The point is the ocean is known to contain bacteria which can metabolize chemical sources in the form of sulfur compounds. There's a chance that any slowly leaking CS munitions in the Baltic Sea could host bacterial colonies which break down these compounds.
Wolves do fairly well without humans, bees as well. Which animals did we bring back from the brink of extinction? I'll admit that new subspecies have emerged thanks to humans, but we hardly need to keep e.g. 1.3 billion cows (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle#Population) just to save the species from extinction.
Buffalos are a good example. Red Panda as well if I'm not mistaken.
The sad part is, we've also made species extinct just because they weren't tasty. Dodos for instance. Taste bad, so we just killed them for fun. Then they went extinct.
Not to delve too deeply into a political debate, but I think a counter-point is fair:
1. Those elected officials are not elected by everyone - in the case of GWB's first term (which many probably think of in this military context) it wasn't even a majority that elected him.
2. Those that do elect officials have a very small choice (lets say 2-3 people who could practically be elected). Further, I'd argue that most only vote on a few key issues, while the elected official has dominion over a vast number of issues.
I don't hold citizens as not at all responsible, but I think its at least fair to argue (in the above context) that the elected officials bear more responsibility - and blame - than the everyday citizen.
You're quite right in your counter-point. And besides it's not always clear beforehand what the key issues are going to be during a politician's term. I reacted more to the wording "Just because they are born in US doesn't make them responsible for the actions of the US military any more than someoe born in Canada, Brazil or Japan." I'd say US citizens are more responsible for US military actions than Canadians, however this definitely does not make the ordinary citizen responsible in the same way as an army general or prominent politician.
US citizens(as citizens everywhere) vote for whatever the media feeds them, and media is at least to some extent controlled by the US government(as in every country) or other political influence.
I would also disagree with politicians controlling the military -- perhaps the people in charge do have political power too, but I would argue that the political power and power over the military are rather indirect, it's not the same entity controlling the two, there are multiple people and entities with indirect relationships.
Some operators already offer flat rate packages for several countries. E.g. my operator the Finnish-Swedish TeliaSonera offers me unlimited data, calls and sms for Fennoscandia (fi, se, dk, no) and the Baltic countries.
Disagree about the "should". Why would we not want to survive indefinitely? And when it comes to species, humans are clear outliers. I'm not sure how well one can extrapolate human future from what happened to the dinosaurs.
Perhaps OP is being a bit more philosophical. Not suggesting that it is a failure of will or a straw poll of our future direction but instead because we are/arent worthy of continuing...?
The fluffy box thrown around in the audience is a microphone called Catchbox, developed by students at Aalto University. http://thecatchbox.com/
We had some problems with the Catchbox during the beginning of the talk (the sound didn't get through to the live stream) but it worked surprisingly well after that. I could hear myself chuckle when holding the box as I listened to the video afterwards.
