The Crisis Upon Us

摘要

My deep connection with the ocean began as a boy growing up in the Central Valley of California. Each time on our trips to the beach as we crested the coastal range and the Pacific came into view, it was like being reborn. And during my graduate school education, the buildings at University of California's San Diego campus opened on the sea. Then and ever since, die ocean has been a constant presence in my life. Meanwhile, unobserved while I went about my daily tasks, it was absorbing great swaths of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and thereby slowing the rate of global climate change. But that alteration in chemistry has created a quiet crisis mat now threatens all life on the planet, on land as well as in the sea, with economic effects measured in trillions of dollars and ecological effects of possible mass extinctions as both the marine environment and the atmosphere undergo vast changes.