[P2P-F] Fwd: Plastic Soup

[Michel Bauwens]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Ryan Fortune <ryan.fortune2012 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Sep 18, 2018 at 10:30 AM
Subject: Plastic Soup
To: <michel at p2pfoundation.net>


The problem is not plastic, it's consumerism, writes George Monbiot
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=4cc09014ed&e=83be33d795>

*Plastic Soup*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=bfc80bfe8d&e=83be33d795>

*The problem is not plastic, it's consumerism, writes George Monbiot*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=69de136082&e=83be33d795>

Do you believe in miracles? If so, please form an orderly queue. Plenty of
people imagine we can carry on as we are, as long as we substitute one
material for another.

Last month, a request to Starbucks and Costa to replace their plastic
coffee cups with cups made from corn starch was retweeted 60,000 times,
before it was deleted
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=a14b64f091&e=83be33d795>
.


Those who supported this call failed to ask themselves where the corn
starch would come from, how much land is needed to grow it or how much food
production it will displace. They overlooked the damage this cultivation
would inflict: growing corn (maize) is notorious for causing soil erosion
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=f50887ea54&e=83be33d795>,
and often requires heavy doses of pesticides and fertilisers.


The problem is not just plastic. The problem is mass disposability. Or, to
put it another way, the problem is pursuing, on the one planet known to
harbour life, a four-planet lifestyle
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=88effaa078&e=83be33d795>
.

Regardless of what we consume, the sheer volume of consumption is
overwhelming the Earth’s living systems.


Don’t get me wrong. Our greed for plastic is a major environmental blight,
and the campaigns to limit its use are well-motivated and sometimes
effective. But we cannot address our environmental crisis by swapping one
over-used resource for another. When I challenged that call
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=c07cf94fd2&e=83be33d795>,
some people asked me, “so what should we use instead?”.

The right question is “how should we live?”. But systemic thinking is an
endangered species.


Part of the problem is the source of the plastic campaigns: David
Attenborough’s Blue Planet II series
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=401d0b5aeb&e=83be33d795>.
The first six episodes had strong, coherent narratives. But the seventh
episode
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=33dd39ea86&e=83be33d795>,
which sought to explain the threats facing the wonderful creatures the
series revealed, darted from one issue to another.

We were told we could “do something” about the destruction of ocean life.
We were not told what. There was no explanation of why the problems are
happening, what forces are responsible and how they can be engaged.

Amid the general incoherence, one contributor stated “It comes down, I
think, to us each taking responsibility for the personal choices in our
everyday lives. That’s all any of us can be expected to do.” This perfectly
represents the mistaken belief that a better form of consumerism will save
the planet. The problems we face are structural: a political system
captured by commercial interests and an economic system that seeks endless
growth. Of course we should try to minimise our own impacts, but we cannot
confront these forces merely by “taking responsibility” for what we consume.


Unfortunately, these are issues that the BBC in general, and David
Attenborough in particular, avoid. I admire Attenborough in many ways, but
I am no fan of his environmentalism. For many years, it was almost
undetectable. When he did at last speak out, he consistently avoided
challenging power, either speaking in vague terms or focusing on problems
for which powerful interests are not responsible. I believe this tendency
may explain Blue Planet’s skirting of the obvious issues.


The most obvious is the fishing industry, that turns the astonishing
lifeforms the rest of the series depicted into seafood. Throughout the
oceans
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=0632710a79&e=83be33d795>,
this industry, driven by our appetites and protected by governments, is
causing cascading ecological collapse. Yet the only fishery the programme
featured was among the 1% that are in recovery
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=3b863164bc&e=83be33d795>.
It was charming to see how Norwegian herring boats seek to avoid killing
orcas, but we were given no idea of how unusual it is
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=922154100d&e=83be33d795>
.


Even marine plastics is in large part a fishing issue. It turns out that
46% of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, that has come to symbolise our
throwaway society, is composed of discarded nets
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=96fecaf779&e=83be33d795>,
and much of the rest consists of other kinds of fishing gear. Abandoned
fishing materials
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=57aeea153f&e=83be33d795>
 tend to be far more dangerous to marine life
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=9cb08fbce6&e=83be33d795>
 than other forms of waste. As for the bags and bottles contributing to the
disaster, the great majority arise in poorer nations
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=0d1e4f524e&e=83be33d795>
, without good disposal systems
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=d78521fa41&e=83be33d795>
.

But because this point was not made, we look to the wrong places for
solutions.


>From this misdirection arise a thousand perversities. One prominent
environmentalist posted a picture of the king prawns
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=f5623e4466&e=83be33d795>
 she had just bought, celebrating the fact that she had persuaded the
supermarket to put them in her own container, rather than a plastic bag,
and linking this to the protection of the seas. But buying prawns causes
many times more damage to marine life than any plastic in which they are
wrapped.

Prawn fishing has the highest rates of bycatch
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=3ca6195cd1&e=83be33d795>
 of any fishery: scooping up vast numbers of turtles
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=6cb32c4ce7&e=83be33d795>
 and other threatened species. Prawn farming is just as bad, eliminating
great tracts of mangrove forests
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=04b856415a&e=83be33d795>,
crucial nurseries for thousands of species.


We are kept remarkably ignorant of such issues. As consumers, we are
confused, bamboozled and almost powerless. This is why corporate power has
gone to such lengths to persuade us to see ourselves this way
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=d67c818c8e&e=83be33d795>.
The BBC’s approach to environmental issues is highly partisan, siding with
a system that has sought to transfer responsibility for structural forces
to individual shoppers. It is only as citizens, taking political action,
that we can promote meaningful change.


The answer to the question “how should we live?” is “simply”. But living
simply is highly complicated. In Aldous Huxley’s *Brave New World*, the
government massacred the Simple Lifers. This is generally unnecessary:
today they can be safely marginalised, insulted and dismissed. The ideology
of consumption is so prevalent that it has become invisible: it is the
plastic soup in which we swim.


One-planet living means not only seeking to reduce our own consumption, but
also mobilising against the system that promotes the great tide of junk.
This means fighting corporate power, changing political outcomes
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=1d29db0967&e=83be33d795>
 and challenging the growth-based, world-consuming system we call
capitalism.


As the famous Hothouse Earth paper
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=1ae4967c2c&e=83be33d795>
 published last month, that warned of the danger of flipping the planet
into a new, irreversible climatic state, concluded, “incremental linear
changes … are not enough to stabilize the Earth system. Widespread, rapid,
and fundamental transformations will likely be required to reduce the risk
of crossing the threshold”.

Disposable coffee cups made from new materials are not just a non-solution.
They are a perpetuation of the problem. Defending the planet means changing
the world.

*Original Article Link
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=e5fe987c0c&e=83be33d795>*
*Disaster*
*Warnings of 'Catastrophic and Historic' Flooding as Experts Say Worst of
Hurricane Florence Yet to Come*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=ec3fd0405c&e=83be33d795>
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=5eaa4b062e&e=83be33d795>
*More Disaster*
*Super Typhoon Mangkhut Rips Through Hong Kong After Pummeling Philippines*
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=a4afb29e0f&e=83be33d795>
<https://facebook.us8.list-manage.com/track/click?u=4c039247ad2f92d6e7fcef312&id=d17487f96c&e=83be33d795>

*"It is easier to imagine the end of the world than to imagine the end of
capitalism." *
*- Anonymous*
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-- 
Check out the Commons Transition Plan here at: http://commonstransition.org


P2P Foundation: http://p2pfoundation.net  - http://blog.p2pfoundation.net

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