21st
Infinity is just a concept
From a piece in the New York Times on the staggering amount of garbage in the world’s oceans:
“Trash is clogging the arteries of the planet,” [said Sylvia Earle, former chief scientist of the N.O.A.A.]. “We’re beginning to wake up to the fact that the planet is not infinitely resilient.” For ages humanity saw in the ocean a sublime grandeur suggestive of eternity. No longer. Surveying the debris on remote beaches like Gore Point, we see that the ocean is more finite than we’d thought. Now it is the sublime grandeur of our civilization but also of our waste that inspires awe.
Funny how essentially every environmental problem humanity has ever faced (read: caused) — deforestation, endangered species, waterway contamination, global warming, etc. — was a result of treating some aspect of the environment as infinite until discovering that, in fact, it wasn’t.
Makes me wonder,
- How long until we finally admit that this is not a good assumption?
- How many other environmental systems, similarly treated, are well on their way to running-out or filling-up?
