Coral reefs are dying off at alarming rates around the globe. Each week it seems we hear of new threats to reefs off Australia, Sumatra, the Caribbean, Malaysia and more, due to freakishly warming seas and the growing impact of ocean acidification.
(Just how hard is acidification on reefs around the world? Remember this stat, which I use all the time, regarding global warming’s evil twin: The amount of carbon dioxide dumped into the ocean each day by the burning of fossil fuels is the equivalent of 24 million Volkswagen bugs each day. That’s a lot of harmful sh*t being dumped into the mix, 24/7/365.)
Most recent reef closings are being reported in Malaysia, home to 12 distinct reefs, which have been officially closed to divers in order to try and limit stress after waters inexplicably heated up by 4 degrees F and the coral began to whiten from bleaching. While it’s helpful for the reefs, the ban takes a heavy hit on local tour operators. Of course too many tourists may be part of the problem as well.
As reef closings increase it has encouraged slightly bizarre attempts by man to create faux reefs, ranging from sinking battle ships, to dumping old car tires to pushing New York City subway cars into the sea.
Is this a good idea? Tossing more of our crap into the ocean as a way to help it recover from damage we’ve already done? While there are a few positive examples, I’d say the long-term jury is still out.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
There is a growing school of thought among ocean experts around the globe, which believes that one way to slow overfishing is to eliminate fishing boats.
Not with dynamite (as occasionally happens among competitive lobstermen off the coast of Maine), but with legislation. Or, as they have done with success in Scotland, a lottery.
In Massachusetts, thanks to recent changes in fishing rules legislated with the encouragement of NOAA – creating so-called “share catches,” where the seas are governed by a kind of co-op system rather than the previous “every fisherman for himself” approach – both fishermen’s groups and Governor Deval Patrick have suggested that the federal government start buying up fishing boats.
A series of summertime letters from Patrick to U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke argued such buybacks are necessary to keep local fisheries healthy. Locke responded favorably to the suggestion, writing Patrick “NOAA is ready to assist in designing a buyback program to help address the economic impacts of ending overfishing in this fishery.”
Now would obviously be a good time, with fish stocks around the world depleted by 90 to 95 percent during the past 100 years.
Boat buybacks to reduce pressure on fisheries is not a completely novel approach. A decade ago the Scottish government drew commercial fishing licenses out of a hat; if yours was picked, you were forced to not only give up your license but to take your boat directly to the scrap yard where it would be disassembled piece-by-piece, to insure its fishing days were over.
Many of those fishermen were already in hock, due to over-spending on new boats and the reality that there were not enough fish to go around among an overgrown fleet, thus were happy to have their boats – and debts – taken over by the federal government. Of course some multi-generational fishing families were not as pleased by the somewhat random approach.
If boat buybacks ever come to pass in the U.S. there will be protests about the government stepping in, like this early response from one Massachusetts resident: “The government shouldn’t act as a charity for fishermen. It’s a waste of tax dollars to buy boats and scrap them.”
Of course in many countries tax dollars already flow to fishermen via subsidies. Buybacks could be a way for government to get out of the fishing business once and for all.
In the EU, which boasts the third largest fishing fleet in the world (behind China and Peru), subsidies were introduced in the 1970s to help grow the fishing business by helping fishermen invest in bigger, more efficient fleets. Between 2000-2006, EU government’s put about $6 billion into the fishing industry; as fleets grew and fishing stocks diminished, the problem became too much efficiency.
In 2007 a review of the subsidy policy was recommended, requesting a “major” overhaul by 2012.
Last month, citing a specific threat – the overfishing of bluefin tuna – the World Wildlife Fund recommended scrapping the EU’s commercial tuna fleet altogether. The suggestion came after the tuna fleet, with an already reduced season that was to last just one month, from May 15 to June 15, met its entire annual quota in less than one week.
The WWF claimed the quick Mediterranean catch was “further proof that these boats are simply not appropriate for this fishery and that the whole operation is entirely unsustainable – not to mention economically unviable.”
While some in the federal and state governments in the U.S., and even the fishing industry, are keen on some kind of buyback program here, they are stymied by one small hitch: No money.
Despite Gov. Patrick’s long-standing friendship with President Obama, Secretary Locke made it clear that while he, and NOAA, were “interested in exploring” the creation of a buyback program, there was no currently no funding from government, industry or any other source.
A year ago, when the economic stimulus package was being hotly fought over, the Northeast Seafood Coalition proposed an earmark that would have included a $100 million buyback program, but it didn’t make the cut.
In this era of “jobs jobs jobs,” boat buybacks are an interesting economic angle, making sound environmental and economic sense, while essentially asking the government not to create jobs but eliminate them.
Another day, another oil rig explosion in the Gulf. Ho-hum.
That, of course, is an exaggerated way of looking at today’s fire on an oil production platform, the Vermillion 380, located eighty miles off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico.
All thirteen workers were able to get off the rig in life jackets and float for two hours – linked arm-in-arm – before being rescued. It doesn’t sound like oil is leaking into the ocean but for the moment most of the “information” is coming from the rig’s management, Mariner Energy.
A cynic could equate the spate of recent oil industry explosions, fires, leaks and sinkings around the world – whether in China, Michigan or the Gulf – as the price we must pay, especially in the U.S., for ridiculously cheap oil and the lack of a serious, forward-looking energy policy.
There was a story in the Times three days ago about oil exploration going on in the Gulf far deeper than the Deepwater Horizon. It cited the example of a rig called Perdido (or Lost) that can pump oil from dozens of wells simultaneously, all at least two miles below the surface. It is located 20 hours from shore, far from easy repair if an accident happens, whether man-made (a bad cement job) or natural (hurricane).
While the story does a serious job of investigating and highlighting the safety risks of doing business in super-deep waters, it never mentions why this kind of high-risk, incredibly expensive drilling continues, especially in light of all the negative press and expense BP suffered. You’d think that might encourage other oil companies to scale back on the most-risky, most-costly, most-experimental operations.
From the oil companies’ perspective, offshore drilling is safer than drilling on land because it is more expensive, thus subject to more rigorous inspections. Given the lack of oversight evidenced in the BP debacle, that seems hard to believe. According to the Times story, 4,000 wells have been drilled in the gulf’s deep water, 700 in water more than 5,000 feet.
But such expensive operations will continue and for one simple reason: We, the U.S. public, demand cheap and abundant oil. Until that demand lessens, as long as the oil companies continue to profit from even the most expensive drilling operations, nothing will change.
The U.S. consumes 19.6 million barrels of oil a day, 25 percent of the world’ total. In the U.S. we produce more than 11 million barrels a day of crude oil and natural gas and import almost 10 million barrels a day of crude. Every single day we use virtually everything we create. Texas is the biggest producing state; Alaska’s Prudhoe Bay the top oil field; Saudi Arabia our biggest exporter.
Until 1970, we were able to produce everything we needed; today we import 57 percent. Yet despite predictions that U.S. will exhaust its own supply of oil within the next forty years, our demand continues to grow.
Each day, every person in the U.S. and Canada uses 3 gallons of oil. In the rest of the world, the figure is less than 0.2 gallons. And compared to the rest of the world, prices at American gas pumps are astonishingly low: Today, on the eve of Labor Day weekend, the average price per gallon across the country is $2.69. Of that, only 18.4 cents per gallon is tax. (At the low end of the scale is oil rich Venezuela, where a gallon of gasoline costs just eight cents.)
But prices at the pump in the rest of the Western world are more honest and include sizable taxes, like Denmark ($7 a gallon), France ($6.89) and Germany ($6.51).
If there is a light at the end of the tunnel regarding the U.S.’s greedy addiction to cheap oil and aversion to alternative energy sources, it’s that soon – within 40 years? – there won’t be an option. At least not an inexpensive one.
In the meantime, deepwater drilling will continue, as will oil rig explosions, leaks, fires and sinkings.
A few months from now, at the height of Antarctica’s very short summer, riders aboard one “bad-ass” snowmobile will attempt to cross the seventh continent.
A so-called “Bio-Inspired Ice Vehicle” designed by Lotus will pace a team of eleven researchers hoping to make the fastest “crossing” of Antarctica. As is required of all expeditions these days, whether they mean it or not, there is an environmental message attached. The Moon-Regan Transantarctic Expedition says it wants to “examine the impact of climate change on the continent and raise awareness of the issue.”
(I’m not 100 percent convinced that driving across Antarctica is the best way to do that, despite its testing of how bio-fuels stand up in the cold. Northern Minnesota and the Northwest Territories are both pretty fricking chilly in January ….)
Novel forms of transport are hardly new to Antarctica. Ernest Shackleton took both horses and the first car to the seventh continent; Australian Douglas Mawson was responsible for shipping the first airplane to Antarctica (it never successfully flew), as well as a classic Volkswagen Beetle, in 1910.
(For the rest of my dispatch go to takepart.com)
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