The seas are the lifeblood of our blue planet. They are the critical element in forging that narrow band of livable climate that distinguishes us, so far as we know, in the universe. It is thus not an overstatement to say that the fate of the oceans is our own fate as well. From sea to shining sea globally, the warning lights are flashing.
The challenge is daunting because the planetary economy, as Jacques Cousteau argued in an interview back in 1996, does not price in the real value of the Earth’s natural assets. “We are selling off the future in the name of immediate gain,” he told me when we met at the Cousteau Society offices in Paris, where a scale model of the Calypso, Cousteau’s famous research vessel that roamed the seven seas, was on display. “The polar ice shelf, to take one example, is melting today as a consequence of global warming,” he said. “Burning fossil fuels at a price that does not include the value of the ice shelf in maintaining a stable temperature and sea level — which is what makes living along the coasts of this water planet possible — is not a viable proposition.”
Since that conversation with the iconic ocean explorer over two decades ago, even more carbon exhaust has been dumped into the atmosphere to keep the economic engine humming on ecologically-mispriced fuel. In The WorldPost this week, we examine the further cumulative consequences from the inundation of coastal communities and islands to the deforestation of kelp beds.
Writing from New Orleans, Aron Chang offers some lessons in resilience planning from that city, half of which lies below sea level. He warns that misguided engineering solutions, which focus on pumping and piping out water, are actually sinking the city further. He also warns that unless citizens are educated to buy in to the expensive fixes that rising sea levels require, they will resist the taxes necessary to finance them.
For the central Pacific island nation of Kiribati, the future that worries New Orleans has already arrived. The place is literally submerging, with several villages already under water. For Kiribati, the former president Anote Tong and filmmaker Matthieu Rytz bluntly declare: “It is already too late.” Their hope is that the world takes notice of their fate while there is still time to slow down our present trajectory toward a global “hothouse.”
What happens to the renowned species diversity of the Galápagos Islands, where flamingos and penguins mingle, is an indication of how ecosystems will evolve elsewhere as the seas warm. John Bruno worries about the “speeding up” of marine ecosystems as temperatures are projected to rise 10 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the 21st century. “Nearly all animals that inhabit the ocean are cold-blooded, or ectothermic, meaning their body temperatures match that of the seawater around them,” he writes from the islands. “The cooler the water, the colder their bodies get. When ectotherms warm up, their metabolism speeds up, meaning they do everything more quickly: grow, reproduce, hunt, escape, eat and digest.” That process will disrupt the marine food chain from top to bottom, he says, from algae to large carnivores.
Marine botanists Thomas Wernberg and Karen Filbee-Dexter sound the alarm over the scourge of the purple sea urchin — the “cockroach of the sea” — devouring kelp forests already severely weakened by ocean warming. “Since most kelp are cool-water species that dominate in temperate and Arctic waters,” they write from Perth, Australia, “warming water causes physiological stress, stronger competition from small, fast-growing algae, and in some places, increased damage from grazers like the purple urchin or tropical fish that move into temperate waters. Higher temperatures also make kelp forests more vulnerable to additional threats such as extreme storms, overfishing and pollution.” Restoration efforts are critical, they explain, because kelp forests help impede the damage of coastal storms as well as suck up significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
This is the weekend roundup of The WorldPost, of which Nathan Gardels is the editor in chief.
This was produced by The WorldPost, a partnership of the Berggruen Institute and The Washington Post.