A destructive transformation is approaching, and its seeds are germinating in our oceans. These are the warnings of Alanna Mitchell, associate of the International Institute for Sustainable Development and the 2008 Atkinson fellow for public policy, in her most recent contribution to the war against climate change, Sea Sick: The Global Oceans in Crisis. We must heed these admonitions because, as Mitchell writes, “the vital signs of this critical medium of life are showing clear signs of distress.”
Yes, that big pool in our backyard is in peril. It has fallen into misuse and neglect, without much concern from its land-dwelling assailants. It’s unfortunate that the oceans are so easy to ignore, Mitchell points out, even though they make up 99 per cent of the living space on the planet.
Overfishing, chemical dumping, rising sea levels, carbon in the atmosphere, coral bleaching—we’ve all heard of these phenomena, but never have they been combined into a single unified picture of the ocean’s health. Indeed, this is what makes Sea Sick so unique; as a former Globe and Mail environmental reporter, Mitchell’s journalistic expertise makes all the pieces fit.
It’s a complex puzzle stemming from her global travels, combining interviews with leading marine scientists with her first-hand experience in the depths of the ocean.
In a recent interview with The Varsity, Mitchell describes one such journey to the Dry Tortugas, 914 metres into the deep blue. She traveled with a group of marine biologists in search of genetic material for a potential cancer treatment. Enclosed in a metallic shell that served as her only protection from the crushing pressure, her fear was palpable. “It was part of the planet that no one had ever seen before,” she says. “It was transformational—an almost otherworldly experience. It was mind altering, game changing.”
Mitchell explains that the ocean can be directly connected to our health. However, the relationship is reciprocal. The ocean will lose its ability to offer us its bounty if we continue on our current ruinous path.
Evidence of a colossal change in the chemistry of the ocean is mounting. Mitchell describes it to me as a “switch of life”—as the mechanisms of the global ocean change, life as we know it will simply die out, making way for an entirely new system. This is a terrifying prospect because, as she reiterates multiple times, “most of life is in the ocean.”
One concern which could lead to this “switch” is the rising level of acidity in the ocean, something that has remained relatively constant for millions of years. “Putting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which then gets absorbed into the ocean, is changing the pH of the whole global ocean. It’s critically important because life exists within a narrow range of pH,” Mitchell explains. “We’re getting to the point where the life that exists in our ocean is going to be disconnected from its evolutionary pH.” Though it’s now been widely accepted, this theory was controversial as little as three years ago.
Another problem is fish farming practices. “If you’re going to do fish farming, which a lot of people say is the answer to the protein crisis that is coming to the planet, you’ll have to think of local species that are low on the food chain and how not to damage the ecosystem,” she says. “And that’s what’s happening in China, a country that produces half of the world’s farmed fish. They’re taking a huge bunches of the mangroves [and destroying them]. It’s much like slash and burn agriculture in the ocean. This part of the ecosystem is being damaged for short term aquaculture profit.”
However, Mitchell doesn’t entirely share her contemporaries’ opinions of China. In his most recent book, Hot, Flat and Crowded, Thomas Friedman expresses a fear of China’s growing economy and their budding propensity to be more “American.” He claims that their destructive path—specifically the unrestrained usage of coal burning power plants—will determine the fate of the planet, provided the west doesn’t set a proper example.
“They have green policies, but [whether] they’re on the path to actually implementing these policies has yet to be seen,” Mitchell explains. “Conceptually, [China is] much further ahead than we are in Canada. You read their policies and it’s like reading a manifesto from an environmental NGO. Our government policies are nowhere near as advanced as the policies in China. If there’s a hope in the world, that’s where it is.”
Despite the book’s gloomy forecasting, Mitchell is somewhat optimistic; for her, the election of Barack Obama seems to indicate a positive turn in the effort to protect the environment. “The key point will be at the climate talks in Copenhagen in December of this year—that’s when the world will have to decide what will happen after Kyoto. What the U.S. will agree to will be critical.”
According to Mitchell, the consequences of the conference will be staggering. “I honestly believe that the drop dead point is December 2009,” she asserts. “I think something dramatic has to have happened by the time those leaders come out of that conference. It has to be big, it has to be substantial, it has to be reachable, people have to actually believe it, and it’s going to have to be a lot more than what they’re talking about now for anything significant to happen.”
