Getting Totally Wasted

Storage tanks from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation are slowly leaking 1,000 gallons of nuclear waste a year into the banks of the Columbia River, and in late February Washington State’s Governor Jay Inslee tells us that there is “No available technology to plug the leaks.” The Department of Energy tells us that the waste is still 250 feet from ground water. Feel better? Didn’t think so. Some folks want to ship the waste to New Mexico, but they’re not sure it can be done without serious risk. Needless to say, New Mexico isn’t exactly welcoming that possibility.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, literally miles across, sits right between the United States and Asia with “exceptionally high concentrations of pelagic plastics, chemical sludge and other debris that have been trapped by the currents of the North Pacific Gyre.” Wikipedia. More refuse from the Fukushima tsunami is also washing up on North American shores. Air pollutants generated by burning coal the United States are being pumped deep underground for future generations to deal with… so we can call this process “clean coal” (which it most certainly is not). Beijing added a sandstorm to already off-the-charts and completely life-threatening level of air pollution. With China burning virtually half the coal on earth, their contributions to greenhouse gasses is staggering.

But with our economy continuing to implode, average American buying power on a seemingly unstoppable decline since 2002 and the impact of the Sequester settling in, the environment is taking a back seat to economic survival. Not to mention the science-denying, religious crazies who actually believe God is just going to come down and fix it all. We’re still waiting! Future generations may have to deal with oceanic dead zones and deforestation realities so numerous as to threaten the oxygen-generating power that has sustained life on this planet, incurably foul and dwindling water supplies, the disappearance of once-populated islands swallowed up by rising seas and the litany of horribles that occur when tipping points in environmental toxicity are tilted beyond repair. Folks are saying that we’ll deal with those problems when they happen, but right now, we need to make a living to survive.

Unless you live in Beijing or live on one of those islands, except for the occasional storm surge, tornado or other climate-driven natural disaster, it’s hard to visualize the damage we are doing to our planet, and ultimately to ourselves, on a daily basis. Environmental issues seem to have an uncanny ability to hide until something really bad and irreversible happens. So when it comes to visuals, nothing screams like the photograph above, taken by videographer/ photographer Chris Jordan. Jordan has taken to making his environmental point by photographing and videoing dead birds on isolated islands, supported with $122 thousand generated through 16,000 Kickstarter donors.

“Sustainability, mass consumption, and what he calls ‘our culture of waste’ have long been the backbone of Seattle-based photographer Chris Jordan's work… For the past four years his creative energy has been focused on a remote group of islands near Hawaii, 2,000 miles from the nearest continent. Yet there, on Midway Atoll, he has discovered a nightmare scenario that powerfully illustrates just how ruinous man’s impact on nature can be: hundreds, thousands of dead albatross chicks choked to death on man’s detritus, mostly shiny bits of plastic picked up from the nearby Pacific Ocean by their parents, and fed to them mistakenly as food.”

“The most prominent piece of waste? Disposable cigarette lighters, which float near the surface of the ocean. Glittering in the sun, they are seductive targets. When they are fed to infant birds and swallowed, none of the plastic disintegrates and instead eventually fills tiny stomachs.” TakePart.com, August 28^th. To birds, those shiny objects sure look like fish. If you stare at the above picture, multiply it thousands and thousands and times to reflect the actual death toll in this isolated and tiny area, maybe the damage we are doing to ourselves will actually sink in. The next question is what exactly are you doing to make a difference… if anything?

I’m Peter Dekom, and tiny little environment mistakes aggregate to great massive, permanent and irreversible damage.