Candy and Poisons: Protecting Marine Environments While Meeting Societal Needs
Our world is culture, technology, biology, economics, politics and finite resources. Technology based on fossil fuels produces candy as well as poisons and enables huge human populations which directly and indirectly destroy marine environments. Technology, in the context of modern society also provides the only way forward. However, policies and goals need to change if technology is to provide that way forward. Meeting immediate societal needs as cheaply as possible is unsustainable as it depletes resources and pollutes. Food production depends on turning limited resources into fertilizer, growing plants and converting them into human food. Excess fertilizer and waste damage fresh and marine environments reducing useful productivity. Microbes, including pathogens, thrive on waste, exacerbate algal blooms which use up the oxygen in water and make dead zones killing fish and shellfish. We are running out of sources of chemicals for synthetic fertilizer. We are promoting pathogen contamination of surface and ground water threatening human health and food security. Developing technology that removes poisons, converts waste into clean water for drinking and recharging aquifers and producing fertilizer for growing food is a necessary next step to meet demands for food and to help restore marine environments. unclos has the structure to address these concerns.
