Ocean Acidification--Another Nail in the Sustainability Coffin

This weekend I read an article by Craig Welsh in the Seattle Times, (published April 11, 2012) about a scientific experiment conducted by chemical oceanographers at Oregon State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that determined ocean acidity in upwelling coastal currents was responsible killing oysters in the Pacific Northwest in 2009. After reading the article I checked out the published research (Alan Barton et al. 2012. The Pacific oyster, Crassostrea gigas, shows negative correlation to naturally elevated carbon dioxide levels: Implications for near-term ocean acidification effects. Limnology and Oceanography, 57(3), 698-710) and read the abstract since I had no access to the entire article. I returned to the Seattle Times, re-read Welsh’s article, and then looked over most of the comments from readers.

I have to say that reading those comments was an exercise in self-flagellation and depressing discouragement. When confronted by the wall of opposition to scientific research into natural events on the part of people who are absolutely convinced that all science they don’t agree with is agenda-driven and is not objective or even basically honest, it is impossible to believe that anything that smacks of sustainability, smart growth, green lifestyles, or global warming/climate change will produce any effective national policies or actions whose purpose is to affect our future positively. And that is a very real problem for us, our children, and grandchildren.

Let me count a few of the reasons for being discouraged. World population will likely grow from 7 billion today to over 9 billion by 2050, increasing pressures on natural resources that supply energy, shelter, clothing, and food. World GDP is projected to almost quadruple by 2050, despite the recent recession in the U.S. and Europe, using more and more resources, renewable and non-renewable. Cities are likely to absorb the total global population growth between 2010 and 2050, when about 70 percent of world population is projected to live in urban centers. Lastly, the latest projections of sea level rise for 2100 is somewhere around two meters; even more discouraging is the conclusion that even if the entire world stopped injecting CO2 into the atmosphere tomorrow, that sea level rise would occur due to the time it takes for greenhouse gases to work their way through the atmosphere. And who out there thinks we could stop injecting CO2 into the atmosphere within the next forty years, much less tomorrow? Hello.

That’s not all. According to David Orr (Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College), the following fascinating bits of information should be considered when discussing the environment: “If today is a typical day on planet Earth, humans will add fifteen million tons of carbon to the atmosphere, destroy 115 square miles of tropical rainforest, create seventy-two square miles of desert, eliminate between forty to one hundred species, erode seventy-one million tons of topsoil, add twenty-seven hundred tons of CFCs to the atmosphere, and increase their population by 263,000.” And that’s not considering what changes time will bring in our relentless march to 2050.

Political conservatives will be happy to tell you the market will respond to those pressures and we will all live better, more technologically fulfilled lives. Well, probably not hundreds of millions of poor bastards living marginal lives in what are euphemistically known as developing or Third-World nations.

But biologists suggest we should concentrate on what is actually happening today to our planet as a direct result of human actions and the widespread adoption of techno-culture. Here’s but one very small example. Current extinction rates for amphibians are most likely 136 to 2707 times greater than the expected background (natural or non-human induced) extinction rate. Those staggering rates of extinction are impossible to explain by natural processes. No previous extinction event in geological history approaches the amphibian extinction rate in effect since 1980. Despite the catastrophic rates at which amphibians are currently going extinct, those rates are dwarfed by expectations for the next 50 years. If information provided by many leading biologists is accurate, one-third of all living amphibians are in danger of extinction, which would be an extinction rate 25,000 to 45,000 times the expected background rate. And that is not good news either for amphibians or humans.

When it comes to the large-scale loss of habitats and consequent decline in biodiversity, we are not dealing with events technology can substitute for. After all, what can technology do after we have wiped out most the species that pollinate crops? Stop eating? Perhaps we should eat the conservative propaganda tracts that trumpet the glories of free market economics and technological breakthroughs. Or the conservation tracts that shout out the wonders of wilderness areas that use regulations to prevent as many people as possible from accessing them. That should get us through a week or two at the very least.

The object lesson of all the above is to forget sustainability or green anything. Driving a fuel-efficient car, or using LED bulbs, or conserving water, or recycling ain’t gonna make any real-world difference. It might make you feel better or even morally superior, thinking you’re doing the right thing. But individual efforts, no matter how well conceived or implemented, are futile and fundamentally ineffectual in the face of global indifference to anything but the mindless consumerism we know too well. After all, how many American their right minds would voluntarily and drastically reduce their energy consumption or comforting lifestyles so our little brown or yellow sisters and brothers in developing countries might live a little higher on the hog, so to speak? Pleeease. That ain’t gonna happen.

As far as I am concerned, it is far too late to do anything but determine as to how best mitigate the adverse effects of modern human culture on the environment. If that what is meant by sustainability then so be it, though even in that limited meaning the word is sense-less. But if we so chose to use it that way, let’s be honest about what is possible and what is not and what is sustainable and what is not.

Let me end this brief essay with a question: So, who’s to blame for this wicked predicament? As the great cartoonist, Walt Kelly, said on Earth Day, February 26, 1971, through his marvelously droll creation, Pogo:

                                            “We have met the enemy and he is us.”