Waterways and oceans face catastrophe

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With the burning of fossil fuels, seawater tempera­ tures are rising, giving impetus to fiercer hurricanes with more destructive winds and powerful storm surges. Warmer seas are eroding polar sea ice, allow­ ing for the release of land-based glaciers from Green­ land and West Antarctica, causing sea levels to rise.

Gigantic plumes of methane are being released from thawing permafrost on the Siberian Sea’s continen­ tal shelf, adding to global heating. With more fresh­ water from melting permafrost and land ice flowing into the sea, the salinity of ocean currents is changing, threatening the shutdown of the global thermohaline circulation that regulates the temperate climate of the Northern Hemisphere.

Coral reefs, which serve as nurseries and habi­ tat for a wide array of marine species, are suffering from heat stress, bleaching, and die-offs. Due to the ocean’s absorption of human carbon pollution, sea­ water acidification is affecting the marine food web by undermining the ability of sea creatures to form shells and skeletons, and also affecting their hearing and navigation.

As seawater temperatures rise, many marine species are migrating toward the poles, dramatically altering feeding patterns and predator-prey relationships in those regions. Due to the changing composition of life in the oceans, jellyfish blooms are becoming problem­ atic in coastal areas and fisheries.

Besides climate change, there are other human in­ terferences in marine ecosystems. Overfishing is de­ pleting the top predators of the oceans, threatening their extinction, and some fisheries have already col­ lapsed due to industrial trawling, which destroys huge numbers of other species with murderous and waste­ ful by-catch.

The flagrant dumping of radioactive coolant and ground water from the Fukushima triple-reactor meltdowns is irradiating the entire Northern Pacific and all life in it with radioactive isotopes. The impacts on marine organisms can be seen in bizarre tumors and increased vulnerability to disease.

Great thumping garbage patches swim in vast flo­ tillas in the Pacific and Atlantic Gyres. There is even human trash on the seafloor. Sea birds are dying of starvation by mistaking plastic bits for food and have been found with gizzards full of nothing but our junk. Organisms that live in the sea consume plastic bits that break down into ever smaller microscopic par­ ticles, enter cells, and become delivery systems for deadly persistent organic pollutants (POPs) such as PCBs and dioxins.

Those dangerous poisons have been carried by wind and waves to the Arctic Circle , where indigenous peo­ ples subsist off of the marine life and are at the top of the food chain. As a result, concentrations of PCBs and dioxins are the highest in the breast milk of First Nation women.

4 SOCIALIST ACTION AUGUST 2014 Nutrient overloading from nitrogen fertilizers gives rise to enormous dead zones at the mouths of all ma­ jor rivers whose watersheds carry run-off from in­ dustrial agriculture. Toxic algal blooms from chemical fertilizers and factory-farmed animal manure are a serious threat to coastal marine life and humans and occur regularly.

The threat of deadly oil spills, such as BP’s Deepwa­ ter Horizon disaster, continually looms. Obama’s “all of the above” energy strategy is primarily focused on fossil-fuel extraction and not on the development of renewables—far from it. As peak oil approaches, and the world scrambles for what’s left of the hydrocarbon reserves, the most extreme forms—tar sands, shale fracking, mountain-top removal of coal, and deepwa­ ter offshore drilling—are what they are going after.

Drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic, where icy condi­ tions and rough seas make it impossible to recover a toxic spill, is still in their game plan. Preliminary to ex­ ploratory drilling, seismic testing for offshore oil and gas reserves must be conducted. That is already ex­ panding in the Atlantic Ocean, undermining the ability of marine mammals such as whales and dolphins to communicate.

U.S. Navy submarines also send out seismic signals, which cause whales to become disoriented and to fa­ tally beach.

There seems to be no end to capitalism’s assault on the seas, and the Global Ocean Commission has issued a warning that the world’s oceans are on the verge of collapse unless things are turned around in the next five years. When one considers that 70% of the planet’s surface is water, it can be seen that a healthy ocean is absolutely vital to our well being. Humans cannot survive on a planet with a dying ocean, and we must restore this great body of water for the sake of all life on the globe.

Water is a vital resource that belongs to no one, yet is required by every living thing. Human beings need it for drinking, cooking our food, cleansing our bod­ ies, washing our clothes, growing our crops, generat­ ing electricity, traveling from place to place, conduct­ ing our rituals and playing. In other words, we need it for Life. Yet, the planet’s supply of pure freshwater is dwindling overall because of pollution and waste.

With climate change, there have been profound changes in Earth’s hydrological cycle. Increased tem­ peratures mean increased seawater evaporation and more water vapor circulating in the atmosphere. Wet places are becoming wetter, often affected by torren­ tial downpours and destructive flooding or violent blizzards with heavy snowfalls.

The subtropic regions of the planet, which contain most of the world’s deserts, are expanding poleward. Arid places are becoming dryer, resulting in pro­ longed, withering droughts. Mountainous areas are experiencing depleted snowpacks and faster spring melts that gush rather than pulse through the warm season, making for much dryer summers. natural entitlements to pure freshwater.

Nestles, Coke, and other outfits are siphoning off nat­ ural springs and municipal sources and bottling the resource. Bottled water is an enormous rip-off. The plastic containers are made of petroleum, better left in the ground, and contain toxic chemicals. When not recycled, they are landfilled and leach endocrine dis­ rupting compounds (EDCs) into groundwater and our bodies as well when we drink from them.

The other matter in regard to freshwater is whether it is actually fit to drink. Despite passage of the Clean Water Act, a regulatory tool riddled with loopholes, our waterways continue to be fouled not only by in­ dustrial chemicals but by concentrated animal feed­ ing operations (CAFOs) and agribusiness chemicals. The overloading of agricultural phosphates along with poorly treated human sewage, combined with heavy rains and warm temperatures, are the cause of the recent algae bloom in Lake Erie that threatened Toledo’s residents with toxic microcystis if they drank municipal water. Toxic algal outbreaks have been a chronic problem on the Great Lakes for some time. With climate change, water-borne diseases are on the rise in general.

Ninety percent of the some 80,000 chemicals on the market come from petroleum-based feedstocks. The human chemical body load of an adult can be as high as 250 compounds, with concentrations even high­ er in our children. Pesticides and herbicides are in ground and surface water everywhere, combining in synergistic ways with other chemicals.

Pharmaceuticals and birth-control hormones are re­ leased into our water courses through urination and because water treatment facilities cannot filter every­ thing out. Endocrine mimics are feminizing male fish, amphibians, and reptiles who swim in the waters. In addition, treatment facilities add unnecessary chemi­ cals to drinking water, such as chlorine and fluoride, that don’t belong in our systems and cause harm. Be­ cause of widespread chemical pollution, cancers and chronic illnesses are epidemic.

The other major sources of water pollution are the extraction of fossil fuels, metals, and minerals. The mountain-top removal of coal destroys not only the mountains and forests, but the hollows and streams, which are filled with toxic overburden. The numer­ ous compounds in the water/chemical/sand mix­ ture used for fracking shale gas and oil are another source of lethal substances. Plus, the water is reused as much as a dozen times, and becomes increasingly more radioactive before stored in poorly lined ponds or pumped into injection wells from where it migrates into groundwater.

Uranium mining on Navajo lands has made their water undrinkable. Then there are the oil spills from pipelines that run over and under waterways, which is why TransCanada’s Keystone XL must be prevented from crossing over the Ogallala Aquifer. The Great Plains cannot afford another spill of the scale in the Kalamazoo watershed.

Mining ores creates millions of tons of overburden. The huge slurry pits from tar sands, coal, and metal mining leach huge amounts of poisons into the wa­ ter. The catastrophic breach in the Mount Polley gold mine tailings impoundment, which is leaking into British Columbia ’s streams, is a nightmarish example (continued on page 10, in “Should ‘population’ be on the climate justice agenda?”)