A new study reveals that a large whale can consume 35,000 pounds of food daily during its foraging season. That’s equivalent to the weight of 175 two-hundred-pound humans—daily. And you thought you overindulged at supper last night! Fortunately, the trophic balance is naturally maintained. Unfortunately, the trophic balance is unnaturally upset by human overconsumption of ocean resources. See the krill oil pills on the Walmart shelves?
Finite like the whales but small by comparison, we humans make up for our puny size by our outsized pride and overreaching desire for things in excess. Lest you think I put the blame on you for your material consumption, I confess to my own excesses. I have rooms in my house I do not regularly use, chairs on which I rarely sit, and a garage and a storage room filled with stuff I do not seem to need. “Oh! I didn’t realize I had that.” Unlike the blue whale but like other humans, I have had a seemingly never-ending foraging season. There, I said it. Now I feel justified for some finger pointing, but not at you:
Translated into politics, this imbalance between what we are physically and what we think we are is a motive for corruption and waste. Too many politicians are political whales, consuming vast amounts of resources in excess of what the ocean of taxpayers can support.
Finite like the whales but small by comparison, we humans make up for our puny size by our outsized pride and overreaching desire for things in excess. Lest you think I put the blame on you for your material consumption, I confess to my own excesses. I have rooms in my house I do not regularly use, chairs on which I rarely sit, and a garage and a storage room filled with stuff I do not seem to need. “Oh! I didn’t realize I had that.” Unlike the blue whale but like other humans, I have had a seemingly never-ending foraging season. There, I said it. Now I feel justified for some finger pointing, but not at you:
Translated into politics, this imbalance between what we are physically and what we think we are is a motive for corruption and waste. Too many politicians are political whales, consuming vast amounts of resources in excess of what the ocean of taxpayers can support.
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