How We Wrecked the Ocean

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


In light of the minute-by-minute horror show underway in the Gulf of Mexico, it’s worth taking a look at the the long view of human impacts on the ocean. And no one talks the long view better than coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In this TED talk he shares his passion, knowledge, concerns, and personal experience. Sadly, what’s going on now in the Gulf adds intolerable stressors to already overstressed ecosystems. As Jackson asks:
“So the question is: How are we all going to respond to this? And we can do all sorts of things to fix it, but in the final analysis, the thing we really need to fix is ourselves; it’s not about the fish; it’s not about the pollution; it’s not about the climate change. It’s about us, and our greed and our need for growth and our inability to imagine a world which is different from the selfish world we live in today.”
 I appreciate Jackson’s willingness to share his despair.
 

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate