The US climate envoy, John Kerry, announced on Wednesday his country’s accession to the Global Alliance Against Acidification, underlining the indissoluble relationship between climate change and the degradation of the seas.
“THE the percentage of oxygen in the oceans is decreasing, with impacts on the chemistry of the seas. The acidity increases. Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are carried by rain to the sea, the pH of which is dropping,” Kerry said.
The impacts, he stressed, “will affect all human beings” and the “small island states” feel it more than the rest of the world, he declared in a multilateral dialogue session in the framework of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans, which will take place in Lisbon.
Therefore, the United States will join the alliance that brings together governments and non-governmental organizations in an effort to increase knowledge about the impacts of acidification and prevent sea warmingwhose source is mainly the emissions of polluting gases resulting from human activity.
Without going to the source, we cannot. Last year, emissions increased by six percent. This is not treating the cause. This is nowhere near a sustainable way of living. Most important of all is the transition to a low-carbon or carbon-free future as quickly as possible,” he said.
John Kerry called for “immediate action” and noted that “every tenth of a degree [de aumento da temperatura global] It has a huge cost, billions of dollars.”
“If we don’t respond, this will all just be rhetoric. All these encounters will condemn us to the dustbin of history, ”she considered.
The fight against acidification also involves measures specifically directed at the oceans, such as the creation of marine protected areas and the transition towards less polluting “green maritime transport”, in which nine countries have already agreed, including the United States, a figure that “is not sufficient”.
The world’s largest shipping company, Maersk, “has already promised that the next eight ships it builds will be ‘carbon free’ and if Maersk can do it, they all can,” he argued.
Kerry also defended the increased installation of wind and solar energy production platforms. offshorepointing out that the technical capacity of production is increasing and that “all countries can increase their energy security with more renewable energy”.
Representing the World Meteorological Organization, scientist Johan Stander noted a “pjoint rise in temperatureof the oceans in the last 20 years, noting that in 2021, virtually the entire sea surface of the world had “at least one heat wave”.
The ocean absorbs 23% of the world’s annual polluting emissions, but at a cost: “the oceans are at their highest level of acidity in the last 26,000 years.”
Carbon dioxide, he said, interacts with seawater and threatens living organisms, many of which are essential to the survival and livelihoods of around three billion people.
To understand and have some control over what happens, it is essential to “monitor and observe”, which is traditionally subject to “short-term financing”, he said.
Source: Observadora
