As people in Europe consider the question, take a moment to consider this graphic from the Information is Beautiful Blog
I’ll leave it at that for now. Hope all of you stuck out there get back home safe, sound and happy in the knowledge that somehow you’ve contributed to making our planet more habitable. The coming generations shall be grateful.
I caught the segment above on an Australian current affairs program called Hungry Beast about a month ago, and it’s stuck with me since. It features the work of photographer Chris Jordan, photographs he took at the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The patch, a swirling mass of debris in the Pacific, is the size of Queensland (but to internationalise things it has also been said to be double the size of Texas). The pictures are the undisturbed remains of baby albatrosses, their stomachs bursting with bright plastic junk from the patch. Everyday we’re confronted with stories and facts about our impacts on the environment, and what I found so striking about this is there’s no message being rammed down our throats – the images do the talking.