Student Congress Legislation & Evidence
Student Congress Legislation & Evidence
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- Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good
Student Congress Legislation & EvidenceStudent Congress Legislation & Evidence 1 A Resolution to Clean Ocean Plastic Pollution 2 Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good 2 Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good 3 Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good 5 Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Good 6 Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad 7 Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad 7 Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad 8 Con: Ocean Plastic Clean Up Bad 9 A Resolution to Stop Overfishing 10 Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas 11 Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas 12 Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas 13 Pro: Individual Fishing Quotas 14 Con: Individual Fishing Quotas 15 Con: Individual Fishing Quotas 16 Con: Individual Fishing Quotas 17 Con: Individual Fishing Quotas 18 A Bill to Incentivize Off Shore Wind Energy 20 Pro: Off Shore Wind 21 Pro: Off Shore Wind 22 Pro: Off Shore Wind 23 Pro: Off Shore Wind 24 Con: Off Shore Wind 24 Con: Off Shore Wind 26 Con: Off Shore Wind 27 Con: Off Shore Wind 28 A Resolution to Clean Ocean Plastic PollutionWhereas, the United States and many other nations have been consuming vast amounts of plastic; and Whereas, unbeknownst to most people huge amounts of plastic finds its way to the oceans; and Whereas, there are more than seven million tons of plastic floating around the ocean’s surface; and Whereas, plastic ocean pollution is causing great damage to ocean life of all shapes and sizes with many creatures dying; and Whereas, ocean animals, including birds that frequent the ocean surface and tiny plankton that are eaten by larger fish are starting to eat plastic; and Whereas, if fish are consuming plastic and people are eating those fish, people are starting to eat plastic and therefore face health risks including cancer; and Whereas, Robert Slat, a young engineering student has developed a test-proven device with the Ocean Clean Up Project that can clean the plastic out of the ocean for just a few million dollars. . THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED by the Student Congress Assembled that: the United States federal government should develop a system of passive ocean plastic clean up arrays as proposed by the Ocean Clean Up Project. Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up GoodOur obsession with plastic produces millions of tons of trash to dump into the oceans. These plastics break down but do not biodegrade. We are poisoning our oceans with a galaxy of trash islands that kill fish, coral and threaten the health of the oceans themselves. Weishar, news and political reporter and founder of Quiet Mike, 2014 “The Ocean Size Problem of Ocean Pollution”, Quiet Mike, http://quietmike.org/2014/04/07/ocean-size-problem-ocean-pollution/ Our oceans cover approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface and contains 97% of the Earth’s water. With those kind of numbers, you’d think it would be hard for us humans to pose a threat to it. Well, humans are capable of anything when we put our destructive minds to it. While the media has under reported the threat of climate change, it has completely ignored the state of our oceans. From oil spills to plastic bags to random sea junk, our oceans may soon resemble some of our dead lakes. The situation is more desperate than you think. Most people think oil spills do the most harm to our waters. It certainly does damage to be sure, however plastic is far worse than oil. There is currently seven million tonnes of plastic floating around in our oceans. Your may have heard of the Pacific and Atlantic garbage patches. They are not large trash islands in the middle of the ocean as some believe. They are more like galaxies of garbage, populated by millions of smaller trash islands that may be hidden underwater or spread out over many miles. These garbage patches are made up of mostly plastic. Unfortunately, plastic breaks down into smaller particles (or micro-plastics) and is then consumed by marine life. This is what makes plastic so bad and difficult to clean up. A lot of it can’t be seen, and therefore the size of these patches are almost impossible to estimate. I’ve heard they are as little as the size of Texas (if you can call that small) or as big as the continental United States. I imagine the truth lies somewhere in between. Plastic uses up only 8% of the world’s oil supply, but we use it now more than ever. In fact, we’ve produced more plastic in the last ten years than the previous hundred years combined. Our addiction to plastic isn’t going away anytime soon and because plastic is not biodegradable, it is not going away either. According to Captain Paul Watson, the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, if we don’t change our ways, all the world’s fisheries will collapse by 2048. He also believes that all our coral reefs may be gone by as early as 2025. Pretty scary. Plastics floating in the oceans provide a unique problem since they break down into tiny pieces but take hundreds of years to disappear. Cho, staff blogger for the Earth Institute, 2011 (Renee, “Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup”, Earth Institute, 1-26, http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/01/26/our-oceans-a-plastic-soup/) The lightness and durability that make plastic such a useful and versatile material for manufacturers also make it a long-term problem for the environment. Trash Travels estimates that plastic bags can take 20 years to decompose, plastic bottles up to 450 years, and fishing line, 600 years; but in fact, no one really knows how long plastics will remain in the ocean. With exposure to UV rays and the ocean environment, plastic breaks down into smaller and smaller fragments. The majority of the plastic found in the ocean are tiny pieces less than 1 cm. in size, with the mass of 1/10 of a paper clip. Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up GoodDespite the huge amount of trash involved, most pieces of plastic concentrate in gyres or giant circuits located in each of the earth’s oceans. Surfrider Foundation & UCLA School of Law’s Environmental Law Clinic, 2013 (“Federal Actions to Address Plastic Marine Pollution, http://law.ucla.edu/~/media/Files/UCLA/Law/Pages/Publications/CEN_EMM_PUB%20Surfrider%20UCLA%20-%20Plastics%20Solutions.ashx) Marine litter tends to accumulate in a limited number of sub-tropical convergence zones known as gyres or garbage patches. Currently, there are five gyres: North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic, and Indian Ocean. Studies have shown that marine litter deposited in coastal areas tends to accumulate in the gyres within two years of entering the ocean. The litter remains cycling within these gyres for many years, with more than 200,000 pieces of plastic per square kilometer in some areas. The sizes of the gyres are difficult to determine because they are constantly expanding and moving, but the gyres are estimated to contain 100 million tons of marine litter. Ocean debris effects marine life by trapping, choking or poisoning animals that it comes in contact with. Plastics kill millions of animals each year and could destroy entire species. Slat et al, founder and lead designer The Ocean Cleanup Project, 2014 (Boyan, “A Feasibility Study”, http://www.theoceancleanup.com/fileadmin/media-archive/theoceancleanup/press/downloads/TOC_Feasibility_study_lowres.pdf) Every year we produce about 300 million tons of plastic, a portion of which enters and accumulates in the oceans. Due to large offshore currents, plastic concentrates in vast areas called gyres, of which the Great Pacific Garbage Patch between Hawaii and California is the best known example. The damage to sea life is staggering: at least one million seabirds, and hundreds of thousands of marine mammals die each year due to the pollution. Even worse, the survival of many species, like the Hawaiian Monk Seal and Loggerhead Turtle, is directly jeopardized by plastic debris.
Pro: Ocean Plastic Clean Up GoodThis is not just a problem for species living in the deep ocean. Plastic debris introduces cancerous chemicals into the food chain which affect every species including humans. Cho, staff blogger for the Earth Institute, 2011 (Renee, “Our Oceans: A Plastic Soup”, Earth Institute, 1-26, http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2011/01/26/our-oceans-a-plastic-soup/) A recent study found that plastics take up and accumulate persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as carcinogenic and endocrine-disrupting polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and organochlorine pesticides such as DDD, a derivative of DDT. Over 50 percent of the plastic samples studied contained PCBs, and over 75 percent contained PAHs. According to Moore, plastic debris can attract and concentrate POPs up to a million times their levels in the surrounding seawater, and when consumed by marine animals, the POPs endanger both the creatures that ingest them and humans higher up on the food chain, especially infants. Moore has said, “No fish monger on Earth can sell you a certified organic wild-caught fish.” The Ocean Cleanup Array would cost only 2 million dollars and prevent the buildup of plastics in our oceans. Business Week, 2014 (Caroline Winter, “This 19-Year-Old Is Ready to Build an Ocean Cleanup Machine”, http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-06-10/this-19-year-old-is-ready-to-build-an-ocean-cleanup-machine The world’s oceans contain millions of tons of trash, much of it collected into vast gyres of plastic and debris. Even if humanity stopped putting garbage in the water today, researchers project that these garbage patches would continue growing for hundreds of years. One such trash vortex, known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, already spans hundreds of miles. How do we get all that garbage out? Boyan Slat, a 19-year-old Dutch aeronautical engineering student, is raising $2 million to build an ocean cleanup contraption he designed to passively funnel garbage to specific collection points. Working with a team of over 100 people, he recently released a 528-page feasibility study (PDF) detailing how the complex technology works and grappling with questions of legality, costs, environmental impact, and potential pitfalls. Slat’s plan, expressed simply, is to deploy several V-shaped floating barriers that would be moored to the seabed and placed in the path of major ocean currents. The 30-mile-long arms of the V are designed to catch buoyant garbage and trash floating three meters below the surface while allowing sea life to pass underneath. “Because no nets would be used, a passive cleanup may well be harmless to the marine ecosystem,” he writes in the feasibly study. Over time, the trash would flow deeper into the V , from which it would then be extracted. The report estimates that the plastic collection rate would total 65 cubic meters per day and that the trash would have to be picked up by ship every 45 days. Slat hopes to offset costs by recycling the collected plastic for other uses. Directory: wp-content -> uploads -> 2013 2013 -> International post doctoral research fellowship programme final report title of the research 2013 -> Seals Family History 1565 to 2004 2013 -> Rao bulletin 15 July 2013 html edition this bulletin contains the following articles 2013 -> R institute of technology school of foreign languages 2013 -> Provisional Programme – subject to change thursday 10th april 2013 -> June, 2013 National hiv testing Day Month Men’s Health Week Hurricane Safety Month 2013 -> In memory of the residents of the Parish Chesham Bois that served their country during wwii 2013 -> Federal contract awards in georgia april 2013 Download 197.98 Kb. Share with your friends:
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