The World Is Blue
How Our Fate and the Ocean's Are One
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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A Silent Spring for our era, this eloquent, urgent, fascinating book reveals how just 50 years of swift and dangerous oceanic change threatens the very existence of life on Earth. Legendary marine scientist Sylvia Earle portrays a planet teetering on the brink of irreversible environmental crisis.
In recent decades we’ve learned more about the ocean than in all previous human history combined. But, even as our knowledge has exploded, so too has our power to upset the delicate balance of this complex organism. Modern overexploitation has driven many species to the verge of extinction, from tiny but indispensable biota to magnificent creatures like tuna, swordfish, and great whales. Since the mid-20th century about half our coral reefs have died or suffered sharp decline; hundreds of oxygen-deprived "dead zones" blight our coastal waters; and toxic pollutants afflict every level of the food chain.
Fortunately, there is reason for hope, but what we do—or fail to do—in the next ten years may well resonate for the next ten thousand. The ultimate goal, Earle argues passionately and persuasively, is to find responsible, renewable strategies that safeguard the natural systems that sustain us. The first step is to understand and act upon the wise message of this accessible, insightful, and compelling book.
Customer Reviews
Not a book to be ignored
"Thousands have lived without love—not one without water." ~ W. H. Auden
This book gets right to the point of our continued existence in a straightforward and factually compelling way.
For instance, are you consciously aware that the oceans drive climate, regulate temperatures, govern planetary chemistry, are the basis of the water cycle, produce the majority of oxygen, and are home to conservatively millions of species, all of which makes our existence on Earth possible? With every breath we take, every drop we drink, every bite we eat, and every day we exist in a conducive climate we are connected to and dependent on our oceans.
"Deeply rooted in human culture is the attitude that the ocean is so vast, so resilient, it shouldn’t matter how much we take out of—or put into—it. But two things changed in the 20th century that may [should] jolt us into a new way of thinking."
Contrary to common sense though, since the middle of the twentieth century we've extracted hundreds of millions of tons of ocean wildlife — not to mention inflicted habit loss, the effects of trophic cascades, accelerated global warming, and ocean acidification — substantially diminishing biodiversity despite arbitrary token conservation successes, and replaced them with our ever increasing wastes and chemicals, severely altering Earth's chemistry at a precipitate pace, and the chickens are coming home to roost. The threats to our oceans are so extensive that more than 40 percent of our oceans have already been severely affected and no area has been left untouched [see NG video Why the Ocean Matters; the Ocean Fact Sheet Package - United Nations 2017 from The Ocean Conference, UN, NY, June 2017; Oceans and the Threats They Face | National Geographic - Environment article; etc.].
This book details the good and bad we are doing to the oceans, our life support system, and discusses what we can do better to take care of the blue world that takes care of us. The sheer volume of details presented is mind-boggling. This is not a book to be ignored.
A quote at the end of one chapter encapsulates the essence of this book. "Carl Safina asks in his book Song for the Blue Ocean:
'Which will it be, then: degradation or recovery, scarcity or plenty, compassion or greed, love or fear, ahead to better times or to worse? We will all, by our actions or inaction, help decide.'"