I first experienced the Florida Keys’ awe-inspiring beauty while on spring break a decade ago. As anyone who has visited here will tell you, the Keys’ turquoise water is majestic, its sport fishing is exceptional and its coral reefs breathtaking.
But since my first time snorkeling there in 2003, the coral reefs have deteriorated dramatically. In sharp contrast to just 10 years ago, the reefs now seem bland and uninspiring. I haven’t become jaded by the reefs’ splendor, they’re simply less vibrant. The Keys’ coral reefs—like coral reefs around the world—are declining largely due to the greenhouse gases humans emit when burning fossil fuels.
For longer than humans have existed, the ocean has maintained a relatively constant chemical balance. Global industrialization has changed that. The world’s oceans absorb about a quarter of all carbon dioxide humans emit and as the amount of carbon dioxide humans emit has drastically risen, the chemical balance in the world’s oceans has changed dramatically, acidifying at a rate unseen for 300 million years. Ocean acidification leads to coral bleaching and, eventually, coral dies off.
Rising ocean temperatures further threaten coral reefs around the world. On the whole, humans will likely prove to be a threat to coral reefs worldwide. In fact, some climate models predict coral reefs—which cover just 0.2 percent of the ocean’s bottom but are home to a quarter of all of the ocean’s biodiversity—will be nonexistent by as early as 2050, while more conservative estimates project them to be gone by 2100.
Of course, coral reef decline is just one adverse effect in a litany of projected negative consequences of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming. The Florida Keys and the Gulf of Mexico have more broadly become a locus for the negative effects of human activities in recent years. In addition to coral reef loss, nearly five million barrels of oil gushed into the Gulf in 2010 via the BP oil spill, making it the largest oil spill in history. Three-quarters of the land in the Florida Keys, according to some projections, is expected to be underwater by 2100 due to rising sea levels caused by global warming.
For me, witnessing the decline in coral reefs in the Florida Keys has been a realization, a loss of innocence really, that the resource-intensive Western lifestyle I, and most Americans live, comes with serious environmental consequences.
As any climate scientist worth his or her salt will tell you, no single severe weather event or weather pattern—whether a series of unseasonably hot days or the increased incidence of extreme flooding, drought or hurricanes—can be attributed solely to human factors. So far in Wisconsin, many of the effects of global warming have been tame. And some effects even seem beneficial: For instance, the increasing occurrence of 60 degree days in January, which could be a direct result of global warming, seems to be more of a reprieve than a punishment for Wisconsinites.
But in an era when climate scientists often make dire predictions portrayed in apocalyptic terms, the decline of coral reefs offers the most vivid, tangible and immediate example of how our actions negatively affect our environment. One day, I will be able tell my children about the grandeur of coral reefs—the aquatic equivalent of tropical rain forests and the ocean’s richest source of biodiversity. Unfortunately, they won’t be able to see for themselves, or at least not the way I’ve been so fortunate to.
Have we reached a critical juncture at which the world’s entire landscape will change drastically from global warming? Or are we close to a tipping point at which the effects of climate change will be irreversible? I don’t know. But I do know we are already seeing the effects of our actions in the here and now.
Michael is a freshman majoring in political science. Please send all feedback to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
