Humans. Humans wake from their deep-sleep by a sun-kissed touch of warmth on their skin. Choirs of birds, warble in the trees outside. A clear blue, blankets the sky and candy floss clouds hold tranquil afternoon showers while the Humans get ready for the day.
Take off the blind fold and open your eyes to what really happens…
Humans. Humans are roused from their deep-sleep by a searing sun, begging them to stop. Pleading with them to wake up from this dream. This dream that barricades the reality that everything in fact is not okay. The birds, outside on saplings taking their last breath, are crying out to the Humans urging them to stop, but they do not listen. The blue skies are stained with the tears of Earth, pleading to fix the punctures in her exterior as she bleeds out. The acidic pillows that darken the heavens release pearls of acid fluid but the Humans do not melt. The Humans do not feel.
Rob Nixon proposes that, our earth, our home, is being suffocated by a “slow violence”(Nixon 2011:2). When Nixon (2011) mentions a “slow violence” he portrays a calamity that “occurs gradually and out of sight” (Nixon 2011:2), where he exposes what should not be hidden. Just as slow violence is made invisible by its illusive pace and dispersed impacts, its victims themselves are invisible, at least in the tiny and shifting lens of the world media. The world is more captivated by instantaneous catastrophes and untimely deaths of pop stars, than by a series of poisons that is busy seeping into the veins of Earth, leaving everything around us, nothing but unsalvageable refuge.
In Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, Rob Nixon stresses large-scale difficulties in altering the perpetrators (humans) of their unconscious carnage (Nixon 2011:3). Nixon goes on to argue the difficulty, in conveying “stories, images and symbols” (Nixon 2011:3) to the billions, that mirror the detrimental reality of climate change (Nixon 2011:2). Nixon (2011) relates his analysis with those of writer-activists, to exhibit dramatic visibility of environmental emergencies. Through this Nixon is able to find new and innovative ways to convey his message, shifting the invisible to the visible. Even if the world decides to turn a blind eye and ignore what is right in front of them.
In an age where the media venerate the spectacular (Nixon 2011:3), a central question still remains adamant to the cause: How can the world possibly amend the cold-shouldered warning signs of slow violence, to a prime mover where the majority is engaged in the quest for survival? Before it is too late…
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
It is frightening to recall that many of us are uneducated about the worlds largest ocean rubbish dumps. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, is a “large and continuous patch of detectable marine debris” (National Ocean Service 2014). A literal island of trash, that is said to be visible through space lenses such as “satellite[s] [and] aerial photographs” (National Ocean Service 2014). While most of the litter concentrations in the “North Pacific ocean” (National Ocean Service), is strikingly big as life and does not go unnoticed, most of the world are unmindful of its magnitude. Much of the wreckage is “not immediately evident to the naked eye” (National Ocean Service 2014) and is made up of tiny fragments of “floating plastic” (National Ocean Service).
The intensity of these ocean junk yards are challenging to size-up due to its dispersed debris when winds and water currents come into action (National Ocean Service 2014). The colossal mass, “Spanning from the West Coast of North America to Japan” (Mark McCormick 2015, is yet another perfect example of how humans violate the planet. Mark McCormick (2015) writes that oceanographers and ecologists estimate that approximately “70 percent of marine debris actually sinks to the bottom of the ocean” (Mark McCormick 2015) which is detrimental to multitude marine life living in coastal reefs. Humans have provided the perfect recipe for a lethal “plastic soup” that is “non-biodegradable and do[es] not wear down (Mark McCormick 2015). This has led to the assassination of marine species. We are the authors of our own horror story.
Mark McCormick (2015), writes that 80 percent of ocean rubbish monster is fed refuse from land-based activities in North America and Asia the rest of the 20 percent accumulates from boats, offshore oil rigs, and large cargo ships. Wildlife, that use these waters as a feeding ground suffer from the contaminated ocean. In a video trailer, Midway: Message from the Gyre “albatrosses mistake plastic pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks” who eventually die from nutritional deprivation or even sharp edges in plastic scraps that puncture the birds organs (Mark McCormick 2015).
Sea turtles are also targeted by the disguised serial killers, when “plastic bags” (Mark McCormick 2015) are thought to be “jellyfish” (Mark McCormick 2015). Many marine animals fall trap to abandoned fishing gear that strangle and suffocate them or barricade them from any movement, where they end up at death’s door. “at least 136,000 seals, sea lions and large whales being killed each year” (Mark McCormick 2015). Plankton and algae, “ecological sponges for carbon” (Mark McCormick 2015) is a food source for vast amounts of sea creatures, and this is compromised when plastic mass act as an umbrella and delay any sunlight from entering the surface.
We, the people, dump man-made waste into beautiful waters that do not belong there. Like a cancer injected into the purest of souls. Oceans, just as any animal that recognizes it as its home has the right to life; water, the sun and the stars. It is essential. Humans are crude to think that they can live in this world alone, without trees oceans and life of all forms. There can neither be civilization or any form of truly living if we obliterate and bankrupt this Earth of everything she was made to provide for. People are reaching the finish line, the race is almost over and all there is left to do is live a terrible future.
Jacob Silverman. 2015. Why is the world’s biggest landfill in the Pacific Ocean?. [ONLINE] Available at:http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/oceanography/great-pacific-garbage-patch2.htm. [Accessed 20 April 2016].
Mark McCormick . 2015. How the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is Destroying the Oceans and the Future for Marine Life. [O] Available at:http://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/great-pacific-garbage-patch-is-destroying-the-oceans/. [Accessed 19 April 2016].
[n.a]. 2014. What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch?. [O] Available at:http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/garbagepatch.html. [Accessed 19 April 2016].
Nixon, R. 2011. Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.