Is All The Talk On Plastic Distracting Us From Solving The Climate Crisis?

The environmental news has been dominated by articles about plastic pollution and plastic solutions ever since the release of David Attenborough’s Blue Planet II documentary in 2017. It won the hearts of the public and persuaded them that they needed to do something about the plastic problem. Whilst that is by no means a bad thing, is the focus on plastic distracting us from tackling the real environmental problem of climate change?

Putting plastic ahead of the climate crisis.

The average member of public now knows that plastic is an environmental and health problem, polluting our oceans, causing havoc for marine life, and ending up as microplastics in the seafood we eat and the water we drink. These arguments are true, and plastic is a problem. However, it pales in comparison to the major environmental problem of our time: climate change.

If you’re concerned about our oceans and marine life, then the impacts of global warming and climate change will be much further reaching than the impacts of plastic in our oceans. Global warming is causing the temperature of our oceans to rise significantly. At the same time, our oceans are becoming acidic as the pH decreases due to absorption of carbon dioxide. Ocean animals will have to adapt to the warmer temperatures and changes in pH, or they will not survive. This is also already causing the bleaching of corals, meaning that habitats and breeding areas for several species are lost.

Read the Medium story by Tabitha Whiting - “Is All The Talk On Plastic Distracting Us From Solving The Climate Crisis?”

(Here in Australia, the Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who’s a climate denier, argued he was tackling the climate crisis - he never called it that - by taking on the plastic problem. That was nothing but “dog-whistling” - he was telling his supporters he was, in fact, doing nothing about the climate crisis while pretending to care - Robert McLean)