DL Opinion columns

Save our planet: No last straw – by Deborah Levine 

originally published in The Chattanooga Times Free Press

I had a meltdown over the Trump administration’s revoking the 2009 “endangerment finding” that says climate change is a danger to public health. Trump is grasping at straws claiming that this would save Americans trillions of dollars. But research by organizations such as Nature Climate Change shows that climate risks, especially flooding, could wipe out almost $1.5 trillion in US home values by 2055. My climate activism DNA was activated big time when Trump declared climate change a ‘scam’. Even his small actions like promoting plastic straws over paper ones got me going. Dumping that crap into creeks, landfills and oceans was poison to this Bermuda island girl. 

I started writing articles about the environment years ago, focusing on the ocean and the plastic dumped in it. My Aunt Polly, then 93 years old, explained how such activism ran through our family. Polly and her husband Erwin Strasmich left their Bermuda home and bought a home near Erwin’s cousin Irving Stowe in Providence, Rhode Island. But soon, the Stowes moved on and created planet-saving history.

Concerned about our growing nuclear arsenal and wanting to protect their son from being recruited to fight in the Vietnam War, Irving and his wife Dorothy emigrated from America and ended up in Vancouver, Canada. That’s where they established Greenpeace. By the time I got to talk with Dorothy, she was 87 years old and Irving had already passed away. But Dorothy’s stories remained priceless. I was honored to hear how they funded Greenpeace in the early days, “We started fundraising by selling Greenpeace buttons for $2.00 on a street corner.” Dorothy’s favorite memory was a Greenpeace Benefit Concert featuring Joni Mitchell, Phil Oaks, and James Taylor. They raised $18,000 to charter a boat (the Esperanza) to sail in protest of a nearby U.S test site for atomic bombs. 

The Stowes would be thrilled that Greenpeace has expanded to international headquarters in Amsterdam and 27 national and regional offices around the world. Its mission has broadened to use peaceful actions that expose global environmental problems, and to force solutions for a green and peaceful future. 

We’re all grateful for Greenpeace’s work, but it has special meaning for me. It turns out that Greenpeace and Bermuda have held conversations about collaborating. Bermuda is in the Sargasso Sea, the only ‘sea’ that is defined by cross currents rather than land. Maybe you’ve never heard of the Sargasso Sea. But I bet you’ve heard of this part of its 1.5 trillion square miles: The Bermuda Triangle. It’s known for mysteriously disappearing ships and planes, but it’s also an amazing ecosystem of whales, dolphins, eels, turtles, coral, and organisms living in its sargassum/seaweed. 

Despite efforts to control dumping of plastic into oceans, Greenpeace researchers were shocked to discover a higher presence of microplastic in Bermuda’s area than those found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The entire ecosystem is threatened with the ‘Triple Threat’ as outlined by he Ocean Acidification International Coordination Center (OA-ICC): oxygen loss, extreme heat, and acidification. This could lead to intense climate changes, evolving into a global situation. I hope that Greenpeace and Bermuda successfully collaborate, providing a model for intervention. 

Bermudians are well aware that they’re the center of much climate change attention. The Bermuda Community Climate Program (BCCP) is launching a “Plastics Control Bill” that will regulate single-use plastics. It will regulate the import, sale, and use of single-use plastics with a ban on items like plastic straws. That’s how we can shape a better future for the planet and ourselves. So ditch the ‘scam’ lies of certain politicians… and don’t buy plastic straws. 

Editor-in-Chief
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