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| ISBN-13: | 9780918172594 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Leete's Island Books |
| Publication date: | 01/15/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 7 MB |
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The Once and Future Ocean
Notes Toward a New Hydraulic Society
By Peter Neill
Leete's Island Books
Copyright © 2015 Robert Neill IIIAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-918172-59-4
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
THE SEA AROUND US
In 1951 — more than half a century ago — Rachael Carson published The Sea Around Us, a classic compendium of the ocean's history, its workings, and its central role in the health of our world and those who live in it. The book is short, concise, informative, and eloquent. It is not a polemic, although its reputation as a classic of environmental literature might suggest that purpose. The text clearly struck a chord, won the National Book Award, has progressed through multiple reprintings, and remains a seminal work, indeed the impetus for subsequent awareness, expanded ocean research, and greater public interest and engagement in the surrounding ocean.
Carson worked at John Hopkins University and the Marine Biological Institute at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, and went on to serve as marine biologist at the US Fish and Wildlife Service and to write additional books to include Under the Sea Wind, The Edge of the Sea, and of course, Silent Spring, that was a polemic and sounded the alarm over the harmful effect of chemical pesticides in agriculture.
Carson, and subsequently Jacques Cousteau, brought the ocean into our classrooms and living rooms. Cousteau's popular, long-running television series took us into the ocean, under the sea, to explore the underwater topography, the brilliance of coral reefs and biodiversity, and the physical workings of marine systems — tides, winds and currents, vast cycles of underwater movement and exchange, earthquake and tectonic shifts, and the life cycles of creatures heretofore beyond our imagination. Carson and Cousteau introduced us to the rewards and dangers of ocean observation and exploration, and their influence shaped more than one generation to become environmental scientists, marine biologists, oceanographers, and conservationists.
This legacy has driven decades of new investigation. New research institutions and programs have been founded in the United States and around the world. Governments have created and funded agencies and projects that have extended our observations by expedition, satellite, and arrays of drifting, fixed, and submerged monitors — a powerful network for the assemblage of data, experiment, and reports that have established an informed baseline of ocean conditions against which future study can be compared. Carson and Cousteau inspired an exponential increase in ocean observation and set in motion the first efforts to transform that information into conservation action.
The period that followed added the ocean to the scrutiny and mission of land-focused conservation groups — World Wildlife Fund, The Nature Conservancy, and the Natural Resources Defense Council — as well as motivated the creation of new organizations such as Conservation International, Oceana, The Ocean Conservancy, and Mission Blue that both extended their advocacy and programs worldwide and applied their resources more directly to ocean issues. Their work, and that by numerous other global organizations and government initiatives, has raised ocean knowledge, consciousness, and planning to its highest level.
But is it enough? Recently, I listened to a radio interview with a well-known and very well-informed ocean advocate and philanthropist who was describing the world ocean crisis in its many forms. He painted a dour picture indeed. It was a call-in show, and so I dialed in with the question, "Now that we know the problem, what do you suggest we do about it?" He indicated that that was the essential question, and then proceeded to give a very disappointing answer — don't use plastic bags, don't eat fish, don't drive your car, hope for the best! With all due respect, that's just not good enough.
If the second phase of the Carson/Cousteau legacy was observation and information that has defined the questions, then the next phase must be invention: the definition of new ideas and application of different answers. We are all seeking. I hear it again and again, at ocean conferences, in speeches and books by ocean experts: presentation of the overwhelming problem followed by silence, not solutions. It is as if we are sailing along the edge of an abyss; we have the skill perhaps to keep going, to extend our way for a time, until we fall off into darkness, or we can apply that skill to our ship and change course, away in a new direction. It is dangerous and uncertain, but I submit that we have no choice but to set forth.
CHAPTER 2Where to Begin
FROM THE HORIZON
The Exhausted Land We Live In
To understand the crises affecting the world ocean, we must first understand the condition of the land around us. For decades, alarms have been sounded to alert us to the exhaustion of the Earth. We have experienced a continuing increase in population; in demand for energy, food, and fresh water; and in the pollutants derived from our physical, chemical, and biological responses to those requirements. We have come to expect an annual raise, ever increasing quality of life, and sustained returns on our investments unrealizable without undisciplined personal credit, under-collateralized debt, and unregulated consumption of natural and human resources. Like any ponzi scheme, we have borrowed against assets once tangible, now increasingly limited, even ephemeral, and can no longer rationalize, postpone, or deny the consequences.
For me, pollution is excess: too much chocolate, too much alcohol, too much fertilizer, too many chemicals, too much waste, too much unregulated gain indifferent to the needs of an evergrowing community. That we have become divided over money, land, resources, and power, locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally, by disputes over all of these is surely no surprise.
We can measure that excess now: in diminished wells and corrupted waterways, in the acidified air, in the price of fuel, in the exploitation of labor, and in the failed economic and social aspirations now impacting the entire world.
But what about the ocean? I submit that the ocean begins at the mountaintop, and descends to the abyssal plain; that is, everything that occurs on land — be it development, manufacturing, agriculture, or financial enterprise — descends to the sea. It passes in, on, and above the earth in fluid streams of decision, action, and transaction, behaviors that reveal our system of values, be they economic, personal, social, political, or moral.
Thus, specifically, those behaviors impact the downstream, be it effluents that generate red tides along the beaches, or nitrate runoff that atrophies and suffocates life on the ocean floor, or emissions that rise and fall into the sea to increase the acidity to modify the food chains and to disrupt the breeding and survival of marine plants and animals upon which the system depends. We often think of the ocean as a place apart, a maritime wilderness, infinitely self-healing and immune to our polluting excesses. But that is not so. Just as we know the situation on land, we now know through observation, research, and experience that the ocean is also threatened by exhaustion: myriad organic pollutants, declining species, poisoned wildlife, excavated mangroves, developed wetlands, dead coral, and more. We know that the glaciers are melting at accelerated rates; we know that extreme weather is damaging our coasts in ways unforeseen by our designers and builders. We know that coastal communities continue to grow into urban centers making exponential demands on supply of food, water, and energy. We know that many of those settlements have been devastated by tsunami, hurricane, typhoon, and shoreline inundation that has cost millions and displaced thousands of environmental refugees with no place to go.
To understand the crises affecting the world ocean, we must accept, not deny, these facts, and use this knowledge to mitigate and adapt short-term to these challenges. But long-term, the problem is more demanding, and may require very different answers to the very difficult questions we face.
On what new premise will we base this response?
Moral Pollution
When asked to define pollution, I usually reply "excess," advocating that not all things are polluting in or of themselves, but become so in excessive quantities — thus natural sugar is a body health requirement, but too much sugar contributes to excessive weight gain, debilitating diabetes, and other unhealthy outcomes that accelerate disease and death. Too much chocolate, too much untreated waste, too much pesticide, too many emissions, too much acid in the air and sea, too much money — all these things, in the extreme, compromise stability, security, and survival.
Is there such a thing as moral pollution — an excess of principle or ideology that can have similar spiritual or social effect? For example, if one believes in a certain religious concept to the exclusion of all others, can this fervor not corrupt moral balance and lead to extreme acts of suicidal terrorism that go against, indeed inhumanely disrupt, a society prepared to acknowledge, respect, and integrate different religious views and practices as part of societal norms, a successfully integrated community, and accepted tenets of civilization? We may ask this question every day in response to events around us.
In the context of the ocean, indeed of our relationship to the natural world in general, the operative extreme relates, in my view, to greed and its associated derivatives, corruption and hypocrisy. If greed is the rapacious accumulation of wealth regardless of consequence, then we have examples of it everywhere: in the behavior of some, certainly not all, governments, politicians, corporations, entrepreneurs, and individual confidence schemes that dilute, corrode, exploit, and contravene all attempts to modulate the unrestrained making of money and to exempt this conduct from regulatory structures designed to protect the rest of us from theft, fraud, bankruptcy, and other forms of financial and societal compromise.
The corporation is one place to look for such phenomena. Perhaps you recall the classic declaration of the fictional investment banker, Gordon Gecko, from the film Wall Street, that "Greed is Good!" The statement was extreme, but honest. Gecko did not care at all for any consequence of investment in corporate behaviors other than short-term return. Just an exaggeration of fiction? Well, not really, as we so often hear chief executives of corporations publicly justifying extreme strategies in terms of maximum return to shareholders, measured in ever-decreasing intervals that theoretically influence stock price and, coincidentally, the CEO's performance bonus from year to year. That the strategy might lessen mid- or long-term impact on the sustainability of the company and its investment value over time seems irrelevant. This attitude explains the ever-increasing articulation of opposing proposals in annual meetings, and shareholder-initiated actions to challenge such behaviors, report profits differently, or modify or curtail certain technologies, products, market opportunities, accounting practices, lobbying activities, executive evaluation and pay, and other strategies that determine what the proposers see as excessive, unnecessary consequence, indeed as poison that pollutes both the landscape and the community.
Corruption and hypocrisy are inevitable by-products of this way of doing business. Millions are spent to influence politicians to provide government subsidies, tax loopholes, statutory exemptions, regulatory exception, and other, almost invisible, but very profitable modifications that exclusively benefit the funders. Given the role corporations now play in political campaigns, political action committees, business associations, lobbyist firms, and special-interest organizations, we can explain the steady stream of ethical reprimands, indictments, convictions, and precipitous decisions not to stand for re-election that are a result of this corrupting political process.
The concurrent hypocrisy is frequently stunning, not just in the self-justifying statements of politicians caught in their contradictions, but also revealed in the actions of the contributing executives themselves. A most egregious example concerns Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, one the largest and most profitable corporations on Earth. At $40 million per year he is one of the most highly paid executives in the world, one of the most articulate defenders of consumption-driven energy policy, one of the largest corporate beneficiaries of US Government subsidy, one of the most vociferous deniers of climate change and the negative impact of automobile emissions and energy production facilities on air and water quality, and one of the most fervid proponents of hydraulic fracking for natural gas. ExxonMobil has aggressively promoted the manageable risk of the fracking process in the face of documented impact on fresh water supply, the surrounding, typically agricultural community, the regional landscape, along with the introduction of contaminates and potential health hazards into aquifers, groundwater, and the further impact of leaked polluted water entering the watershed to poison streams, rivers, and the ocean. Recently, according to the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Tillerson joined a lawsuit against another energy company setting up a 160-foot water tower to support a fracking operation on land adjacent to his private $5 million Wyoming horse farm, as a plaintiff citing increased noise, heavy truck traffic, and other negative impacts on his property values. What does this say to the citizens of the places where his zealous corporate enterprise has disrupted their lives, depleted their spirit, ravaged their landscape, and polluted their land and water without apology or concern? This is moral pollution at its most egregious, for which there is no redemption.
The Sea Connects All Things
For many, the ocean is a place apart, a vast wilderness extending beyond our physical and psychological horizons, at once alien and indifferent, fascinating and compelling, and about which we know very little. But consider these facts: the ocean covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface; the ocean is a central element in the recycling and purification of fresh water; the ocean provides 40 percent of the world's protein, especially in developing nations; more than 200 million people worldwide are dependent on the ocean for their livelihood; 65 percent of the world's population lives within 100 miles of an ocean coast.
The reality is that the ocean is essential to human survival, a primary source of food, water, climate, and community — immediate, universal, and undeniable. In short, the ocean is the determinant ecology in which we live — the sea connects all things. If, indeed, all life is dependent on the ocean, then this understanding calls for its new definition as:
• an interconnected, global ecosystem that integrates natural process, habitat, and species with human intervention and impact;
• a comprehensive social system that integrates human needs and actions; and
• a complex political system that connects all peoples worldwide through economic interests, cultural traditions, and cooperative governance.
Thus, when we envision the ocean as a wilderness, we are ignoring the reality of the ocean as a domesticated place where humans have left their mark throughout history by exploration and exploitation, immigration and trade, and the exchange of custom and culture. To look today from a satellite, one can see that the ocean is marked constantly by the tracks of ships, the tools of globalization through marine transport as old as the ancient Chinese in the Pacific, the Phoenicians in the Mediterranean, and the Vikings in the Atlantic.
What has changed over time, however, is the impact of human population growth whereby the use of the ocean has increased exponentially so that today the ocean evinces a shift from abundance to scarcity and from accommodation to conflict.
This is well exemplified by the crisis in fisheries. Research has documented the collapse of certain species such as cod that once formed the staple diet of much of North America and Europe, a result of a complex of causes to include unrestricted catch, the advent of new, efficient gear and technology, and the unwillingness of fishers, both artisanal and industrial, to work cooperatively toward a sustainable harvest. This problem was further compounded by the difficulty of regulation, a resultant lack of jurisdiction outside of national economic zones, the inability to monitor or enforce quotas, and the failure of governance to address the challenge.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Once and Future Ocean by Peter Neill. Copyright © 2015 Robert Neill III. Excerpted by permission of Leete's Island Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS,FOREWORD by DR. PAUL A. MAYEWSKI,
I. Introduction,
II. Where to Begin,
FROM THE HORIZON,
III. Why the Ocean Matters,
WHO WE ARE,
CLIMATE,
FRESH WATER,
A GLOBAL HYDRAULIC SYSTEM,
FOOD,
HEALTH,
SECURITY,
ENERGY,
ECONOMY,
RENEWAL,
IV. Why We Need a New Way of Thinking,
IN PURSUIT OF CHANGE,
V. Toward Solutions,
THE RIGHT OF PASSAGE,
VALUE SHIFTS AND NEW PREMISES,
AN OCEAN ETHOS,
HYDRAULIC SOCIETY,
EXEMPLARY BEGINNINGS,
SOME OF US ARE DREAMERS,
VI. A New Hydraulic Society,
GETTING THERE,
NATURE'S TRUST,
WHAT NEXT?,
WATERMARKS,
VII. The Once and Future Ocean,
THE NEW PARADIGM,
REFERENCES,
FURTHER READING,