ocean acidification

To reverse the effects of civilization would destroy the dreams of a lot of people. There’s no way around it. We can talk all we want about sustainability, but there’s a sense in which it doesn’t matter that these people’s dreams are based on, embedded in, intertwined with, and formed by an inherently destructive economic and social system. Their dreams are still their dreams. What right do I — or does anyone else — have to destroy them.
At the same time, what right do they have to destroy the world?

As we celebrate Earth Day in 2019, we need to recognize that more than climate change threatens our environment and our very existence. We have passed or are approaching several Planetary Boundaries outside of which human society may not survive.

People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth’s life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. Ninety-seven percent earth’s water is there. It’s the blue heart of the planet – we should take care of our heart. It’s what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won’t get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something.

As a tender of youth – 16 to 21 year olds, as my clients are in foster care, held by the state or some other guardian, or on their own, but still labeled as foster youth – I find the topics of our time more magnified by the presence of the ever-vaunting capitalist mindset about time, work, energy, technology, digital supremacy, patriotism, consumerism, punishment, surveillance, worthiness.

In the next few decades we’ll be driving species to extinction a thousand times faster than we should be.
— Dr. Stuart Pimm, conservation ecologist, Duke University.
It is quite possible that the baby boomer generation is the most impactful generation that this planet has ever seen.
— Racing Extinction directed by Louie Psihoyos, Discovery Channel, 2015.)

David Wallace-Wells’ article “The Uninhabitable Earth,”1 has created a furor of criticism, people bouncing off walls from coast to coast.  Consider – the title of the article says it all!
The critics, including prominent climate scientists, claim Wallace-Wells’ conclusions are dangerously exaggerated, but are they really? Additional criticism is leveled by some of the first-rate news sources on climate change, like Grist: “Stop scaring people about climate change. It doesn’t work.”

A major new scientific report, “Explaining Ocean Warming” was released on September 5th. It is grim.
According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Conservation Congress in Hawaii, the findings are based upon peer-reviewed research compiled by 80 scientists from 12 countries. It is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken on the subject of warming of the ocean.

Water – its dearth or its abundance – is already a global problem. It manifests itself in poor countries, poor regions and poor neighborhoods first, but most assuredly will affect us all within the next generation.  In 2015, the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risk Reports rated “Water crises” as the most important risk facing the world.

Over hundreds of millions of years, Earth and all living things have tolerated five mass extinctions, one of which wiped out over 90% of living things. You might say that such happenings are part of natural processes and beyond the control of Earth’s occupants, but humankind’s ascendency over what is seen as our kingdom defies, maybe even defiles, that judgment.

Planet Earth is seen through rose-colored glasses by 58% of congressional Republicans who refuse to accept the fact that humans are responsible for climate change. And, they have a right to their opinion, same as the other side on this issue.
But, are they wearing rose-colored glasses and only fooling themselves? Or, are their scientific advisers wearing rose-colored glasses? Or, are they correct about global warming?
Whichever question is the appropriate one, the thesis of this article questions whether their scientific advisers are giving them good advice.