Oceans in Crisis - Ocean Worlds: The Story of Seas on Earth and Other Planets - page 173

plastics pollution. Current attempts at control are largely ineffective.
There has been an international ban on the disposal of plastic waste
by ships into the sea for decades—signed by 134 nations. Since then,
the recorded levels of microplastic debris have risen, not fallen. Not
all ships comply with international regulations, and in any event
much of the plastic is washed in from the land (for which no interna-
tional regulations are in place).
How bad can the problem get? The use of plastics is soaring. With
business as usual, the amount of plastic produced by the world by the
middle of this century will reach an estimated 33 billion tonnes. 100
That would be enough to wrap the whole Earth, land and sea, in cling-
film more than five times over. It will likely feel like that, too, unless
either levels of production fall dramatically or global levels of recy-
cling climb even more strikingly from their current 10 per cent or so.
The plastic planet is growing ever more a reality. The plastic oceans
somehow have an added poignancy.
Warming
A trawled sea floor can recover if left alone for a while. Fish popula-
tions can bounce back (although perhaps into another pattern), given
enough respite. The world's plastic layer can gradually degrade into
harmless and unrecognizable dross, or be buried by marine muds.
However, some of the threats to the sea—although seemingly invis-
ible or imperceptible—can alter the Earth's seascapes far more pro-
foundly, and forever. Or, at least, forever as regards the prospects of
recovery of the oceans for human use and enjoyment: for 10,000
human generations, say.
Three major threats are directly tied to humanity's current addic-
tion to carbon-based fuels: warming, acidification, and oxygen depri-
vation. It is still astonishing to think that altering the proportion of
what is after all a trace gas—carbon dioxide only comprises a little