Educating the masses
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska — whose state drives the country’s most bountiful fishing harvest, providing half the nation’s catch — spoke of the need for stable research funding and worried about food-web changes.
“If the little pteropods that are out there that the salmon gobble on leave us because of what’s going on with acidification … think about what that means for our fisheries industry,” Murkowski said during an oceans forum in D.C. “It is huge for the state of Alaska.”
For many, the chief barrier is ignorance.
In part that’s because acidification is fairly new and surfaced first in Washington and Oregon — far from the corridors of power.
“I think (acidification) is a real problem,” said Democratic Congressman Sam Farr, who co-chairs an ocean caucus. “But the first thing you have to do is educate people about what’s broken and needs fixing.”
Persuading politicians
Much of the easy work is already under way. Globally, the amount of CO2 from land-clearing or timber harvest has plummeted 25 percent as deforestation declined.
The European Union is moving to cut its CO2 emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030. But emissions in China and India seem destined to rise. And while U.S. emissions fell in recent years as a result of the recession and a natural-gas boom, they rose again in 2013.
“Other than transforming our energy system, I’m not sure what we can do,” said Ken Caldeira, a climate scientist at Stanford University, who helped popularize the term “ocean acidification.”
“I think politicians are rational. Not until they feel that they’re going to lose votes for not acting will they start dealing with these issues. The real story is winning the hearts and minds of the average person and convincing them we have to stop using the sky as a sewer.”
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