Before humanity manages to clean up the ocean floor of plastic straws that kill innocent turtles, all marine biodiversity will die, and there will be no one to save. As global consumers focus on quick fixes of switching to metal straws, the planet continues to heat up to sustain the modern focus on the oversimplified solutions to complex issues.
While plastic pollution is a legitimate concern, it mostly serves as a distraction for more significant environmental problems. Firstly, modern societies have expressed the unwillingness to tackle climate change because of the economic, financial, and political implications. More specifically, top New Zealand companies regard little to no attention to climate change problems that they contribute to.
Secondly, the public tends to focus on what is easier rather than effective. One of the most recent articles on plastic pollution states that there are 8-14 million tons of microplastic in the oceans’ depths. The article conveniently frames the needed immediate action as merely “stopping the use of so much plastic.” Promoting paper bags, reusable cups, and biodegradable packaging is more convenient than working on an illusory solution to climate change. By weaponizing smaller ideas and oversimplifying solutions, people find comfort in tackling minor environmental problems through semi-conscious consumerism, while the bigger ones remain.
Thirdly, media creates overt publicity for plastic pollution, blowing the problem out of proportion through sensationalism, which distracts the population from more pressing issues. For instance, a popular article reported that by 2050, close to 99% of seabirds will have plastic in them. However, the claims of the initial researchers were completely different: the data showed that all animals will ingest plastic at least once, which is true for humans too. Despite being incomparable to climate changes’ impact and scale, media forces the plastic pollution agenda through misleading facts.
However, at the same time, people who adopt an anti-plastic mentality should not be villainized. Despite falling for the informational manipulation, people passionate about plastic reduction and zero-waste have good intentions, which could easily be transformed into more actionable activism with the right climate change awareness campaigns. It is also worth noting that the public’s attention on plastic is justifiable: for a regular reader, ten tons of plastic in the ocean sound more alarming than seemingly minuscule heating of the planet. Consequently, an ultimate solution to the misinterpretation of the marine ecology catastrophe is combining the already adopted anti-plastic agenda with strategies to minimize more pressing climate change tendencies.
Thus, the environmental activism that targets plastic pollution should not be entirely disregarded. On the other end of the spectrum, some researchers claim that plastic is an underreported issue. It continually harms marine biodiversity through “entering the marine food web at low levels” and “moving up the food chain as bigger species eat smaller ones.” More than that, if the public would momentarily shift all of their efforts to the issue of overfishing, ocean pollution would go out of control and become as global as climate change is now. At the same time, it is also essential to recognize the apparent bias, exaggeration, and overt simplicity that issue of plastic pollution urges for and eventually realize the bigger scale of the environmental emergency.
People should not pick battles in the global war on ecology. There are numerous issues to tackle, and, according to researchers, humanity does not have a lot of time. However, current media efforts aim to divert attention from the global issues that extend the planetary boundary threshold since they appear to be too complex to tackle. In their turn, individual consumers should make conscious environmental decisions not only via purchasing non-plastic alternatives. Conversely, they should vote for candidates who focus on climate change, support manufacturers who minimize carbon imprint, and choose the challenging yet practical path to the clean oceans.
References
Stafford, R, & Jones, P. S. (2019). Viewpoint – Ocean plastic pollution: A convenient but distracting truth? Marine Policy, 103(1), 187-191. Web.
Ryan, P. (2019). Plastic poses a major environmental threat: But is it being over-stated? The Conversation. Web.
Thaker, J. (2020). New Zealand companies lag behind others in their reporting on climate change, and that’s a risk to their reputation. The Conversation. Web.
Hardesty, B. T., Wilcox, C., & Barett, J. (2020). We estimate up to 14 million tonnes of microplastics lie on the seafloor. The Conversation. Web.