The seas, oceans, lakes, wetlands and rivers and the animals and plants they sustain are under severe stress from overfishing, atmospheric pollution, contaminants pollution, coastal development, invasive species and climate change. Many marine ecosystems are floundering. Others are collapsing. People are causing devastation to the marine life support systems vital for our survival. The WWF […]
Oceans
Biodiversity Emergency – Planet Earth is Broken
Biodiversity emergency. This is a moment of truth for people and planet alike. COVID and climate have brought us to a threshold. We cannot go back to the old normal of inequality, injustice and heedless dominion over the Earth.
Plastic Problem – Plastic is Everywhere
In “The Plastic Problem: PBS NewsHour Presents”, Amna Nawaz and her PBS NewsHour colleagues look at this now ubiquitous material and how it’s impacting the world, why it’s become so prevalent, what’s being done to mitigate its use, and what potential alternatives or solutions are out there.
Plastic-Free Choices demanded by Oceana
We should not be forced to pollute the ocean every time we eat, drink or go shopping. We need to be given a choice, a plastic-free choice. Our oceans sustain life. An abundant ocean can feed a billion people a healthy meal every day forever. But now they are being killed, filled by throwaway plastics. The equivalent of one garbage truck of garbage is dumped in the sea every minute, 17.6 billion pounds (8 million tons) every year. Plastic is everywhere in our ocean, floating on the surface, mixing in the salt water and sitting on the ocean bottom, miles and miles deep. And once in the ocean it never goes away.
In nature we are not alone
We are not alone in nature – We are singlehandedly driving the sixth mass extinction of life on Earth, exterminating nature both on land and in the oceans. We say that we believe in compassionate and wise Gods and yet day-in-day-out we slave for the god of economic growth, overexploiting the Earth’s resources and bringing the end of days closer and closer to our grandchildren’s future.
Global Warming – Permafrost Meltdown
The oceans and cryosphere provide people with food and water supply, renewable energy, and benefits for health and well-being, cultural values, tourism, trade, and transport. The health of the ocean and cryosphere is critical to every aspect of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Extinction – It is Real, It is Now, It is Forever
We must appreciate that when we speak of extinction of life, this is forever and there is no going back and that our own existence today, as well as the existence of all other sentient life, the existence of the life supporting planetary ecosystems, has been billions of years in the making.
Oceans – Our Life Support System
We have this idea, we humans, that the Earth, all of it, the oceans, the skies, are so vast and so resilient that it doesn’t matter what we do to it. That may have been true 10,000 years ago, and maybe even 1,000 years ago but in the last 100 years the acceleration of destruction and killing by humans has brought the planet to the 6th mass extinction of life on Earth.
Plastic Pandemic is now a Global Crisis
We are forced to deal with plastic pandemic with urgency as it has now reached global proportions. It is estimated that there was the equivalent of 200 million garbage-truck-loads of plastic in the oceans and landfills at end 2015 and that this will become the equivalent of 500 million garbage-truck-loads by 2050.