Population Onslaught: Poisoned Oceans

“Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” ― Chief Seattle

Three years after Fukushima’s nuclear power plants exploded and started leaking millions or possibly billions of gallons of radioactive waste into the Pacific Ocean, contaminated liquid circulated into all of the oceans of the world.

Our harsh reality: radioactive waste enters into every living creature in Earth’s oceans and contaminates their flesh. If you eat salmon, tuna, shrimp and other marine creatures in 2015, you cannot help but absorb, to some degree, the radioactive contamination of Fukushima.

Fukushima worker. Photo: www.IrishTimes.com

That single catastrophe may spell greater disasters for humans and all living creatures in the seas around the planet – for decades to come. As one writer said, “We’re all standing on the beach for this one.”

“There’s a strong possibility these tanks also leaked, or had leaked previously,” said Hiroaki Koide, Assistant Professor at Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute.

Plastic and chemicals overflow in rivers around the world. Photo: www.theelefunt.com

What bothers me as a food eating, water drinking and air breathing human being on this planet is the reality that we humans continue our mass contamination of our planet at breakneck speed.

We spray tons of pesticides and insecticides on our plants 24/7 worldwide. Ironically, we outlawed DDT in the USA, but Chevron Corporation still produces and sells it around the globe. I know because I smelled it during my bicycle travels in Asia and South America. We know it kills all life and destroys ecological systems, but for the love of money, we keep selling DDT abroad. Unfortunately, like the Fukushima disaster, 72,000 chemical poisons we created also spread globally 24/7.

Google depiction of Fukushima radioactive waste spreading throughout the Pacific

Consequently, cancers affect one in three people here in the United States, and cancers grow worldwide as we continue our quest to soak the planet with chemicals. The more we continue our plundering and polluting of this miraculous globe, the more we shall face the wrath of Mother Nature.

We lose more than 100 species every single day of the year because of human encroachment. Not known by most Americans, we dumped billions of pounds of mustard gas and Lewisite gas into the oceans after WWII. We dumped more than 500 barrels of radioactive waste 20 miles off San Francisco in the 50s. We continue to draw down aquifers and contaminate ground water here in the USA with massive pig farms, cattle farms and industrial waste. For example, the toxic and polluted Mississippi River blooms into a 10,000 square mile dead zone at its mouth.

At some point, we human beings, whether Americans or planetary citizens from other countries, must take stock of what we are doing to the planet and to ourselves.