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On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, at a time when our country's attention will be focused on what we need to do to protect our planet, I am honored to be in our nation's Capital to testify before Congress on an emerging environmental threat. I will be testifying before the Subcommittee on Oceans, Atmosphere, Fisheries, and Coast Guard of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee on the topic of ocean acidification.
Scientists have known for decades that when carbon dioxide mixes with ocean water it creates an acid; this is textbook chemistry. But only recently did they begin to realize what this growing quantity of acid would mean for ocean life. This new understanding has some of the world's leading ocean scientists deeply concerned.
What they say is this: the oceans are 30 percent more acidic today than they were during pre-industrial times and, if we continue burning fossil fuels as we are now, we will double the ocean's acidity by the end of the century. Scientists fear many organisms may not survive so radical a shift in chemistry. And some of those organisms form the foundation of ocean food webs. If they perish, what happens to the tens of thousands of species further up the chain? What happens to our shellfish -- our oysters, clams, mussels -- that appear particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification?
I first had the opportunity to address this issue in the Senate last fall, when I screened a short documentary I narrated on this phenomenon called Acid Test, made by my friends at the Natural Resources Defense Council. And after my Senate testimony this Earth Day, I am thrilled to show it to our nation's policymakers once again -- this time for a group in the House of Representatives.
Like that other film I was in this year, Acid Test has had an amazing run of its own. It aired on the Discovery Channel, has been shown in film festivals nationwide, and was selected by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association to run in kiosks in major aquariums and museums across the country. If you haven't seen it yet, catch it online here.
More and more people -- at home and in the halls of Congress -- are learning about ocean acidification and what we can do to stop it. Thankfully, we have solutions that will not only fight ocean acidification, but climate change at the same time.
Our policymakers have the power to add to the legacy of Earth Day by taking action that will protect people and the planet. Along with millions of other Americans, I will be urging them to put aside their differences and begin America's transition to a clean energy economy that will increase our energy efficiency and invest in renewable power, while cutting carbon pollution. By passing strong clean energy and climate legislation, Congress has the power to move us toward clean energy, tackle climate change and protect our seas from acidification.
I hope you will join me in calling on our leaders in the Senate to act.
Editor's note: You can watch the author discussing ocean acidification earlier today on CNN's American Morning.
Image: Weaver narrates the NRDC-produced documentary Acid Test.
Looking out beyond Earth Day 40, perhaps we can reflect upon words from the speech that Norman Bourlaug delivered, coincidentally in 1970, on the occasion of winning the Nobel Prize.
Near the end of the very first year of Earth Day celebrations Dr. Bourlaug reported,
" Man also has acquired the means to reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely. He is using his powers for increasing the rate and amount of food production. But he is not yet using adequately his potential for decreasing the rate of human reproduction. The result is that the rate of population increase exceeds the rate of increase in food production in some areas."
Plainly, Norman Bourlaug states that humanity has the means to decrease the rate of human reproduction but is choosing not to adequately employ this capability to sensibly limit human population numbers. He also notes that the rate of human population growth surpasses the rate of increase in food production IN SOME AREAS {my caps}.
Dr. Bourlaug is specifically not saying the growth of global human population numbers exceeds global production of food. According to recent research, population numbers of the human species could be a function of the global growth of the food supply for human consumption. This would mean that the global food supply is the independent variable and absolute global human population numbers is the dependent variable; that human population dynamics is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other species. More food equals more people; less food equals less people; and no food, no people.
Perhaps the human species is not being threatened in our time by a lack of food. To the contrary, humanity and life and we know it could be inadvertently put at risk by the determination to continue the dramatic overproduction of food, such as we have seen occur in the past 40 years. Recall Dr. Bourlaug's prize winning accomplishment. It gave rise to the "Green Revolution" and to the extraordinary increases in the world's supply of food. Please consider that the seemingly miraculous increases in humanity's food supply occasioned by Dr. Bourlaug's great work gave rise to an unintended and completely unanticipated effect: the recent skyrocketing growth of absolute global human population numbers.
We have to examine what appear to be potentially disastrous effects of increasing, large-scale food production capabiliities (as opposed to sustainable farming practices) on the population numbers of the human species between now and 2050. If we keep doing the business-as-usual things we are doing now by maximally increasing the world's food supply, and the human community keeps getting what we are getting now, then a colossal ecological wreckage of some unimaginable sort could be expected to occur in the future.
It may be neither necessary nor sustainable to continue increasing food production to feed a growing population. As an alternative, we could carefully review ways for limiting increases in the corporate production of food; for providing broad support of sustainable farming practices; for redistributing more equitably the present superabundant world supply of food among the members of the human community; and for following Dr. Bourlaug's recommendation to "reduce the rate of human reproduction effectively and humanely."
Ms. Weaver’s somewhat pedantic understanding of CO2 and the oceans is like pablum. The ocean acidification is the result of the trillion tonnes of CO2 already emitted. Only 1/4 of this carbon bomb has created the ocean acidification crisis. The even more deadly effect of the remaining 3/4’s of this first carbon bomb will not be changed one iota by reducing future emissions. What use is there in reducing the second deadly dose of CO2 if one does nothing about the first deadly dose.
Ocean life as we know it is doomed unless we immediately administer a “dirt cheap” ocean CO2 anti-dote. What will save the oceans is replenishing the mineral micronutrients our CO2 plague has denied the oceans and resulted in their acidifying demise. Only restored ocean photosynthesis can compete with the acid forming chemistry Ms. Weaver refers to, H2O+CO2=H2CO3 carbonic acid. Photosynthesis will capture the first deadly CO2 dose before it becomes ocean acid and turn it into restored ocean life. But only with our help.
Twenty years and $250 million in science spending has shown the way is immediately available and incredibly cheap. 20 years ago one famous ocean scientists called for an ocean Geritol Solution that would require just one of the 50,000 ships that ply the worlds oceans. Replenish the mineral micronutrients, dirt, to the ocean plants and they will do the rest with the free energy of photosynthesis. Read more about this at planktos-science on the web… Stop taking the pablum and the kool-aid from the movie stars who would fiddle their PR tunes while the oceans burn. Demand the replenishment and restoration of the ocean pastures.