I rise today for the 298th time to call attention to the looming climate calamity. I went last week to the Our Ocean conference, a conference founded by the United States of America, and dedicated to protecting our oceans before the damage to them — and ultimately to us — becomes irrecoverable. It was the tenth such conference, which made it a bit of a benchmark.
I was the entirety of the United States delegation. You’re looking at it. 100% of the entire U.S. delegation. Ordinarily many executive branch officials come. In this case, not one executive branch official attended from the United States. Of course not: this administration is nothing more than hirelings of the fossil fuel industry, and the conference—of course—addressed the harm that fossil fuel emissions are doing in the oceans, and the harm that petrochemical plastics are doing in the oceans.
Fossil fuel emissions are heating up the oceans in zettajoules. It’s a massive number, with 21 zeros. It’s a billion trillion joules. In practical terms, the entire energy production of the entire human species across the entire planet Earth amounts to one half of a zettajoule of energy. Everything. All the energy sources of humankind produce one half a zettajoule every year. That’s how much our species relies on. The price to all of us of the fossil fuel component of that half-zettajoule is that those 14 zettajoules of excess heat gets pushed into the ocean, absorbed by the ocean every single year. The heating of the oceans is more than thirty times the energy use that causes the heating, magnified by the greenhouse effect.
It’s not that fossil fuel creates some excess heat and some of that goes into the oceans. It’s that fossil fuel creates changes in the Earth’s physical environment that magnify the heat retention of the planet, the so-called greenhouse effect. So for the component of the half zettajoule of human energy use that comprises the entire species’ energy, 14 zettajoules of heat go into the oceans.
Put another way, if you imagine the heat energy given off by the nuclear bomb explosion over Hiroshima, multiply that by seven. Seven Hiroshima nuclear detonations worth of excess heat is what fossil fuel emissions are driving into our oceans, every single second. Every second. In the ten minutes it takes me to give this speech, the oceans will absorb four thousand Hiroshima detonations worth of heat.
That’s why sea water off the Florida Keys hit Jacuzzi temperatures. That’s why measuring devices along our coasts show a foot of sea level rise already. That’s why fish species are moving about, and fisheries are collapsing. That’s why the world’s coral reefs are bleaching, over 80% of the world’s reefs hit in the latest ocean heating surge caused by fossil fuel.
The physical disruption of the ocean with this massive injection of Hiroshimas-per-second of excess physical heat is matched by a chemical effect — acidification. The excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by fossil fuel pollution interacts with the surface of the ocean — covering seventy percent of our planet, so a lot of surface to interact — and it causes the seawater chemically to acidify. I actually did an experiment here at my desk, blowing the carbon dioxide in my breath through an aquarium bubbler into my water glass. Sure enough, pH strips showed that the water in the glass acidified, measurably, just from my breath.
Acidification in the ocean degrades structures that are made up of calcium. It injures coral reefs, worsening the problems of pollution and warming. We’re headed for a world of dead reefs, at this rate. It makes life harder for shelled creatures, particularly in their larval stages, to grow. There are many of them, but one species measurably hit is the pteropod. Who cares, you might ask? Well, you might, and your kids likely will, because it’s an important part of the oceanic food web. Crash the pteropod, and a lot of other species fall. A survey off the Pacific northwest found that most of the pteropod caught in the survey showed what scientists called severe shell damage. Pteropod don’t survive well in acidified oceans. That much sever shell damage in a foundational species is a bad harbinger of things to come; and it’s just one of many harms from fossil fuel emissions acidifying the world’s oceans.
Then we get to the other petrochemical problem, plastics. The ocean is awash with marine plastic waste. Unlike natural substances that biodegrade into basic elements return into the cycle of life that other beings consume, plastics are man-made. Unlike natural substances, they break down eventually, into microplastic and even nanoplastic particles, that have no use to anything. Ocean plastic waste is a menace.
Large ocean plastic waste ends up in the bellies of whales, indigestibly, killing them. Ghost gear made of plastic goes about its lethal business with no fisherman ever retrieving the catch, just killing, killing, killing. Pretty much every sea bird consumes plastic, lodging in its belly, starving its young of real food. Small creatures consume tiny particles; bigger creatures consume the small creatures; we consume the bigger creatures; and now we find plastic particles in mothers’ breast milk, in human brain tissue samples, even in rain drops over Colorado. Unless we change direction, there will be soon be more plastic by weight in the oceans than the weight of living fish in the world’s oceans.
The plastics and fossil fuel industry may chortle about their profits, but none of this is good for humans. These industries are damaging the natural systems of the planet; the natural systems to which we have adapted as a species; the natural systems that make Earth so beautifully and abundantly livable. There comes a reckoning. As Pope Francis said, you slap Mother Nature, and she will slap you back.
Regrettably, the plastics and fossil fuel industries are also damaging the political systems of the planet, corrupting government, so as to disable our ability to remedy their pollution. The question of the moment that people should be asking, is why are so many politicians lying to us about climate change? The answer, of course, is money. Fossil fuel money floods our political system, pours into it, much of it secretly. Politicians whose home state universities teach about climate change lie about climate change. How is that possible? It’s not like there’s some unfathomable mystery about how climate change works that eludes human understanding. No, it’s known. There’s a counterforce at work against knowledge: fossil fuel money and political pressure is that counterforce.
That force, the malign, corrupt political operation of the fossil fuel industry, has now become dangerous. If you delay treatment of a disease, things get worse, and a treatable disease can become lethal. If you delay dealing with termites in your house, things get worse, and it’s no longer a repair but a teardown. The fossil fuel political operation, for very selfish reasons, has delayed the remedies that would have given us a broad pathway to climate safety, and it’s now getting dangerous.
The control of our government by this political operation is right now complete. Neither house of Congress will do anything right now to avert the looming danger. After asking for a billion dollars from the fossil fuel industry and getting massive donations, our madman president says there is no danger, a supposedly educated man calling our climate perils a “hoax.” His executive officials are all in tow to the fossil fuel industry, doing exactly as they’re told. Puppets on a fossil fuel string. They even put justices on the Supreme Court to ignore the facts about climate danger.
Here’s their problem – which is our problem as well: politics responds to money, but Nature? She can’t be bought; Nature couldn’t care less. Nature will keep administering the consequences dictated by natural laws, by laws of physics and chemistry and biology. I flew home from the Our Ocean Conference thanks to our understanding of those natural laws. When you honor those laws, aerodynamics and metallurgy and chemistry all make flying from Seoul to Dulles possible. Dishonoring those laws is foolhardy and dangerous. Dishonoring those laws for money is reprehensible and dangerous.
