A friend from Louisiana talks with pride and concern about his son in a U.S. Navy submarine thousands of miles away, lurking in the darkness of our sacred ocean which covers three fourths of planet Earth and provides half of the oxygen we need for daily survival.
In our “Industrial Ice Age” we too busy with “bingles, baubles, beads” (Frank Sinatra) and are hardly able to detect oxygen slipping away from our present.
Submarine crews are busy preparing for war – until they run low on oxygen!
Those serving in submarines who are deprived of oxygen become cantankerous, edgy and cannot explain their irrational behavior until the solicitous captain is notified of an oxygen crisis! Submarines are equipped with an essential device that splits oxygen from the unlimited amount of ocean H2O enveloping a billion dollar vessel designed for catastrophic warfare.
Submarine captains with nuclear weapons are the second most powerful individuals on Earth after nine heads of state who are now able to declare a nuclear conflict. President Kennedy considered such an unthinkable decision as “the final failure.” (Averting The Final Failure, pp 105-106)
When the order is given by a captain for release of precious oxygen into the submarine, normalcy returns to the crew within minutes and nuclear accidents might be avoided.
Unfortunately, “big brain, two legged ones” (Kurt Vonnegut’s term for humans) are not able to sense that the flow of oxygen to our lungs, brains and nervous systems is now declining. “Scientists with GO(2)NE (Global Ocean Oxygen Network) created by the UN Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission conducted a sweeping, all-encompassing study on the state of ocean oxygen: ‘In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms” (Global Warming Zaps Counter Punch, February 2018). The Gulf of Mexico “dead zone” expands yearly.
British anthropologist Louis Leakey was asked in the 1990’s what the most significant problem facing humankind was. Without hesitation Leakey responded – “Global warming!”
Professor James G. Anderson of Harvard claims irrefutable evidence 12 million years ago there was no ice at either pole of Earth. In our century there is now the same amount of carbon as there was 12 million years ago. Scientists describe such a condition as a second Paleo Ecological Thermal Maximum (PETM) in which carbon coming into contact with water becomes carbonic acid.
Melting of ice at both poles and reduction of our essential oxygen might prompt all thinking beings to ponder an economic system without fossil fuels. Unless we transition soon to gofossilfree, will anybody have jobs in the future? The Carbon Combustion Complex (CCC) holds Earth hostage.
