Let’s clear the air, and water. It’s time to close the door on the Dirty Fuel Age. It’s been a good run but now we know the hidden costs of overloading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide. Not only is human produced CO2 driving climate shifts and having dramatic impacts (the 2010 Russian heat wave and fires, Australian drought and flooding, the recent weird weather on the East Coast) and threatening agricultural production, water supplies and population/societal stability, but it is also degrading marine life via ocean acidification by helping create carbonic acid.

“Oceanic pH is dropping now at a rate and to levels not experienced by marine organisms for over 20 million years.” scientific study states. It is already having effects on organisms that rely on calcium carbonate for their structural integrity like mollusks, shellfish and coral, but, most importantly, on diatoms and zooplankton, which serve as the basis of the marine food chain (see this April’s National Geographic for examples).

One billion people depend on the ocean as their primary source of food. Also oceanic, the estimates of sea level rise have had to be radically adjusted upward following the Andrill research in Antarctica.

In the final analysis we have to ask, “Is it worth the risk?” Would you drive without a seatbelt? Would you walk on a busy highway with your eyes closed?“ “What’s the worst that could happen?” is answered at: www.gregcraven.org/.

There are solutions, but investors want to be assured that there will be a stable market for the new industries and technologies. We’ve got to cut the $80 billion in subsidies for dirty energy, which together with a carbon tax and lowering of the income tax are the keys to a new, clean economy and livable future. The Stone Age didn’t end due to a lack of stones. Let’s dream a clean, stable future. Let’s be the “re-generation.”

Gary Piazzon
Coupeville