Discuss: Polymers Are Forever

Oil is what we make the non biodergradable building materials from. Some talking points on the Solar Hydrogen Economy. Its the solar budget that rules here.
http://raenergy.igc.org/stupid.html

Sorry,
you got the special atmosphere =)
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What would Rachel say?  Imagine Rachel Carson walking the edge of the sea along with Thompson…  “Polymers are Forever” is a nice companion piece to Rachel Carson’s 1963 lecture, “The Pollution of Our Environment,” included in the book Lost Woods, edited by Linda Lear.

My impression of plastic is that it’s a polymer that takes hundreds of years to break down (virtually forever).  The long chain molecules of polymers degrade into smaller, very often toxic organic compounds.  It guarantees at least a trickle of toxins into the environment just about forever unless we do something about this problem…soon.

There may be a solution on the horizon.  In a very short time we will notify Orion Magazine of a major breakthrough in utilizing all the used plastic in the world, while at the same time save enough energy to offset the fuel being consumed by automobiles worldwide.

Stay tuned.

We are fast in everything we do, and always seek to be faster, while nature is slow, so slow by comparison. We come up with something new in days and weeks and months while evolution works over millions of years testing small changes. This natural pace is beyond our perception and comprehension in any meaningful way. How can human artifice ever be compatible with the natural world? Of course we are a product of that world but we’ve taken the ball of technology and run with it impetuously, to our great benefit in the short term. How could we ever test what we produce so thoroughly as to be sure it would not have deleterious effects in the wild? We test and test for safety to ourselves in the things that we make yet even then problems occur. How nature will respond is only recently under consideration. Need I even mention that we live almost entirely in our artificial world where consequences in an ocean gyre are effectively as far out of sight and mind as something on Neptune? How many read Orion? I consider myself an environmentalist of many years standing yet only within the last week have heard of nurdles. The few of scientific knowledge create. Then the billions of us consume in ignorance. Following behind, as illustrated in this article, some few of scientific knowledge come, but always behind, to sound yet another alarm. It’s been said that possibly life has been so hard to find in the universe beyond Earth because the period of intelligence (that would allow interstellar communication) is vanishingly short…short because it quickly brings its own end. We’ve had some 500 years of scientific reason generally applied, 50 years since plastics were invented, 100 years since radio, powered flight, the automobile etc. etc. We are only now (for the last 30 years?) beginning to understand the depth and thoroughness of our effect on the Earth. In less than 100 years more our fate should be clear and I’ll be darned if I can say whether I’d put my bet on thumbs up or thumbs down. I’m doing my best to live sustainably, considering the consequences of what I do but, even so, I feel like I’m swept along in a tidal wave where the best of intentions are largely unnoticed in a roar for more of everything and, to reiterate my opening thought, to have it as soon as possible.

Here’s a link to a Greenpeace animation of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre:

http://oceans.greenpeace.org/en/the-expedition/news/trashing-our-oceans/ocean_pollution_animation

Thank you for all your insights! I’m teaching about pollution and litter to my students tomorrow. We just took a trip to the aquarium on Friday and saw all the cute little animals. Now we get to see what we do to the cute little animals when we don’t recycle or throw our garbage in the trash can.