So says Kate Marvel, a climate scientist and rather fine writer from NASA. Here she’s writing on the On Being website about ocean warming. It’s a dark tale. But then, it’s not a story, it’s what is happening.
She writes:
“I am not afraid of the ocean, although I should be. On hot summer weekends I take my son to the beach. He toddles toward the water, laughs at the lazy waves splashing his fat baby legs. I follow behind, turn him back when the water reaches his naked belly. He is too young to know the sea gets deeper, that eventually it rises above your head and you must swim so as not to drown. I am prepared for nightmares as he grows and learns about the vastness of the ocean and the monsters real and imagined that swim there. He will soon know that evil things lurk in the deep. …”
And the moral of the story? Well, Marvel says that we put those evil things there; all of us, and we’re still at it. And she’s not talking about plastics …