Latest / Saving the World From Bad Ideas / Bad Idea #45 "Eating wildlife is more sustainable’" with Sylvia Earle

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Bad Idea #45 "Eating wildlife is more sustainable’" with Sylvia Earle · Saving the World From Bad Ideas

• 0:00
  This enormous diversity of life, the 14 different phyla of
• 0:06
  animals, there are about 3035 different categories of animal
• 0:11
  life. They're all in the ocean, and in
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  a small sample, you just take in the clearest ocean water, you
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  can get about half of that category, that library of life.
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  It's only about 14 phyla of animals that occur even in the
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  richest rainforest or take all of the planet on the terrestrial
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  side of things. That's all 1415 categories of
• 0:42
  animal life. The ocean is where the library
• 0:45
  of life is. It's like diving into the
• 0:48
  history of life on Earth. Welcome to saving the world from
• 0:53
  bad ideas. I'm Mark Linus, and I've had a
• 0:55
  few bad ideas in my time. I used to go out in the night
• 0:58
  time to destroy GMO crops, and I also posed nuclear power.
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  But then when I looked at the science, I found I got it wrong.
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  Oops. I've learned the hard way that
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  none of us are right all the time.
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  So now I'm here to challenge the assumptions that we all too
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  often take for granted because the future depends on us getting
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  it right. Hello, and welcome to another
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  episode of Saving the World from Bad Ideas.
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  I'm here with the wonderful Sylvia Earle, oceanographer and
• 1:24
  all round ocean superstar, who will be celebrating her 90th
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  birthday this year, I believe. Is that right?
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  Sylvia? Welcome.
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  Right in the middle of it and. We're here in Switzerland, we've
• 1:36
  been at a conference about oceans and poles.
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  And I want to start though, by talking a bit about your life, a
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  whole life story. You've just lived this a most
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  amazing life where you've. How long have you got?
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  I've got a whole hour, if not longer.
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  We were in a such a different place in when you started out in
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  your career, exploring the oceans from where we are today
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  in terms of the technology, our understanding.
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  Give us some, give us give. For the younger listeners, give
• 2:05
  us some idea of what you've seen over your lifetime and how
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  that's changed. Well, in some ways not much has
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  changed in the way people regard the ocean, as if the ocean is so
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  big, so vast, that humans cannot do much to harm the ocean, not
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  too much to worry about what we take out or what we put in, and
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  that therefore a fair degree of complacency.
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  Who cares? The ocean will take care of
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  itself. Now we know the evidence is very
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  clear that what we have been putting in and what we have been
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  taking out has dramatically Alterton nature of the ocean.
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  We've removed, for example, about roughly half of the wild
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  animals that were there at the time that I was a kid.
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  Now, from the 1950's, the time that some are now referring to
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  as the Anthropocene, the time when the human impact on the
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  planet has been so, so significant that you can measure
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  it geologically, we can measure times of extinction in the past.
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  You know, 5 great eras when much of life on Earth simply died
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  because of radical environmental changes.
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  And the most recent was when dinosaurs basically were wiped
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  out because of whatever it was that struck the earth.
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  A comet, meteorite, whatever. But mass extinction it was about
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  65,000,000 years ago. So the big dinosaurs phased out
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  and a new wave of life, including mammals, including our
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  long ago ancestors, really began to prosper in ways they had not
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  prospered before. OK, so the asprosine marks a
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  time geologically when the impact of one species that would
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  be us is so dramatic on everything else that it's being
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  referred to as the 6th extinction, the 6th mass
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  extinction caused by us. You've written about this,
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  you've, you've done the numbers, you've checked out the evidence
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  and it's there for anybody to do.
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  But not everybody has done this. Not everybody is aware that what
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  we have today is not what was there even when I was a child.
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  But I remember not what my parents can remember, could
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  remember. And that is when the skies would
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  darken with migrating birds. And I, but I, I do remember as a
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  kid in New Jersey when it was like, like almost like an
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  eclipse. There's so many birds that they
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  darkened the sky when they passed over migrating songbirds.
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  Those days are gone. And so are the the way that
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  those ribbons of life going across the planet in such
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  abundance that they move nutrients around.
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  Birds like the passenger pigeons would eat a lot of seeds and
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  pick up and move and they'd leave nutrients behind.
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  And when they roosted at night, the areas where they stayed
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  fertilized the ground. And this has been going on, I
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  mean, through millions of years, long before humans arrived,
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  these patterns, these waves of animals across the planet that
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  we can't almost visualize. We don't experience it.
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  The concept of shifting baselines.
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  So what I knew as a child, the children of today don't
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  experience, which is, I think David Attenborough speaks of his
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  role as an expert, as a witness. And I guess to some extent,
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  that's where I am witnessing not just what we are experiencing on
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  the lab, but I've been privileged to be among those who
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  came along at just the right time to be when technology
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  enabled people to go underwater. And it's just a matter of luck
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  that I was a kid when scuba came along.
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  Actually, the first time I went underwater was with one of those
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  copper diving helmets that sponge divers were using with
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  the cable back to the surface with compressed air fed down to
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  those below. And I just had the luck of
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  living next door to a sponge diver in Florida.
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  And the sponge diver's son and my brother had this great idea
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  to borrow that equipment and go diving in a Florida river, the
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  Weeki Wachee River. And I was a kid sister who
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  tagged along. And the first time I breathed
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  underwater was there thinking that we were going to go watch
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  the fish. And it turns out the fish came
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  and watched us. And people can't imagine that
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  sensation of surprise. It's like if you went in into a
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  forest and the birds came flying down out of the trees and looked
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  at you and, and, you know, came swimming or flying along.
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  As you walked through the woods, you had this group of birds
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  flying along with you. That's what happens when you go
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  into an ocean where the fish have never seen primates
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  underwater before. They're curious, they're
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  excited. They said, come look at this.
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  And that's how it used to be. Now we disturb the systems in
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  the ocean so much that there's a tendency to fish do fish tend to
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  do. Now in places where people are
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  more and more common to not come down and see who you are.
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  They flee the way birds tend to flee.
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  But if you go to a place where people have not been, you can
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  experience this magic. The creatures who will want to
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  know who you are a come over. Wow, look at you.
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  And and so you first when when did?
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  When was scuba equipment invented?
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  So when was the? Forties, 1940s but I first tried
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  it in 1953 it was among the first to be I have access.
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  I was taking one of the first classes in marine biology at
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  Florida State University, the marine lab, in the summer.
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  There were eight students with the professor who somehow
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  managed to get two scuba tanks with regulators.
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  We did not have buoyancy compensators or anything to
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  regulate or tell you how much air you had in a tank.
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  You just breathe it until it was hard to breathe and then you
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  came up. We didn't know any of the
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  current rules about coming up slowly or I don't know.
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  We learned, and there's so much that has been learned so fast,
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  literally since I think the middle of the 20th century to
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  where we are now. More has been learned about the
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  ocean, about the nature of the ocean, about life in the ocean
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  because of the technology that gives us access to the sea in
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  ways that no one had before. Think of the millions of scuba
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  divers who now have witnessed the experience of being
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  weightless underwater. They can fly underwater and you
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  can see creatures who have been seen before, maybe, but dead on
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  a plate or used. Squeeze the oil out of the
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  little fish, but you never see the little fish.
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  Or use fish as fertilizer. But you never see who they are.
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  If we didn't know the creatures that we know and love on the
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  land, dogs and cats and horses and things just as dead bodies,
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  we wouldn't. Care about them.
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  I often find it a bit horrifying if you're in.
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  Well, I've worked in the Maldives, for example, and you
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  go scuba diving or snorkeling and you see all these incredible
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  fish, amazing colours, and then later that evening you see them
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  being barbecued. Yes.
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  Reef fish or even the tuna. Yeah.
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  And it is horrifying. I can't.
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  I can't possibly then. And that actually you've, you've
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  taken that stance for a long time.
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  You. You don't.
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  Once you know you cannot unknown.
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  I mean, it's just there. So I say sometimes if you only
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  knew cats and dogs as cat burgers and dog burgers.
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  If you've never seen a cat only experienced what they taste like
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  more dog, but somehow it's we've normalized eating cows and sheep
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  and pigs, but those who really know who they are have a level
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  of difficulty just putting them on their plate anyway.
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  It's most people have never seen a live fish and as they go to an
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  aquarium, but it's changing. But we're still this upper layer
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  that is accessible within diver depth.
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  It's about 50 meters. That's just the skin of the
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  ocean. Yeah, the deepest I've ever been
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  is about 40 meters, and you've been a lot deeper than.
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  That oh, the ocean. The average depth is 4000
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  meters. It's about where the Titanic
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  rests, and the maximum is 11, 1000 meters, 7 miles down, which
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  is not that far when you think millions of people fly 11
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  kilometers in the sky. I flew that far to get to where
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  we're sitting right now here in Switzerland.
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  What's it so? What's the deepest you've been?
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  I'm I'm kind. Of the average depth I've been
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  to 4000 meters in in submersible.
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  Yeah, you know, you're obviously not scared, I think.
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  I wonder what? It's so easy to go one way,
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  right? A lot of people have done that,
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  but they haven't given us their view and.
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  What's it like being in one of these submersibles then?
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  Well. I've never been in it.
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  So describe. Describe for us what?
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  We're going to fix that. I look forward to it.
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  We're building some sources right now that'll be launched
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  during this year. They'll first, they're being
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  built in California, but they'll be launched in French Polynesia
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  later this year. There'll be two, three person
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  submersibles that can go to 1200 meters.
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  That's still the upper part of the ocean, but it's below where
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  sunlight shines to get down in the dark, where most of life on
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  Earth lives it. It took me a while to just
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  understand the truth of that, that the ocean is full of life,
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  from the surface to the greatest depths.
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  We did not know that when I was a child.
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  There are still those who imagined that.
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  That the deeper we woven the ocean, that the less life there
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  is because sunlight photosynthesis, the capture of
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  food from photosynthesis, have to be in the sunlight.
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  But not only is there food raining down from the sunlit
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  surface, chemosynthesis, the deriving energy from the
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  chemicals that are in seawater through chemosynthesis without
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  light. We're just beginning to wrap our
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  minds around how important that may be.
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  Even on the land in the soil where it's dark, we're in the
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  shade in a, in a, in a forest. We're learning so much so fast
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  about how this unique planet, this water blessed planet
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  functions that nobody knew and, and most people still don't know
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  because while the knowledge is there distributing and getting
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  it to be normalized to know, most of life on Earth lives in
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  the dark below where sunlight shines in the ocean, it's cold
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  because when you get below where sunlight shines, the deeper you
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  go, the colder it gets. So it in the, I mean it never
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  freezes because when water freezes, it's lighter than the
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  water that it is in and it goes back to the surface, which is
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  why lakes have a layer of ice on the surface at the bottom is
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  warmer. If it freezes at frozen water,
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  it goes back to the surface and otherwise we'd have a different
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  planet. Water is the key to so many
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  miracles. I don't think people realize how
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  much life there is in the ocean because you look at the
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  rainforest, I guess it's easier to see terrestrial biodiversity.
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  But you're so you're I just want to repeat this point.
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  You're saying there's more life in the dark bit of the ocean?
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  You can look like a glass of Clearwater, right?
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  Taken scooped out of the sea where that first descent back in
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  the 1930s, William Beebe and Otis Barton, the scientist and
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  the engineer who went into submersible down to about 1000
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  meters, 1/2 mile, and they witnessed this explosion of
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  life. People didn't think life could
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  occur even at that depth. But years later, scientists from
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  the Woods Hole Historiographic Expedition began looking at the
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  with magnification at zooplankton and at
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  phytoplankton, and found in what looked like Clearwater this
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  enormous diversity of life, a 14 different phyla of animals.
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  There are about 3035 different categories of animal life.
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  They're all in the ocean. And in a small sample, you just
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  take in the clearest ocean water, you can get about half of
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  that category, that library of life.
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  It's only about 14 phyla of animals that occur even in the
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  richest rainforest or take all of the planet on the terrestrial
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  side of things. That's all 1415 categories of
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  animal life. The ocean is where the library
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  of life is. It's like diving into the
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  history of life on Earth when you go into the sea, even in the
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  shallow water. But if you could go and take a
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  dive into the deep sea, still you get the main categories,
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  like the category that includes jellyfish, the category that
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  includes starfish, the category that includes vertebrates, that
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  would be fish and other chordates.
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  And they're categories of life that most people don't even know
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  they exist unless you make a point of, you know, diving in
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  and figuring it out. So it looks like there's not
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  much there. And James Cameron said there was
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  nothing down there, didn't he referring to?
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  Didn't James Cameron say there was nothing down there referring
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  to deep sea mison? Oh, he should know better.
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  Out of thoughts, out of all the people.
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  No, but he's, he started out as a biologist, right?
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  And then he got lured away into art and all the things that he
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  still is. He's he's has wide interests,
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  but he says he goes exploring. No, he makes films so he can go
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  exploring, but he does many things.
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  But I don't know why he made that statement because he does
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  no better. Yeah, because deep sea mining is
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  now a big threat to this seabed habitat, which we're only just
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  beginning to find out about because there's all these.
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  Minerals down there which we supposedly need, manganese,
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  nickel. Oh, Mark.
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  Just think about it. Throughout our history, we have
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  consumed nature. All wealth ultimately comes from
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  what we take from nature. We monetize trees.
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  We monetize fish, wildlife. The Lewis and Clark expedition
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  in the early 1800s across North America, the mission of
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  exploration. They're trying to find a, you
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  know, waterway from one coast to the other that doesn't exist.
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  But they were. Nobody knew that at the time.
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  They helped fund the expedition by killing animals and bringing
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  back their furs is a fur acquisition expedition.
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  It's a footnote in the story of for most, but for me it's just a
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  glaring example of how casual we have been about consuming nature
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  birds. Their numbers are so much lower
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  and the diversity has decreased so greatly in just the last 100
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  years because of US habitat destruction and direct
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  consumption taking for feathers or meat.
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  And the same is true with the wild animals over the last
• 21:32
  10,000 years. Is EB Wilson, that famous
• 21:36
  biologist from the Ant man, from Harvard pig thinking biologist
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  who said that we consume the large, the slow and the tasty
• 21:49
  animals across North America over the last 10,000 years or
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  so. And think about the extinctions
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  of the the mammoths, the the the wolves, the bears, the larger
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  ones. We still have bison, we still
• 22:07
  have some bears, we still have Panthers.
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  But gone are many of the creatures that are in the fossil
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  record. But since the last 200 years,
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  the so-called revolution, when we really began to not only
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  master technologies that give us control over nature to a much
• 22:32
  greater extent, but our numbers go back to what some referred to
• 22:38
  as the great era of exploration. 500 years ago, 15 hundreds, Oh
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  my goodness, world population was half a billion.
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  Fast forward to 1800, think Lewis and Clark, about 1 billion
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  people. And then I came along in the
• 22:59
  1930s, 2 billion and then by the 1980s, four billion.
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  And here we are, we've doubled that number, 8 billion
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  inclining. So just the sheer impact of our
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  appetites, our need for space, our need for water, food, and
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  it's going at an increasingly high expansion and the quality
• 23:33
  of life that we now expect means we take more.
• 23:37
  So taking more from nature. And when I say that about half
• 23:42
  the life it existed in the ocean in terms of volume, whales,
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  fish, squid, shrimp, lobsters, krill from Antarctic waters, you
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  name it, we're really good at finding, catching and marketing
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  it. There wasn't a market for many
• 24:00
  of the creatures that now are common fleece, even tuna, if you
• 24:05
  start now, you think of tuna the way you think of chicken,
• 24:08
  chicken of the sea. And but it's not that way at
• 24:12
  all. They're like lions and tigers.
• 24:15
  And where they were in the 50s as compared to where they are
• 24:21
  today, about 90% are gone. Of these big top predators,
• 24:29
  swordfish, you can still see it on menus.
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  And you think it's got to be like cows and chickens and pigs.
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  It's not. These are wild animals and
• 24:40
  they're disappearing fast. Yes, we have regulations about
• 24:45
  limiting the numbers that we take, But once you put a price
• 24:49
  on wild animals, there's essentially no limit to what
• 24:55
  people will, the lengths to which people will go to to
• 25:00
  acquire them. Because you can sell them.
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  And any animal that you can't sell is considered either not
• 25:08
  has a 0 value or it's considered underutilized.
• 25:16
  We haven't figured out what to do with it yet, which is the way
• 25:19
  it is with sharks. In the 1980s, they were
• 25:22
  considered underutilized. And I recall it was a year of
• 25:29
  the ocean. You know, every once in a while
• 25:32
  we decide to celebrate something, including the ocean.
• 25:37
  And in the United States, the agency in the government called
• 25:43
  NOAA National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency was 10 years
• 25:48
  old in 1980. And they celebrated finding
• 25:54
  markets for sharks and made connections for the fishermen in
• 26:00
  Asian markets where there was an appetite for sharks.
• 26:05
  And globally, it became fashionable to eat Shark wasn't
• 26:09
  fashionably before they thought about sharks don't relate.
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  They they actually accumulate urea in their, in their muscle
• 26:21
  and to make sharks shark meat palatable, you have to treat it
• 26:29
  in such a way that the urea that gives it a bad taste to our
• 26:32
  taste way of thinking. But all at once, you know, shark
• 26:39
  fin soup became not just an elitist kind of treat in mostly
• 26:49
  in China, but other Asian countries.
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  It became kind of one of those things that you could get
• 26:55
  anywhere. You could get it in Washington,
• 26:57
  DC or New York City. And it became a global special
• 27:02
  treat. And instead of just marketing
• 27:06
  sharks, shark meat is shark meat.
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  It got just fish and chips. And you just, it's a piece of
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  something covered with bread crumbs and fried.
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  It doesn't matter what you've put into it could be any 20
• 27:22
  different kinds or 30 or 100 different kinds of fish.
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  It's, you know, fish and chips. We can't, can't we?
• 27:30
  Obviously it's completely unsustainable to take wild fish
• 27:34
  from the Easter ecosystem. Why can't we just move to
• 27:37
  farming as we have with terrestrial meat sources?
• 27:41
  Well, there are issues with terrestrial farming.
• 27:44
  How much of the land we have consumed just to feed one
• 27:48
  species? close to half of the farmable
• 27:54
  earth where you can farm has been converted.
• 28:00
  You cut the trees and you plant cows.
• 28:03
  You destroy an entire thriving, complicated ecosystem where
• 28:09
  birds and snails and all kinds of creatures live.
• 28:13
  And you, you create a monoculture of soybeans, corn.
• 28:20
  We've converted wilderness to farmland to feed one species.
• 28:26
  And in the ocean, aquaculture going back to the 1950s was
• 28:37
  already widespread in China. I remember visiting a place in
• 28:45
  China in 1973 where pond culture of carp where they had several
• 28:54
  species of plant eating fish in a pond with ducks on the surface
• 29:00
  that ate some of the plants that were fertilized by the fish and
• 29:04
  by the ducks. And they had duck eggs from the
• 29:09
  ducks on the surface and they ate the the fish that were in
• 29:14
  the water. Mulberry trees were around the
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  pond and the farmland again benefiting from the the water
• 29:23
  from the pond and the fertilized water that fertilized the crops
• 29:28
  that were surrounding made great use of a small area for
• 29:33
  diversity of different kinds of creatures that were sort of
• 29:36
  interdependent. The Mulberry trees were food for
• 29:42
  silkworms. And anyway, it was something
• 29:47
  that had been developed over long periods of optimal
• 29:52
  utilization of a small area, not like industrial farming that has
• 29:57
  taken over to feed 8 billion people.
• 30:02
  We can put a price tag on land. You have to pay tax on it, you
• 30:06
  have to manage it. You have to buy the land in the
• 30:08
  1st place or whatever. There's a cost associated with
• 30:12
  it. The ocean is free now there are
• 30:17
  policies for leasing states that provide certain concept of
• 30:24
  ownership of areas of water, the places designated as exclusive
• 30:30
  economic zones out 200 miles surrounding coastal countries.
• 30:39
  That's not every country, it's only those with the coastline
• 30:43
  and oil and gas leases are you pay as a company to lease parts
• 30:53
  of the ocean and you can do the same thing if for aquaculture,
• 30:57
  you can lease from the the state or the country that has
• 31:02
  jurisdiction. But even that idea that we own
• 31:06
  the ocean is new in the last 100 years or so We're you actually
• 31:13
  have walls that enable somebody to pay for use of the ocean
• 31:21
  beyond that 200 miles. It's the high seas, it's the
• 31:25
  open ocean. And we're just now, right now,
• 31:28
  beginning to not only start to pay whatever depends on the
• 31:38
  country or the state globally, how much you have to actually
• 31:41
  pay. Sometimes it's nothing because
• 31:44
  the ocean is free to establish a farm, an aquaculture set up.
• 31:49
  Shrimp farming is an example of something that has taken off
• 31:53
  since the 1980s to fence off a place in the sea where you
• 32:01
  deliberately cultivate shrimp or some certain kinds of fish.
• 32:08
  Salmon farming has taken off since the 1970s and when you
• 32:15
  think about it, as it seems like the most unlikely creature than
• 32:21
  Atlantic salmon to to choose as an animal to cultivate,
• 32:28
  considering first of all they're top predators.
• 32:31
  They eat fish that eat fish that eat other fish that eat plants.
• 32:35
  I think about a cow or a chicken or any of the farmed animals.
• 32:40
  There's a long history of selection.
• 32:43
  We don't raise carnivores. We raise plant eating animals
• 32:47
  that grow fast. So they can get a chicken before
• 32:51
  they're a year old. It goes to market and get a cow.
• 32:56
  It takes about a year for a cow to get to maturity.
• 33:00
  So they get to a point where they can start making more cows
• 33:03
  and sheep and pigs. You know, it's the rapid growing
• 33:08
  phases from the time they start out to the time that they're of
• 33:12
  full maturity. And most of the animals we grow
• 33:16
  this happens within a year and they eat plants.
• 33:20
  So it's a very short food chain. Sunlight plants the animal.
• 33:25
  So the investment is very efficient and if you're feeding
• 33:29
  an animal, you want to take them to market when you've put had
• 33:34
  the least investment to get them to the point where they can go
• 33:39
  to market. And for chickens it's months,
• 33:43
  not years. With sheep, it's within that
• 33:47
  first year. With cows, sometimes it's within
• 33:50
  the first two years. You don't eat 15 year old cows,
• 33:54
  you don't eat 20 year old chickens, you don't eat 50 year
• 33:58
  olds sheep or 100 year old anything that we cultivate.
• 34:05
  But in the ocean, think about salmon, adult salmon that are
• 34:14
  probably 6 or 7 or 10 or 12 or 20 years old, swim upstream of
• 34:21
  rivers, fresh front of rivers and spawn.
• 34:26
  And for some species, that's where they end their life.
• 34:31
  For others, they can return and go through another cycle, but
• 34:38
  there's an investment. The time that they spend the
• 34:43
  little fish when their hatch upstream, swim back down and
• 34:46
  then into the sea. This freshwater saltwater
• 34:50
  journey, They're at sea for three or four years, getting
• 34:56
  from a little tiny fish to a big robust salmon, and then they
• 35:00
  come back up when they die after they spun.
• 35:06
  That fertilizes the water. So the zooplankton, the little
• 35:11
  creatures that live in the water are really abundant.
• 35:15
  It's like having a feast ready when the babies come out of the
• 35:18
  egg and they need something to eat.
• 35:20
  It's the fertilizer from the the adult fish that have set the
• 35:26
  table for the young fish. Those cycles have been so
• 35:30
  disrupted when we take the adults coming upstream or now
• 35:35
  when we cultivate them, we've begun to think about, OK,
• 35:39
  normally it would take three or four or five years or longer for
• 35:43
  some kinds of salmon. But the Atlantic salmon, it's
• 35:49
  three or four years that they're at sea before they come up
• 35:52
  stream to spawn. I think about the complexity of
• 35:56
  this life history that clever Norwegian scientists figured out
• 36:02
  how you can capture the fish that were about to spawn and
• 36:08
  then grow the little guys out in cultivated systems so they never
• 36:14
  get to go to sea. They they're in captivity from
• 36:18
  the time they're hatched. And you can select those that
• 36:22
  grow faster than others and you can con them into eating
• 36:26
  something other than wild fish and shrimp and other things that
• 36:31
  they would normally consume from wild ocean and try to get them
• 36:37
  to grow faster and eat something lower on the food chain.
• 36:42
  But still, there's a higher cost to trying to manage growing a
• 36:49
  carnivore salmon. There is growing a plant eating
• 36:53
  animal, as in cows, chickens, pigs, sheep, you know, took us a
• 37:01
  long time to figure out that out of all the mammals that exist,
• 37:07
  we've chosen a few that don't mind crowding.
• 37:11
  They're Hardy, they eat plants and they taste good.
• 37:16
  We can handle that in the ocean. We just take whatever is there
• 37:22
  without thinking what did it what what did a fish have to go
• 37:26
  through? How old is it?
• 37:28
  What has it been eating? What's the cost of benefit ratio
• 37:33
  if we don't have to pay for the fish or what the fish has been
• 37:37
  eating? It's all free without a second
• 37:41
  thought to the real cost of making a so-called orange ruffie
• 37:47
  or a Chilean sea bass or a tuna or a swordfish or a lobster or
• 37:56
  any of these creatures. It's we sort of equate cows,
• 38:00
  chickens, pigs, lobster, shrimp as if they're all the same, you
• 38:05
  know, like they're just, you know, you eat a lobster could be
• 38:09
  30 years old. It could have this long tail of
• 38:12
  what it has taken to make that lobster.
• 38:16
  They can live as long as they're human.
• 38:19
  We usually take them when they're about 5 years old, but
• 38:22
  we don't raise 5 year old cows with five year old chickens.
• 38:28
  It's just too expensive to keep feeding an animal.
• 38:31
  But if you take it from the ocean, it's been, you know,
• 38:37
  taking what it normally does out of the ocean system.
• 38:41
  And those who take the lobsters don't have to pay for what it
• 38:44
  takes to feed the lobster or for the lobster itself or the tuna
• 38:49
  or the swordfish or the shrimp or the curl.
• 38:52
  They have a zero accounting base.
• 38:54
  You take these animals, whatever it's caused the system to create
• 39:00
  and put it on our table and and well understanding the real
• 39:08
  impact of our choices. It's tough though.
• 39:12
  Salmon tastes great and I completely accept the case, not
• 39:16
  just for not taking wild fish, but not taking, not eating fish
• 39:20
  at all, or indeed any animal meat.
• 39:22
  But it's really, really difficult.
• 39:23
  Even marine biologists we were discussing this earlier all seem
• 39:25
  to eat fish. How?
• 39:27
  I mean, I'm holding out for cell cultured bluefin tuna or
• 39:31
  something, but it's going to be a long way.
• 39:33
  Off. So what it's how do you convince
• 39:35
  people it's happening already? You take a few cells from a tuna
• 39:41
  and it's actually having take a few cells from a cow, a few
• 39:46
  cells from a chicken. Cultivate it.
• 39:50
  You don't have to have the feathers, the bone, or all the
• 39:53
  other stuff that makes a chicken a cow or a pig.
• 39:57
  And just the part that we tend to eat, the muscle meat and you
• 40:02
  just grow it by putting nutrients into a liquid water.
• 40:11
  And in large tanks, those cells multiply and you can get a piece
• 40:19
  of chicken that not only just tastes like chicken, it is
• 40:23
  chicken. It came from a chicken.
• 40:27
  You can invite that chicken from whom the cells were removed to
• 40:31
  dinner. He can be there at the table
• 40:33
  with you and you could say thank you chicken.
• 40:36
  You taste really great in Singapore and now even in the
• 40:41
  United States. You you can actually, if you go
• 40:45
  to the right place. It's not like Kentucky Fried,
• 40:49
  but it could be because when you get Kentucky Fried chunks, it's
• 40:54
  just a chunk of chicken meat that is covered with bread
• 40:59
  crumbs and fried. Could be fried almost anything.
• 41:04
  But if it's cultivated chicken, you know, it tastes like chicken
• 41:09
  because it is chicken. And it's been talked about in
• 41:13
  science fiction. I've ever heard story from
• 41:17
  Arthur C Clarke where some astronauts were sitting around
• 41:22
  next to a big machine and they dialed up the steak dinner
• 41:25
  because they put in the carbon, the nitrogen, the phosphorus,
• 41:28
  the sulphur into the big mix and waited for a little while while
• 41:32
  the machine did its thing. And out came a steak dinner with
• 41:37
  potatoes and salad and, you know, all the trimmings.
• 41:41
  Because when you think about it, life, all life, we're all made
• 41:46
  of the same basic stuff. And it's one of the things that
• 41:51
  is kind of miraculous when you think DNARNA, the chemistry of
• 41:57
  life, whether you're talking about fleas on a dog's back,
• 42:03
  there's the same basic chemistry that makes the flea and the dog.
• 42:08
  It makes us and makes pine trees, makes, they say,
• 42:13
  remarkably common chemistry, but so miraculously distinctive.
• 42:19
  Your DNA is different from mine, basic elements, your carbon,
• 42:25
  your hydrogen, your sulfur, your phosphorus, like all this stuff.
• 42:29
  We're all made of the same basic stuff, but there's just one U,
• 42:34
  one me, one tree out there that's unique among all the
• 42:39
  others. And I mean, this has been going
• 42:43
  on for hundreds of millions of years, the variations, but with
• 42:48
  the consistency of the recipes for light to feed ourselves.
• 42:56
  Even now with 8 billion people coming up with a way to minimize
• 43:03
  our impact on the systems that make our existence possible.
• 43:09
  We we need to think, we need to have food that is nutritious,
• 43:16
  delicious, and, you know, attractive.
• 43:21
  All those things that we food is, you know, one of the things
• 43:25
  that common ground, we all have to eat something.
• 43:28
  We do not photosynthesize or maybe someday we can go green.
• 43:32
  I'm not sure. But you know, we've got to do
• 43:36
  better than we're doing now because we're still transforming
• 43:40
  land and now we're transforming the ocean to grow stuff, to grow
• 43:46
  the wrong kinds of animals we should be growing if we're going
• 43:49
  to grow them at all. Plant eating fish, Carp, People
• 43:55
  say I don't like the taste of carp.
• 43:58
  We'll put more garlic or lemon or whatever it is that we put on
• 44:03
  the things we eat anyway. Or tilapia, catfish.
• 44:09
  These are three categories of fish that kind of follow the
• 44:16
  same recipe of the animals that we've chosen to cultivate on the
• 44:20
  land. They grow fast, they eat plants,
• 44:24
  they don't mind crowding. But to take something like a
• 44:30
  tuna, a high seas animal travel over thousands of miles, or cod,
• 44:37
  or many of the creatures that are now being cultivated at
• 44:40
  great cost and a great cost of feeding them.
• 44:45
  I mean, it's just maybe for a luxury market where people don't
• 44:49
  mind how much they take just so they can eat tuna, maybe there's
• 44:54
  a market that's justifiable, but it is going to feed 8 billion
• 44:59
  people. Wouldn't wouldn't it be amazing
• 45:01
  if we could use science and technology to create these
• 45:04
  proteins as you say, through cell culture means?
• 45:07
  It's being done. Then right, it's being done.
• 45:09
  There's things coming to market already, including for fish I
• 45:12
  believe, but wouldn't it be amazing if we could have that as
• 45:15
  the main source and then just leave the oceans alone and let
• 45:17
  these ecosystems recover? And the land?
• 45:20
  I mean both. But again, you have to pull back
• 45:26
  and think, here's our home planet.
• 45:32
  We know more right now than has ever been possible to know
• 45:38
  before. What makes Earth habitable
• 45:43
  starts with the water. All life needs water.
• 45:48
  I mean, I think about the poet Auden who said many have lived
• 45:54
  without love, none without water.
• 45:58
  It's just not just humans. It's all life needs water.
• 46:03
  And what we've done to the fresh water it just in the last 100
• 46:09
  years, converting free flowing rivers to power plants, putting
• 46:18
  up dams, blocking the flow, interfering with these ancient
• 46:24
  migration routes. And not just of fish, but so
• 46:28
  many creatures that are over millions of years have developed
• 46:33
  their life histories around the flow of rivers that we've
• 46:37
  stopped. We don't even count for that as
• 46:40
  a cost. We're beginning to, but not
• 46:43
  really. And we've diverted the flow for
• 46:47
  agriculture. We've turned deserts with all
• 46:50
  their great secrets about how do creatures get along with very
• 46:54
  little water? We, we should want to know how
• 46:58
  do creatures get along with very little water?
• 47:01
  Because we're getting ourselves to a place where fresh water is
• 47:05
  increasingly precious, but we're losing those secrets by flooding
• 47:12
  a natural desert to make it better for cultivating for one
• 47:16
  species us. And do you think how much of the
• 47:21
  land is now fly over any part of the where people live and see
• 47:29
  how we've put lines, boxes. We've just domesticated the
• 47:35
  land. But the cost is taking from the
• 47:38
  systems that keep us alive. It's our life support system.
• 47:42
  So now that we can see the world as a whole, the way Johan
• 47:47
  Rokstrom and teams of scientists now are saying, OK, what makes
• 47:51
  Earth habitable? How close are we to pushing the
• 47:55
  limits of these systems that make our existence in a universe
• 48:04
  that is really not friendly? Where else in the world, in the
• 48:09
  universe, is there a place with water?
• 48:13
  Is there a place where other forms of life exist that we
• 48:18
  could perhaps live? We don't have any answers yet,
• 48:22
  but even Mars, our sister planet, had an ocean Once Upon a
• 48:27
  time. But there is water there, but
• 48:31
  there's not an ocean. Is there life there today?
• 48:34
  Maybe, but we don't have evidence of it yet.
• 48:37
  It's here. This planet has everything we
• 48:39
  need, and it's still in habitable condition.
• 48:44
  But we're losing the opportunity to keep it that way by not
• 48:49
  paying attention to the boundaries that we are now
• 48:52
  exceeding through the release of carbon dioxide and methane and
• 48:58
  other so-called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, warming the
• 49:03
  planet, increasing the warmth that would happen as the natural
• 49:09
  planetary systems go through these ups and downs.
• 49:13
  But we have accelerated the warming.
• 49:15
  We've accelerated the loss of the diversity of life.
• 49:20
  We've decreased the resilience of nature that we need if we're
• 49:25
  going to weather ups and downs that are natural, compounded by
• 49:30
  what we're doing to increase the increase the frequency and the
• 49:38
  intensity of storms and other impacts.
• 49:42
  Anyway, we can see it for the first time and what the benefits
• 49:47
  of burning fossil fuels is that now we know we have to give them
• 49:53
  up if we're going to really succeed as a species on a planet
• 49:58
  that's right at the edge of shifting to a different phase
• 50:02
  that is not in our favor. Too warm the water systems, the
• 50:06
  carbon cycle, the phosphorus cycle, the those forces that
• 50:15
  make Earth habitable for US one way or the other.
• 50:20
  As long as there's an ocean on Earth, there's likely to be
• 50:24
  life, because there was life on Earth 4 billion years ago.
• 50:28
  But we could not survive here. We couldn't because there wasn't
• 50:34
  enough oxygen in the atmosphere. Life had not converted rocks and
• 50:38
  water until, you know, about 1/2 a billion years ago.
• 50:48
  Earth existed with mostly microbial creatures life.
• 50:53
  It may exist somewhere else in the universe, but it's not a
• 50:56
  planet favorable for our existence.
• 51:00
  And so now that we know this, thank you fossil fuels, you took
• 51:05
  us high in the sky. You've given us, you know, the
• 51:08
  ability to communicate. You've given us the power to
• 51:12
  create better health food sources that have exceed
• 51:17
  anything that existed in times before.
• 51:21
  Corn, rice, wheat, soy, they are cultivated to an extent that
• 51:27
  they occupy about 80% of the calories that people consume.
• 51:33
  Just those four, three kinds of grain, one kind of legume,
• 51:39
  soybeans, and then the other rest, all the other plants, all
• 51:45
  the animals that also consume what we tend to grow for their
• 51:50
  benefit, for our benefit anyway. We couldn't conceptually wrap
• 51:57
  our minds around what it is going to take to for us to
• 52:03
  prosper, but we can do it now. You have to give up fossil
• 52:06
  fuels. We have alternative means.
• 52:10
  It's hard when we've become accustomed to burning oil, gas
• 52:15
  and coal, but now we know. We know what to do, what's going
• 52:20
  to keep us safe within safe operating boundaries, and we
• 52:27
  have a little bit of time, but not a lot before we tip over
• 52:31
  into a different phase. That's not pleasant, not even
• 52:36
  possible for 8 billion people to survive.
• 52:40
  We want to survive, right? I mean, I do.
• 52:44
  I think you do. You want our kids, grandkids,
• 52:48
  those who don't have a vote. You can't be here deciding.
• 52:52
  It's kind of up to us right now. Whoever you are, think about
• 52:58
  your footprint, think about the choices you make.
• 53:03
  Think about the people we elect who are making decisions on
• 53:07
  supposedly the behalf of humankind, not just now, but
• 53:11
  forever. Because it's now we've, we're
• 53:15
  right in this moment in time. We, I, I tell kids, you are so
• 53:20
  lucky. You're a 21st century kid.
• 53:24
  You've come along when we've known more than anybody has ever
• 53:27
  been able to know before. Nobody can know at all.
• 53:32
  But we've got lots of, we have 8 billion minds.
• 53:36
  That's the good news. The bad news, we've got 8
• 53:39
  billion appetites. I don't mean just eating.
• 53:43
  We've got appetites for, you know, things that are a matter
• 53:47
  of choice about how we live and where we live.
• 53:49
  And, but first we have to live 1st.
• 53:53
  We have to be able to breathe. We have to have water.
• 53:56
  We have to have water that's safe to drink or use in other
• 54:04
  ways. And we have to have something to
• 54:06
  eat. We have to have something to
• 54:08
  wear, place to live. And we have to take into account
• 54:13
  that we're all in this together, that all of us have to have
• 54:18
  those basic things that are given to us by a planet that is
• 54:24
  within safe operating boundaries.
• 54:28
  I've had a privilege that most have not had to be able to
• 54:34
  explore the ocean in ways that are beginning to be accessible
• 54:41
  for more people. But when you think how many
• 54:48
  people have been to the moon, 12 so far, we're about to make it
• 54:54
  possible for more to go. Until very recently, more people
• 55:00
  had been to the moon and had been able to go to the deepest
• 55:05
  parts of the sea, 11 kilometers down.
• 55:09
  I mean the first person, first two people.
• 55:13
  Not until 1960 had we been as deep in the ocean as astronauts
• 55:19
  who go to the moon, and it was just two for 52 years before
• 55:25
  there was one more. James Cameron in his submersible
• 55:28
  by himself went to 11,000 meters down.
• 55:33
  And then starting fairly recently, Victor Boscovo
• 55:39
  commissioned the development of a submarine to take two people
• 55:43
  and he took himself 1st and became the second person to go
• 55:46
  by himself. And now about two dozen, maybe I
• 55:53
  don't know the exact number, but less than three dozen people
• 55:57
  have been to the deepest part of the ocean.
• 56:01
  There have been hundreds of people to go beyond up, up into
• 56:04
  the atmosphere of in the spacecraft, in the space
• 56:12
  shuttle, to have in the space station, to look back on Earth
• 56:17
  from afar. And you know, you think how many
• 56:22
  have been up in the sky beyond our atmosphere and how few have
• 56:27
  been to the deepest part of this planet.
• 56:30
  But the technology is developing.
• 56:32
  We are China and the United States.
• 56:36
  We are the two countries that have launched Australia is where
• 56:40
  James Cameron's submersible was built.
• 56:44
  But launching off the Mariana Islands and the Mariana Trench,
• 56:50
  it's the deepest place in the ocean.
• 56:53
  But everywhere in the ocean, most of it has not been seen by
• 56:58
  anybody. We're just beginning to explore
• 57:01
  and understand the magnitude of our ignorance about the ocean,
• 57:07
  about the land, about the nature of the soil and the creatures
• 57:10
  that has used close knit associations as microbes and
• 57:14
  fungi and the roots of trees. And how we can apply that new
• 57:20
  knowledge to agriculture to be more efficient, more effective
• 57:25
  in how we use the land and how we protect the wild ocean, our
• 57:31
  life support system. And what's your vision for the
• 57:34
  high seas? Because this was something we
• 57:36
  discussed at the same meeting here in Villas last year.
• 57:40
  It's a term most people may not think about.
• 57:42
  Or if you hear it, you think it's the wild ocean out there
• 57:46
  are beyond the land. When you get beyond where you
• 57:49
  can see. It's the high seas, beyond the
• 57:52
  areas where nations have claimed jurisdiction starting in the 19.
• 57:58
  It's 1993 when the Law of the Sea nations came together to
• 58:02
  ratify the treaty that gives coastal nations authority.
• 58:08
  But they don't govern the habits of whales.
• 58:12
  It's we are the ones who make the rules.
• 58:15
  One species taking command of the whole planet.
• 58:19
  But let's say, OK, those are the rules.
• 58:23
  Half of the world is high seas beyond where nations claim
• 58:29
  jurisdiction. Who owns the high seas?
• 58:32
  You could say the whales, the tunas, the jellyfish, the
• 58:36
  history of life on Earth. That's out there in half the
• 58:38
  planet. The waters around the continent
• 58:42
  of Antarctica are not owned by anyone nation.
• 58:46
  High seas are part of the Southern Ocean and beyond
• 58:56
  national jurisdiction. The Cirgasso Sea in the
• 58:59
  Atlantic, the North Atlantic, the North Pacific, the South
• 59:03
  Pacific, all of this. If you look at a map, there's
• 59:06
  Big Blue expanses. Everybody, if we really do own
• 59:11
  the ocean, everybody owns that. Everybody, not just coastal
• 59:15
  nations. Every human being has a voice.
• 59:21
  And we need to understand not just that concept that anybody
• 59:29
  who goes out on the high seas to extract from it, whether it's
• 59:33
  deep sea minerals or fish or squid, they're taking from you.
• 59:38
  You're taking from all of us. Why do we let this happen?
• 59:42
  I think most people don't appreciate that you have an
• 59:47
  interest, whoever you are, in what happens out there in the
• 59:51
  global Commons. The air we breathe, that's the
• 59:54
  global Commons. The moon.
• 59:57
  Who owns the moon? Well, we can debate that, but
• 1:00:01
  all of us have a vested interest.
• 1:00:04
  All of us have. If we want to think of ourselves
• 1:00:07
  as owning the moon or owning the high seas or owning the air, we
• 1:00:12
  need to think about our responsibility.
• 1:00:17
  We need to speak not just for ourselves, but for all of those
• 1:00:20
  in the future. We need to keep it safe because
• 1:00:24
  that's our life support system. Where does oxygen come from?
• 1:00:28
  Where has it come from? How is it that we have a planet
• 1:00:32
  unique in the universe, suitable for humankind?
• 1:00:39
  It's the ocean that does the heavy lifting.
• 1:00:42
  It's where most of the oxygen has been generated over billions
• 1:00:47
  of years and it's still happening.
• 1:00:52
  We we credit trees and grass and ferns and any greens have
• 1:00:57
  photosynthesis, but the majority even today when we have trees,
• 1:01:03
  we haven't always had trees. There were not trees the way we
• 1:01:08
  know trees today when dinosaurs were around 200 million years
• 1:01:12
  ago. The planet that we have today is
• 1:01:15
  very different from that that has gone before to create the
• 1:01:22
  level of oxygen, carbon, hydro, all those things that make Earth
• 1:01:27
  habitable for us that we are chipping away at destroying the
• 1:01:32
  very systems that keep us alive. We didn't know it, so we didn't
• 1:01:36
  care. But now we do know.
• 1:01:40
  And if you don't care, it's probably because you don't know
• 1:01:44
  or you're only thinking about you now and not taking into
• 1:01:50
  account the way we're causing this planet to go into a
• 1:01:56
  different phase that is not suitable for us.
• 1:02:02
  But as long as it's good for us now, why not enjoy it?
• 1:02:05
  Some people say to most people, I think don't know how close to
• 1:02:10
  altering those systems so that it's too hot for us, that the
• 1:02:16
  water systems are not functioning in a way that is
• 1:02:19
  favorable to us, or that life on Earth is generating conditions
• 1:02:26
  that make Earth habitable. And it's mostly ocean systems
• 1:02:32
  capturing carbon, generating oxygen, maintaining A favorable
• 1:02:37
  temperature range where we can prosper.
• 1:02:42
  But knowing it makes me jump up and down.
• 1:02:47
  I want, I want everybody to know first of all, so you can make
• 1:02:52
  informed decisions. We could not do that until right
• 1:02:56
  about now. I can pick up my little
• 1:03:02
  communication device, little cellphone, talk tech people
• 1:03:07
  anywhere around the world who has a similar device.
• 1:03:11
  We have television. When I was a kid, it did not
• 1:03:15
  exist. We have radio, but not when my
• 1:03:18
  dad was a boy. We've come so far mastering
• 1:03:25
  technologies that were unimaginable, microscopes and
• 1:03:30
  telescopes, communicating devices.
• 1:03:32
  But one thing that we're really good at is devices that enable
• 1:03:39
  us to consume nature. Call it the weapons of war.
• 1:03:45
  We're very good at killing. We are experts to this point
• 1:03:52
  where we really have the capacity to exterminate
• 1:03:58
  ourselves if we choose to, and we don't really want to see the
• 1:04:04
  end of our existence. Dinosaurs did not have a choice.
• 1:04:12
  We do. Do we want to continue to invest
• 1:04:18
  in better ways of destroying nature and destroying one
• 1:04:24
  another? We do have a choice.
• 1:04:30
  Yeah, and the good news is that the ocean ecosystem bounces back
• 1:04:33
  very quickly when the pressure is released, right.
• 1:04:36
  Let me look at this. Look at how whales have
• 1:04:38
  recovered since since the era of industrial whaling.
• 1:04:41
  I hesitate to use things like bounces back or recovers
• 1:04:45
  quickly. And I know that when we, you can
• 1:04:51
  look at individual species and say look at the good news.
• 1:04:56
  And with whales, when we stopped killing them deliberately
• 1:05:02
  commercially in 1986, when we were right at the point of being
• 1:05:08
  able to kill all of the humpbacks, we were down to a
• 1:05:12
  very low level. We were almost exterminated.
• 1:05:16
  The the greatest, largest animal that has ever lived, as far as
• 1:05:21
  we know, they can get bigger in the ocean because the ocean
• 1:05:24
  supports that great weight of blue whales.
• 1:05:28
  And we stopped just in time when the number of births has
• 1:05:37
  consistently begun to change that trajectory over those that
• 1:05:43
  that die every year and their populations are increasing.
• 1:05:50
  And we can we, we can measure it with most of the great whales,
• 1:05:55
  but some of them have not made that turn, the northern right
• 1:05:59
  whales. And there are species that we
• 1:06:02
  don't have numbers on how many there were, how many have
• 1:06:06
  already gone extinct that we did not know they existed at all in
• 1:06:10
  the soil, birds that we have exterminated because we cut the
• 1:06:16
  trees. I mean, look at islands like
• 1:06:19
  Hawaii that had birds that only live there that are now gone
• 1:06:23
  forever because we took away their habitat.
• 1:06:28
  And that's not just Hawaii, but everywhere.
• 1:06:32
  So there's good news. When he stopped the killing and
• 1:06:37
  deliberately start to care, you can see this recovery.
• 1:06:40
  And I love the trajectory for most whales are recovering, but
• 1:06:45
  the complex systems that keep them alive, generating food,
• 1:06:50
  we're killing the whales now because we're taking their food
• 1:06:55
  in the California coast, Gray whales that really came from
• 1:06:58
  almost extinction in the 1950s, we stopped killing them.
• 1:07:05
  They have come back remarkably well.
• 1:07:08
  But now they're starting to decline again because two things
• 1:07:13
  they're they're consuming plastics that did not exist 100
• 1:07:16
  years ago. And we're taking their food.
• 1:07:20
  We're taking what they require to prosper.
• 1:07:24
  And in Antarctica, we're taking krill from the global Commons on
• 1:07:30
  a scale that is affecting not just the whales, but the birds,
• 1:07:34
  the Penguins and the fish, the creatures that rely on krill.
• 1:07:41
  One species of krill in particular, about 50 different
• 1:07:45
  kinds of these little shrimpy creatures.
• 1:07:47
  But one species, Euphasia superbe, is the linchpin in the
• 1:07:53
  life histories of seals, the whales, Penguins and other
• 1:07:58
  birds. You take them away, you take
• 1:08:01
  away their groceries and they don't have choices.
• 1:08:06
  They can't get to the plankton. They need the krill to translate
• 1:08:11
  the phytoplankton into something that the bigger creatures can
• 1:08:16
  actually get to. So what right do we primates?
• 1:08:22
  Our home is basically terrestrial to travel thousands
• 1:08:26
  of miles from the Northern hemisphere with a big carbon
• 1:08:30
  footprint, putting COT and methane into the atmosphere,
• 1:08:36
  creating a lot of noise, a lot of disturbance as these ships go
• 1:08:41
  all the way to the Southern hemisphere, to Antarctica where
• 1:08:47
  no humans have been until the last 200 years and now it's
• 1:08:54
  considered open season. First in 1800s when we first
• 1:09:00
  discovered waters around Antarctica, seals was a
• 1:09:05
  commercial enterprise and then Penguins.
• 1:09:09
  It took Penguins for feathers and for oil, marking the little
• 1:09:13
  birds into big cook pots so we could take their oil and from
• 1:09:21
  then deep sea fish and then the whales, the whales who stopped
• 1:09:28
  killing the whales deliberately in Antarctica.
• 1:09:32
  But it wasn't that long ago that they were being exploited by
• 1:09:38
  nations from many countries in the global continents.
• 1:09:42
  All right. But now we're taking the krill.
• 1:09:45
  It's been this, you know, transition.
• 1:09:50
  First the seals, then the birds and then the fish and then the
• 1:09:54
  whales and now the krill, killing the whales by taking
• 1:10:02
  their food, killing the seals, killing the birds because they
• 1:10:06
  all depend on the krill and the krill themselves.
• 1:10:11
  I mean, what are we thinking? Now that we know, why are we
• 1:10:15
  even considering allowing a few individuals with a few
• 1:10:22
  countries, a few companies to benefit from something that is
• 1:10:28
  free and accounting base of 0, But it's in the global Commons.
• 1:10:33
  All of us are allowing this to be rated by a few countries, few
• 1:10:40
  companies, a few individuals, and there are 8 billion of us
• 1:10:44
  right now. But how many in the future who
• 1:10:46
  will suffer the consequences of these actions?
• 1:10:51
  Why are we letting it happen or in the high seas?
• 1:10:55
  Again, it's a few individuals and a few companies with a few
• 1:11:01
  countries that are disproportionately extracting
• 1:11:07
  for their benefit. But everybody else suffers, pays
• 1:11:11
  the consequences, not just now, but altering the systems that we
• 1:11:16
  all have to live within for as long as they're humans.
• 1:11:22
  We, we have the capacity right now to alter the nature of
• 1:11:26
  nature and we're doing it. We need to think what is the
• 1:11:30
  world we want? What are the decisions?
• 1:11:32
  We can choose. Elephants can't choose, even if
• 1:11:37
  they knew what was causing the disruption of the natural
• 1:11:42
  rhythms that make earth habitable.
• 1:11:45
  They don't have the power that we do.
• 1:11:48
  And you think I'm just one person, I don't have any power.
• 1:11:54
  And it's easy to get discouraged.
• 1:11:57
  But I say, and everybody beginning to say, look in the
• 1:12:03
  mirror, what is your power? What can?
• 1:12:05
  What do you have? What have you got?
• 1:12:08
  Everybody has something that makes Mark.
• 1:12:11
  Linus makes you you. You're using your power right
• 1:12:14
  now, your power of communicating, power of telling
• 1:12:19
  stories and getting others to see what's there to be seen.
• 1:12:24
  Some people have a a voice. I think of those who entertain
• 1:12:29
  people with their incredible beauty of making sounds and
• 1:12:36
  using that to tell stories, using that to inspire people to
• 1:12:41
  think about what can you do? We have problems, but biggest
• 1:12:45
  problem is you don't know you have a problem.
• 1:12:49
  If you don't know you have a problem, you won't do anything
• 1:12:51
  about it. But we we know what to do, or at
• 1:12:54
  least we know we've got problems.
• 1:12:56
  Now turning our attention to why are we taking wildlife from the
• 1:13:03
  high seas? That belongs.
• 1:13:05
  If belongs to anybody, it belongs to all of us.
• 1:13:09
  We all have a voice. We have a voice not just to
• 1:13:12
  protect ourselves and those future humans, but life on
• 1:13:16
  Earth. If whales had a voice, if
• 1:13:19
  elephants could vote, how would they vote?
• 1:13:23
  We have to think about if the kids out there 50 years from now
• 1:13:27
  or even today's children who don't have a vote, they will
• 1:13:32
  have, but it could be too late if 10 years from now to make the
• 1:13:38
  decisions. For right now, it's up to those
• 1:13:43
  who can vote. It's up to those who can make
• 1:13:46
  music or communicate or make the decisions about what to do for
• 1:13:52
  their companies or for their countries.
• 1:13:56
  We need more leaders, but I don't mean just leaders in
• 1:14:00
  office, although they have magnified power to make choices
• 1:14:05
  or to have influence. I mean the kids who can go out
• 1:14:09
  there, as one kid in Texas did, starting to pick up trash on the
• 1:14:14
  beach because she hadn't seen plastic stuff there before.
• 1:14:18
  And others saw her doing it, and they started doing it too,
• 1:14:22
  became fashionable to pick up the trash.
• 1:14:25
  If somebody had to start it, somebody had to be, you know,
• 1:14:30
  willing to be first, and you have to be willing to step out
• 1:14:36
  there. You see there's a problem.
• 1:14:39
  You don't want to do anything because nobody else is doing it.
• 1:14:42
  Well, get over that. You see, something that needs to
• 1:14:46
  be are you choose with your fork, You think, well, does it
• 1:14:50
  matter if I eat a salmon or if I eat tuna?
• 1:14:54
  Because everybody's doing it Well.
• 1:14:56
  Maybe you can be the one who sets a new fashion.
• 1:15:00
  It could become fashionable to eat something that's better for
• 1:15:04
  you and better for the planet. And you don't have to make a
• 1:15:07
  thing over it. Just do it.
• 1:15:09
  And others will see you having a great time eating something that
• 1:15:13
  has a lighter touch on the planet and is better for you.
• 1:15:18
  And you can get others to say that looks delicious.
• 1:15:22
  You can make a point of it if you wish.
• 1:15:25
  But even just doing it, just do it it if we get enough people
• 1:15:31
  making it fashionable not to choose wild animals to put on
• 1:15:36
  your plate because it's better for the planet, certainly better
• 1:15:40
  for the creatures. If you choose to let the fish
• 1:15:46
  live in something like an orange roughy that might be 50 years
• 1:15:52
  old by the time it reaches your plate, think of the investment
• 1:15:56
  that goes into making those animals.
• 1:16:00
  I mean, we don't eat lions and tigers and they're only maybe 10
• 1:16:03
  years old, but a chicken is less than one year old.
• 1:16:07
  But just think about it. It's kind of fun to know who
• 1:16:11
  you're eating or where did that even that piece of lettuce,
• 1:16:15
  where did it come from? I mean, it's a privilege to have
• 1:16:20
  choices. Speaking of privilege, you were
• 1:16:22
  privileged enough to it's gone with humpback whales in Tonga
• 1:16:26
  only a few months ago. Yes.
• 1:16:28
  What was sad expedition? Was it like being a part of that
• 1:16:30
  expedition? I was with a group of
• 1:16:34
  individuals who were there purposefully to get in the water
• 1:16:40
  to document who those whales are, knowing as we now do, that
• 1:16:49
  those are the same whales that go to Antarctica to feed on
• 1:16:55
  krill. But they make the journey, the
• 1:16:58
  migration across the wild ocean to come to Tonga to give birth
• 1:17:05
  to their babies, and they hang around for three or four months
• 1:17:12
  in Tonga. It's in the Southern hemisphere.
• 1:17:16
  I have met some of their counterparts in the Northern
• 1:17:19
  Hemisphere, in Hawaii, in Bermuda, that migrate to cold
• 1:17:26
  waters on the other end of the planet to the Arctic.
• 1:17:32
  They also feed on krill and small fish and come back to the
• 1:17:39
  same places year after year of the birthing areas.
• 1:17:43
  The, the place where, at least for some species, we don't know
• 1:17:47
  the habits of most of the great whales.
• 1:17:51
  We don't know where blue whales actually have their babies.
• 1:17:56
  I mean, it's the biggest creature on the planet.
• 1:17:59
  We haven't figured out their their habits to the extent that
• 1:18:05
  we will eventually. I mean, there are people working
• 1:18:08
  on these questions, but that's we want to document who the
• 1:18:16
  whales are and tell their stories.
• 1:18:20
  They cannot be it this microphone that we can be, we
• 1:18:26
  can speak for them and show their images and they'll be
• 1:18:30
  their ambassadors because people, if they know, they might
• 1:18:34
  care if they know that these incredible creatures that have
• 1:18:40
  language, now we know they have culture, they have dialects that
• 1:18:46
  whales, same species, same genetic makeup basically, but
• 1:18:53
  every whale is different, as different as you are from for
• 1:18:57
  me, there's humpbacks. Each one has its own signature
• 1:19:02
  and group signature, if you will.
• 1:19:05
  We know that these whales that sing this song have these voice
• 1:19:10
  imprints. They're different from those in
• 1:19:13
  Australia. They're different from those on
• 1:19:17
  the other side of the planet, but they're all part of this
• 1:19:21
  network. And for us to be able to just
• 1:19:27
  first learn about it and then share the view to get others to
• 1:19:31
  care, to get others to add their contribution of knowledge.
• 1:19:36
  So, I mean, it's a story of life on Earth, and we've never been
• 1:19:45
  better equipped to discover the nature of nature and who we are
• 1:19:51
  within the fabric of life and how we might be able to
• 1:19:54
  perpetuate our place to have a long and enduring future within
• 1:20:01
  this matrix that we need. It's Earth is not just rocks and
• 1:20:09
  water that magically interacts to have oxygen in the
• 1:20:14
  atmosphere. No, no.
• 1:20:15
  It's taken millions, hundreds of millions of years to create the
• 1:20:22
  basic ingredients to an environment that is has come to
• 1:20:29
  be optimal. The sweet spot in all the
• 1:20:33
  history of life on earth. It's the last 300,000 years, but
• 1:20:40
  mostly the last 10,000 years. The so-called whole scene, it's
• 1:20:45
  when we have really taken off from a very small number
• 1:20:50
  thousands of years ago to a point when we began to have
• 1:20:57
  greater number of births surviving than those who died.
• 1:21:04
  And it started out gradually, but then it became, as it has in
• 1:21:10
  the last 500 years, this exponential growth.
• 1:21:15
  So the more people there are, the more next generation.
• 1:21:18
  And so it's really increasing. Now think about those numbers.
• 1:21:23
  500 years ago, about 500 million people, 1800 about a billion
• 1:21:31
  people, 1930s, two billion people, 1980s, four billion
• 1:21:38
  people. Here we are with 8 billion by
• 1:21:41
  the middle of this century. You know, we keep adding faster
• 1:21:47
  and each of us needs space. Each of us needs water, food,
• 1:21:53
  place. And we have to for the first
• 1:21:57
  time think about, well, maybe we should have thought about it 500
• 1:22:01
  years ago, but we didn't know enough.
• 1:22:04
  We could not see Earth as we now can from space.
• 1:22:08
  We could not measure. We didn't even know 500 years
• 1:22:11
  ago what is air. We did not have the formula H2O
• 1:22:19
  for water, for just plain fresh water uncomplicated by all the
• 1:22:25
  things that are in water. And I mean, this was the time.
• 1:22:32
  Lucky us. I can't end without asking you
• 1:22:37
  about bad ideas. This show is called Saving the
• 1:22:39
  World from Bad Ideas. So what's the bad idea that we
• 1:22:42
  can save the world from here? Is it that we should that we
• 1:22:45
  should continue that the eating fish is OK?
• 1:22:47
  They're taking wild animals out of the ocean to put on your
• 1:22:50
  dinner plate. What are some of the other bad
• 1:22:51
  ideas you've talked about? There's all sorts really, it's
• 1:22:56
  just that we it's nice to have some single bad idea to to to
• 1:23:03
  then. Eating wildlife would seem
• 1:23:05
  wildlife OK in the 21st century. It's a bad idea, Bad idea.
• 1:23:10
  We need those creatures that have lived before there were
• 1:23:14
  humans and are still with us, still contributing to the
• 1:23:20
  generation of oxygen, the capture of carbon, the
• 1:23:24
  maintaining of the fabric of life, all life.
• 1:23:27
  It's a bad idea to use pesticides that kill insects and
• 1:23:35
  a lot of other creatures, including us mean they're not.
• 1:23:41
  There are some that that that are very specific, but I don't
• 1:23:45
  know of any that just kill one kind of insect, Kill mosquitoes
• 1:23:50
  with these broad based chemicals that are not good for us and
• 1:23:58
  they're not. They don't kill us outright in
• 1:24:00
  the sweet. Just take it by the spoonful.
• 1:24:03
  But you know, we're killing ourselves by killing the
• 1:24:06
  insects, not just by the poisons, but by their loss.
• 1:24:12
  How many insects have been catastrophically exterminated
• 1:24:19
  that we need for fertilizing plants or for providing food for
• 1:24:26
  this network of life? The chemistry of the planet as a
• 1:24:29
  whole, anchored in insects, in krill, in shrimp, in squid,
• 1:24:38
  these food chains, the passage of the elements of life, we
• 1:24:44
  couldn't see it, we couldn't understand it, we could not
• 1:24:46
  measure it until right about now.
• 1:24:50
  We're still doing really stupid things in the name of progress.
• 1:24:54
  You know better, healthier food, but not healthier food when
• 1:24:59
  they're loaded with pesticides and herbicides and other
• 1:25:03
  chemicals that seem like a great idea at the time but turn out to
• 1:25:08
  be disastrous in the end. So bad ideas or seemingly good
• 1:25:14
  ideas that turn out to be not such good ideas.
• 1:25:18
  Taking wildlife out of the sea. Who could object to the ideas
• 1:25:22
  that we can go and take this mass of life to feed people and
• 1:25:28
  create the marketing story that we're feeding its food security
• 1:25:35
  to take tuna, to take squid, to take krill, to take this, to
• 1:25:39
  take that wild animals from the sea.
• 1:25:42
  And what we're doing is taking the elements, these wedges of
• 1:25:48
  life out of the sea that make the ocean, our life support
• 1:25:53
  system, less able to capture carbon, less able to generate
• 1:25:58
  oxygen. Figures that I haven't
• 1:26:02
  personally verified, that I trust the sources who have
• 1:26:07
  crunch the numbers and say that about half, roughly half of the
• 1:26:13
  phytoplankton, the oxygen generators, the carbon capturers
• 1:26:18
  in the sea are gone since 1950. That we've methodically taken
• 1:26:24
  away the fertilizers by catching the squid and the fish out of
• 1:26:30
  the ocean. The whales, the impact of
• 1:26:33
  removing whales that ate the small creatures generated
• 1:26:39
  fertilizer that power the phytoplankton.
• 1:26:43
  You take that mass out of the ocean, and we did, disrupting
• 1:26:48
  the chemistry of the planet, and we still are by taking squid,
• 1:26:54
  the small fish that are critical intermediaries between the
• 1:27:00
  generators of the food, phytoplankton and kelp forests
• 1:27:06
  and the other plants And the other photosynthesizers.
• 1:27:13
  Not just out of the water, but the fabric of life in the cracks
• 1:27:16
  and pieces around other places, including kelp forests and coral
• 1:27:22
  reefs that are capturing carbon, generating oxygen, maintaining
• 1:27:27
  food for animals. And we haven't thought about it
• 1:27:34
  before, but now we can. We can do something about it.
• 1:27:37
  We can say just stop extracting wildlife out of the ocean
• 1:27:43
  because we need them alive. Live fish have to be more
• 1:27:47
  valuable than dead fish. Live squid, live octopus, live
• 1:27:52
  kelp, All these creatures, all these elements of the wild
• 1:27:57
  planet, nature. People might recoil at the idea
• 1:28:02
  of wild No, it's nature. Nature.
• 1:28:05
  The living systems make our existence possible.
• 1:28:09
  The trees that we have sacrificed because they provide
• 1:28:15
  wood that we use in so many different ways.
• 1:28:18
  We don't think about the value of a tree that's 1000 years old
• 1:28:23
  or a shark like Greenland sharks.
• 1:28:26
  It may be 400 years old with secrets of how does a fellow
• 1:28:33
  vertebrate survive for four centuries?
• 1:28:36
  What was the world like 4 centuries ago?
• 1:28:40
  Wouldn't we like to know their secrets?
• 1:28:43
  Or we can cut them up and use them for bait, which is
• 1:28:46
  happening right now. These big wild deep sea
• 1:28:50
  creatures just being taken for free.
• 1:28:53
  You don't have to pay when you take a fish out of the ocean or
• 1:28:56
  krill out of the Antarctic waters.
• 1:29:00
  But all of us are paying the cost, but only a few are
• 1:29:06
  benefiting from taking tuna out of the sea.
• 1:29:11
  And you could say I'm benefiting because I have tuna to eat in my
• 1:29:16
  salads or sushi or whatever it is.
• 1:29:20
  Well, that's your choice. But if you know the cost, you
• 1:29:24
  might think differently. I have had to think differently.
• 1:29:28
  When I was a kid, I didn't know, but now I'm burdened with
• 1:29:32
  knowing. And you can't unknown once
• 1:29:35
  you've got it here. But I want everyone to know
• 1:29:39
  because it's knowing that leads to caring.
• 1:29:44
  And you can know and not care. And there are a lot of those who
• 1:29:51
  are right now knowing that I don't care.
• 1:29:56
  It's about me now. I don't care about the kids.
• 1:30:00
  I don't care about the future of life on earth because I can live
• 1:30:07
  in such comfort for me. OK, Sylvia, you persuaded me I'm
• 1:30:11
  going to stop eating fish. Or you can know and care.
• 1:30:17
  You can't care though, if you don't know.
• 1:30:20
  If people don't know and you are helping people understand.
• 1:30:24
  Yeah, but I've got I do need to stop eating fish, don't I?
• 1:30:28
  Sorry, do I need I need to stop eating fish though, right?
• 1:30:31
  I'm not going to tell you no. No, I, I'm making.
• 1:30:33
  But I want you to know the power of choice, that the choices you
• 1:30:39
  make make a difference. And if you every fish that you
• 1:30:44
  choose not to eat could be swimming out there in the ocean.
• 1:30:48
  If I think about the whales that were taken, Wild Aid had this
• 1:30:53
  has this theme. It's when the buying stops, the
• 1:30:58
  killing can too. If you stop eating tuna, it's a
• 1:31:03
  choice. It means if enough people stop
• 1:31:07
  eating tuna, there's no market for it.
• 1:31:09
  Why would anybody catch tuna if you can't sell it?
• 1:31:13
  Where's the profit and having fish for sale if nobody's going
• 1:31:17
  to eat it? If I feel I need to make a
• 1:31:19
  pledge, so I'm saying I'm pledging to Sylvia Earl right
• 1:31:22
  now, I'm going to stop eating fish.
• 1:31:24
  But the fish say thank you, the ocean says thank you, The kids
• 1:31:29
  in the future, the kids of today will say thank you.
• 1:31:33
  And you know, for me, the highest priority every one of us
• 1:31:38
  can do. It's what I with the
• 1:31:42
  organization that I started to help get this message across.
• 1:31:47
  Like you're using whatever power you've got, aligning with
• 1:31:50
  individuals, other organizations.
• 1:31:53
  We started something called Mission Blue to prioritize
• 1:31:59
  identifying places that are still in great shape and
• 1:32:01
  includes the high seas, despite what's being put out in and
• 1:32:05
  taken out. The high seas and the deep sea,
• 1:32:09
  the largest areas of wilderness that still remain on the planet.
• 1:32:13
  That is our life support system. Still the biggest, most intact
• 1:32:17
  area that remains. The polar systems, the Arctic,
• 1:32:21
  the Antarctic. We've still got the best chance
• 1:32:24
  we'll ever have to protect it. We've identified with the help
• 1:32:28
  of people around the world nominating places that they know
• 1:32:33
  his place is still in good shape or this place isn't great shape,
• 1:32:37
  but we would like to do what it takes to go from wherever it is
• 1:32:42
  to get to a better place. Hope spots.
• 1:32:45
  You're now 168, No 169 places globally where there are
• 1:32:51
  champions. Could be you could be anybody
• 1:32:54
  nominating a place that you know and love.
• 1:32:58
  It's the ocean, but it could be on the land too.
• 1:33:02
  Find a place you're willing to commit to going from where you
• 1:33:06
  are to get to a better place. Get others to join you and
• 1:33:10
  create this network of hope and and it's it's happening.
• 1:33:17
  And I think it's something that gives people that I can do
• 1:33:27
  something recognition. It's true.
• 1:33:32
  You can do something. You just have to find that
• 1:33:34
  something and developing places that you can work with others to
• 1:33:40
  get from where you are to a better place.
• 1:33:43
  It's happening. It's not happening right now
• 1:33:46
  fast enough to counter this avalanche of those who are
• 1:33:51
  taking without knowing the consequences or knowing and
• 1:33:55
  doing it anyway because it's good for them now.
• 1:33:59
  They're not worried about or don't care about their kids, the
• 1:34:04
  future world that is being created by our actions.
• 1:34:08
  But if we get enough people choosing really to do what they
• 1:34:13
  can to move from this to this, from tipping points to turning
• 1:34:20
  points, the turning point that we need to really embracing the
• 1:34:26
  natural world, protecting everything we can to keep us
• 1:34:31
  safe within the this network of conditions, living conditions
• 1:34:39
  before we go over the edge to a state that is not favorable for
• 1:34:44
  our existence or the rest of life as we know it or
• 1:34:47
  maintaining this safe place. And we can still breathe water
• 1:34:53
  still magically falls out of the sky as snow or rain or whatever.
• 1:34:59
  It's getting a little bit iffy because of the disruptions
• 1:35:03
  already in motion. And it may be a little rough for
• 1:35:09
  the rest of this century, but we do have the capacity.
• 1:35:13
  That's the great news. That's what being here now is
• 1:35:18
  such a gift. We had the best chance or ever
• 1:35:21
  have because we can still breathe.
• 1:35:24
  We still have a planet that's working in our favor, but it's
• 1:35:28
  getting a little wobbly, so we better hurry.
• 1:35:32
  And safeguarding the ocean. I would say all of the planet
• 1:35:37
  but terrestrial systems. It's only 3% of the biosphere.
• 1:35:44
  97% of the biosphere where life on Earth exists is the ocean.
• 1:35:50
  The magnitude of our ignorance about the ocean is humongous.
• 1:35:57
  The deeper we go, the less we know, more new discoveries we're
• 1:36:01
  finding. But we know enough to know the
• 1:36:04
  ocean is where the action is. Let's just take the pressure
• 1:36:08
  off. It's up to all of us to use
• 1:36:11
  whatever we've got. Our votes, our voices, our
• 1:36:14
  recognition. Waters around Antarctica.
• 1:36:18
  Stop the killing. Just stop.
• 1:36:21
  Why can't we get over the idea that we have to take from nature
• 1:36:25
  to recognize its value? Value of nature is we live.
• 1:36:30
  I'm here. Thank you, nature.
• 1:36:32
  I want to take care of you because you take care of me.
• 1:36:35
  Aren't these old growth trees that have taken centuries or
• 1:36:39
  subcases of millennia were longer to get these systems in a
• 1:36:44
  state where they're optimally working on my behalf, your
• 1:36:48
  behalf, our behalf? Why would we want to destroy
• 1:36:51
  them so we can plant corn or beans or cows or houses or roads
• 1:36:59
  or whatever we think of is more important than protecting our
• 1:37:03
  life support system? We don't see it that way, could
• 1:37:08
  not see it that way, but now we can.
• 1:37:12
  You just have to wake up and say now I understand this is the
• 1:37:19
  time. It's like at the time of
• 1:37:21
  greatest peril, right on the edge.
• 1:37:26
  It's the greatest awakening of knowing the risks and knowing
• 1:37:32
  the opportunities to think what the world will be like 50, a
• 1:37:39
  hundred, 1000 years from now. It'll really depend on what we
• 1:37:43
  do while they were so close to either tipping this way or
• 1:37:49
  turning into a safe place keeping us within a universe.
• 1:37:56
  OK, go to Mars if you want to and take off.
• 1:38:00
  Good luck with that. Because you don't have a
• 1:38:02
  building life support system on Mars.
• 1:38:05
  We've got 1 here. All of us benefit from being
• 1:38:10
  able to just step out of our little cozy houses, our cars or
• 1:38:16
  airplane or get off the boat. We can breathe what nature gives
• 1:38:20
  us. We have a planet that's working.
• 1:38:26
  You think what how lucky we are to know this.
• 1:38:30
  Could not know it when I was a child.
• 1:38:33
  And as a witness to the most radical changes that have ever
• 1:38:37
  happened, the greatest transformation that any species
• 1:38:43
  has imposed on the planet, one species, us altering the nature
• 1:38:48
  of nature so comprehensively in a very short human lifetime.
• 1:38:56
  Jane Goodall spoke of her experiences transformed the way
• 1:39:01
  we think about one other species, chimpanzees, because
• 1:39:05
  she took the time to get to know them personally and get us to
• 1:39:10
  see them not just as numbers, but as fellow creatures.
• 1:39:15
  And how we change the way we think about them and about
• 1:39:19
  ourselves with greater empathy and understanding.
• 1:39:24
  David Attenborough with his wisdom and his voice about
• 1:39:30
  respecting nature by getting to know these creatures and how
• 1:39:34
  they create this fabric of life, our life support system.
• 1:39:42
  And I'm not alone as, but I'm here because you invited me to
• 1:39:47
  be here to speak as a witness about changes in the ocean.
• 1:39:53
  It's a system that is of the utmost importance in maintaining
• 1:40:00
  Earth as a habitable planet. We just have to respect that.
• 1:40:06
  Let the wild animals in the sea keep doing what they do best
• 1:40:11
  from our standpoint, keeping us alive by shaping the ocean in
• 1:40:16
  ways that we need. If we're going to survive here,
• 1:40:19
  we don't need to eat ocean wildlife.
• 1:40:23
  It looks like a good deal. All these creatures out in the
• 1:40:27
  sea that are free, let's go get them and eat them.
• 1:40:31
  OK, that works for a little while, but it doesn't work for
• 1:40:33
  long when you consider since 1950, middle of the 20th century
• 1:40:38
  to now, here's where tuna were, here's where they are now here's
• 1:40:43
  where squid were. We haven't been doing a good
• 1:40:47
  accounting job, but he can't continue to take millions of
• 1:40:51
  tons the way we have with sharks, cod, swordfish, herring
• 1:40:57
  in a lobsters. We've taken their numbers from a
• 1:41:01
  high level to a really low level in 100 years, 200 years if you
• 1:41:07
  want to go back to when we started to really impose new
• 1:41:12
  technologies to extract on the scale, like the exploding
• 1:41:16
  harpoon, that enabled us to take more whales in the 20th century
• 1:41:21
  than during all preceding history of humans and whales.
• 1:41:25
  But now we've stopped. See the impact if we stopped
• 1:41:29
  killing whales in 1986 And now there are more whales, they're
• 1:41:34
  dying because of what we're putting into the ocean, but
• 1:41:37
  they're even. So they're improving their
• 1:41:40
  numbers because we stopped killing them.
• 1:41:42
  What if we stopped killing squid or tuna or COD or herring?
• 1:41:48
  You'd say, oh, the livelihoods. OK, we need to think of
• 1:41:52
  alternative ways for those who are making a true living from
• 1:41:56
  killing ocean wildlife. But there's so many ways you can
• 1:42:00
  make a living. Look around.
• 1:42:02
  How do people all over the world make a living?
• 1:42:06
  You don't have to pitch your fortune to killing wild animals
• 1:42:11
  to make a good living. And people who have hitched
• 1:42:16
  their fortune to killing wild animals from the sea, who have
• 1:42:21
  chosen a different way to keep the fish, the lobsters and the
• 1:42:28
  other creatures in the sea, they're making a better living
• 1:42:32
  now because the ocean is healthier.
• 1:42:35
  The reefs are coming back. When you stop killing the fish
• 1:42:40
  and the lobsters and the squid, they are enjoying a time of
• 1:42:46
  encouraging people to come. Call it tourism if you will,
• 1:42:50
  call it education if you will. But whatever it is, they have
• 1:42:54
  alternative ways of making a living without destroying the
• 1:42:58
  very system that gives us the most important thing that all of
• 1:43:01
  us value. It's life. 100% of people on the
• 1:43:07
  planet require healthy systems for our existence. 100%, a small
• 1:43:14
  fraction now get their livelihoods from taking
• 1:43:18
  wildlife, whether it's from the land or from the sea.
• 1:43:23
  We can shift. We know how to do it.
• 1:43:26
  It is being done. Why don't we just think that is
• 1:43:30
  normal, that we need to get together and say it's normal to
• 1:43:35
  protect nature because we need nature, not little pieces here
• 1:43:40
  and there, as if it's a luxury to have a National Park.
• 1:43:45
  It's a luxury to stay alive. Shouldn't be.
• 1:43:48
  It should be normal. We need to think how much of the
• 1:43:52
  land that we have international policies now to at least protect
• 1:43:58
  30% of the land. We have about half of that right
• 1:44:02
  now. At least 30% of the ocean.
• 1:44:06
  We have a 10th of that. About 3% of the ocean is now
• 1:44:12
  highly protected. What are we thinking If we
• 1:44:17
  protect the high seas, at least 30% highly protected from all
• 1:44:22
  the things that we're doing and just stop the killing of
• 1:44:26
  wildlife throughout all of the high seas, That'll go a long way
• 1:44:32
  toward giving nature a break. Waters around Antarctica.
• 1:44:37
  And we have policies that give some nations the authority to
• 1:44:42
  disproportionately take from the global Commons to the benefit of
• 1:44:47
  a few individuals, a few companies, a few countries.
• 1:44:55
  But all of us bear the cost. It's just wrong.
• 1:44:59
  We need to say so. We need to stand up not just for
• 1:45:02
  nature, not just for krill and whales and birds and fish.
• 1:45:08
  He just stand up for ourselves and for the kids who are coming
• 1:45:12
  along and say this is wrong. Let's fix it.
• 1:45:17
  We, we made these policies. We can change these policies.
• 1:45:21
  Why not? Because they exist.
• 1:45:24
  Well, they didn't exist before. Let's just have a new policy now
• 1:45:28
  that we know the consequences. We didn't know before, but we've
• 1:45:33
  learned so much so fast. We've got to get these policies
• 1:45:37
  to keep up with the knowledge that now exists.
• 1:45:41
  Who's going to do it? The kids when it's too late for
• 1:45:46
  those when it was not time enough, we, we were making
• 1:45:50
  decisions based on ignorance, based on what we knew.
• 1:45:54
  But now we have new knowledge. We have new will to keep the
• 1:46:01
  planet safe. Let's do it.
• 1:46:06
  Come on, make the pledge. I hereby make the pledge,
• 1:46:10
  Sylvia, your, your deepness. I just want to say thank you so
• 1:46:14
  much for showing your time and your wisdom and all of your
• 1:46:17
  knowledge with us today. Well, I think if you could
• 1:46:23
  choose a time to be on the planet, why wouldn't you choose
• 1:46:28
  right now? Before, we didn't know enough to
• 1:46:34
  understand what we now know. The magnitude of our ignorance
• 1:46:40
  is probably the greatest discovery of our time.
• 1:46:43
  But that means the greatest era of exploration is just
• 1:46:46
  beginning. Whether it's in the skies above
• 1:46:49
  or right here in the soil, in all the wildlife on the land or
• 1:46:56
  in our own bodies and certainly in the ocean.
• 1:47:00
  And 10 years, 2050, whatever the future, we're going to lose the
• 1:47:07
  chance that we have right now. So celebrate, all of us should
• 1:47:12
  being a 21st century kid or human being at whatever age.
• 1:47:20
  I'm celebrating at 90, yeah. Absolutely.
• 1:47:24
  Thank you, Sylvia. It's been amazing to speak to
• 1:47:27
  you. Thank you so much.
• 1:47:28
  Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to
• 1:47:33
  Saving the World from Bad Ideas, a Weplanet podcast.
• 1:47:36
  Weplanet's a movement of citizens and scientists
• 1:47:39
  dedicated to defending the science and solutions we need to
• 1:47:41
  save the world. Please do subscribe and share a
• 1:47:44
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• 1:47:46
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• 1:47:48
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• 1:47:52
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• 1:47:55
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• 1:47:59
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