Pacific Ministroni Soup

Every where we look the nature sky seems to be falling. And maybe in some areas it is -- from human's perspective. As I have always voiced my opinion -- nature can, does and will take care of itself -- just by the very definition and historical span of nature. It is more powerful and will far outlive man.

Air is polluted (it has been much more so in history), global warming is occurring (it too has happened many times in the past) and animals are dying and becoming extinct (this has happened in dramatic steps in the past). The only difference today is man.

From our view and survivability it may well be dire times. Man, like other animals is part of nature. Except for our numbers, we are more "damaging" in our behavior than maybe other animals or swarms. Whales are very intelligent animals. So are dolphins. They probably knew enough about nature to live truly in harmony with her.

We are more obnoxious, arrogant and aggressive in our thinking that we should manage, control, direct, enhance, stop and be an adversary of nature. I think the only animal, natural wildlife or species that acts this way is man. Maybe nature does know what she is doing. First, she has created the most favorable weather, environment and "home" man could ever expect to see. Humans have blossomed during this period. It has been most favorable to our global expansion.

Now, maybe nature is growing and progressing into her next billion or two years. She very well may decide to "make extinct" humans just like other numerous animals have been instantly eliminated, how the earth was instantly polluted and made caustic, how the earth was heated and frozen before. Nature does not revolve around humans and hopefully never succumbs to man's perceived intellect. Let nature's weather continue -- let man's behavior not accelerate the rate of nature "deterioration".

Nature will have a tremendous challenge cleaning up from man applying his supposed higher intellect. A good example is essentially the world's largest circulating dump in the Pacific. There is a circular current that goes up our western coast, over to China and the Asian rim and then circles back down and over to our coast again. Literally, samples taken look like minestrone soup -- plastic not broken down but broken into confetti-like pieces in every color, swirling in what used to be the pristine nature waters. And, many many animals stomachs have carried and still are carrying literally tons of plastic in their bodies. It may not actually kill them, but how would you like a couple extra stones to carry around in your stomach -- constipated for life with plastic which does not break down, even in stomachs' acid. Then there was man; with his intellect, making plastics.

I believe every manufacturer of plastics and producers of packaging should incur the full life-cycle costs of their products and not pass these costs off to governments, communities and individuals like you and me, which they are doing every today.

If they invent, market and use materials don't let them offload disposal costs to us, in our dumps and in our oceans. Right now, they make things best for them and since other "costs" are easily transferred away, they have no market incentive to do otherwise. But if different manufacturers had to be directly responsible for these costs you would see instant change. We also would see instant human behavior change. If a product had a high life cycle cost, even though the core product might be cheapest, people would not buy it and manufactures would not sell the damaging and more "life cycle" costly product.

Pacific Minestrone Soup -- is another form of man's intellect. We are paying dearly for the transfer of these plastics because their true life cycle costs were made our problem by the perspective of product versus total life cycle product impact (cost).

Goodnight from Maine, USA