, but there shouldn’t be one speck of plastic in anyone’s body.
All of this means it’s time for each one of us to start caring. We’ve already gone through a phase where we would look down at the sand when walking across the beach and see a piece of hideous plastic sticking up like a dead body by the shoreline, and we just did nothing. We walked by. At that moment, we were being absolutely selfish. We weren’t taking care of ourselves, we weren’t taking care of future generations, and we weren’t taking responsibility for our contribution. We were saying to ourselves, "Why should I have to clean up somebody else’s plastic?" Well, because your plastic is ending up in Indonesia on a beach somewhere, and some kind person is picking it up, or your plastic is floating out in the middle of the ocean, breaking down and getting into some fish, and winding back up in some kid’s baby food in Ireland.
Every single one of us should be an activist from this moment forward. Make time in your life to get a garbage bag and some rubber gloves and pick up garbage anywhere you can. Do it as a ritual to pay homage to the manatee’s mistake. If we mistreat the planet, it shows that we see the planet as a dead rock that we can just pollute. If we study the type of garbage that humans stockpile around the peripheries of our city streets and natural habitats, we will see that all of this garbage buildup is not an accident. It’s part of the consumer mechanism that we created.
In our anxious state, we want more and more. We don’t want to wait. We don’t want to pay too much. We want things to be easy. We want things to be unbelievably relaxing. But to what degree do we demand this? It makes you think, without judgment of yourself or others, about what we have to wake up to become. Whatever degree that we can handle, whatever degree makes us comfortable.
The issues of climate change can be debated forever. But what rational, intelligent person would debate that too much garbage floating around on the beach is okay? Who would say, "I don’t care if my kids have to play in the ocean and swim around trash bags, condoms, and hypodermic needles. I don’t care if my kids grow up with no places to see nature and wild beasts roaming free. Why should it matter that the only place my children will see beautiful animals is behind cages in the zoo?" If there is anyone who thinks like that, they are likely just totally out of focus.