Date published: 2008/02/14
The BBC says:
Only about 4% of the world's oceans remain undamaged by human activity, according to the first detailed global map of human impacts on the seas.
A study in Science journal says climate change, fishing, pollution and other human factors have exacted a heavy toll on almost half of the marine waters.
Only remote icy areas near the poles are relatively pristine, but they face threats as ice sheets melt, they warn.
The authors say the data is a "wake-up call" to policymakers.
Surprise, humans dominate the world's ecosystem. Who would have thought. And what does "relatively pristine" mean? It means that humans can't usefully cope with the extreme environment there. But other animals can. So evidently when non-humans dominate a specific ecosystem it is "pristine" (they are all such nice cuddly creatures) but as soon as humans get anywhere near any ecosystem the world is deemed to be at an end. Well, if the scientists just want to make the claim that the way humans dominate some ecosystems is bad for the planet, then all fine and well. Are they going to suggest that six billion people is too many for the planet? Or do they instead want to make the richest two billion people as poor as the poorest four billion? Is their "wake-up call" anything more than gesture politics?
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