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I realize that I want to say more about plastic, justice, and the ocean. And it is this: we have the entire plastic in the ocean problem exactly backwards. https://twitter.com/MiriamGoldste/status/1304435775803715585
Since I started working on plastic pollution in the ocean in 2008, there has been an outpouring of public interest into how ocean life is affect. Here is baby Miriam talking about our 2009 @Scripps_Ocean expedition on @scifri: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111421080
Along with concern for ocean animals, people always asked: what can I do? what can we do? And I would always say: "reduce reuse recycle" in that order. And then they'd ask: can we clean it up? And I'd say, "I don't think so." And then they would be frustrated.
And that frustration would come out in unhelpful ways, such as by calling women scientists "emotional" instead of engaging with the substance of our critique. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2019/01/17/experts-warned-this-floating-garbage-collector-wouldnt-work-ocean-proved-them-right/
But here's the truth: sometimes in nature we break things that we can't fix.
The passenger pigeons are gone. The climate is changed. And there is _no way_ to get tiny pieces of plastic out of the middle of the ocean.
The passenger pigeons are gone. The climate is changed. And there is _no way_ to get tiny pieces of plastic out of the middle of the ocean.
But the thing is, that is the wrong question. We CAN fix this - but the problem is that scientists, environmentalists, and technology entrepreneurs were only talking to ourselves. The right people weren't in the room, or the conversation, at all.
Where were those people? In Louisiana, fighting for their health, their communities, and their children. https://twitter.com/amprog/status/1231987376798470146
This is WHY plastic is so cheap - it is manufactured on the backs of towns like Mossville, founded by former slaves and the site of more than a dozen permitted refining and chemical industry facilities. https://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/26/toxic.town.mossville.epa/index.html
Fighting for justice for towns like Mossville IS the same as cleaning up the ocean. Because plastic isn't really cheap at all. It only seems that way because the oil companies flooding the market with "cheap" plastic aren't the ones paying the real price. https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
The path forward on plastic in the ocean is climate justice. Morally, yes, but also functionally. @drvox explains here, in a must-read piece for anyone who wants to understand where the climate movement is at: https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21252892/climate-change-democrats-joe-biden-renewable-energy-unions-environmental-justice
To clean up the ocean, clean up Cancer Alley. Here's one way of doing just that: https://www.axios.com/democrats-climate-agenda-cc5ad985-7801-4ad5-85c0-bc22d33aade7.html
After 12 years thinking about plastic in science and policy, I probably know less than when I started. But here's what i do know. Science is necessary but not sufficient. Justice and equity is what gets us to a clean ocean and a better world for all people. /fin
