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Welcome to World Ocean Radio...
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
I often hear my generation lament, “What a sad situation we have created for our children and grandchildren – the pollution, the climate crisis, sea level rise, and so much more.” All true, but perhaps not so despairing as it sounds, in that my children, and now their children, have received the circumstance with resilience and resolve not to wait for us to solve the problem, rather to meet the crisis for themselves. The urgency has been understood and there is ample evidence to support trans-generational awareness and commitment to become agents for change, in effect, to take charge of their own rescue from the situation that we have created.
The paragon of this endeavor is, of course, Greta Thunberg, the young activist who in 2018 stood outside the Swedish Parliament as a one-woman protest against indifference to the conclusions and recommendations of the International Panel on Climate Change and who has remained fully engaged in that singular demonstration as an example for the engagement required by all of us. Greta Thunberg has continued to inspire her generation, leading global protests by children in over 180 countries, outside schools and at countless events and international meetings like Davos and the UN, where she has continued her activism without compromise in the face of political criticism and arrest. She was named as Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2019 and might well be so honored every year since for her integrity, modesty, and consistency of intent. “Much has changed since we started, and yet we have much further to go,” she has said. “We are still moving in the wrong direction, where those in power are allowed to sacrifice marginalised and affected people and the planet in the name of greed, profit and economic growth. We’re rapidly approaching potential nonlinear ecological and climatic tipping points beyond our control.”
She is no longer alone. She has been joined by thousands of young people who understand both the challenge and the solutions. They are everywhere, in the United States, Europe, the Far East, Africa, and South America. They are active in the schools, cleaning the beaches, recycling plastic, further empowered by local youth councils, both local and international, where their voices can be heard by their families, their neighbors, their fellow-students, their governments, and the larger world community in which they incite action and inspire hope. Dr. Sylvia Earle, ocean scientist and advocate, uses the phrase “Hope Spot” for places of exquisite biodiversity identified and conserved as “marine protected areas.” But, the real “hope spots” are each of these children who, with the wisdom their elders have not shown, are envisioning and executing their future.
Beyond these, one can begin to look for institutional change -- heat pumps, rooftop panels and community solar farms, offshore wind, electric cars, state and local laws and ordinances, government subsidies, incentives and grants, open space protection, forest conservation and carbon sequestration, organic farming practice, aquaculture, kelp harvest, shellfish and fisheries regulation, environmental studies in high school and college education, outdoor education in pre- and elementary schools, expanded programs in nature-based vocational training, even the concept of human ecology as the curricular focus of a college experience, demonstrating the expansion of the asset value of Nature as a focus for professional work, community development, and quality of life. Even the media weather people, faced with the ever-increasing evidence of drastic change in meteorological patterns, record intensity, recurring destruction, and inadequate protections against drought and wildfire, have become evidentiary agents against the complacency of climate denial. For whatever political purpose such denial might have advanced in the past, the indisputable reality reveals its absurdity. Denial may be acceptable to the perpetrators of the causes of climate change, but, up against the facts, now evident and experience by all, it becomes ludicrous and ignorant.
Our kids know this, and know it is up to them. We owe them our thanks. We must reinforce their strength, their acceptance of the need, and their commitment to urgent transgenerational RESCUE: R for renewal; E for environment; S for society; C for collaboration; U for understanding; and E for engagement.
We will discuss these issues, and more, in future editions of World Ocean Radio.
World Ocean Radio is distributed by the Public Radio Exchange and the Pacifica Network for use by college and community radio stations worldwide. Find us wherever you listen to podcasts and at World Ocean Observatory dot org.
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