Greetings from Copenhagen

Greetings from Copenhagen, December 11

We traveling divers love the island nations – Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the Solomons, the Maldives, and those in the Caribbean – and the island nations are speaking in a very loud voice in Copenhagen.  Their argument, as I heard the ambassador from the Cape Verde Islands say today: “It was not us who put our waste in the atmosphere, but we are the ones who will suffer the most.”

Reef destruction may be upon us, with increased ocean acidification. As the sea gets warmer, more coral dies, taking the fishing industry with it.  The warming atmosphere and the seas produce more severe hurricanes and cyclones, floods, mud slides  . . .  and of the course the biggest threat, an increasing sea level that already has people living in nations like Tuvalu moving their homes inland or migrating elsewhere.

As I listened to the island-nation advocates, I could hear their fear and anger.  Those of us who live on beach fronts in America may experience some direct effect, and all of us can expect increased storms, but over then next decade or two the temperature increase for most of us may only mean a longer growing season for our roses and lower heating bills.  But the poor nations are on the battle lines. And they haven’t got the money to fight the war. So they are doing everything they can in this enormous gathering to make sure everyone knows it.

In my dive travels to island nations, I see bleached coral but I’ve never thought much about the effect of global warming on the people I meet.  I doubt that many divers do.  We tend to get off a plane, go directly to the resort and liveaboard, maybe mingle with the staff, get in as many dives as we can then go home.  But, unless we seriously curtail the amount of CO2 we – the US, the UK, and the rapidly industrializing world – spew into the air, in a generation or so these nations, the people and the reefs will be a shadow of what they are today.  We might as well stay home and dive the local quarry.

I’m impressed with energy I see in the enormous Copenhagen Bella Center, where 20,000 attendees are acutely aware of the problem and see the solutions.  Nonetheless there are plenty of reluctant governments.  In the history of humanity, there has never been such an all-encompassing issue.  At stake is whether mother earth will remain what we know, or whether our actions will change it irreversibly and disastrously.  My guess is that if the US and the other industrial nations don’t act forcefully this time around, what we divers love about the island nations will disappear before our very eyes.

Ben Davison
Publisher, Undercurrent

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