State of the Ocean Report – Time to Act

Yesterday the International Programme on the State of the Ocean released this report: International Earth System Expert Workshop on Ocean Stresses and Impacts. It is a must read and only takes a few minutes.

Conclusions are:

The participants concluded that not only are we already experiencing severe declines in many species to the point of commercial extinction in some cases, and an unparalleled rate of regional extinctions of habitat types (eg mangroves and seagrass meadows), but we now face losing marine species and entire marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs, within a single generation. Unless action is taken now, the consequences of our activities are at a high risk of causing, through the combined effects of climate change, overexploitation, pollution and habitat loss, the next globally significant extinction event in the ocean. It is notable that the occurrence of multiple high intensity stressors has been a pre--‐requisite for all the five global extinction events of the past 600 million years (Barnosky et al., 2009).

What can we do? According to the report:

Technical means to achieve the solutions to many of these problems already exist, but that current societal values prevent humankind from addressing them effectively.

What one little thing can you do to reduce your impact? My family will raise our thermostat, better plan our car trips, and take at least one less car trip a week.

And I will have to decide which battle I am going to fight – health care freedom or environmental protection. Environmental protection clearly is more fundamental and critical, but it is a battle I fought for 20 years. I did my time and I am not sure I want to jump back in.

This year I waged a couple of health freedom battles in the North Carolina legislature (and won I might add). The return on investment as far as my human body energy output is concerned is much greater in these battles, and I enjoyed them. Environmental battles, in contrast, became a grind. Maybe taking the last five years off was the break I needed?

What to do, what to do? As my wonderful calculus professor used to say in his cool Polish accent.

I had human race survival concerns when I was little - the commercial of the Native American walking through the trash on the shoreline always upset me: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7OHG7tHrNM. My earliest belief has always been "We need clean air and clean water or we will not survive." It is why I became an environmental planner and fought hard for 20 years. It is why I stood up to those who lied and threatened and stomped on the planet and then threatened my family, resulting in police protection for my home and family.

I have had a quiet five years in North Carolina and loved it. Now I have a decision to make. I am no longer into being an environmental martyr, and I have relatively buried my head in the sand. I love being a homeschooling mom! But what good will that ultimately do my son?

Who knew that a little girl in the 70s would be reading this Oceans report? Hopefully my little boy from the 2000s will not see it come true.

If you are wondering what you can do, just do something. People do not understand how easy it is to influence society and the political process. You could:

• Stop buying crap and stop supporting the stores that sell it

• Take one less car trip a week

• Call your federal and state senators and representatives and actually write them letters. Calls and letters have more impact that emails and petitions

• Start your own local small group of people to take action. Don’t do it under an umbrella organization such as Sierra or Audubon. Just do it as yourselves with no group name. That was a new technique for me this year when dealing with the NC legislature, and it was far more powerful than working for or with an organization.

I am sure you get the idea. Be creative and make your voices heard.

Comments

[rachel]

oh boy, it's endless. i'm totally defeated this AM. head in the sand is so much more pleasant. i dont have time for much more than emails and petitions. i wrte letters now and again altho as often as not that's social justice stuff, not environmental. it looks to me like this is the end, my friend. maybe not this minute. but i'm betting in 50 years we have about 20% of the current earth's population, and it's not going to be from forward thinking family planning.

[Carol Cross]

But to some extent, it isn't an either/or. As Michael Pollan points out in his fantastic book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, the current American industrialized food production is bad for the Earth as well as being bad for the body, AND it consumes more energy than it provides. So a move to a simpler lifestyle, particularly by eating non-pesticide/organic food you grow yourself or buy from local farmers, helps with, perhaps not health care freedom, but with health, as well as with environmental concerns.

So with all you've been doing in encouraging people to buy local healthy foods, you've been promoting an environmental cause as well.

[Maria Droujkova]

One super-easy thing to do is compost. At least it's easy for those of us who have a back yard. If you don't have a secluded spot, dig a hole, if you do, just put some thick branches around a square yard or so of the ground and put your fruit, vegetable and eggshell discards there. Then cover with a thin layer of leaves or grass clippings.