Ocean Acidification (and Carbon Emissions): Consequences, Responsibility, and Possible Solutions
Picture this; a world without beauty… a world without colorful coral reefs, a world with sky-rocketing fish prices, or even no fish at all! I know you’re thinking this doesn’t sound horrible, but it’s really a lot more detrimental than it sounds! So, who’s at fault? Well, we’re here to explore that very question, alone with a “small” dive into the short-term and long-term consequences of ocean acidification.
First off, what are coral reefs anyway? According to the COFL (Cleaner Oceans Foundations Ltd), “Coral reefs are large underwater structures composed of the skeletons of colonial marine invertebrates called coral.” The organisms that forms coral are called coral polyps. It takes hundreds of thousands of polyps to form one coral. (NOAA). It’s very fascinating how long the process of coral creation is; the larger the coral, the longer it has been supporting life. COFL explains this process very well, “Each individual coral is referred to as a polyp. Coral polyps live on the calcium carbonate exoskeletons of their ancestors, adding their own exoskeleton to the existing coral structure. As the centuries pass, the coral reef gradually grows, one tiny exoskeleton at a time, until they become massive features of the marine environment.” Coral Reefs support a large, diverse population of hundreds to thousands of species of fish and algae. The Great Barrier Reef, the biggest reef of them all, is over 1500 miles long! (That’s longer than the distance from Portland, Oregon to San Diego, California 😉.) It is about 132,974sqmi big, about the same size as Germany! It supports over 5,000 species and varieties of organisms, including 600 varieties of coral and 1,625 types of fish!
Now we’re going to explore the consequences of ocean acidification, both short-term and long-term. I’m sure most of us are aware of its effect on our coral reefs; coral bleaching is a widely known issue. It doesn’t just stop at bleach though. The pH change of the water, one of the effects of ocean acidification, slows down, and may even stop completely, calcification. “What is calcification?” you might ask. Calcification is an important process in the formation of shells, specifically the ones used by oysters and clams. Shells are formed from Calcium Carbonate, which is a combination of carbon dioxide and water. When you increase the acidity of the water, it slows down the process of forming calcium carbonate. This means fewer shells and reefs and gives calcifying organisms like oysters and clams a harder time surviving. Moving on from calcification, I want to head into biological diversity and richness. Coral Reefs are known for their biological diversity and richness, having over 3000 tropical reef species in just the Indian Ocean (Samoilys). Tragically, between the years of 1985 and 2012, the Great Barrier Reef lost half of its coral cover due to global warming and ocean acidification. (Chan).
Now that we’ve looked at a lot of the consequences of ocean acidification, we can get into responsibility! So, who’s at fault here? That’s the question… it doesn’t take much to figure this out, but there are some grey areas. Statistically, transportation emits the most carbon overall of the 5 categories of carbon emission, which are: transportation, electricity, industry, commercial and residential, and agriculture. Transportation was responsible for about 27% of the carbon emission in the United States for the year of 2020. The other categories are as follows: Electricity 25%, Industry 24%, Commercial and Residential 13%, and Agriculture 11%. (3EPA). It could be said that consumer responsibility solely lies in the Commercial and Residential the Electricity, and the Transportation categories, but this is where that grey area comes in. Consumers support every category in some way. Consumers need energy for their homes, consumers support industry emissions by purchasing the products they manufacture, and consumers support agriculture emissions by purchasing the food they produced. Though, we can’t blame ourselves as we were born into this world and most of us don’t have any other choice but to support these corporations. Corporations have taken over most of the world, it’s hard to avoid them. If they don’t change their ways, the world won’t change. There is only so much consumers can do to offset emissions without relying on corporations to offset their own.
So, what about us consumers, individually? How at fault are we? The answer varies depending on how you look at it; The first route we could take is by saying how us consumers go about our days without putting much thought into the consequences of our actions environmentally. We leave our lights on during the day without a second thought. Go out to eat at restaurants monthly if not weekly. Everything we do, we don’t think about what could happen as a result. A lot of us use our cars daily, for trips as short as 2 minutes. “A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. This number can vary based on a vehicle’s fuel, fuel economy, and the number of miles driven per year” (2EPA). Cars in the United States emit almost as much carbon as the average worldwide total individual carbon emissions. (Carbon Footprint Ltd). Food is another way us consumers contribute to carbon emissions. Food, or the category Agriculture, took up 11% of United States greenhouse gas emissions in 2020. Meat, or livestock, is the biggest contributor regarding food. Beef is the biggest contributor of the meats. If we reduce or omit beef from your diet, even better meat all together, together we could reduce carbon emissions significantly. If you can’t get rid of meat completely, and let’s be honest hardly anyone can, switching to solely pork and/or poultry is already a huge difference regarding greenhouse gas emissions. Per serving, beef is responsible for 6.61 pounds of CO2, compared to pork’s 1.72 pounds per serving, and poultry’s 1.26 pounds per serving. (University of Michigan). Smaller ways to reduce carbon emissions that we usually do not think twice about would include unplugging electronics that are not in use, recycling and purchasing products with minimal packaging, avoid using incandescent lighting, consider using solar paneling for part of your energy source, etc.
What can we do to fix this, as consumers, as corporations, and as organizations? Well, we can start with what is already in the works. According to Madin, researchers who showed up at one of the International Coral Reef Symposiums in 2016, had spoken about applying new technologies to provide information about reef ecology and health. These technologies included: drones, underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), and satellites, and their purpose is to help advance our knowledge of human impacts to marine ecosystems, such as coral reefs. Using this knowledge, it can help our organizations and research teams globally to figure out better solutions to offset carbon emissions or restore our coral reefs. Transitioning into electric cars, the models available now are too expensive to be easily accessible to the average consumer. However, as time goes on this will change. It only took around 30–40 or so years for cars to succeed horses. We have had electric cars since the beginning, but they only became incredibly popular around the 2010s. If history repeats itself, electric cars will become commonly accessible and affordable in about 15–25 years, or sooner if human life shows exponential progress like it has in the past. Seeing the previous statistics for 2020 regarding carbon emissions, transportation and electricity both being contributors, you may think that electric cars will not even help. You may assume it would just be a trade-off. I have good news for you, even with current fossil fuels contribution to carbon emissions and the use of electricity in manufacturing and using electric vehicles, the total “lifecycle GHG” or greenhouse gas emissions would be a lot lower compared to current gasoline based vehicle emissions! (1EPA). For now, common solutions to reducing car emissions include walking, bicycle, electric bikes, carpooling, riding the bus or train, giving in and buying that oh-so-expensive electric car, etc. During these 15–25 years, we would also need to find other energy solutions outside of fossil fuels, as these, although less than gasoline vehicles, would still emit carbon. This is also in the works, though! As of December 8, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order that will work towards a clean energy United States. According to The White House, this executive order will work towards achieving 5 major goals, which are: 100% carbon pollution free energy by 2030, 100% zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) acquisitions by 2035, net-zero emissions from federal procurement no later than 2050, net-zero emissions building portfolio by 2045, and net-zero emissions from overall federal operations by 2050. Outside of this executive order we have wind power, solar power, and power from algae! Wind and Solar power have been in use for many years, but it is not efficient enough to replace fossil fuels. Microalgae biofuels have limitless potential, including the ability to replace fossil fuels. The current drawback of them is that technology surrounding them are not advanced enough to make them a cheap and profitable option. Until technology is advanced enough to make microalgae biofuels a worthy investment, and until the government has the incentives to use them, then they will not be replacing fossil fuels any time soon. Though, with the 2020 executive order, it is very likely that the technology needed to make this a feasible option will be funded and pushed. If we can fully replace fossil fuels, it will reduce the carbon emissions from transport by 90%! That’s around 1,453 million metric tons of CO2 emissions from the United States, around 24% of total emissions, that would not have happened in 2020. It would also reduce the carbon emissions from electricity by 60%. That is around 897 million metric tons of CO2 emissions from the United States, around 15% of total emissions, that would not have happened in 2020. Most of the emissions in the Industry and the Commercial and Residential categories are also from fossil fuels. I am going to assume 55% for each category so that I can get a minimum value in regard to the amount of carbon emissions we could have avoided. For Industry, that would be around 790 million metric tons, around 13% of total emissions, and for Commercial and Residential, that would be around 428 million metric tons, around 7% of total emissions. All of this means that in 2020, had we already gotten rid of the burning of fossil fuels, we would have had had around 59% less CO2 emissions, or around 3,529 million metric tons less CO2 emissions in the United States. If we get rid of the need to use fossil fuels completely, we get rid of over half of the CO2 emissions produced by the United States, or (by my calculations) about 5% of global emissions! If all countries were to follow this, and we are able to reduce our carbon emissions by 45% or more by 2030 (compared to carbon levels in 2010) and reach net zero by 2050, we would be able to significantly slow down climate change (United Nations) and ocean acidification! Then we could act in restoring what has been affected, such as the coral reefs and the atmosphere.
Now we’re going to wrap this up, finally. We learned that carbon emissions are the main reason for ocean acidification, and how coral reefs are biological superpowers in the respect of how many species of organisms they support. We also learned that Ocean Acidification, in addition to other stressors, is the reason for coral bleaching and the decline in calcification, or the formation of important structures like coral and shells. This results in many species being at risk, including oysters, clams, and the thousands of species coral reefs support. We now know that us consumers are reliant upon corporations to reduce their carbon emissions in order for us to effectively reduce our own in an affordable and sustainable matter. Until then, we can avoid using our gasoline powered cars as much as possible, opting for walking or bicycling even ebikes instead until electric cars become more affordable and readily available, reduce the amount of meat, especially beef, in our diet, and use other smaller methods of offsetting our own emissions.
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References
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