Very interesting!
Obama has a new Ocean Policy and you can read about it here.
I did quickly skim over the relevant document and found this remarkable paragraph.
The time has come for a comprehensive national policy for the stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes.
Today, as never before, we better comprehend the links among land, air, fresh water, ocean, ice, and human activities. Advances in science and technology provide better and timelier information to guide decision-making. By applying the principles of ecosystem-based management (which integrates ecological, social, economic, commerce, health, and security goals, and which recognizes both that humans are key components of ecosystems and also that healthy ecosystems are essential to human welfare) and of adaptive management (which calls for routine reassessment of management actions to allow for better informed and improved future decisions) in a coordinated and collaborative approach, the Nation will more effectively address the challenges facing the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes and ensure their continued health for this and future generations.
Precisely!
Forget the notion of there remaining some remote and pristine corner worthy of being called Wilderness!
We are everywhere – physically, but also in the air, in the climate, in the water, in the soil, from the tip of the Everest to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. And those who profess the contrary and are advocating hands-off policies and a return to Rousseau’s views of noble savages living in harmony with nature are either hopelessly naïve (or hopelessly optimistic) or fatally subjected to the fallacy of shifting baselines, or both.
Granted, panta rei.
But this is not some natural change dictated by the slow progression of geological and evolutionary processes: this is an explosion of anthropogenic extinctions and habitat degradation that is simply unprecedented, a full-scale war on biodiversity that for the most part is completely irreversible and seemingly unstoppable.
May I be a tad overly melodramatic? On the contrary – just look at the mess we’ve made!
But whereas we cannot change the past and ever bring back what we have irrevocably destroyed, we can at least try and halt the onslaught.
I’ve said it before, if we choose to do so, we may indeed succeed in preserving some highly reduced, less diverse, less attractive resemblance of what once was. But whatever we will call it, it will never again just be, it will be something that we will need to continuously defend and to actively manage.
As the Pew correctly remarks
The policy reflects a "modern outlook that doesn't mistake the oceans for wilderness, but a work zone where we need zoning,"
The sooner everybody understands this, the sooner we can embark on a common route aimed at achieving realistic, tangible and above all, sustainable and long lasting results.
Obama has a new Ocean Policy and you can read about it here.
I did quickly skim over the relevant document and found this remarkable paragraph.
The time has come for a comprehensive national policy for the stewardship of the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes.
Today, as never before, we better comprehend the links among land, air, fresh water, ocean, ice, and human activities. Advances in science and technology provide better and timelier information to guide decision-making. By applying the principles of ecosystem-based management (which integrates ecological, social, economic, commerce, health, and security goals, and which recognizes both that humans are key components of ecosystems and also that healthy ecosystems are essential to human welfare) and of adaptive management (which calls for routine reassessment of management actions to allow for better informed and improved future decisions) in a coordinated and collaborative approach, the Nation will more effectively address the challenges facing the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes and ensure their continued health for this and future generations.
Precisely!
Forget the notion of there remaining some remote and pristine corner worthy of being called Wilderness!
We are everywhere – physically, but also in the air, in the climate, in the water, in the soil, from the tip of the Everest to the bottom of the Marianas Trench. And those who profess the contrary and are advocating hands-off policies and a return to Rousseau’s views of noble savages living in harmony with nature are either hopelessly naïve (or hopelessly optimistic) or fatally subjected to the fallacy of shifting baselines, or both.
Granted, panta rei.
But this is not some natural change dictated by the slow progression of geological and evolutionary processes: this is an explosion of anthropogenic extinctions and habitat degradation that is simply unprecedented, a full-scale war on biodiversity that for the most part is completely irreversible and seemingly unstoppable.
May I be a tad overly melodramatic? On the contrary – just look at the mess we’ve made!
But whereas we cannot change the past and ever bring back what we have irrevocably destroyed, we can at least try and halt the onslaught.
I’ve said it before, if we choose to do so, we may indeed succeed in preserving some highly reduced, less diverse, less attractive resemblance of what once was. But whatever we will call it, it will never again just be, it will be something that we will need to continuously defend and to actively manage.
As the Pew correctly remarks
The policy reflects a "modern outlook that doesn't mistake the oceans for wilderness, but a work zone where we need zoning,"
The sooner everybody understands this, the sooner we can embark on a common route aimed at achieving realistic, tangible and above all, sustainable and long lasting results.
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