Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
On this Reality Roundtable, marine biologist Daniel Pauly, ocean physicist Antonio Turiel, and paleobiologist Peter Ward join Nate to discuss the numerous oft-overlooked threats to the Earth’s great oceans.
Ocean temperatures have been off the charts since mid-March 2023, with the highest average levels in 40 years of satellite monitoring, and the impact is breaking through in disruptive ways around the world.
Could it be that the whales are drawing attention to themselves as a warning—expressed in anger—that human activity is turning the oceans into a deathbed?
Kelp forests are one of the “most widespread and valuable marine ecosystems on the planet,” according to a United Nations Environment Programme report released in April.
On this episode, physicist Antonio Turiel joins me for a wide-ranging discussion from oceans and climate to energy and culture.
Healing the ocean and keeping it healthy—i.e. focusing on the root causes of environmental and social injustices—so as to prevent sea animals from washing up on the shores in the first place is where we all need to focus. But what does that even mean?
If the research is correct and we did suffer a total breakdown of the microlayer, even massive carbon emissions mitigation would do little to staunch the earth’s climate unraveling.
My new book, ‘The Blue Commons’, argues that the only way to stop – and reverse – the destruction and depletion of marine resources and ecosystems is to revive the ethos of the sea as a commons, managed for the benefit of all by those whose lives and livelihoods depend on it.
Standing has just published The Blue Commons: Transforming the Economy of the Sea, a book that synthesizes vast amounts of complicated maritime histories, international law, and ecological science to explain how commoning could curb the market/state’s irresponsible, life-destroying treatment of oceans.
These corals — their lives, their futures — will be decided just a few miles away up on land by people sitting in these convention halls. Richard wants to take the people from that meeting out onto this reef to say, “This is literally what’s at stake here.”
For Carlos Duarte, the chief science adviser behind Oceans 2050, seaweed farming looks like a vital contribution to saving the planet from climate change and restoring ocean life.
I want to track this strange oscillating vision, of whales as powerful spiritual beings but also a target of relentless persecution. Human nature is not endlessly malleable, and it contains all sorts of destructive impulses, but we would do well to turn this on those destroying our seas and not on those who call it home.
