Men Are From Venus

"(Obviously any of my generalizations are subject to numerous exceptions and infinite qualifications; let's assume I know this, and that I use large generalizations in order to be suggestive rather than definitive.)" --Pauline Kael

I love that quote.  So, please apply Ms. Kael's note to the following...

I was recently on my way to see the new documentary, Summer of Soul.  So, I was chatting with my husband.  You know, one of those conversations you have when you're in a car.  I brought up the recent obsession with the planet Mars.  Especially the obsession with Mars that seems to be possessing Rich White Men.  There's a new Space Race; but instead of the moon, this time it's the Red Planet.  Now, I'm all for space exploration and such-like.  But the more I think about it; the more it seems to me to be phenomenal waste of money.  I expressed this sentiment to my husband, who didn't disagree with me.
Now, he has The Shining.  He's a Pisces.  They are prescient.  Clairvoyant.  Soothsaying.  Call it what you will.  And it seems that after twenty some years, his Shining is rubbing off on me.  During the movie, which is set in the summer of 1969, there's a segment where people at the Harlem Music Festival are being asked about the moon landing and why they're not at home watching it on TV.  Many of them express the sentiment that going to the moon is a waste of time and money when the earth already has enough problems "down here"; and that that would be money better spent: on the planet Earth.  We turned to each other in the darkness of the theater.  But of course, we're both kind of used to that now.  But still, it was exactly what we were talking about in the car.
But why Mars?  Don't we have enough war down here? 

So, colonies on Mars?  Correct me if I'm wrong; but the idea is that we go to Mars to establish a residence for humans while we continue to wring the Earth for every drop of resource we can until we're left with a desiccated rind.  So, as we're transforming Earth into an uninhabitable Venus, the idea is that we move to Mars which is only slightly more inhabitable if we live inside bubbles and space-suits?  Is that what you're telling me Jeff and Elon and Richard?  Or are you guys trying to trick everyone into going to Mars so can you have more of the Earth for yourself?  Sounds more likely.  Or, are you just wanting to exploit Mars for whatever untold riches it might have lurking beneath it's crimson crust?

So, lets say, a couple of billion dollars (more or less) was sunk into putting a roving robot on Mars.  So far, it's sent back pictures of a landscape that looks exactly like the Nevada desert.  They could've sent someone out there for about $50 bucks worth of gas and gotten the same thing.  Can you imagine what two billion dollars put towards ocean clean-up or wildlife conservation could do?  
You know, nowadays I'm afraid to go to the grocery store.  No, it's not just the parking lot mass murderers; it's what's inside the store: PLASTIC.

Okay, I'm not a climate scientist.  Many of the following assertions may come across as overly simplified.  Maybe even simple minded.  But I need to express these thoughts because I'm becoming a little obsessive.
Okay.  So, if we look in Andy's shopping cart, the majority of the packaging is paper, metal and glass.  In fact, I don't see any plastic packaging in his cart at all.  I don't see much plastic on the shelves around him.  If you took this same picture today...well, maybe it's not a good example.  The Brillo pads still come in cardboard boxes.  Campbell's soup remains the same.  You can still get Coke in bottles.  The Heinz Ketchup, today, would be plastic.  The point is that almost everything nowadays is packaged in plastic.  If you throw a plastic bottle in the woods, it won't biodegrade for another 400 years or so.  At least paper, glass and metal eventually decay in a somewhat timely fashion.  Toss some broken glass in the sea and you get beautiful sea-glass in a couple of years.  Throw a plastic botte in the ocean and it will be there for several centuries.

When I go in my local Kroger's grocery store I look around at all the stuff.  And most of that stuff is contained in plastic.  Eventually, that stuff will come out of that plastic and then that plastic will have to go somewhere.  Kroger's is one of three large grocery stores within fifteen minutes of my house.  That's one town.  Now, think about how many towns there are in America and even if all of them have just one grocery store; think about all that plastic.  Millions of tons of plastic...which is all going to have to go somewhere.  Except we know that it doesn't go anywhere.  There's a commercial running informing us of how little of the plastic we think we're recycling is actually getting recycled.  So, we've opened this Pandora's Box of Plastic (a plastic box too, natch) and it just keeps coming.  There's this stuff called "microplastic" that has infiltrated the oceans.  We have these plastics in our bodies.  Plastic emits some chemical that can fuck with things like sex hormones and your immune system.  And yet, it still keeps coming.  We have a thing called The Great Pacific Garbage Patch.  But we shrug and say, "Oh, well."  Out of sight out of mind, right?

My question is, how does THE PLASTIC INDUSTRY get away with this?  They have zero accountability.  Their product is destroying the ecosystem.  Why is this allowed?  And now, it's almost as though we have no choice but to choose plastic.  It's everywhere.  Remember when they tried to introduce that chip bag that would break down in the environment?  And remember when the public rejected that bag because IT WAS TOO NOISY?  I mean, what do people who suffer from plastophobia do?  They can't even hide in their own houses.

Well, I guess the answer to that question is: "Not the American Public."  See, we say want to help the environment but we can't even deal with a noisier potato chip bag.  And so, we just gave up?  I mean, with all the technology we have today, Jeff Bezos couldn't come up with a biodegradable plastic like substance?  No.  I guess he was too busy spending half a billion dollars on a yacht.  And looking to the stars.  And not the dead starfish on the beach who got zapped by global warming.  But I don't want to get too preachy.  I use plastic.  I drive a car that runs on fossil fuel.  I have a carbon footprint.  So, I want to try and be constructive.  So, here's what I would do if I were King of the World...

Give Trees A Chance:
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Trees give shade, right?  And how many trees have been displaced in the name of parking lots across this great nation? Why, there has to be millions of acres of asphalt reflecting heat back into our atmosphere.  So, no shade, hotter temps global warming, right?  Sounds logical to me.  Simple.  Like, remember when we were kids and we sucked down sugared drinks like there was no tomorrow and we never got fat?  And then they replaced sugar with high fructose corn syrup which made beverages so cheap you could drink unlimited amounts at restaurants.  The "free refill."  And then, slowly but surely, people started getting hugely fat?  Well, it's the same logic.  Cause and effect.  So change the cause.  Put the trees back.  You know how people fight for that one parking spot under the tree because they know their car will be nice and cool when they get back in it?  Yeah, kind of a duh moment, huh?
You know that Italian restaurant chain?  The one that has plants and trees all over its roofs?  Carrabbas?

I can't speak to their food; but I like their ideas.  So, clearly, you can plant trees on a roof.  Can you imagine a modern city that had all the buildings swathed in flora?  Why, it would be like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon!  Or what if we went one step further and did Hobbit style buildings?

I would happily; nay, merrily; nay, gaily shop at a supermarket that looked like this.  And what about all of the zillions of acres of roadway medians that are cleared of everything but grass?  I mean, I understand in many cases they have to, but it also seems like a lot of times they don't have to.  Is it a conspiracy conspired by the lawnmower industry?

And while we're at it, would it kill us to put in more of those "animal bridges" over and under roadways to help out our fine furred friends?  In the places they've built them, they built them and they did come.  You can watch video of it on Youtube.  And what about those really cool construction cubes you see along the highways in New Jersey of all places.  The ones that foster plant growth?  I mean, why are these not universal?  I mean this stuff is happening; but clearly not fast enough.  Why?  Plants grow pretty damn fast.

Noiseless Biodegradable Plastic

So, the U.S. government came up with Silly Putty pretty quick.  And we already had the biodegradable Sun Chips bag.  So, we can't find a way to develop a malleable product that can be formed into packaging but will also biodegrade?  And that we couldn't go back to the drawing board with the noisy bag and make it less noisy?  I simply don't believe that.  We put a man on the moon a half century ago.  Nobody's trying.  We've drunk the Kool-Aid and also swallowed the plastic container it came in.  Although, Kool-Aid still does come in a paper packet.

​Trash Volcano:

Admittedly, this idea is a bit fanciful.  But what if we could just put our trash into lava?  The lava would instantly vaporize the trash.  The trash would become part of the molten magma.  Now that's recycling!  Of course, you'd have to ship all the trash to a place that was willing to do this, so feasibility is a problem.  But what if we could drill down to the magma and...oh, never mind.  We'd find a way to screw it up.
But, anyways, I'm not the King of the World.  But I can do what I can to help.  I can plant trees. I can join Trees for A Green L.A.  I can recycle plastic, even if its just tears in the ocean.  I can let the property go fairly wild and not try to maintain a lawn. I can spread milkweed seed that I've collected and watch it grow along the roads in my neighborhood; thus, maybe helping a monarch butterfly or two. So I can do small things like that.  And maybe if we all did small things like that, we can bring the temperature down.  
Okay, I've vented.  Time to go plant a tree.