holy shit This is like going from "it's all our faults, we need to feel terrible" to "no, the Japanese are killing whales."Half of the great Pacific garbage patch is made up of fishing nets, by weight, according to a report published last year in Scientific Reports.
More than three quarters of the GPGP plastic mass was contained in the upper size classes (>5 cm), with a respective total contribution of 25% and 53% for macroplastics and megaplastics (Fig. 4a). Plastic types ‘H’ (hard plastics, sheets and films) and ‘N’ (nets, ropes and lines) represented respectively 47% and 52% of the total GPGP plastic mass, with most of micro-, meso- and macroplastic mass coming from type ‘H’, and megaplastic from type ‘N’. Two additional plastic types, pellets (type ‘P’) and foams (type ‘F’) were also observed in a few size classes, but their overall contribution to the GPGP plastic load was minimal.
It gets a little philosophical. I'm assuming we're all familiar with deontology and consequentialism, but I've had to adopt a deontolgical position with my own actions in climate change. Individuals are contributing very, very little to the degradation of the planet's climate (local environment being another discussion, obviously - if you litter, you're still a piece of shit), but I still want to reduce my emissions because it's the right thing to do. We're fucked if we don't get everyone on board with putting serious limits on industry, particularly the barges that ship goods across the Pacific...But yet, I'm still going to recycle and take shorter showers. I'd rather take a train than a plane. It almost certainly won't make a difference, but I'll still do it because I feel like I have to.