Oceans hold the solution to Earth's woes

From a commentary in the Miami Herald by Sam Waterston, actor and board member for global ocean conservation group Oceana:

They've been a highway for goods and people, connecting us to the world, and a barrier against foreign invasion, protecting us from the world; a source of food and wealth, going back to our earliest beginnings, when whale oil lit our houses and when cod were so plentiful in New England that huge specimens were commonly stacked like cordwood on New England docks and wharves and still there were so many that you could walk on their backs across some harbors.

Until the recent unrelenting hammering by our technologically impressive, very efficient, very destructive fishing fleets, the seas have been an inexhaustible cornucopia of sea life for our sustenance, delight and wonder. For just as long, they've been an uncomplaining dump. They've absorbed our waste -- trash, sewage and, from manufacturing and power generation, nuclear waste and oil spills.

For the last 250 years, oceans have also been a great sink, absorbing 30 percent of the carbon dioxide we put into the atmosphere through the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation, moderating and masking its global impact. They take in 11 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. Each year, the amount we release grows another 3 percent.

Early-warning system
And still the oceans serve us. In fact, they're performing double service. First, they are giving us early warning, telling us in plain language, the certain consequences of continuing to consume as we are. Second, they're offering us a solution to the problem that has brought us to this dangerous moment, namely humanity's vast appetite for energy. So what happens to the carbon dioxide absorbed by the seas? It combines with seawater to create carbonic acid, changing the acidity of that vast solution and reducing the amount of available carbonate. And that is serious mischief for all kinds of sea life, from corals and pteropods, continuing on through shellfish, clams, oysters, lobsters, mussels and so on, that need carbonate to make the structures that support them.