Could life on planet Earth get any worse?
That was the zinger that immediately popped into this reporter’s mind, as I thought about a permanently altered landscape buried in every conceivable piece of crap one might imagine. Yes, I am referring to the place we call home…..Earth.
Humans just can’t get enough of their consumptive addiction. The mantra, “Shop Till You Drop” echoes from every corner of the “United Shopping States of America”. Just take a drive to Warwick, and if you have the guts to withstand the day-long road rage, take a ride down Bald Hill Road. For miles, store after store. And how many of them are vacant that could house the thousands of Rhode Islanders that face homelessness on a regular basis?
Really.
Do we really need dozens of fast food shops offering nothing but preprocessed poison imitating food, car dealerships and mattress stores dotting the landscape? Maybe that’s why so many people are overweight. I guess they need the latest car to shop for a free range, vegan, and plant -based mattress when they leave work.
Ah yes, we care -addicted motorists set our GPS for the nearest junk food joint, car lot or local mattress sale. I really enjoy watching local television news give us the latest traffic report during the holiday shopping frenzy. Maybe we should rename black Friday, “Night of the Living Dead”.
Rhode Islanders already suffer from obesity, mega traffic jams and you guessed it, abandoned mattresses cluttering the roadways. Can you only imagine what aliens must think when they look down at us?
And, while the little green men are gazing down at Earth and the environmental chaos that engulfs it, they’re getting a firsthand peek at The Great Pacific Garbage Patch. This ocean of indestructible plastics of all kinds is actually 2 monumental nightmares. One of the loathsome
watery waste dumps is located near Japan, while the other monster lurks in the waters between Hawaii and California. Both are so large they are visible from the International Space Station.
Which shifts the discussion to what I referred to earlier, the distant cousin of Climate Change……..Space Junk. The final frontier (that sounds ominous) is littered with space junk from old satellites, some military and others communication probes. There are 34,000 identified objects orbiting our suffocating planet and more than three quarters are debris hurtling thru orbit at speed seven times faster than the speed of a bullet.
Maybe, because humans love to play the blames game, rather than taking responsibility, we can target the Industrial Revolution that helped motorize the world, feeding off petrochemicals that fueled factories creating our consumptive obsession.
With globalization and an addiction for the latest phone, car or medical advance, the Heavens have become filled with the unthinkable by- products of rampant capitalism. If you want to talk to someone across the globe, you need satellites to transmit the signal. Thousands of spy satellites crisscross the globe. The problem is many of these objects decompose crashing into other satellite’s that create more space junk, because they have outlived their use. And, some come hurtling down to Earth. What goes up must come down. In other words, if you want instant communication, streaming television and a U.S. Space Command there is an environmental price to pay. Get used to it. There is no free ride.
Earlier this year, a Florida homeowner found out firsthand the dangers of space junk. In March, a one and a half pound metal object tore into a home in Naples, Florida, nearly injuring the owner’s son, according to its owner, Alejandro Otero.
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) officials stated the object was part of some 5,800 pounds of hardware that was dumped by the International Space Station after it had new lithium ion batteries installed on it.
Local news outlets reported a searing bright flash tore through the sky back in October, engulfing a Portsmouth RI home in flames. The home was under construction. While the state fire marshal says there was no evidence of space debris in the ruins, town fire department officials say they believe the fire’s cause was a lithium battery explosion from stored power tools. Despite video footage showing the initial explosion, local officials report there was no evidence of space junk on the property.
Humankind, with its voracious appetite for the newest convenience is responsible for this latest threat to our species. Some scientist theorize that with the ever- growing amount of satellites and the millions of pieces of space debris, space explorers may not be able to travel to the
remote corners of the solar system. There is just too much garbage travelling at supersonic speeds that could interfere with safe space travel in the future.
Will humanity be defined by whether it protected our planet, our only home? Or will the human species continue to ignore sustainability, while trashing what’s left of our precious home?
Next time you look up at the sky on a starry night, ask yourself what you can do to help save our planet. As former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said years ago, “It takes a village.”
Walter Slattery is an old school tree-hugger, wanabee musician and avid music reporter. He can be reached at slatterywalter1@gmail.com