A short-sighted world...

There's a line of trash bigger than the state of Texas, floating it's way to the islands of Hawaii.  Residual from the humungous earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan earlier this year.  It's not rushing towards the U.S. at break-neck speed - no it's flowing with the currents and ships that travel the Pacific Ocean have seen it and reported on it's size.  Some of those ships have picked up bits and pieces to figure out where it came from, but there has been no reported effort from the shipping magnates to help clean up the ocean they use as a traffic way, nor from the fishing consortiums who fish in those  parts of the ocean to help clean up the waters to protect the ecosystem they depend on.

This is an outrage.  This ocean belongs to the inhabitants of this planet.  We are ALL responsible for the well-being of those waters.  Those who use those waters for transportation, for fishing, for recreation, all have a responsibility for the health of those waters and when an event such as the Fukushima earthquake and tsunami occur, it is incumbent on all of us as stewards of this planet upon which we live, to clean up the mess.  Even if it doesn't bring us any profit, it is our responsibility.  Our short-sighted, give me a profit, or I won't help mentality has killed the US economy, the European economy, and may even kill off the Chinese economy as they have taken cues from the western world.

We, as a people need to wake up and take some responsibility for the planet we inhabit or there will soon be no inhabitable space left for us here.  The stuff recovered from the Fukushima mess should be able to be recycled for the most part, so recovery by ships that travel through the area, would not be so much of a hardship.  Is there not room in the holds of those ships for picking up some of this debris?  Even if each ship picked up a little as it passed by, and deposited what it picked up at the next port, that would be a start.

We must be good stewards of the land and of the sea or we as a people and as a planet will cease to be livable.