Keeping Our Earth Clean

When I walk along the beach and take in the beauty of the Pacific, it sure does look big.  Sure, the volumes of pollution pouring into our oceans is growing steadily, but won’t the sheer volume of water and abundance of aquatic plants and animals serve to hold all this in check?  

Not to the degree most people imagine.  

Here’s a picture I came across, done by Adam Nieman, whose aim is to get us to appreciate the environmental challenges we face, due to the fact that the volumes of water in our oceans and air in our skies really aren’t as large as we imagine.  The graphic depicts the actual size of the Earth’s oceans (the small blue sphere on the left) and atmosphere (if it were at sea-level air pressure, the small white sphere on the right).

Since everything seems to come down to dollars and cents nowadays, I’l close with this reminder:  It may be expensive to keep our planet clean, but it’s even more so to clean it up once it’s dirty.