All these changes, whether we recognize it or not, are connected to us. Anything that happens to the ocean will affect our lives. Sea levels rising and creating dozens of underwater cities will undoubtedly affect us, of course, because a quarter of the world’s population will be driven inward. All major cities will be filled up to unimaginable congestion; food and water will become in very short supply, good relations will break down, housing will be unavailable, homelessness and poverty will overwhelm. This could happen in twenty years or less. However, we will feel the impact in other ways, as well.
As sea life dwindles in the oceans, it will mean fewer and fewer jobs for anyone dependent on resources from the sea. As well, public aquarium centers and personal saltwater aquariums will become cathedrals for marine life that no longer exists. As major parts of world economies break down, the last remaining marine species preserved by humankind within glass enclosures will come to haunt us, as these isolated, ephemeral, and fleeting creatures make for us memories of a planet once defined not by its land, but by its ocean. Already today, hundreds of years of overfishing have resulted in an empty ocean through which immense populations of wildlife once swam. There is now less of everything, and more of nothing.
Global warming will make memories out of many living things, and as we remember the bounty of life that this planet used to support, we will feel shame. Unless we do everything we can to slow climate change, protect what is left and restore part of what we have lost.
However, none of this has to come to pass. We can protect the future by realizing that no one is born a conservationist. A conservationist is shaped and inspired by world events: these events, this world. Human beings have always been at their best when things are at their worst. We can no longer wait for the worst to come before we reveal what is best within us. Now is the only time for that.
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