The Alarm Bell is Ringing

             The Alarm Bell is Ringing!

Stephen Hawking, who was called one of the smartest men who ever lived, made this statement a few years before his death; “In a hundred years, we will have polluted the Earth to the extent that it will be uninhabitable, and we will have to find another planet on which to live.” Dr. Hawking was basically saying the Earth will become so toxic that it will be a wasteland of landfills and rafts of plastic that will have filled our oceans. In some bodies of water it doesn’t have far to go. In the Pacific, there is already a plastic raft of material nine feet thick larger than the state of Texas.

Of course, a large portion of the World may already be under water from global warming caused by climate change before we have to vacate this planet, as Stephen Hawking predicted. Recently, His Holiness Pope Francis spoke out decisively about the threat to billions of people around the World from climate change. The Pope called climate change an international emergency that threatens everyone.  (Want more info on climate change? Read the great Voices Column on 7/9/18 by Dr. Malcolm Cleaveland professor emeritus of geosciences at the University of Arkansas. His area of expertise is paleoclimatology and climatology.)

Centuries before, Chief Seattle said: “To harm the earth is to heap contempt on its creator.”  I will paraphrase that by saying “Christians don’t trash our Earth.”         

I guess my little exercise routine has something to do with my current environmental reactions to what I see as an avalanche of pollution that is quickly trashing our earth. The exercise I have developed is a fairly rapid walk leaving my house on Calion Road on the edge of town, and then in a few hundred yards, I connect with the 167 By-pass. It’s about 3 and a half miles, and I was a jogger a few years back, but now I’m a rapid walker. Brisk walking is a good exercise and it gives you a chance to look at your surroundings. The Bypass is a pretty bland piece of a South Arkansas landscape, but the shoulders are wide and there are no hills, which I like.

As I walk, I see everything that can blow out of the back of a pickup truck, or a person can throw out a car window. When I view the huge amount of roadside trash one of the most obvious items I see are things that are not biodegradable. Yes, big word, but it means essentially plastic. Plastic everything from hundreds of plastic water bottles, to plastic straws including everything you can imagine made of plastic. Of course, we just ignore things such as plastic straws, but a little fact might make you reconsider when you suck up that Sonic Coke. Every hour, let that sink in, every hour 500,000 plastic straws are trashed, and since they are plastic, they will be with us for generations. You would think a garbage problem of that magnitude would have some folks up-in-arms to force straws to be made of paper, and sure enough over a dozen cities have already banned plastic straws. Seattle has not only banned plastic straws, but also banned single use plastic forks, spoons, and knives. And since I mentioned Seattle, let me make a comment about the town. It is considered one of the most livable cities in the country with a superior quality of life. Trails and sidewalks connect the inner city and almost 1/3 of the downtown workers either use bicycles or walk to work. They lead the nation in protecting the environment. But thank goodness Seattle isn’t the only city that’s trying to control the flood of plastic that threatens to overcome us. According to the number of legislative bills being proposed and nationwide polls, several states are ready to ban plastic straws and other one-time use of plastic utensils. The U. K. has already banned them, and Starbucks just announced they will eliminate all plastic straws. That will keep one billion straws a year from going to a landfill. I’m always looking for a good reason to stop at Starbucks.

However, plastic straws not only contribute to the overall landfill problem they actually are a significant part of the overall plastic trash. An estimated 7.5% of the landfill plastic trash comes from plastic straws. But there are other negatives in using plastic straws. Plastic straws can be detrimental to your health. Using a straw contribute to gas, bloating, and tooth cavities. Well, here’s another little problem with plastic straws, and you ladies might find this a good reason to quit the plastic…smoker’s wrinkles. That’s right, sucking on a plastic straw for years will do the same thing puffing on a cigarette will do…give you wrinkled lips!

Of course, plastic straws are only the tip of the plastic iceberg when you consider the 300 million tons of plastic products that are made each year, but those numbers are don’t reflect the actual enormity of the plastic problem. This is the number that is staggering…50% of this plastic goes into the one-time-use category such as plastic bags and other one-time uses. It is estimated each plastic bag is only used for 15 minutes and the vast majority end up in landfills or in our oceans. Recently a pilot whale beached itself in Thailand, and went through an agonizing effort to throw up the plastic bags it had ingested. It died and 80 plastic bags weighing 17 pounds were found in its stomach. The next time you grocery shop and come away with a half dozen plastic bags of groceries, think of that magnificent whale dying on the beach because it swallowed plastic bags.

I know it’s hard to understand the magnitude of the problem, but if you visit a landfill and view the hundreds of tons of non-recyclable plastic and other pieces of trash and then consider the World’s billions of people, maybe then you will have a better concept of why Stephen Hawking said in 100 years those landfills and other items that degrade our planet will become so numerous that future generation will be forced to live in squalor and Earth will become a toxic wasteland. That is the part that’s not under water from climate change.

Well, yes, there is hope for our planet, but it’s not from Washington. The plastic problem is a local problem, and it must be solved by local initiatives. Communities all across the country have already banned many of the items listed above and even a country, we might consider an undeveloped county, Rwanda, has banned all one time plastic products. That was ten years ago, and the country is doing just fine.

There are hundreds of web sites that offer reusable bags and other items that you can buy if you really want to help, and you can insist on either paper straws or no straw when you order a drink, and if paper straws aren’t available, then just sip the drink, and know that studies have shown a person will drink less of what is usually a sugary drink----and guess what? Lose weight.