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Phytoplankton gives us 75 percent of the oxygen we breath
Greenhouse gas reduction is impossible without the oceans and yet, discussions regarding ocean’s protection have been removed from the Paris negotiations.
Oceans are 71 percent of our planet and 95 percent of Earth’s biosphere. Melt waters from the Antarctic and from the Arctic will probably inundate coastal cities by the half of this century. According to climate advocates, thinking that we can live without protecting the oceans is just as thinking that a human can live with no lungs.
Oceanic phytoplankton absorbs each day a third (more than 32 million metric tons) of the greenhouse gases emitted by the climate-changing fossil fuels industry.
The dramatic raise of carbon dioxide levels in the oceans has a disastrous effect on sea creatures. Fishes become disoriented, genetic mutations happen more often and many species are at risk of going extinct.
Carbon emissions are acidifying the ocean’s water at a higher speed than in the past 300 million years. The Chukchi and Beaufort Seas are almost too acidic for shellfish, which might disappear in the next decade.
More that 42 percent of the planet’s coral reefs have been killed by the rising temperatures of the seas and waters’ acidification. That means that almost a million species of sea creatures have been left without shelter and feeding habitat.
The increasing temperatures of the oceans make it impossible for iron and nitrogen to reach and fertilize the phytoplankton since they were mostly carried by cold currents. The phytoplankton is the totality of marine food but it also plays a vital role of producing the oxygen in the oceans.
Three of 4 breaths of air inhaled by each earthling come from oxygen produced by marine phytoplankton. But the greenhouse gases have killed 40 percent of it.
However, fossil fuels industry, which destroys our planet at a faster speed than ever before, is still subsidized by governments with about $5.6 trillion every year.
The only help to rebuilding the lost phytoplankton comes from whales’ fecal plumes, rich in nitrogen and iron which are fertilizing the oceans. But due to pollution their primary food source, the Antarctic krill, is also disappearing at alarming speeds.
More than that, states like Norway, Denmark, Iceland and Japan continue hunting these greatest fighters against global warming. And yet, negotiations in Paris are excluding the oceans from the discussions, missing the chance of reaching an agreement that could really save the planet.
Image source: pixabay.com
