Oceans

Today I was confronted with two pieces of information regarding the oceans.

The first, a movie, regarding the garbage on the oceans, particularly in some areas of the Pacific Ocean. Makes you wonder...I had once seen a documentary about the same subject, where a girl showed a huge amount of tooth brushes, lighters, toys and other plastics collected at a beach in Hawaii.

Now, I just arrived from a lecture by Dos Winkel, an underwater photographer and conservationist, about the state of the seas and of the fish. He presents a grim image of the state of the oceans, as nets plough the bottom of the seas in search for fish, catching everything in their way, and leaving only devastation, for what is mostly only by catch.
Furthermore, all the garbage we dump in the sea causes the fish we eat to be contaminated with toxic metals, and other contaminants, while it is increasingly advertised as healthy.

The film of the speech I attended will soon be available online. Meanwhile the dutch version is available here I hope (couldn't see it on a mac...).

By the way, there are plenty of nice lectures on all kinds of subjects available for viewing in the studium generale of the TUDelft.

Climate Justice

"Climate change was first seen as a scientific problem, then an economic one," explained report author Kate Raworth. "Now it is becoming a matter of international justice.

I wonder...if it changes to an international justice problem, then nothing will ever be done about it...I think it is best to leave it in the economic view...

Contrasts

I just arrived from Malaysia, where I spent a couple of weeks traveling around.
Malaysia is a cheap country. Food is cheap, accommodation is cheap, transport is cheap, most things for sale are cheap. Oil is cheap...
Malaysia is also a warm country, tropical, humid, rainy at times, so we can not blame the locals for abusing the air conditioning...apart from the fact of setting it to polar temperatures. Everything is air conditioned, houses, shops, cars...

What led me to write this post however, is that in Malaysia, it is common place to leave your car running while you go shopping or while you have a pause along the highway to rest, just so that the car is still cold when you come back.

We live a confortable life in the western world, and can't blame them for wanting one also. Nobody keeps themself from buying and using airco in the car, or heating in the winter. All people should have access to a comfortable life.

It is easy to provide comfort, if people are willing and/or able to pay for it. Shouldn't we also provide education.

How do you measure up against the mold on your bread?

An interesting video I came upon in youtube, that links in nicely with our ongoing discussions. Basically, my take on it is that any economic system (like our global economy nowadays) attempting to achieve sustained growth is bound to fail, sooner or later. Resource depletion sets in at some point, and the system suffers a drastic correction from its state of overshoot to either a much lower equilibrium point. Given the news in the last few months (food prices, oil prices, economic crisis, raw material shortages...), I´m getting the feeling that we´re going to find out pretty soon where the ceiling is...