Poisoning our world

1. What does nature mean to you?
2. What questions do you have about connections between nature and your community, especially with regard to the state of coastal and marine ecosystems?
3. How would you use the findings of the National Nature Assessment? What kinds of products would be useful?
4. How should the Assessment team engage the public as the National Nature Assessment is developed?

Does it really matter what nature means to me? Why would anyone care that I think nature is the very basis of our humanity and that no matter how we try to progress away from the base, we always lose to its wrath, reacting to our attempt at slowly try to kill the only world we know we can exist and can live in?  The little people from their own little worlds are somewhat isolated from the rest of the powerful world seeking world dominance and therefore our voices are low and do not resonate across the world where all the most dangerous attempts at destroying the earth take place.

Take, for instance, the U.S. military using small islands to practice with their deadly arsenals and Japan getting ready to dump nuclear waste into the Pacific Ocean—one of the fabrics of our soul and existence—so it can create more of the lucrative poisonous energy sources for its country.

The U.S. military claims no knowledge of Japan’s plan, but Japan, I am most certain, is aware that there is military buildup in the Marianas. But does either one of them care that the two activities may not mesh well and there is no certainty but the death of ocean life that thrives in our little orbits? The United Nations and World Health Organization are of no help either as neither one of them is actively monitoring the level of nuclear waste proliferation. I will say, with the same certainty, that they do monitor nuclear weaponry output, especially in regions they consider unfriendly to them while treading most carefully to adhere to their international agreements lest they may find themselves adversaries.

Oh, there are reports galore, but all those reports have not acted as catalysts to encourage a cohesive effort to ease climate change and further poisoning of the earth.

So, the next question that asks, what questions might I have about connections between nature and your community, especially with regard to the state coastal and marine ecosystem? My short answer to that is don’t waste my time and yours.  If world leaders do not come together and address these issues uniformly and collaboratively, there is nothing that little people like us can say that will make a difference.  We don’t have the expertise or the resources, and we heavily rely on expert opinions paid for by the Big Brothers of the world and we find them to be either watered down or not completely transparent.  Take, for instance, Japan.  It states in its laid-out plans to dump so many gallons of treated nuclear wastewater containing tritium into the Pacific Ocean, but pay careful attention to what Japan isn’t stating—the volume of tritium in each gallon is absent.  Note, too, that their safety declaration is based on research in a lab, which by its own restrictions cannot be equated to what will happen in open water with varying existing elements, some known, and some unknown.

Juanita M. Mendiola

Tinian