The Ocean Is Running Out of Time — and So Are We

Stand on any coastline in the world and the ocean looks the same as it always has. Vast. Indifferent. Eternal. The waves arrive and retreat with the same rhythm they have kept for billions of years, and it is almost impossible — standing there, salt on your lips, wind in your face — to believe that anything is wrong.But something is deeply, measurably, urgently wrong. And the gap between what the science tells us and what most people understand is one of the most consequential communication failures of our time.The world's oceans are absorbing the consequences of human civilization at a rate that has no precedent in recorded geological history. They are warming, acidifying, losing oxygen, and losing the extraordinary biodiversity that makes them — and us — possible. The timeline for meaningful action is not decades. According to a growing number of marine scientists, it is years.A planet defined by waterIt is a peculiarity of human psychology that we call our planet Earth when it is, by surface area, overwhelmingly ocean. More than seventy percent of the planet is covered by water. The oceans contain ninety-seven percent of all the water on Earth. They generate more than half the oxygen we breathe. They absorb approximately thirty percent of the carbon dioxide we produce and more than ninety percent of the excess heat generated by global warming.In other words: the ocean is not a feature of the planet. It is the life support system. And we have spent the better part of two c...