[Coral-List] carbon offsetting AND slowing down

[Douglas Fenner]

Oh yes, indeed!!  Especially in about the 1950's and early 60's.  All kinds
of things had been invented in chemical labs, like nylon and rayon and
plastics were growing.  In the movie "The Graduate", a guy says to young
Dustin Hoffmann who is graduating that he has just one word for him:
"plastic."  He was obviously trying to tell Hoffmann that working in
plastics was a growth industry, get into working for companies on plastic
and you will do very well, probably get rich.  I also remember late in the
60's a poster that showed some hippies with smiles on their faces with the
big title "Better Living Through Chemistry."  The chemistry that hippies
were using was not the kind of chemistry that the short-haircut straight
guys in the 50's were talking about.  More like pot, LSD, etc.  And now we
live in a world awash with plastics, which get into everything and we seem
not to be able to live without, and chemicals of all sorts are in the
sewage system from people, and in the ground and in the water supply and
the air.  I remember reading that you could get info on what illegal drugs
people are using by testing sewage.  And of course now some or many of
those chemicals may (or may not) be damaging coral reefs.  They certainly
have done that to a lot of people, from the Bopal disaster in India to Love
Canal in the states, air pollution, water pollution, chemical waste
dumping, basically world-wide problems in both developing and developed
countries.  And greenhouse gases that may be "gassing" the world's reefs.
     Modern life.   Cheers, Doug

On Tue, May 28, 2019 at 2:18 PM Eugene Shinn via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Steve, I have no problem with what you said.. Just remember that the
> Mark Grable story was published in 1948. Attitudes were quite different
> back then.  "Better Living Through Chemistry" was a popular theme back
> then. Gene
>
> --
>
>
> No Rocks, No Water, No Ecosystem (EAS)
> ------------------------------------ -----------------------------------
> E. A. Shinn, Courtesy Professor
> University of South Florida
> College of Marine Science Room 221A
> 140 Seventh Avenue South
> St. Petersburg, FL 33701
> <eugeneshinn at mail.usf.edu>
> Tel 727 553-1158
> ---------------------------------- -----------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Coral-List mailing list
> Coral-List at coral.aoml.noaa.gov
> https://coral.aoml.noaa.gov/mailman/listinfo/coral-list



-- 
Douglas Fenner
Ocean Associates, Inc. Contractor
NOAA Fisheries Service
Pacific Islands Regional Office
Honolulu
and:
Consultant
PO Box 7390
Pago Pago, American Samoa 96799  USA

New book "The Uninhabitable Earth"  First sentence: "It is much, much worse
than you think."
Read first (short) chapter open access:
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/read-a-chapter-from-the-uninhabitable-earth-a-dire-warning-on-climate-change

Want a Green New Deal?  Here's a better one.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/want-a-green-new-deal-heres-a-better-one/2019/02/24/2d7e491c-36d2-11e9-af5b-b51b7ff322e9_story.html?utm_term=.a3fc8337cbf8

Nations falling short of emissions cuts set by Paris climate pact, analysis
finds
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/11/nations-falling-short-emissions-cuts-set-paris-climate-pact-analysis-finds?utm_campaign=news_daily_2018-11-28&et_rid=17045989&et_cid=2515903