[intro music]
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
Our perspective is ocean fixated. But what about the land? The predictions of sea level rise, exacerbated by high tides, extreme weather, storm surge, and rainwater flooding overwhelming traditional controls and protections, have come home in tangible, destructive experience worldwide. We are caught unprepared by the effects of seemingly invisible human actions as cause of long-predicted outcomes of past behavior. We are now asked to pay attention, after the fact.
But all these destructive phenomena were predicted by scientists and environmentalists for years, to little avail, now embarrassingly evident. Even as we struggle to deal with consequence, we are confronted with additional warnings regarding dangers, not from the sea but from the land itself. We have degraded the land in so many ways: among them, destructive agriculture, over-development in marginal places, and profligate water consumption, pollution, and waste.
Are we aware? If not, why not? And if so, what are we going to do about it.
According to a recent article by Askhat Rathi in Bloomberg Green Daily, “about 40% of planet’s land is used for farming…one third to grow crops, the rest for grazing livestock.” Unsustainable agricultural practice has degraded almost half of it, with CO2 released from land disturbance as a primary source of greenhouse gases contributing to global warning. Inherent in success is failure; the power of over-fertilized production to meet indiscriminate demand, corrupting the future from within and below, resulting in decline, if not collapse, of future fecundity and correlative impact on food supply and public health. Rathi points to a dramatic solution: if the problem has been promoted and accelerated by government subsidies, some $500 billion invested globally, the application of public monies toward the destruction of natural capital, why not invest that same amount in land restoration, research for crops with increased yield, and stimulus for organic farming and other methods to at least attempt to abandon past practice and promote alternatives. Again, the politics of industrial agribusiness, lobbying and donations, and the force vested recalcitrant interest stand in the way, just as they did for prior predictions.
Another problem has also come to light. The same socio-economic factors have reached critical impact as it becomes apparent that infrastructure development – the location of urban expansion in coastal areas and wetlands and reclaimed land, and the associated consumption of natural sources and aquifers -- have reached a scale where historic infrastructure – water pipes, sewer and septic systems, stormwater drains, culverts, roads and bridges, industrial waste and buried contaminates – are rising to the surface from below, as groundwater, supplemented by extreme weather, drought, urban wildfire, flash flooding, and rising tides, swells and subsumes from below and above demanding higher cost of repair and maintenance, of re-design and re-construction, with concomitant physical and social disruption. Lakes and streams, wells, and existing municipal water supplies are corrupted; septic tanks, cesspools, power lines, water mains and sewage systems uplifted and broken; transportation and supply chains diverted – all insidious elements of community upset and decline. Add to that the intermixing of fresh and salt water from coastal inundation, and you have a recipe for social chaos at incalculable cost. Have we been here before? Am I experiencing the vertigo, even nausea, of déjà vu.
So, what about the ocean? What about the land? What about our communities? What about our children? If history is the repetition of past mistakes, we are living in a time of historical hell. No one is immune. It is just not possible to ignore these realities and predictions again. And again. What do you call it when you know the problem, understand its cause, have the technology and financial capacity to embrace its solution, and yet do nothing? What do you call it when our government is distracted by the petty and unresolved, our leaders fearful and politic? What do you call it when, on a beautiful winter day, you are in despair over our collective mis-understanding, mis-direction, and missed opportunity to take action to protect ourselves from ourselves and to build a viable future? What do you call it; and what do you do about it?
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
[outro music]
