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Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Founder of the World Ocean Observatory.
To regulate: is a verb with many nuanced meanings: to standardize, to classify, to monitor, to supervise, to coordinate, to supervise, to administer, to rectify. They are living points of order, often shifting to meet the unexpected, but just as often concretized as laws, the most absolute, didactic response to abuse. By regulation, we propose to control established patterns of behavior: as, for example, the protection of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or for the preservation of the land, the water, and the ocean as essential protection against loss.
Government and the courts are the tools of regulation. Our expectation is that those entities are created to sustain and preserve the natural order of things that protects us all. Those who violate regulation are punished for betrayal of the public good. Regulation has proven essential as a measure of civilization.
From recent events comes examples of the counter-revolutionary movement of these days. In recent months, by executive order, the US Council on Environmental Quality has rescinded regulations and standards for prior restrictions, project review, permits, agency oversight – the abandonment of 50 years of protections of natural resources, on land and sea, against the predation and corruption of such processes and places by the agents of their pollution and destruction: in national parks and wildlife preserves, coastal zones, offshore protected areas, and in the air we breathe. This reversal goes against the conclusions of science, politically affirmed behaviors, responsible corporate adaptations and new technologies, financial returns and the welcome by markets, and the embrace of national and international policies and treaties that are the product of five decades of democratic progress initiated by individuals, organizations, nation states, and multi-government agreement. By the stroke of a pen, all that work, all that hard-earned consensus, has been “disappeared” into regress and the worst interest of the place and the peace in which we live.
The irony in this is that at the same time the historic “Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction” treaty, agreed by the United Nations, came into effect after ratification by the requisite number of members cooperatively dedicated to protection of a unique global ecosystem, beneficial to all. – more than two-thirds of the ocean not under coastal control by individual nations.
As of this date, the United States has not ratified the treaty, and under the present government, is not expected to join the world community, as declaration of “sovereignty,” economic aspiration, and private self-interest. In effect, we have asserted our interest over all and contradicted both the spirit and the law; in fact, we, in arrogance and indifference, have denied both the principle and the power of regulation. In the name of the narrowest self-interest, we have defied collective interest, denied science, enabled the depletion of l natural asset value worldwide, claimed sovereignty over resources that we do not own, isolated ourselves from the community of nations, and asserted a cultural identity that is rogue and destructive and ignorant and suicidal and impervious to the future.
We must take back our right to regulate: to standardize, to classify, to monitor, to supervise, to coordinate, to administer, to rectify…and to sustain the world ocean, to protect its vitality, and its essential contribution to our survival. We must channel outrage and resolve against regression and assert the power of the ocean over the weakness of men and meaninglessness. The ocean is relentless and connective; it can, and will, inundate egoistic weakness to drown the fools and false idols. As “citizens of the ocean,” we are the regulators, embraced, conjoined, in the swim.
We will disuss these issues and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
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[outro music, ocean sounds]
