COP 16 CANCUN. Speaker on drastic action required to reduce CO2 emissions, loss of 40% of ocean phytoplankton since 1950, increasing ocean acidification and global environmental destruction.
In the final analysis, we will use renewables for almost everything, and in some cases, we will have to compensate instead of just replacing everything with renewables, stimulate carbon sequestration with planting trees with other means that will compensate for the carbon we use now, because we do have to, in the long run, reduce the amount of carbon which is in the Carbon Cycle if we have any hope of controlling our climate. Reducing the cycles of hot and cold, of ice age etc… to the point where we can live on this planet in perpetuity. The way it is happening now, we’re not going to have these many people living on the planet by the end of the century, and that may happen no matter how hard we try.
We now know that we have lost over 40% of the phytoplankton since the 1950’s, and this is strange as the adding of carbon dioxide would lead to the stimulation of the production of phytoplankton and photosynthesis. What has happened though is the carbon has been reintroduced to the environment so fast that the phytoplankton has not been able to keep up and the added carbon dioxide has acidified the ocean and consequently reduced the phytoplankton which is the fundamental source of our food chain, and if that collapses, we are going to be in deep trouble, much deeper trouble than we are in now. We are not going to have enough to eat.
If we don’t act now, we may face the rather severe concept that we may be walking around with nothing to eat on the planet except each other