Sadness and Hope

Sadness

The girl looked out from the window. Hanging onto the beige curtains that stood there, seeming to droop with the smell that permeated the room. The ocean was out there, somewhere. At one point the gray had stretched as far as the eye could see. Letting the mind wander to thunderstorms and hot chocolate. Now, twelve years later there was nothing but the bobbing expanse of plastics. The plastics that poison the ocean, the plastics that had driven away the once plentiful bounty of life by her home. Turning, she tucked her hair behind her ear and checked the phone that had been, until now resting on the desk beside her. A notification had come through. There was now no way that she wouldn't have to leave. Walking down the stairs she grabbed her bag and the keys to her car that rested on the table. Walking outside she saw that another politician was saying that we needed to get rid of the plastics. She sighed. There was always a lot of talk and much boasting, but no real action. Plastic had been one of the most used commodities back when she was younger. That had steadily increased to the point where many ecosystems had simply collapsed. Unable to handle the man-made stressors that were placed upon them, many animals had simply fled to the few remaining places not poisoned by the litter that had seeped into the world. The girl remembered when she could play at the park without having five or six signs warning her that the plastic was not safe. She remembered when her biggest worry was the next test at school. She needed to come up with a way to solve the problem that had slowly but surely hit the world. She was a scientist; one dedicated to solving the problem that concerned all the  countries. Single use plastics had become one of the most present concerns on the minds of the diplomats at the most recent United Nations, second only to global warming. The problems that had barely concerned her predecessors had now on her shoulders, and the shoulders of all of her colleagues spread around the globe. Single use plastics were responsible for many of the organisms that once thrived in the wild to become endangered. The plastic covering the ocean stopped the ocean from absorbing carbon from the atmosphere. True, there now were more effective ways to do this, but absorbing carbon had been the oceans job for long before she had come, and would still be long after as long as they figured out a sustainable option to  stop the pollution from plastics that was an ever present issue on the back of her mind. At least she wasn't doing this alone. There was still hope, and this could be resolved. After all, Humans had created this mess so they could solve it. After all, it never ceased to amaze her what humans could do when they put their minds to it.