Its very true that most of the world's urban population is utterly
clueless about the magnitude of the problems in EVERY ecosystem on
earth, and not just marine.
However, to quote Sarah "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."
I think economics is, unfortunately, VERY real. Conservation of
ecosystems, national parks, protected areas and the exploitation of
natural resources are all directly linked with human needs, both basic
and luxury. In the end, humans are part of the world too, and their
actions directly impact all other forms of life.
Its time that a course embracing both perspectives are taught to
school children right from first grade, so that they understand what
are the ecological costs of say, a plastic water bottle, or a can of
tuna, or transporting organic apples from washington to florida, or
the costs of airconditioning or needless packaging, or what happens to
the batteries and computers when we junk them. And then raise
awareness of ecosystems, with case studies of community-based
conservation in other countries. Unless most people are aware of such
effects, we'll be on the same consumption-based trajectory we are
currently on, never mind all the carbon neutral rock concerts and even
recycling.
Cheers
amartya
Quoting Lyndell Bade <[email protected]>:
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
PhD candidate
Department of Biology, University of Miami
www.bio.miami.edu/asaha
