plastic

And the greatest arrogance of all: Save the planet! What? Save the planet? We haven’t learned how to care for one another, but we’re going to save the planet? Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine! The people are fucked. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great! The planet’s been here four and a half billion years! We’ve been here, what, a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand years? And we’ve only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, solar flares, sunspots, the magnetic reversal of the poles, hundreds of thousands of years of cosmic bombardment by comets, asteroids, meteors, worldwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages … and we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere – we are! We’re going away! The planet will shake us off like a bad case of fleas! The planet will be here for a long, long long time after we’re gone. The air and water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it’s true that plastic is not degradable, well, then the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new paradigm: The Earth Plus Plastic! The earth doesn’t share our prejudice about plastic. Plastic came out of the earth! The earth probably sees plastic as another one of its children! Could be the only reason it allowed us to spawn in the first place! It wanted plastic. Didn’t know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to that age-old philosophical question: Why Are We Here? Plastic.
 
– George Carlin