Sofia Herron Geller is a sophomore at Oberlin College.
The“Seafood Bake” incident described in the July 11 Earthweek column “cooked more than a billion seashore animals to death, leaving a putrid stink near Vancouver, B.C.”. This line lends itself to some puns, but it is by no means a dismissable event. The unprecedented heat of this summer which has destroyed major populations of mussels and other mollusks is indicative of the accelerating impact of climate change.
Experts attribute this seafood bake to a combination of warming temperatures and low tides, so we know what to focus on to prevent this in the future. Quite evidently, we must address climate change action now.
I lived in California when starfish populations all but disappeared due to disease and when one of the few mass beachings of by-the-wind sailor jellyfish occurred. Even though this mass decline of sea creatures isn’t an isolated event, I remain optimistic about political actions we can take to reduce our impact on the Earth.
Fortunately, there are numerous pieces of congressional legislation that demonstrate a new and inspiring wave of bipartisan support to decrease greenhouse gas emissions and stabilize global temperature. If we act now, we can stop more unintentional seafood bakes from happening!