20,000 pounds of garbage removed from ocean

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/20000-p ... age-patch/

Just thought I'd share some good news for a change

[ProfessorDetective]

Not bad. Hope they get that funding and go global with this.

[Frustration]

Meanwhile, 200,000 pounds of garbage dumped into ocean...

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Meanwhile, 200,000 pounds of garbage dumped into ocean...

Yeah 'cause of capitalism.

[Frustration]

You're not doing yourself, or your ideology, any favors when you say things without thinking them through.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

You're not doing yourself, or your ideology, any favors when you say things without thinking them through.

Just like the corporate fat cats paying employees pennies on the dollar for the goods that they produce with their heart and tears. Are they thinking things through. Who is the idealistic one now?

[Madner Kami]

People threw things away without concern before capitalism was a thing. Ask any archeologist, they live from garbage-dumps. So spare that nonsense you just produced, it's just adding more waste.

[Draco Dracul]

You're not doing yourself, or your ideology, any favors when you say things without thinking them through.

How is that not thinking them through? The use of single use plastics in everything is very much a product of capitalism because making plastic goods to be thrown away rather than containers that are meant to be reused or refilled is a cost saving measure of the capitalist class.

[McAvoy]

People threw things away without concern before capitalism was a thing. Ask any archeologist, they live from garbage-dumps. So spare that nonsense you just produced, it's just adding more waste.

Huge difference between now and then though.

Yes humans have always thrown away stuff since stone age. Whether it's a pile of shards from making an arrow head to a shattered one use clay container.

The difference? The stuff we throw away is a billion times more and not bio-degradable. Stuff we threw away 2000 years ago? It's freaking baked dirt. Ain't going to harm anything.

Capitalism being one of the biggest culprit to be sure. Though I would say modern society in the past 40 years would be the biggest factor honestly.

[Madner Kami]

The difference? The stuff we throw away is a billion times more and not bio-degradable.

The fact that we can find stuff our ancestors threw away tens, if not houndreds of thousands of years ago throws kind of a wrench in that gear though, doesn't it? Scale is different, to be sure, but not the fact of garbage and littering predating capitalism and I find it impossible to argue, that this would be different with any form of economy, except an explicitly environmentally focused one, simply because roughly 7% of all humans that have ever existed, are alive on this very day.

And as for toxicity, well, there's always the tomb of Qin Shi Huangdi. You know, the guy with the terracotta army and literal rivers and lakes of mercury which are slowly leaking into the surrounding soil. Or the left-overs from cavemen and -women creating what is considered contaminated soil by modern standards. Or lets talk about how the iberian peninsula had quite extensive forests, until Rome needed to rebuild it's repeatedly wrecked navy. Or how every gold-mine in the human past is a place where you can find cyanide and mercury in plentyful and unhealthy amounts.