Canadian Couple Celebrate with a Kiss Over a Tamed, Captive Lion They Murdered

“…Despite their grim pose, the couple - who run a taxidermy business - describe themselves as ‘passionate conservationists,’ the Mirror reports…

“When asked about the horrifying snaps, Mr Carter, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, said: ‘We aren’t interested in commenting on that at all. It’s too political.’

“Experts say that the tragic lion was bred in captivity purely to be hunted by bloodthirsty tourists. Linda Park, boss of Voice 4 Lions in South Africa, insists the white lion pictured was ‘definitely captive.’

“And Eduardo Goncalves of the Campaign to Ban Trophy Hunting adds: ‘It looks as though this lion was a tame animal killed in an enclosure, bred for the sole purpose of being the subject of a smug selfie. This couple should be utterly ashamed of themselves, not showing off and snogging for the cameras.’

“Legelela offers giraffe hunts for £2,400, zebra from £2,000, with prices for leopard, rhino, lion and elephant hunts available ‘on request.’

“The firm was banned from exhibiting at the Great British Shooting Show in Birmingham next year after public outcry. Legelela Safaris declined to comment…” 

For the entire article, click here.

“It was an easy and close shot,” Mr Harlan told the Pakistani press. “I am pleased to take this trophy”

“An American trophy hunter is receiving heat for a recent expedition to Pakistan’s northern Himalayan region of Gilgit-Baltistan. Bryan Kinsel Harlan, from Texas, reportedly paid $110,000 to hunt and kill a rare mountain goat. In the photo below, he proudly kneels beside the kill.

“Harlan is the third American to travel to Pakistan and kill a markhor goat. The wild animal is considered to be endangered. In 2011, there were only about 2,500 markhor goats in the region. Over the past several years, the population has dwindled immensely, largely due to deforestation, military activities, local poaching, and unregulated trophy hunting.

“The image prompted outrage on social media. For the most part, people are angered by the lack of laws banning or regulating hunting. Despite the fierce backlash, Harlan remains proud of his adventure…

“He called Pakistan a safe destination for tourists and recommended it to American travelers. ‘This is a perfect example of hunters and villagers coming together for a common goal of game conservation,’ said the hunter.

“To prevent the markhor goat from going extinct, Pakistan has allocated five sanctuaries in India for the rare mountain goats to roam freely and breed. Authorities in the country also allow hunters — like Mr. Harlan — who have paid large amounts of money, to hunt markhor goats in the region. They claim the effort will protect the endangered species from potential extinction.”

The Independent reports that about 80 percent of the profits from trophy hunters are reportedly given to “isolated residents” who live in the goats’ habitat. The other 20 percent is allocated to the government wildlife agencies.

An Injustice That Few People Care About: The Adjunct Underclass

“Adjunct professors are the minimum-wage temp workers of academia. Underpaid, overworked, with no benefits and no job security, their numbers have ballooned in recent decades. They are part of what Herb Childress calls ‘hope labor,’ in his new book, The Adjunct Underclass. Childress quotes researchers who define hope labor as ‘un- or under-compensated work carried out in the present, often for experience or exposure, in the hope that future employment opportunities may follow.’ For most adjuncts, that hope comes to nothing.

“Childress compares the catastrophe of gig economy college teaching to gig-based employment in other industries like medicine or taxis. He argues that adjunct teachers are the Uber drivers of academia. ‘College teaching has become primarily a pickup job … like running chores for TaskRabbit,’ he writes, reporting that 25 percent of adjuncts depend on some form of public assistance. His book brings to mind the nearly starving, peripatetic scholars, wandering from one university to another, teaching and begging, in medieval Europe.

“The Adjunct Underclass summarizes The Pittsburgh Post Gazette’s account of the death of Margaret Mary Vojtko, who died at the age of eighty-three from cancer she could not afford to treat. She died at her home, for which she could not afford electricity. She had taught French at Duquesne University for twenty-five years, never making more than twenty-thousand dollars a year for her six or more courses and never receiving health benefits or retirement contributions.

The stories you care about, right at your fingertipsBottom of Form

“Childress discusses homeless adjunct professors who sleep in their cars. He cites the San Francisco Chronicle and the example of English professor Ellen Tara James Penny. While teaching four courses per semester at San Jose University in Fall 2017, Penny ‘often drives to a parking lot to grade papers. When it’s dark, she’ll use a headlamp from Home Depot, so she can continue her work. At night she’ll re-park in a residential neighborhood and sleep in her 2004 Volvo. She keeps the car neat to avoid suspicion.’...

“Many adjuncts toil at multiple campuses in a semester, commuting hundreds of miles each day, working essentially nonstop except for sleep, as they teach, grade papers and answer multitudinous student emails. ‘The figure of 45 contract hours is a fiction that conceals 350 hours of work, maybe 400 and maybe more,’ Childress writes. ‘A $3,600 pretax stipend with no benefits like healthcare or retirement contributions, spread over 400 hours of work, comes to $9 per hour.’

“As a result, adjuncts are organizing. This spring, adjunct professors at several Minnesota colleges began agitating for unions, as reported by the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Minnesota’s first adjunct union, at Hamline University, has pursued negotiations for a second contract since July 2018. Meanwhile in January, New York City-based Mercy College adjunct teachers started a drive to join the Service Employees International Union (SEIU). Recently, Fordham University adjuncts ratified their first contract, which mandates substantial pay increases. ‘Nationally about seventy new faculty bargaining units — all but one for nontenure faculty — have sprung up on private campuses since 2012,’ according to the Star Tribune.

“By 2016, gig faculty labor at more than 60 schools was organized by SEIU. In March 2018, ‘University of South Florida adjuncts voted to form a union…. On April 13 adjunct faculty at the University of Chicago ratified their first union contract … adjuncts at Loyola University in Chicago,’ also reached an agreement, according to the Johns Hopkins notice. And Labor Notes recently reported that this past April, international student workers were key to the success of the University of Illinois at Chicago graduate employees strike. Unionization is sweeping the gig faculty labor force, despite fierce management opposition that does not want to cede money or power to what Childress calls ‘the scavengers, the bottom feeders, paid by the course as the need arises.’

“Overworked and impermanent, no matter how excellent their teaching skills, adjuncts lack opportunities to form the sort of lasting mentoring relationships with students that are associated with tenured faculty. So, students suffer. And these students are predominately low-income at community colleges, which employ more adjuncts than four-year schools — at some, 90 percent of their faculty. Adjuncts, Childress writes, ‘are camouflaged to look exactly like their [tenure track] counterparts,’ so students and parents don’t know the difference. This affects lots of students, because there are so many adjuncts. ‘More than one million people are now working as contingent faculty [in the U.S.] … providing a cheap labor source, even while students’ tuition has skyrocketed,’ according to a congressional Democratic staffer quoted by Childress.

“This faculty precariat constitutes almost three-quarters of community college teachers who instruct, in turn, 40 percent of all undergraduates. ‘If community colleges prepare students to mirror their faculty’s lives as isolated individuals, scratching out a tenuous survival,’ Childress writes, ‘the state [universities] also prepare students to mirror their own faculty’s lives, with secure enough jobs that provide for the mortgage, the gold clubs and the new SUV every few years.’ Affluent liberal arts colleges have far fewer adjuncts, while Ivies and other elite universities are certainly not training their students for a precarious survival.

“Stanford education professor David Labaree, quoted by Childress, says ‘stratification is at the heart of American education. It’s the price we pay for the system’s broad accessibility.’ Just as 100 million economically precarious Americans cling to the bottom rungs of the U.S. economy, so too in U.S. education, precarious gig faculty labor teaches those low-income students who can scrape together community college tuition. Clearly community college students have the greatest need for close mentoring relationships with their professors, but, as Childress observes, they are the least likely to get it, since more of their professors are adjuncts. Ironically, it is students at elite colleges, among the least needy, who get the most professorial attention.

“Meanwhile, and not coincidentally, this devaluation of teaching parallels the profession’s feminization. Many adjuncts are women. Childress cites ‘rising discrimination against occupations after the entry of women.’ This has happened in medicine, education, law and veterinary practice. Research ‘shows college grads entering male-dominated fields at starting salaries far greater than those of college grads entering female-dominated field.’ Women’s work is not considered important. This explains why when women enter an occupation, the pay and the standing decline.

“The public-school model provides the best approach. Early on public education became feminized, thus devalued and underpaid. But it unionized completely. Adjuncts in higher ed should do the same, because barring the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, no help other than unions awaits them.

“The Adjunct Underclass lists five ways that universities have whittled away teacher pay: fewer people, longer hours; workers redefined as independent contractors; de-bundled professional activities and the creation of paraprofessionals; outsourced non-core functions; replacement of humans and space with technology. And of course, the glut of Ph.D.-credentialed teachers puts downward pressure on pay.

“Yet colleges and universities still crank out Ph.D.s, tens of thousands ever year. And every year many, many of those people don’t get jobs. They join a pool of surplus educational labor that constantly swells: There are more unemployed adjuncts every year, their increasing numbers putting downward pressure on pay.

“Years of study, papers, exams, the dissertation, followed by ferocious competition for academic employment scraps: It’s high time this sector of the work-force unionized widely, got some benefits for its precarious piece-work and recognized that tenure is, for most, an impossible and destructive dream.”

Eve Ottenberg is a journalist who has reviewed books for The New York Times Book Review, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker‘s “Briefly Noted” section, USA Today, and many other newspapers and magazines. She is also a novelist. Two of her novels, Dead in Iraq and The Walkout, deal explicitly with recent political issues. Two others, Sojourn at Dusk and Dark Is the Night focus on 1960s political activism.

Posted in Truthout.org.  

Commentary Redux:

It is well known that adjunct faculty work without job security, without the benefit of healthcare, and without an ethical living wage. Most universities’ priorities are their development of building projects and technology, renovation of infrastructure, management of revenues and investments and reducing operating costs, administrative/bureaucratic positions and salaries, and athletic programs and their resources…  

There is no equity for adjunct instructors. Courses staffed with contingent adjunct faculty cost the same student tuition and provide the same credits staffed by tenured full-time faculty. Adjunct faculty grade compositions and tests, write recommendations and advise students, devise and develop classes, create lesson plans and course materials and improve curricula, among other unpaid responsibilities. 

There are no due process protections for adjunct faculty. There is no equal pay for equal work. There is no professional advancement. There is no equity in the lack of health insurance and retirement benefits available for adjunct faculty. There is little to no inclusion in the way higher education’s formal decision-making procedures and structures are made. Indeed, adjunct faculty are simply part-time contractors, “lecturers,” or non-essential “marginalized” hires who are disenfranchised from high-level governance and required to carry out most of the responsibilities of the full-time faculty (and sometimes at multiple institutions), but for less than one-fifth of the salary of the full-time faculty and without meaningful job security from one semester to another…

Equally demoralizing is that most full-time faculty do not sympathize with the adjunct faculty’s plight. Adjunct faculty are generally without help in their hardship… What is more, most tenured faculty are unconcerned about the slow moral dissolution of higher education and the threats to their own security, even though these debasing administrative trends and practices persist. 

Not surprisingly, at Benedictine University where there is declining student enrollment but increasing student tuition ($33,900 a year (2017)—though only a fraction of this amount pays for college adjunct instruction), full-time tenured faculty are given priority for available classes each semester; thus, an adjunct faculty member’s originally-designed course will be dropped from the core curriculum, no matter how competent and dedicated the adjunct instructor is and respected by students.

Nevertheless, if the reduction of courses taught by adjunct faculty is one of Benedictine University’s severe budgetary constraints, “when contingent appointments are used, they should include job security and due process protections. Contingent faculty appointments, like all faculty appointments, should include: the full range of faculty responsibilities (teaching, scholarship, service); comparable compensation for comparable work; assurance of continuing employment after a reasonable opportunity for successive reviews; inclusion in institutional governance structures; and appointment and review processes that involve faculty peers and follow accepted academic due process…" (Background Facts on Contingent Faculty).

Indeed, “[f]or the [Catholic] Church, there is no distinction between defending human life and promoting the dignity of the human person. Pope Benedict XVI writes in Caritas in Veritate [Charity in Truth] that ‘The Church forcefully maintains this link between life ethics and social ethics, fully aware that a society lacks solid foundations when, on the one hand, it asserts values such as the dignity of the person, justice and peace, but then, on the other hand, radically acts to the contrary by allowing or tolerating a variety of ways in which human life is devalued and violated, especially where it is weak or marginalized’” (no. 15) (Human Life and Dignity).  

Surely, flagrant indifference to the mental and physical well-being of adjunct faculty is incompatible with the adage “cura personalis” (care for the entire person). What remains to be seen at universities like Benedictine and across the nation is the rejoinder to an essential ethical question: “To what extent can universities be considered [moral and just] while engaging in practices or ideologies that run contrary to [their Mission, Vision, and Commitment Statements]? ...Catholic universities have to decide whether or not running a [consumerist/capitalist academic structure] that utilizes [and exploits their core adjunct faculty]… fundamentally contradicts Catholic teaching [and its ideals]. Adjunct pay, [their lack of benefits and precarious job security… are] not just a [Benedictine] issue — it is an industry wide issue...” (“The Fordham Ram Unfair Adjunct Wages Go Against Jesuit Values”).

-Glen Brown

Adjunct Faculty Instructor

For the entire article, The Continuing Demoralization of University and College Adjunct Faculty, click here. 

A Response to Crain’s Forum on Public Pensions: “For more than a century, Illinois politicians have kicked the can” by Glen Brown

We are tired of the ill-advised forums, half-baked letters and biased editorials regarding so-called pension reform, and we are tired of the media’s omission of the most significant facts about public pension debt and anyone who talks or writes about “amending the Pension Protection Clause,” “restructuring pension debt in Bankruptcy,” or spending money on pensions overtakes spending on children’s education, public safety and human services because of failed pension reform.

Most Illinois politicians and businesses like Crain’s do not care whether teachers and other public employees have contributed responsibly to their pension funds or that teachers will receive [little to] no Social Security when they retire. They do not care whether retired teachers’ and other public employees’ defined-benefit pension plans are a fundamental source of economic stimulus to communities in Illinois and the only retirement income for hundreds of thousands of people.

They do not care that the State of Illinois has not consistently paid its full constitutional and obligatory contributions to the public pension systems throughout the decades; thus, the unfunded liability (the debt service owed) has increased to approximately 80% of the pension payments needed today. Furthermore, the money that should have gone to the public pensions was diverted to other operating expenses and special interests’ groups. 

An even more blatant irresponsibility is that the State of Illinois saved billions of dollars, for instance, by not paying what actuaries have calculated the Teachers’ Retirement System should have received throughout the years: money that was earmarked as deferred-earned income for teachers in Illinois. This continuous theft and deceit enabled the State of Illinois to provide services for its citizenry without raising taxes.

It is obvious Illinois politicians do not possess the resolve to take on an inadequate fiscal system that fails to generate enough revenue growth to properly maintain state services and pay state expenditures for health and social services, education, government, transportation, capital outlays, public protection and justice; nor do they possess the resolve to take on a re-amortization of the unfunded liability.

Be that as it may, what should Illinois politicians do? 1) Stop favoring corporate interests rather than the interests of the citizenry. 2) Transform the state’s failing revenue system and unfunded pension liability. 3) Defend the Illinois and U.S. Constitutions. 4) Tell the truth.

-Glen Brown

For an important article regarding reforming the state's revenue system and unfunded pension liability, click here.  

For important articles on why bankruptcy is a bad idea, click here and click here.  

For the Crain’s forum, click here. 

An economic system that serves everyone and the planet is necessary for our survival by David Korten

We’re running out of time. There’s spreading awareness of the institutional failure that is driving humans toward self-extinction, and related calls for a deep transformation of our economy. This is happening in every quarter, from college campuses to the Vatican to the U.S. presidential debates. Everywhere we hear calls for an economy that serves the well-being of people and Earth. Pope Francis has spoken of the social and environmental failures of an economy devoted to the idolatry of money. Workers and their unions are joining in with the wrenching observation that “There are no good jobs on a dead planet.” There is a related rising awareness of the need for a serious update to how we study and think about economics and prepare our future leaders. With few exceptions, economics, as it’s taught in universities, relies on the same badly flawed theories and ethical principles that bear major responsibility for the unfolding crisis. It values life only for its market price; uses GDP growth as the defining measure of economic performance; assures students that maximizing personal financial return benefits society; recommends policies that prioritize corporate profits over human and planetary well-being, and ignores the natural limits of a finite planet. Here are eight guiding principles for a reformed economic theory to guide our path to a new economy for the 21st century. Principle 1: Evaluate the economy’s performance by indicators of the well-being of people and planet; not the growth of GDP. Growing GDP serves well if our goal is only to increase the financial assets of the rich so they can claim an ever-growing share of the remaining real wealth of a dying Earth. If our priority is to meet the essential needs for food, water, shelter, and other basics for all the world’s people, then we must measure for those results so that we can get the outcomes we really want. Principle 2: Seek only that which benefits life; not that which harms life. We should seek to eliminate war, financial speculation, consumption of harmful or unnecessary products, and industrial agriculture that pollutes the soil, air, and water and produces food of questionable nutritional value. We can eliminate most driving by designing infrastructure to support people living close to where they work, shop, and play. We can eliminate most global movement of people and goods by keeping production and consumption local, using recycled materials, and substituting electronic communication for global business travel. The labor and resources thus freed up can be redirected to raising and educating our children, caring for the elderly, restoring the health and vitality of Earth’s regenerative systems, rebuilding the social infrastructure of community, and rebuilding physical infrastructure in ways that reduce dependence on fossil fuels and simultaneously strengthen our beneficial connections with one another and nature. Principle 3: Honor and reward all who provide beneficial labor, including nature; not those who exploit it to get rich. Life depends on the labor of nature and people. Too often, the current economic system rewards those claiming ownership rather than those performing useful labor. Instead we should follow the model set by traditional societies, in which we earn our share in the surplus of the commons through our labor in service of it. Much of the current economy’s dysfunction can be overcome by eliminating the division of society between owners and workers—a problem corrected through worker ownership combined with an ethical frame that recognizes our well-being depends on much more than just financial return. Principle 4: Create society’s money supply through a transparent public process to advance the common good; not through proprietary processes that grow the profits of for-profit banks. In a modern society, those who control the creation and allocation of money control the lives of everyone. It defies reason to assume that society benefits from giving this power to global for-profit banks dedicated to maximizing profits for the already richest among us. The system of money creation and allocation must be public, transparent, and accountable to the people. It must reside in democratic governments and be administered by public banks supplemented by individual community-owned, cooperative banks whose lending supports local home and business ownership. Principle 5: Educate for a lifetime of learning in service to life-seeking communities; not for service to for-profit corporations. Most university economics courses currently promote societal psychopathology as a human ideal and give legitimacy to institutions that serve only to make money, without regard for the common good. We must prepare youth for future leadership that builds on a moral foundation that recognizes our responsibility for one another and Earth, favors cooperation over competition, and prioritizes life over money and community well-being over corporate profits. No one knows how to get where we now must go, and education cannot provide us with answers we do not have. Education can, however, prepare us to be lifelong learners, skilled in asking the right questions and in working together to find and share answers. Principle 6: Create and apply technology only to serve life; not to displace or destroy it. Technology must be life’s servant. Deciding how to apply technology based solely on what will produce the greatest short-term financial return is madness. Humans have the right and the means to assure that technology is used only to serve humanity as a whole, such as by eliminating destructive environmental impacts, restoring the regenerative capacity of Earth systems, facilitating global understanding, and advancing social justice, cooperation, and learning. Principle 7: Organize as cooperative, inclusive, self-reliant, regenerative communities that share knowledge and technology to serve life; not as incorporated pools of money competing to grow by exploiting life. We can meet our needs through constant cyclical flows of resources. That was our standard way of living until less than 100 years ago. We can do it again. Urban and rural dwellers can rediscover their interdependence as cities source food, timber, fiber, pulp, and recreational opportunities from nearby rural areas and rural areas regenerate their soils with bio-wastes from nearby urban areas and enjoy the benefits of urban culture. Suburbs can convert to urban or rural habitats. Principle 8: Seek a mutually beneficial population balance between humans and Earth’s other species; not the dominance of humans over all others. The health of any natural ecosystem depends on its ability to balance the populations of its varied species. This means maintaining free access to reproductive health care options and removing barriers to women in education and the workplace. Only starting from this point can we both maintain a free society and manage our population size. The basic frame of 21st century economics contrasts sharply with that of the 20th century economics it must now displace. The new frame is far more complex and nuanced. Yet most people can readily grasp it because it is logical, consistent with foundational ethical principles, and reflects the reality that most people are kind, honest, find pleasure in helping others, and recognize that we all depend on the health of our Mother Earth. David Korten wrote this article for YES! Magazine. It is excerpted from a longer working paper “A 21st Century Economics for the People of a Living Earth” written as input to various discussions mentioned in this article. He holds M.B.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Stanford Business School and was a professor at the Harvard Business School. He is co-founder of YES! Magazine, president of the Living Economies Forum, and author of When Corporations Rule the World. Also printed in Vox Populi. Illustration by Hurca.

Happy 4th of July, America

Nearly 43 percent of American citizens continue to support a bully who is contemptuous and ignorant of the Constitution of the United States of America; a bully who wondered why the U.S. can't use nuclear weapons; a bully who was endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan and other white extremists and populists; a bully who has empowered fascists and white nationalists; a bully who appointed Wall Street bankers, industry insiders and special-interest lobbyists to plunder this country’s resources and money while many members of the Republican Party are complicit; a bully who has violated the emoluments clause; a bully who praised Wikileaks and called on Russia's help with his election; a bully who appointed a supreme court justice who was accused of sexual assault; a bully who withdrew the U.S. from the U.N. Human Rights Council; a bully who has enriched the super-rich at the expense of the working people; a bully who has rolled back protections for workers and consumers to benefit corporate interests and donors; a bully who sided with Vladimir Putin over the U.S. Intelligence Agencies on the world stage in Helsinki; a bully who helped the Saudis cover-up a murder of an American journalist; a bully who disparaged Gold-Star parents; a bully who attacked John McCain for being captured and a judge for his Mexican descent; a bully who called immigrant Mexicans "rapists" that "bring drugs and crimes"; a bully who proposed banning Muslims from entering this country and killing the families of terrorists or suspected terrorists; a bully who bragged about his genitalia and grabbing women's genitals; a bully who denies the reality of climate change, lifts restrictions on fossil fuel production, and dismantles environmental regulations; a bully who is responsible for the largest reduction of protected lands in the U.S.; a bully who attacks American media; a bully who extols Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-Un, Rodrigo Duterte, and other despots and attacks American allies; a bully who constantly attacks the U.S. Intelligence Agencies and the Rule of Law; a bully who ignores the legislative and judicial branches of government and their Balance of Power; a bully who exacerbates hatred toward Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Muslim Americans and degrades veterans, women, lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transsexuals and the disabled; a bully whose policy has taken children from their parents and placed them in cages…

Nearly 43 percent of American citizens continue to support his malignant narcissism, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his constitutional ignorance, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing idiocy, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his belligerent intimidation, his pathological lying, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his lawless demagoguery, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his dangerous idiocy, his droning voice, his repulsive self…

-Glen Brown

The Ever-Growing Problem of Plastics in the Ocean

"After investigating, the El Valle Wildlife Rescue Center determined that the sperm whale was killed by gastric shock to its stomach and intestines after ingesting 64 pounds of plastic. The autopsy found plastic bags, nets, ropes, plastic sacks, and even a plastic jerrycan in the whale's stomach and intestines.

"Experts found the inner walls of the whale's abdomen to be inflamed due to a bacterial or fungal infection. This is likely a result of the whale unable to expel the plastics from its system, resulting in peritonitis.

"The male sperm whale, an endangered species protected in the US under the Endangered Species Conservation Act, weighed over 6 tonnes and measured 33 feet long. Sperm whales typically eat squid and live around the same lifespan as humans, averaging 70 years.

"As a result of the whale's death, the Murcia government launched a campaign against dumping plastic waste into the coastal town's water. The coastal community is working to raise awareness of the ever-growing plastic problem in oceans and the need for beach cleaning.

"It is becoming increasingly clear that plastic in our oceans is a core threat to marine life in the decades to come. Approximately 5 trillion pieces of plasticare estimated to be floating around the world's oceans based on a recent study. To make matters worse, marine experts believe the total weight of plastic in our oceans could outweigh fish in the world's oceans by 2050..."  

For the entire article, click here.