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5 Human Habits Harmful to Ocean Health

By Jaymi Heimbuch, Planet Green

No matter where we live, even if we’re in the middle of the Mojave desert or the middle of farmland in the mid-west, our connection to the ocean is surprisingly direct. The planet’s marine systems are intricately linked with our daily activities, even when those activities seem trivial or distant. Here are five ways small choices add up to big problems for the ocean’s health.

1. Carbon Emissions and Ocean Acidification

Every time we flip on the lights, turn on the water faucet, charge a cell phone, hop a plane or in any other way create carbon emissions, we’re directly causing the acidification of the ocean and the harmful disruption of marine life that results. The ocean can absorb about two-thirds of the carbon emissions in the atmosphere, but the more CO2 it tries to absorb, the more acidic it becomes. This altered pH causes everything from the softening or thickening of crustacean shells to the bleaching of corals to the overabundance of jellyfish. As we pump more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels, ocean acidification worsens and marine life is being thrown out of whack.

Decisions like skipping an unnecessary plane ride, eating less meat, and buying green power can radically reduce your carbon footprint, and help alleviate one of the biggest threats facing our oceans.

2. Packaging and the Pacific Garbage Patch

Americans generate a lot of trash. Each of us tosses about 185 pounds of plastic per year, a vast amount of it from packaging. From plastic bags, to take-out containers, to packaging used for everything from toys to food, we use up and throw out an incredible amount of something that will never, ever disappear. In fact, much of it is making re-appearances in our oceans. The Pacific Garbage Patch and four other trash vortexes illustrate the problem of plastics in our oceans. Plastics are not only killing marine life, but also entering the food chain to ultimately end up on our dinner plates through the seafood we eat.

By making purchases that take into account the packaging of the products, and choosing to a) minimize as much as possible how much packaging we consume and b) recycling as much of what we do end up consuming as possible, we can make big strides in stopping the flow of plastic into the ocean.

3. Sushi Dinner and Disappearing Seafood

Our fisheries that once seemed endless are now reaching the brink of collapse. Scientists estimate that if our current practices continue, 100 percent of global fisheries will completely collapse by 2050. That is a very short time from now. Even if you think of yourself as a sushi addict in the worst way, or can’t seem to live without salmon or shrimp a couple times a week, you can still make sustainable choices.

By cutting back where you can, keeping an eye on the Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Seafood Guide, and taking advantage of handy techy tools for buying fish, you can help ensure that our seas will have fish in the future.

Photo Credit: mdid via Flickr

4. Over-Consumption and Whale Deaths

Wait, ordering that toy from Amazon.com could cause whale deaths? The short answer is yes. While humans have been sailing the seas for millennia, the shipping industry has skyrocketed over the last few decades. Much of that is due to our rabid consumption habits. Raw materials are transported on container ships to manufacturing plants, and products are then loaded up on ships to be transported to the hands of consumers. The more stuff we consume, the more stuff needs to be shipped across oceans. But crossing paths with those container ships and carrier vessels are whales.

The loud sounds of ships — or acoustic smog — makes it hard for whales to communicate with one another, which means heightened stress levels and decreased opportunities for mating and feeding, among other consequences. Even worse, collision with ships is a major problem for whales, including threatened and endangered species.

Reducing our consumption of material goods can literally help threatened whale populations recover.

5. Driving and Deep-water Oil Wells

Unless you’ve been living far, far away from any media source, you’re probably well aware of the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico thanks to Deepwater Horizon, a BP-owned offshore oil rig that has been leaking since late April. It takes just the tiniest leap of logic to connect our reliance on oil to our car-dependent culture. Currently the US uses about 19.7 million barrels of oil a day, of which 71 percent goes to transportation via cars, trucks, buses, airplanes. So, the longer we stay reliant on fossil-fuel powered vehicles to get from point A to point B, rather than bikes and public transportation, the longer we stay dependent on drilling for those rapidly diminishing fossil fuels, which means a high likelihood of risky wells placed in deep water areas of the ocean and the statistically inevitable occurrence of another disaster like the one playing out in the Gulf of Mexico.

Minimizing our reliance on oil equates to keeping our oceans safe from deadly pollution.

Related:
10 Surprising Ways We Can Restore Our Oceans
12 of the Biggest Threats Facing Our Oceans

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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5 Human Habits Harmful to Ocean Health

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Quote of the Day: Jay Mathews’ Biggest Mistake Was Trusting Michelle Rhee

Mother Jones

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Jay Mathews has been covering local education for the Washington Post since 1996. Alexander Russo asked him what his biggest mistake has been in those past 20 years:

I think my major mistake was giving too much credit to the jump in achievement scores and the appointment of new principals under Michelle Rhee in the DC schools. The scores proved to be largely the result of test tampering and many of the new principals weren’t as good as they needed to be.

Has the cult of Michelle Rhee finally run its course? We can hope.

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Quote of the Day: Jay Mathews’ Biggest Mistake Was Trusting Michelle Rhee

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Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

By on 21 Mar 2016commentsShare

National embarrassment and presidential hopeful Donald Trump met with The Washington Post’s editorial board on Monday and spouted some nonsense about climate change, among many other topics. The takeaways: He’s “not a big believer” in human-caused climate change; instead, he believes “our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.”

Here’s the full climate exchange:

FRED HIATT, WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?

DONALD TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.

STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?

DONALD TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.

FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Thank you for joining us.

No, thank you, Frederick Ryan Jr. and the WaPo editorial board, for reminding us to check out Mexico’s immigration policies. We hear the food’s great and there’s going to be a really big wall. Maybe that’ll keep Trump out.

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Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

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Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

By on 13 Apr 2015commentsShare

Australia wants its cats dead. But not because it’s a nation of fanatical dog people — rather, the country’s enormous feral cat population now constitutes a major threat to its biodiversity. To save the country’s native wildlife, the cats need to go.

Due to hotter days, longer dry periods, and increasingly intense bush fires caused by climate change, Australia’s biodiversity is diminishing. Despite being one of the world’s 17 “megadiverse” countries, Australia has not done a bang-up job of protecting its wildlife. As mammalian extinction rates go, Australia’s is pretty dang high: Twenty-one percent of Australian native land mammals are threatened.

But, shockingly, climate change is actually not the No. 1 enemy of koalas and kangaroos: Feral cats are the “single biggest threat” to protecting Australia’s wildlife, according to a new piece from VICE News. There are about 20 million of these little cutthroat barbarians pawing, nuzzling, and murdering (in equal measure) their way across the continent, eating three to 20 animals each day — which adds up to a loss of 80 million native animals per week.

So, in a cruel but necessary gesture to save the country’s wildlife, the Australian government has pledged $2 million to slow their biodiversity loss by 2020 by killing as many feral cats as possible. Eliminating feral cat colonies altogether won’t be possible because they reproduce at high rates and are difficult to catch, but dammit, they’re going to keep trying. Here’s more from Vice:

For now, poisoned baits are the weapon of choice for population control. The largest programs for this method use aircraft to scatter baits across Australia’s vast outback. The aircraft can drop upwards of 60,000 baits across areas of over 1,000 square kilometers.

Until a stronger solution is found, endangered animals will have to be kept alive by isolating them from the vast swathes of the country where the cats roam unabated.

An entire continent terrorized by herds of meaner, angrier house cats sounds like the plot of a David Lynch movie, but this is real life. Who knew Miss Fluffs had it in her?

Source:
One of the World’s Biggest Extinction Crises Is Being Caused by Cats

, VICE News.

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Feral cats are literally eating all of Australia’s wildlife

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Rescuers Seek Survivors in Turkish Mine Disaster

Rescuers battled on Wednesday to reach miners trapped underground after more than 200 people were killed in one of the biggest mining disasters in Turkey in decades. View this article:   Rescuers Seek Survivors in Turkish Mine Disaster ; ;Related ArticlesProtest of Planned Incinerator Turns Violent in Chinese CityPhilippines Jails Chinese Sailors in Fish DisputeBrothers Battle Climate Change on Two Fronts ;

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Rescuers Seek Survivors in Turkish Mine Disaster

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This Town Was Almost Blown Off the Map

green4us

Now it’s back, and super green. dmbernasconi/Flickr If I were to tell you this is a story about a tornado in Kansas, it would probably bring to mind a certain doe-eyed girl and her little dog. Well, sometimes tornadoes transport girls and their adorable pets to magical lands. Other times they level entire towns. That is what happened the night of May 4, 2007, when an EF-5 tornado (for non-Kansans, that’s a really freaking big — the biggest, in fact) nearly two miles wide hit the town of Greensburg, a farming community in south-central Kansas. Almost all of the 1,383 residents lost their homes, nine died, and the town was left looking like this: To keep reading, click here.

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This Town Was Almost Blown Off the Map

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