The rest of the world sees Americans as bloated, selfish and spoiled. In some respects, we are.

All it took to convince me was this Associated Press article that came my way. I have been in Europe nine months and noticed that on this side of the globe they are much more conscious about the world around them. Maybe with the exception of a few million, or so, Californians.

I became infuriated after reading this piece that the American public still wants its plastic bags. We are all guilty. The more I spend at Wal-Mart the more 2-cent bags I want to take home (Yes, I am sadly seduced by the one-stop, discount shopping). Those things never decompose. Do you read me? Never.

What’s worse is those bags and other plastic materials are finding their way into our oceans.
 



Oh, but you say you don’t litter on the beach and are sure to put your trash in a bin. It doesn’t matter. This shi—crap is making its way there despite our meager efforts. There is so much of it that it’s got a name: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

It’s 3.5 million tons of floating trash, twice the size of Texas, in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Biologists say 80 percent of which originated on land. It's an 80 percent collection of plastic crap that’s twice the size of the second-largest state in the Union but there are no evidentiary pictures of it because it’s floating just beneath the water’s surface. It grows tenfold every year and has been doing so since the 50s. Hey, I got an idea. Maybe we can develop it and stick all the poor people related to or with criminal records out there! (Confused? Click here to catch up.)

According to the AP article, San Francisco banned plastic shopping bags last year. They were the first city to succeed. The plastic industry has a powerful lobby. Surprise, surprise. Today, Whole Foods Market announced they'll stop offering them. One shop owner said consumers still want their plastic. Tell the people, it’s killing the Earth.




I couldn’t do this entry, without sharing with you a piece of exceptional journalism relevant to the topic. It’s a five-part exposé on the changing chemistry of our oceans. It also won a coveted Pulitzer Prize. Here’s an excerpt. You can read the rest on the Los Angeles Times Web site.

By Kenneth R. Weiss, Times Staff Writer
July 30, 2006

MORETON BAY, AUSTRALIA -- The fireweed began each spring as tufts of hairy growth and spread across the seafloor fast enough to cover a football field in an hour.

When fishermen touched it, their skin broke out in searing welts. Their lips blistered and peeled. Their eyes burned and swelled shut. Water that splashed from their nets spread the inflammation to their legs and torsos.

"It comes up like little boils," said Randolph Van Dyk, a fisherman whose powerful legs are pocked with scars. "At nighttime, you can feel them burning. I tried everything to get rid of them. Nothing worked."

As the weed blanketed miles of the bay over the last decade, it stained fishing nets a dark purple and left them coated with a powdery residue. When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn't eat solid food for a week. Others made an even more painful mistake, neglecting to wash the residue from their hands before relieving themselves over the sides of their boats.

For a time, embarrassment kept them from talking publicly about their condition. When they finally did speak up, authorities dismissed their complaints — until a bucket of the hairy weed made it to the University of Queensland's marine botany lab.

Samples placed in a drying oven gave off fumes so strong that professors and students ran out of the building and into the street, choking and coughing.

Scientist Judith O'Neil put a tiny sample under a microscope and peered at the long black filaments. Consulting a botanical reference, she identified the weed as a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago. ###

Our water is so polluted it’s burning and choking us along the creatures of the sea to death, resurrecting age-old pestilences. Sounds like Bible prophecy but I'll save that. Is it really any wonder where Morgellon’s is coming from? The highest concentration of cases is in northern California. Could it be from the polluted water? Hmph.

Here are some factoids the LA Times posted on their Web site:

650 gray whales (one such whale is pictured above) wash up sick or dying each year
90 percent of our tuna, cod and other big fish have disappeared in the last 50 years
150 dead zones have been identified in our world’s oceans

And, Americans still want to use plastic bags. I’m not saying paper is any better. Yes, it decomposes but we have to kill trees to make them. I say let’s be more like Europeans. In most markets, they don’t even offer bags. You know who’s going to the store because everybody lugs a cart or brings their own cloth bag. Imagine that. So what if I have to throw my cellophane-wrapped chicken in with my plastic-bottled water into an old gym bag. I have to start somewhere.