COMMENTARY
The Answer Lies in the Solution
By The Green Hornet
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
IT’S hard to believe that it’s been a whole year since the
Net News came buzzing around and asked me to write this weekly column.
Not that I thought for one minute it would be difficult to write about
ecological issues every week.
Far from it. In today’s world, it’s hard to pass a day
without observing some change in the planet around us or see it in the news
media. And, unless we change our habits, I am certain that we will continue
to do so for the rest of our lives.
That’s a daunting thought: a daily dose of drought and
pollution, habitat and species loss and extinction for as long as we live.
We can choose to ignore it or to do something about it, each in our own
small way. If we don’t, then we will see things deteriorate, I can pretty
much guarantee that. If we do something, we are making a change,
albeit not a huge one.
But at least we won’t feel impotent and useless –
unless we start to think realistically about the true impact of global
warming, for example. With the kind of wealth that exists in Cayman, we
could actually do a lot more than make just a small change. The question is,
will we?
This question was triggered by an article I read on
the weekend in an online newsletter called Rachel’s Democracy & Health
News (formerly Rachel’s Environment & Health News). The news
service says that it “highlights the connections between issues that are
often considered separately or not at all.” The focus of the Democracy and
Health News, it says, is as follows:
“The natural world is deteriorating and human health
is declining because those who make the important decisions aren’t the ones
who bear the brunt.”
“Our purpose is to connect the dots between human
health, the destruction of nature, the decline of community, the rise of
economic insecurity and inequalities, growing stress among workers and
families, and the crippling legacies of patriarchy, intolerance, and racial
injustice that allow us to be divided and therefore ruled by the few.” Is
this starting to sound familiar, or what?
Connecting issues
In a democracy, the News continues, there are no more
fundamental questions than “Who gets to decide?” and “How do the few control
the many, and what might be done about it?” Before we look that question,
here’s one of the “connecting issues” that Rachel’s passed on to its
subscribers. It will affect us, who rely on our reefs to support one of the
two bases of our economy – tourism.
A story in London’s Sunday Times by Jonathan Leake,
entitled “Acid Seas Kill off Corals”, states that the world’s coral
reefs could disappear within a few decades, together with hundreds of
species of plankton and shellfish The story tells of a new study, just
published by Professor Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution’s global
ecology department, which has found that carbon dioxide, the gas already
blamed for causing global warming, is also raising the acid levels in the
sea.
Because the shells of coral and other marine life
(mostly composed of calcium carbonate, the same material that forms
limestone) dissolve in acid, the researchers note, the process is happening
so fast that many species – including coral, crabs, oysters and mussels –
may become unable to build and repair their shells and therefore will die
out.
The report says that increased carbon dioxide
emissions are making the world’s oceans more acidic and could cause a mass
extinction of marine life similar to the one that occurred on land when the
dinosaurs disappeared.
How does this happen? When carbon dioxide (CO2)
produced by burning fossil fuels dissolves in the ocean, it forms carbonic
acid. A little of this can benefit marine life by providing carbonate ions –
a vital constituent in the biochemical process by which sea creatures such
as corals and molluscs build their shells.
Unfortunately, Dr. Caldeira found that the huge volume
of carbon dioxide being released by humans is dissolving into the oceans so
fast that sea creatures can no longer absorb it. Consequently, the levels of
carbonic acid are rising and the oceans are “turning sour”.
The Sunday Times reports that Dr. Caldeira told
the American Geophysical Union’s ocean sciences conference recently: “The
current rate of carbon dioxide input is nearly 50 times higher than normal.
In less than 100 years, the pH (measure of alkalinity)
of the oceans could drop by as much as half a unit from its natural 8.2 to
about 7.7.” Will our reefs and shellfish dissolve?
This would mean a massive change in ocean chemistry,
because the shells of marine creatures are made of calcium carbonate, the
same substance as chalk, which is vulnerable to acidity. Even a slight
increase in acidity would mean many creatures would dissolve. Others might
be able to rebuild their shells but would be unable to reproduce.
In another recent study published in the scientific
journal Nature, Jim Orr of the Laboratory for Science of the Climate
and Environment, Paris, predicted that by 2050 the Antarctic Ocean and
subarctic regions of the Pacific might be so acidic that the shells of
smaller marine creatures would start eroding. Such a loss would have
disastrous consequences for larger marine animals such as salmon, mackerel,
herring, cod and baleen whales. All these feed on pteropods, or sea
butterflies, one of the species which is most threatened by rising acidity.
At the recent annual meeting of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in St. Louis, Missouri, another
warning was issued about the threat of acidity to ea life sea life.
Katherine Richardson, a professor of biological oceanography at Aarhus
University in Denmark, told her fellow scientists:
“These marine creatures do humanity a great service by
absorbing half the carbon dioxide we create. If we wipe them out, that
process will stop. We are altering the entire chemistry of the oceans
without any idea of the consequences.”
The signs are already there. Last year, the Caribbean
experienced one of the most devastating coral-bleaching events on record
during September and October while hurricanes battered the Gulf of Mexico.
In response, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)
sent a team to assess the situation, but they only reported what we already
know from our own observations of Cayman’s reefs.
NOAA reports massive bleaching
Warnings of the onset of the bleaching event were
first reported by the NOAA Coral Reef Watch Satellite Bleaching Alert
monitoring system in late August in the Florida Keys. The bleaching spread
through much of the eastern Caribbean during the next two months.
According to scientists in Puerto Rico, bleaching is
both widespread and intense, with colonies representing 42 species
completely white in many reefs. Surveys show that 85 to 95 per cent of coral
colonies were bleached in some areas, while reefs in Grenada suffered close
to 70 per cent bleaching in some areas. It would be interesting to hear from
the Department of Environment as to the extent of bleaching in Cayman.
It all goes back to taking responsibility for our
actions – leading by example. Every schoolchild knows that trees absorb
carbon dioxide and give us oxygen. So why are we paving or grassing over our
forests? Why are we still buying SUVs that create far too many CO2
emissions? And about those power plants … how good to see that Cayman Brac
Power and Light plans to shift to wind energy in two years if the studies
pan out. Hello, CUC … wha’ happenin’?
But the thing that really nags at me is a distant
memory of a chemistry class in high school when we dissolved limestone in
acid. Let’s see, now, if I’ve got this clear. The oceans are turning acidic
and we live on limestone rock. Nah, we couldn’t disappear now – could we?
To start your own free e-mail subscription to
Rachel’s Democracy and Health News send a blank e-mail to:
join-rachel@gselist.org
In response, you will receive an email asking you to
confirm that you want to subscribe.
Back...
| 
