January 22, 2014 — The corrosion of the oceans by carbon-dioxide emissions has barely made a ripple among Washington, D.C.’s power brokers. Little money gets earmarked for research. Ocean change has inspired few stabs at curbing CO2.
In fact, aside from West Coast lawmakers and scattered others from coastal regions, few in Congress seem to grasp the scale of the challenge, said current and retired lawmakers from both parties.
So West Coast states, led by Washington, are now forging ahead largely on their own.
“This is a profound and unprecedented threat,” said Baird, a Washington Democrat, who stepped down in 2011 and is now president of Antioch University in Seattle. “The existence of marine life as we know it could be profoundly changed by this. And we are scarcely attending to it.”
As the oceans absorb ever more CO2 from cars and power plants, that is transforming the chemistry of the seas faster than at any time in tens of millions of years. That CO2 makes life hard for creatures with shells and skeletons and threatens to fundamentally transform the entire marine world.
Already, acidification has wiped out billions of oyster larvae in the Pacific Northwest and is causing trouble for tiny see-through creatures called pteropods, which are critical food for birds and fish. It poses risks for important sea life, including red king crab and many fish.
But since the source of acidification is also the chief culprit driving climate change — rising CO2 — efforts to respond at the national level get mired in global-warming politics.