Ocean Acidification/Climate Action!
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I am a retired USEPA scientist. Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) denied a petition I filed with the Center for Biological Diversity under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The petition asked EPA to stop ignoring the effects of CO2, which is not only altering our climate in dangerous ways, but is also causing the acidification of the oceans...and that’s killing corals, fish, other marine life and presents a danger to human health.
We have 60 days to file a civil suit to force EPA to comply with TSCA and regulate CO2. The courts seem like the only avenue available to address these two existential risks before it's too late. This account is to help pay for that litigation.
Here's the situation:
The oceans are acidifying because we’ve emitted about 600 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and almost half of that has ended up in the oceans. All those tons of CO2 have not only started to heat up the globe, but have also changed the chemistry of the ocean. It’s now 30 percent more acidic than it was before the industrial revolution. Such rapid shifts in distant history have been linked to mass wildlife extinctions. There’s no reason to think that won’t happen again if we don’t change our ways.
The science connecting CO2 to ocean pH and acidification is unambiguous and well measured. The important thing is that this is a path to Climate regulation without Climate's manufactured science controversy. “Fixing" ocean acidification fixes climate change as well.
Climate and Ocean Acidification are the two most global and catastrophic environmental risks we face. If CO2 isn’t considered a toxic substance in terms of these two existential risks, I don’t know what is.
There are advantages to using TSCA: Ocean acidification and climate change require an international solution. The Montreal protocol, which "fixed" the hole in the ozone layer, started with a TSCA rule.
TSCA requires that those responsible for the problem, pay for the fix. Because TSCA allows consideration of past or legacy emissions, which are the proximate cause of the current warming and acidification, into the calculus of determining who pays for the fix and how much they pay, it provides an equitable accounting of harm from both past and current emissions, i.e., the West, which benefited most from past emissions and the developing countries which benefit most from current emissions. A fair basis for an international climate agreement.
In addition, under TSCA section 9, any federal statute can be used to mitigate the problem if it is more efficient. So a multi pronged approach can be used.
So, in order to “fix” ocean acidification we need to stabilize and lower the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Doing that also helps slow down the effects of climate change. While EPA is regulating some CO2 emissions, it's not doing near enough to avert disaster. A successful civil suit will require EPA to move faster. I hope you can help.
I thank you, our children will thank you, and their children will thank you.
Funds collected will be spent on the litigation.
The petition and the denial can be found (under Anthropogenic Emissions of Carbon Dioxide) here: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/chemtest/pubs/petitions.html
(My background) I worked at EPA for 34 years. I served as director of the Climate Policy Assessment Division in EPA's Policy Office, and as Chairman of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board's Toxic Substances Committee. I have a Chemistry PhD. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
That's it in a nutshell. If you need to read more...
On the surface, it may seem strange to think that CO2, vital for plants to grow and what we exhale could be “toxic”. But the basic tenet of toxicology is: “the dose makes the poison”. Vitamin A is natural, necessary for life, but too much can kill you. We excrete urea, just like CO2. We don’t regulate small amounts of urea (except when we excrete it in public) but we do regulate large releases into waterways, because while a little provides needed nitrogen for aquatic life, too much leads to algal blooms, fish kills and eventually dead zones. So it should be obvious that if some of something is a good thing, lots and lots (and lots) may not be.
Now the science behind ocean acidification isn’t fancy. The higher the amount in the atmosphere (growing by about 5% every ten years) the more in the oceans. There it combines with water to form carbonic acid. This change in water chemistry affects most marine organisms, particularly those at the lower end of the food chain. These tiny critters provide us with about half our oxygen and form the bottom tier of the entire marine food web… from phytoplankton a hundredth the size of a human hair diameter, to anchovy, to tuna, to whales bigger than a semi.
Are we sure this will be a problem? Yes, in both specific and general ways. It’s already been shown to be a problem for many specific species, and generally, because anything that requires additional energy makes it harder and eventually impossible for a species to compete and reproduce.
How bad will it be? We’re not sure, nothing’s certain with biological systems, that alter and adapt, but we do know things will change, a lot. Think about it this way. Would you be willing to bet your life savings or the fate of your kids, on a football game, if you were told that the rules would change every quarter, and you couldn’t know in advance how much they’ll change? This is the situation not only with climate change, but also with ocean acidification.
Climate change science isn’t fancy either... well maybe a little fancier. I think about it his way, the earth receives it’s new energy from the sun, in lots of size wavelengths. One of these “sizes” fits CO2. When it passes it causes CO2 to rotate, vibrate, and just jump around more. Now what we call temperature is really just molecules and atoms moving. So a more energetic CO2 will bump into other molecules (or radiate) making the surroundings hotter. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.
If the sun keeps giving us heat why doesn’t the earth get hotter and hotter? Because the earth also radiates out into space. The amount a body radiates depends on it’s temperature. That’s why when you put on infrared glasses you “see” people in the dark. Humans are cooler than the sun (in a temperature sense) so we radiate in the infared not the visible. The earth’s radiation depends on temperature. Add CO2 and the earth gets hotter, the top of the atmosphere (where we radiate out into space) gets hotter, it radiates more, we lose a little of the energy and the temperature stabilizes. But if we keep adding CO2 the temperature doesn’t stabilize it keeps going up.
Are we sure global warming will be a problem? Let’s put it this way, Humans and nature have evolved to efficiently live in the current climate. As things warm there will be winners and losers. Do we want to bet our future and that of our kids, and their kids, that the changes will all be in our favor… Sea level rise? Dead coral reefs? Dessertification? Temperature extremes?
Virtually every credible laboratory study and computer simulation establishes dire outcomes for the ocean and climate systems, unless we act without delay to slash CO2 emissions and drawdown atmospheric carbon.
We have 60 days to file a civil suit to force EPA to comply with TSCA and regulate CO2. The courts seem like the only avenue available to address these two existential risks before it's too late. This account is to help pay for that litigation.
Here's the situation:
The oceans are acidifying because we’ve emitted about 600 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere and almost half of that has ended up in the oceans. All those tons of CO2 have not only started to heat up the globe, but have also changed the chemistry of the ocean. It’s now 30 percent more acidic than it was before the industrial revolution. Such rapid shifts in distant history have been linked to mass wildlife extinctions. There’s no reason to think that won’t happen again if we don’t change our ways.
The science connecting CO2 to ocean pH and acidification is unambiguous and well measured. The important thing is that this is a path to Climate regulation without Climate's manufactured science controversy. “Fixing" ocean acidification fixes climate change as well.
Climate and Ocean Acidification are the two most global and catastrophic environmental risks we face. If CO2 isn’t considered a toxic substance in terms of these two existential risks, I don’t know what is.
There are advantages to using TSCA: Ocean acidification and climate change require an international solution. The Montreal protocol, which "fixed" the hole in the ozone layer, started with a TSCA rule.
TSCA requires that those responsible for the problem, pay for the fix. Because TSCA allows consideration of past or legacy emissions, which are the proximate cause of the current warming and acidification, into the calculus of determining who pays for the fix and how much they pay, it provides an equitable accounting of harm from both past and current emissions, i.e., the West, which benefited most from past emissions and the developing countries which benefit most from current emissions. A fair basis for an international climate agreement.
In addition, under TSCA section 9, any federal statute can be used to mitigate the problem if it is more efficient. So a multi pronged approach can be used.
So, in order to “fix” ocean acidification we need to stabilize and lower the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Doing that also helps slow down the effects of climate change. While EPA is regulating some CO2 emissions, it's not doing near enough to avert disaster. A successful civil suit will require EPA to move faster. I hope you can help.
I thank you, our children will thank you, and their children will thank you.
Funds collected will be spent on the litigation.
The petition and the denial can be found (under Anthropogenic Emissions of Carbon Dioxide) here: http://www.epa.gov/oppt/chemtest/pubs/petitions.html
(My background) I worked at EPA for 34 years. I served as director of the Climate Policy Assessment Division in EPA's Policy Office, and as Chairman of the Great Lakes Water Quality Board's Toxic Substances Committee. I have a Chemistry PhD. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 900,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
That's it in a nutshell. If you need to read more...
On the surface, it may seem strange to think that CO2, vital for plants to grow and what we exhale could be “toxic”. But the basic tenet of toxicology is: “the dose makes the poison”. Vitamin A is natural, necessary for life, but too much can kill you. We excrete urea, just like CO2. We don’t regulate small amounts of urea (except when we excrete it in public) but we do regulate large releases into waterways, because while a little provides needed nitrogen for aquatic life, too much leads to algal blooms, fish kills and eventually dead zones. So it should be obvious that if some of something is a good thing, lots and lots (and lots) may not be.
Now the science behind ocean acidification isn’t fancy. The higher the amount in the atmosphere (growing by about 5% every ten years) the more in the oceans. There it combines with water to form carbonic acid. This change in water chemistry affects most marine organisms, particularly those at the lower end of the food chain. These tiny critters provide us with about half our oxygen and form the bottom tier of the entire marine food web… from phytoplankton a hundredth the size of a human hair diameter, to anchovy, to tuna, to whales bigger than a semi.
Are we sure this will be a problem? Yes, in both specific and general ways. It’s already been shown to be a problem for many specific species, and generally, because anything that requires additional energy makes it harder and eventually impossible for a species to compete and reproduce.
How bad will it be? We’re not sure, nothing’s certain with biological systems, that alter and adapt, but we do know things will change, a lot. Think about it this way. Would you be willing to bet your life savings or the fate of your kids, on a football game, if you were told that the rules would change every quarter, and you couldn’t know in advance how much they’ll change? This is the situation not only with climate change, but also with ocean acidification.
Climate change science isn’t fancy either... well maybe a little fancier. I think about it his way, the earth receives it’s new energy from the sun, in lots of size wavelengths. One of these “sizes” fits CO2. When it passes it causes CO2 to rotate, vibrate, and just jump around more. Now what we call temperature is really just molecules and atoms moving. So a more energetic CO2 will bump into other molecules (or radiate) making the surroundings hotter. The more CO2 in the atmosphere, the hotter it gets.
If the sun keeps giving us heat why doesn’t the earth get hotter and hotter? Because the earth also radiates out into space. The amount a body radiates depends on it’s temperature. That’s why when you put on infrared glasses you “see” people in the dark. Humans are cooler than the sun (in a temperature sense) so we radiate in the infared not the visible. The earth’s radiation depends on temperature. Add CO2 and the earth gets hotter, the top of the atmosphere (where we radiate out into space) gets hotter, it radiates more, we lose a little of the energy and the temperature stabilizes. But if we keep adding CO2 the temperature doesn’t stabilize it keeps going up.
Are we sure global warming will be a problem? Let’s put it this way, Humans and nature have evolved to efficiently live in the current climate. As things warm there will be winners and losers. Do we want to bet our future and that of our kids, and their kids, that the changes will all be in our favor… Sea level rise? Dead coral reefs? Dessertification? Temperature extremes?
Virtually every credible laboratory study and computer simulation establishes dire outcomes for the ocean and climate systems, unless we act without delay to slash CO2 emissions and drawdown atmospheric carbon.
Organizer
Donn Viviani
Organizer
Arlington, VA