Tragic

And completely heartbreaking.



What are you looking at in that picture? You're looking at the remains of a baby albatross, which starved because it was fed plastic which its parents had picked up from the ocean thinking it was food. From the site:

These photographs of albatross chicks were made just a few weeks ago on Midway Atoll, a tiny stretch of sand and coral near the middle of the North Pacific. The nesting babies are fed bellies-full of plastic by their parents, who soar out over the vast polluted ocean collecting what looks to them like food to bring back to their young. On this diet of human trash, every year tens of thousands of albatross chicks die on Midway from starvation, toxicity, and choking.

Pathetic. We are starving these birds through our own actions, and we'll wind up being the poorer for it. If things like this don't make you think long and hard about how we treat this planet ... I don't know what's wrong with you.

h/t: bioephemera

ETA: CBC News article on an upcoming manuscript documenting this tragedy.

ETA: A Scientific American article on the story. This one comes complete with a video of albatross chick necroscopies. And this article does (weakly) pay homage to Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic poem.

One word ....

Recycle.

As for aluminum cans, recycling just one saves enough energy to run your TV for 2½ hours.

Word.

New Continent Discovered in Pacific Ocean

Only problem is, it's made entirely of plastic.

A high-seas mission departs from San Francisco next month to map and explore a sinister and shifting 21st-century continent: one twice the size of Texas and created from six million tonnes of discarded plastic.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Coolness abounds though, thanks to the efforts of Scripps and Brita:

With a crew of 30, the expedition, supported by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brita, the water company, will use unmanned aircraft and robotic surface explorers to map the extent and depth of the plastic continent while collecting 40 tonnes of the refuse for trial recycling.

If that recycling proves to profitable it could be a boon! There are six million tonnes (at least) of plastic there, and we could tap into it all. Remember my post about limited resources? Bringing those resources back to the United States, and converting them for use by our country (and then keeping them here) would be great. These are, I believe, the technologies we need to work on if we're to stay relevant in the world economy of the future.

What happens when the United States ...

... finds itself without any natural resources that are needed in a world economy? For example, a majority of the lithium needed for lithium batteries for electric cars can be found in Bolivia. In addition, Bolivia has wizened up and wants to use their resources to generate jobs (and profits) within their own country.

For Bolivians, economic development and job creation are a must — the partner can't be like foreign companies who they say shortchanged the nation's hardscrabble Indians while extracting copper, silver and tin from vegetation-starved highlands. Morales wants lithium batteries manufactured domestically, and even hopes to assemble battery-powered cars.

So, where does this leave the United States, who was hoping to factor in the environmentally-friendly car economy of the future? Exactly what natural resources does the United States have which can ensure that it remains a "power" in the future? Also, and I think more importantly, this points the focus towards recycling efforts. There are finite supplies of materials such as lithium in the world, so recycling them will be essential in the future. Since we are a consumer economy, the influx of these resources will be into the United States. Recycling ensures that they will remain here, and if they remain here we do not need to import (and thereby pay another country for the "rights" to these materials). Right?

I'm sure there are some flaws, or unnecessary worrying on my part, here ... so if someone can point them out I'd be appreciative.