The Ripple Effect of Plastic Pollution and Global Warming

Embark with us on a season of growth as we grapple with the undeniable urgency of our planet's climate crisis. Have you ever stopped to consider the true impact of your plastic footprint? This season, we're not just sharing stories but igniting a movement towards responsibility and sustainable action. Unearth the unsettling truth behind the United States abysmal plastics recycling rates and discover how the refining of plastics is silently exacerbating greenhouse gas emissions. It's a revelation that will compel you to look beyond the immediate and consider the legacy we're crafting for the Earth's future caretakers.

As we navigate the complexities of our interconnected ecosystems, the polar bear's plight becomes a poignant symbol of the broader implications of climate change. Faced with a planet warming unnaturally, we delve into the cascading effects on species and environments critical to our survival. This is more than a podcast; it's a clarion call for awareness, education, and advocacy. Join us in this transformative conversation as we challenge apathy and inspire each listener to be an agent of change, ensuring the Earth remains a nurturing home for generations to come.

Reference:

Think that your plastic is being recycled? Think Again by Douglas Main

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh, we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the Habit Cup of Johani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hi. Did you know that in the United States, only about five to six percent of plastics are being recycled each year? Hello, welcome to today's episode where we are discussing another uncomfortable, possibly divisive subject the climate crisis. And that quote I got from the MIT Technology Review and I'm going to give you the title of the article Climate change and energy. Think that your plastic is being recycled. Think again. Written October 12, 2023. All right. So you may be asking yourself OK, johani, you're talking about plastic, but this episode is about climate crisis. What does that have to do with one another? So let me tell you the climate crisis. It refers to the rapid changes in our planet's climate, which is caused primarily by human activities, such as burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas, and because this burning it leads to greenhouse effect like gases like carbon dioxide, and these gases they get trapped into the Earth's atmosphere, causing the planet then to get warmer at a pace that is not normal, a pace that has not happened before, very unnatural. So, when it comes to plastic, the refinement of plastic emits an additional, an additional folks, an additional 184 to 213 million metric tons of greenhouse gases each year. You see this, what I just said, right, the greenhouse gases are the things that get trapped into the Earth's atmosphere, which then causes the planet to warm unnaturally. And we have plastic that, when we are refining plastic now, we are pushing 184 to 213 million metrics more of these greenhouse gases that usually go up to the Earth's atmosphere. Now we're adding 184 to 213 million metric more to it. And all, by the way, landfills that we use for just single use plastic. They account for 15% of methane emissions, more gases that now get to be trapped in the Earth's atmosphere and warm are our Earth at normally. So we haven't seen those videos of polar bears holding on to like this, just small little nugget of ice, and then you see the sea level rising or ice now melting, so there's more water than ice. And these videos it may not hit everybody the same way. I know it makes me sad whenever I see it, but those videos are showing us the changes in the ecosystem of the polar bears or whatever animals benefit from what the ecosystem is in that area. So, because now the planet is warming at an abnormal pace, it is changing the ecosystems that are needed for these animals, these species, to be able to live in those regions, in those parts of the world, and everything is tied together. I'm going to keep saying that throughout the whole month of March. Everything is tied together because we need these species, we need these animals. They're part of our ecosystem of life and it's what we need to sustain life as it is on earth.

Speaker 1: 4:43

And some people don't see the urgency of it. Some people think, well, I will die before anything like that happened. But if you're just thinking short term, I will see why this wouldn't scare you. I would see why you're not really worried about this. But if you are like me and you think long term and you're not just thinking about yourself or even your children, but you're thinking of the generations that will come from you after you, then, yes, this will scare you. And if you think about how much more rapidly this can worsen if we continue to have a nonchalant attitude about it, then you're like me as well. Right, and you're trying to educate, advocate and do as much as you can to make a difference, to try to do differently and not aid this at getting worse. Right, you're not trying to help this situation worsen. If I can say it more succinctly, it will be that.

Speaker 1: 5:51

But, yeah, as the planet warms, we're seeing more extreme and unpredictable weather. Hello, we're going to see, or we're seeing already more hurricanes, droughts, heat waves and heavy rainfall, and all of this, right affects not just humanity but our environment and then the species that live in those environments and that need those environments to thrive there. These events not only cause immediate destruction but, like I said, they also cause long-term economic and social challenges. By that, they give us an opportunity to sacrifice our life. If we're not helping Mother Nature, mother Nature is going to do its own thing, which may be quite destructive, such as hurricanes, right and drought and other things like that, which then causes us to have to use other artificial means to be able to survive, because now, mother Nature is not making this place habitable for us, it's making it inhabitable. But it's not Mother Nature's fault right, it's more like our fault, because we didn't take care of Mother Nature. Now, when we are living in a place that is inhabitable, we have to do superficial things to make it habitable, and these superficial things cost money, and when we're putting money into that, then that means we're not putting money into the other things that we need to thrive, and then we can potentially go back to just being in a survival society, as opposed to a society that is moving forward and trying to aid their population to thrive.

Speaker 1: 7:38

You see, so all of this has its long-term repercussions, its long-term effects. If we allow it to continue, we're going to rising sea levels. We have melting ice caps now and glaciers that contribute now to the rising sea levels, and this poses a threat to coastal communities. I come from an island and I remember seeing a long time ago when I was a child, like the climate change and the rising sea levels and how the Caribbean, most of it, would just be underwater. We will be like quote unquote the Atlantis and that's not cute, right, we're not Jason Momoa, so I don't want that, but that's what will happen displacing millions of people. And now you are causing people to have to go and move to another area, because now where they used to live is underwater, so now we have to have more people in a certain area, you see? So it's all like a domino effect of things, and then we also have impact on ecosystems, like I was saying.

Speaker 1: 8:53

So the change in climate is going to disrupt the ecosystem and it's going to lead to laws of species that cannot adapt quick enough, and this loss impacts biodiversity, which then can destabilize our ecosystem, and some people don't think of this affect the human food sources, such as fishes and agriculture, right? So now we're talking about we have less food to feed the world, you see what I'm saying. And now we're gonna try to tap into other means that are not so natural, that are more artificial, and then just think about the continuance of that impact. So now we're eating something different. How would that impact the human body, how would that impact our health, and so forth? And you keep going from there. It can get pretty dark, right?

Speaker 1: 9:56

All right, now we're talking as well about the agricultural challenges. I hate to be preachy, but follow me here. It can stop crops when we have drought, and we have seen it already. If you are a farmer out there, bless you right, bless you. You may be seeing some of this already. You may be seeing less crops. You may be seeing less viable crops, which reduces food security, not just in your area but around the world. Changes in temperature and precipitation patterns really can make farming more difficult, and you can ask any farmer about that.

Speaker 1: 10:37

When I live in Wisconsin, I lived in a thriving farmer community that was seeing some of this effects already. Some of them were having a hard time with their crops and their crops was just not what it used to be, and they need those crops in order to live. Those crops are their livelihood and because of the changes in pattern and weather pattern, it was affecting their crops. Therefore, it was affecting their livelihood. But there's also health risk, right, just like I said, like when we start shifting from natural food resources, and we're seeing that with the foods that we eat already that have a lot of chemicals and a lot of things of that nature. But imagine if just the natural food resource was little to none how much more worse would that be? And that's what we're looking at. We're looking at health problems worldwide that can be affected by that, but can also be affected by heat related illnesses when we go into desert areas that just become unlivable because of the heat, changes in weather patterns that can really just make infectious diseases that much easier to traverse, an air pollution that can just make respiratory conditions like asthma that much more worse in people.

Speaker 1: 12:16

But while I painted this very dystopian picture for you, people may not believe it, but there is still hope. There's still a way that we can reverse it and really even individual people. Mind you, we need to be really hard on corporations and these big groups, right, because, yes, their carbon footprint is way bigger than any one individual can be, but I'm a big believer that even individuals, right, we can make a change, we can have a positive impact if we all choose to do the right thing as individuals, because we can reduce our carbon footprint by using energy more efficiently. When it comes to LED lighting, switching right to LED lighting, when it comes to walking or using a bicycle more than traveling by car, eating less meat, going into a more vegetable-rich diet not saying get rid of meat or not eat meat at all at all by eating less meat per, say, and using renewable energy sources. Whenever it's possible for you, we can also advocate for this renewable energy sources as well, so that way we can transition into them and make it easier, make it cheaper, more accessible, such as wind, solar, hydroelectric power that reduces our codependency on fossil fuels, which will then lower the greenhouse gas emissions. Right, because this is what gets trapped in the Earth atmosphere and make everything warmer and make the whole pattern change that we have in the world.

Speaker 1: 14:07

We can also like this is something that I knew since I was little. I watched Captain Planet. Right, so we know. Right, we use, reduce, recycle if we minimize our waste and we support recycling and compel efforts. Right, we use compost and compost is a great fertilizer, by the way. Like, you can use this and have like a mini garden, and if you're in an urban area, you can have a mini garden and use some of this compost for that and boom, just by doing that, you are reducing the methane emissions from landfills that will have to have taken your trash that you weren't able to compose or recycle. We can also support the conservation efforts of reforestation right, that's not killed the trees which can help absorb that CO2 that I was talking about at the beginning. It protects biodiversity and restores ecosystems that have been affected by climate change.

Speaker 1: 15:15

We can also advocate for change, which is something that you're going to hear on every single one of these episodes, because everything that I'm talking about I'm going to say it again is connected, it's intersectional, it affects us all. So it doesn't matter what race, what ethnicity, what culture, where you're located. All of this, every single one of these things that I'm talking about in March, affects us all. So that's why it's so important to get involved and to advocate for peace, advocate for change, advocate for humanity, because, at the end of the day, last time I checked, I didn't have any aliens from Mars listening to this podcast, or do I? No, I didn't think. So.

Speaker 1: 16:05

We can also educate and spread awareness. I know you have that thea or that theo that is out there that really doesn't believe any of this, what they call crap, and then just would laugh at your face if you dare say anything like that. Take it easy on them, do it nice and slow, but insert that information in there. Talk about it in the way that they can understand it and they can digest it, so that way you can push them into making these small, tiny changes until they're comfortable with it and they can make bigger changes. So that way we can all play a positive role in just keeping this thing from happening, keeping this thing from getting worse.

Speaker 1: 16:52

I know this is like a daunting challenge and I probably painted like this really dystopian picture in your head, but none of these changes are insurmountable. They're not like impossible to do. Through collective action and small changes, sustainable living and advocating for supportive policies, we can mitigate the negative impact that the climate crisis is happening and work towards having a more sustainable future and helping mother nature and this planet be able to thrive so it can sustain us all. It requires actions from every individual, but also every community, because it requires collective action, nations to play a role as well in reversing, through policy changes and things of that nature, to reverse the course of climate change. The good thing about this issue unlike what I was talking about the Gossak humanitarian crisis and the Ukraine conflict is that this issue right here most of us here that are comfortable in our households, in our world right now and we're not going through any of these crises affecting other human beings we can take action right now to help our next generation to be in a world that can sustain them.

Speaker 1: 18:26

Think about that and I will leave you with that and don't get uncomfortable on me, don't get shy. Come back, okay, so that way we can continue to have more of these tough conversations with one another. All right, see you next Wednesday. Bye. Thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you, leave me a comment, do a rating if you can on the podcast, share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time, bye.