In this Thursday Teach-In, our focus will be Oceans. Healthy, functioning global marine ecosystems are essential to maintain a stable, livable climate. Our oceans sustain millions of people around the world, while also currently storing 50 times more CO2 than the atmosphere. But our oceans are in danger from increasing CO2, rising temperatures and acidification. The uptake of CO2 from the atmosphere by the oceans has far exceeded sustainable limits. Increasing water temperatures and acidity already seriously impact marine life as well as the millions of people depending on healthy oceans. Furthermore, the ocean's "blue carbon" capacity is at stake, which has serious ramifications for the climate. That’s why solving the climate crisis and protecting the ocean go hand in hand. We must demand that governments and industries drastically cut fossil fuel emissions and speed up the energy transition to 100% renewables to reduce threats to the ocean, and at the same time quickly increase the protection of marine ecosystems to safeguard and strengthen their natural climate mitigation and adaptation capacity.
We are so excited to have Ted Danson, John Hocevar, and Denise Patel join us to talk about why our Oceans are such an important part of our fight for the climate.