Our home planet operates like an intricately interconnected organism. Its networks and processes range from minuscule to massive. They include carbon, nitrogen and hydrologic cycles, along with ocean currents and atmospheric jet streams.
When these networks are relatively stable, the climate is stable. They come together to create the conditions that make human life possible.
However, we’ve upset the carbon cycle. Mainly by burning too many fossil fuels over a short time — releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide that had been stored for millennia into the atmosphere. This has trapped heat in, and the overheating planet affects everything from ocean currents to weather.
Gulf Stream on brink of collapse
Scientists say fresh water from the rapidly melting Greenland ice cap and other sources could alter these currents, weakening the Gulf Stream to the point of collapse.
Its official name is the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It carries warm Atlantic water north where it cools and sinks, driving Atlantic currents. Ocean covers 70 per cent of Earth’s surface, and plays a key role in regulating climate and weather patterns.
The Gulf stream could collapse between 2025 and 2095, a new study finds, if we don’t reduce global carbon emissions quickly. The Guardian reports:
“[the collapse] would have disastrous consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and west Africa. It would increase storms and drop temperatures in Europe, and lead to a rising sea level on the eastern coast of North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.”
All these effects, in turn, would have impacts of their own. They would create feedback loops and tipping points as greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere continue to rise.
Record highs for ocean surface temperatures
The ocean around the Florida Keys recently hit an all-time global record for surface temperature, at more than 38 C — as warm as a hot tub. Normal temperatures in the area range from 23 C to 31 C this time of year.
On the Pacific side, high temperatures in the Salish Sea off northeastern Vancouver Island have been cooking the kelp.
Scientists have found that ocean heat waves are rapidly increasing around the world, killing off kelp, corals, shellfish and other marine life. “The research found heatwaves are becoming more frequent, prolonged, and severe, with the number of heatwave days tripling in the last couple of years studied,” the Guardian reports.
The 2021 heat dome alone killed more than one billion marine animals off British Columbia’s coast.
We rely on the ocean for so much — oxygen, food, medicine, carbon sequestration and climate regulation, recreation, transportation, and storm protection. This damage affects us all.
Canada commits to protecting oceans
The good news is that the world is finally starting to recognize how important the ocean is. We’ve also started recognizing how poorly we’ve treated it.
Joining many other countries, Canada now pledges to protect 30 per cent of its marine territory by 2030, along with efforts to protect international waters.
The government has effectively declared a moratorium on deep-sea mining. It has set a goal for new national marine conservation areas.
Canada also joined other nations in signing a high seas treaty, which creates a legal framework to set up a network of marine protected areas in international waters. It also includes requirements for environmental impact assessments in areas beyond national jurisdictions.
Too little, too late
But these commitments are not enough. They are patchwork solutions to interconnected, critical problems.
The sad state of the ocean is another symptom of our excessive lifestyles, fuelled by polluting, climate-altering gas, oil and coal. We cannot fix it while maintaining our status quo economics and lifestyles.
We must challenge all our outdated systems that propel overconsumption and waste, pollution and poverty.
We’ve inserted our relatively recent economic schemes into planetary processes we barely understand. We’ve elevated ourselves and our ideas above nature, justifying our rapid and destructive exploitation of everything around us. As we learn more about how nature’s networks interact and operate, we need to learn how to work with rather than against them.
The ocean is sending a stark warning. We don’t have much time.
David Suzuki is a scientist, broadcaster, author and co-founder of the David Suzuki Foundation. Written with David Suzuki Foundation Senior Writer and Editor Ian Hanington. Learn more at davidsuzuki.org.
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