Facing our environmental crisis head on

In a recent article, Professor Rick Stafford and Dr Peter Jones, both working in marine conservation at Bournemouth University, questioned if the media, corporate and government attention on plastic pollution actually distracts attention from bigger environmental challenges.

We are changing our planet rapidly, substantially and irreversibly.

As a researcher working across multiple environmental problems, which include climate change and plastic pollution, it’s a question I often ask myself. Like a good doctor, I need to triage so I can prioritise urgent cases. I don’t have an answer, but Professor Stafford and Dr Jones made me think.

Report after report present increasing quantities and quality of evidence that we are changing our planet rapidly, substantially and irreversibly in order to meet human demands for resources – food, minerals, water, timber, fibre and fuel.

For decades, we have justified damage to the planet as the cost of economic development and human wellbeing, but we’ve now come to a point where we can no longer justify business-as-usual as it will disrupt our very civilisation.

Read the Pursuit story by Dr Ee Ling Ng from the University of Melbourne - “Facing our environmental crisis head on.”