You should know what is taken out of the ecosystem in order to give you a moment's sustenance. Sylvia Earle More Quotes by Sylvia Earle More Quotes From Sylvia Earle When you think about the real cost of so-called cheap energy that has driven our prosperity to unprecedented levels, for some of us, to our horror, we've realized that this has the potential for burning brightly and then snuffing out. Sylvia Earle energy real thinking We couldn't go to the moon on whale oil. We don't have the capacity yet to consider doing such things as harnessing current sunlight. We're burning ancient sunlight in order to get us to where we now are. But it's costly. Sylvia Earle oil moon order Never again will we have this good a chance as we now have to find an enduring place for ourselves within the natural systems that keep us alive. It's a sweet spot in history. That's why this is such a critical time. Sylvia Earle alive chance sweet Never before have we known what we know. Sylvia Earle known knows There are now more than 4,000 places in the sea around the world that have some kind of protection. The bad news: You have to look hard to find them. What you find instead is destructive fishing, mining, gas and oil exploration. Sylvia Earle oil fishing sea I am driven by what I know; that the world I love is in trouble. Sylvia Earle trouble love-is world When you are a child you learn your alphabet, your numbers, but increasingly, we must learn from the earliest stages that the highest priority has to be to maintain the world as a safe place for humankind. Sylvia Earle priorities numbers children It is not too late to turn things around. Sylvia Earle turns late too-late If you make the choice to just go with the flow, that is a choice to make a difference in a negative way. Sylvia Earle making-a-difference differences choices Fortunately, we know more about the problems that we have than in all preceding history. We know now the consequences of the things that we put into the air, into the water - of the way we treat life on Earth. Sylvia Earle earth air water We don't have to be that greedy generation that just continued to take down the underpinnings of what makes the planet work in our favor. Sylvia Earle greedy generations favors There are a lot of smart creatures out there. Dolphins, elephants, and whales are smart. And there are some really smart birds. I know some really intelligent fish. But they cannot know what humans know and are incapable of inflicting as much damage. Sylvia Earle smart intelligent bird Give the ocean a break. Give yourself a break. Sylvia Earle ocean break giving Throughout all of human history we've enjoyed certain benign circumstances: an envelope of atmosphere, an envelope of temperature. A kind of resilience that if you cut down trees, then they'll grow back. You take fish, they recover. You put stuff into the atmosphere that you know is not good for us, but we can still breathe. We haven't awakened, generally, to the sense of urgency that does exist. Sylvia Earle cutting over-you tree Since I began exploring the ocean in the 1950s, 90 percent of the big fish have been stripped away. Tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod, halibut, you name it, the numbers have just collapsed. Also, about half of the coral reefs are gone, globally, from where they were just a few decades ago. Sylvia Earle sharks ocean names We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently. Sylvia Earle nitrogen atmosphere oxygen The burning of fossil fuels has altered the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere so rapidly and so abundantly that now, we are driving not just the warming trend, not just the sea level rise that is a consequence of the warming trend that is melting polar ice and alpine ice, but also [ocean acidification]. Sylvia Earle ice ocean sea We woke up some years ago about the consequences of ozone depletion, the hole in the atmosphere. You can't see it. You can't taste it. You can't smell it. But now we do regard that as a key issue. It's a scientific finding. Sylvia Earle smell issues years It's baffling why the issues relating to climate change - [which] have far more obvious and tangible and much more clear-cut evidence about the cause - have been slower for people to accept as a given. Sylvia Earle issues cutting people The climate has been changing. Of course it [has]. Evidence throughout history, [which] we can assess, especially during human history, shows there have been ups and downs. But the last ten thousand years have been relatively stable compared to now. Sylvia Earle climate lasts years
