Some justices have publicly showed sympathy for the administration's position opposing the case.
"There is a lot of conjecture," said Justice Antonin Scalia. "When is the predicted cataclysm?" he asked Milkey (Massachusetts Asst. Attorney General)
"It is not so much a cataclysm as ongoing harm," Milkey responded.
The fact is that high and rising CO2 in our atmosphere is an immediate global cataclysm. That this cataclysm isn’t occurring in the familiar terrestrial atmospheric biome of the planet but rather in that 70+% of the planet Earth that are our oceans seems to mean it is off the court radar. First, ocean acidification, a direct consequence of the long rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere, has made the oceans 10% more acidic over recent decades. Reports of the UK Royal Society (2005) report the beginning of a cataclysm of global mass extinction of sea life will be well underway by 2050 and profound by 2100.
Second, high atmospheric CO2 has caused a great diminishment of wind blown terrestrial dust that normally nourished the ocean with vital micronutrients. Scientific reports, with which there is no dispute, (Science Oct. 2006) have clearly shown that this lost productivity has resulted in an ongoing cataclysmic change of state of the oceans from being a vastly effective CO2 sink via living plant life, to having lost the capacity to biologically fix and remove 4-5 billion tonnes of CO2 from the global atmosphere each year. This amount of CO2 is noteworthy as it is a substantial portion of the "global warming" net CO2 problem, stated at 6-7 billion tonnes/year. It also represents a dramatic loss of food at the bottom of the ocean food chain. The loss of ocean productivity combined with over fishing lead to the recent cataclysmic reports of all seafood disappearing from our tables by 2048.
Planktos implores the Supreme Court Justices to switch to sonar to see the cataclysmic evidence they demand – a clear and present danger is now well underway. It is imperative that we empower and charge our government with the duty to act immediately to restrain CO2 emissions and restore and revive our oceans. It is insufficient to make excuses that, as residents of this small blue planet, we need not do anything but rather argue political and legal semantics while the cataclysm progresses.
With regard to the administrations legal maneuver to deny that the petitioning States a position before the court claiming they lack demonstrable losses due to high levels of anthropogenic CO2. It is clear by the plethora of ocean evidence that all of the coastal states with historically derived revenue and benefits from their ocean fisheries have and will continue to suffer huge losses in this arena as a result of unabated and unregulated CO2 pouring into our air and oceans.
Planktos, a California, is company working to develop and deliver practical and affordable solutions to the global ocean and climate crisis by restoring ecosystems on land and at sea.
For more information contact: Russ George russ@planktos.com
