Amen to that, Sarah. Those are the problems that scare me senseless and keep me lying awake at night.
The fall-out of the marine food web crashing and ocean acidification (among other problems) is so monumental that I don't think we can even grasp an eighth of the potential overall impact on the planet. There's so much we still don't know about our oceans--species, networks, and processes--that we barely have an inkling of the consequences of what we're presently doing (pollution, overfishing everything, especially sharks), never mind what we're considering doing (deep sea drilling, mining, increased whaling). We just have to keep working to bring about the day that *we all* understand that humans are just a part of the environment. I have to focus on that or I end up crying into my beer... Cheers, Lyndell On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Sarah Frias-Torres < [email protected]> wrote: > Brian and all,People talk about economy as if it was a living entity. "the > economy is fragile"... " we must revive the economy", etc. It is all a > mirage.Economy, economics, economic growth, is artificial. It is a mirage. > It is something we made up. It is not real. Yet, we are more respectful of > the economy than we are of the planet we live on.The current "world crisis" > is also a mirage. It is a crisis generated by greedy banks and investors, > those that traded with "futures" and money that did not exist, and at the > end, it has impacted the pockets of the many hard-working people, which will > have to pay the mistakes of a few, with real money.The true crisis, the ones > I'm really scared about, are yet to come. When drinking water becomes > scarce, when basic crops (wheat, rice, etc) become scarce due to a > significant reduction of pollinating honey-bees, major disease on the now > almost clonal crops, or both; when ocean acidification (due to global > climate change) begins to impact the marine food web, and I could go on and > on.These are the true crisis. The systematic shut-down of our life-support > system.it is a possible future, unless we stop thinking of ourselves as > the center of the universe, and start looking beyond our navels into the > wide world. The day we understand it is not "us" and "the environment". That > "we" are an insignificant part of the environment. That day, we will learn > to live sustainably.I hope the day arrives, but for now, I doubt it will. > Sarah Sarah Frias-Torres, Ph.D. > Marine Conservation Biologist > Ocean Research & Conservation Association > 1420 Seaway Drive, 2nd Floor > Fort Pierce, Florida 34949 USA > www.oceanrecon.org >
