Does Spam belong at the bottom of the sea?
Dear Dale:
I saw this show about pollution and it’s terrible. There’s even a can of Spam at the bottom of the ocean. How can we clean it up?
Signed,
Worried about the fish
Dear WATF:
Are you kidding? That’s exactly where it belongs: at the bottom of the sea. Because that stuff is disgusting. I say we gather up all the Spam in the world, load it onto a ship, sail out to the deepest part of the ocean and heave-ho.
But you make a good point: we humans are changing this world and changing it forever and I say, thank God for that.
Because nature is far too predictable. When’s the last time you saw a six-foot cockroach, a talking octopus or a chick with three tits? All those things comic books promised us so long ago. A hundred years now and we’re still waiting.
(Especially for the chick with three tits.)
Besides, as any kid unfortunate enough to go to a real school knows, life is ever-evolving. One tiny mutation at a time.
But that’s just too damn slow. I can’t wait for natural selection to boost breast size and neither can you. We’ll both be long dead by the time that first chick is born with an extra boob. So naturally we have to speed things up a bit.
And that’s exactly what we’re doing with our plastic and PCBs: speeding up the process of evolution. Radioactive insects, lobsters with metal claws and tigers that can fly… we’re just making nature more interesting. There will always be life on this planet. It just won’t include us. And given the way I feel Monday morning after a hard weekend’s drinking, maybe that’s just as well.
(Just give me one night with a triple-titter first.)
So next time you’re out fishing, toss your trash overboard. You’ll be glad you did. Because a new nature, terrible maybe, alien for sure, but beautiful in its own way, is waiting to be born and we, we are its midwife. Hope this helps.
Sincerely,
Dale
Hi. If you’ve made it this far, you probably liked the story. So why not check out some others at my Medium page? https://medium.com/dear-dale
