I know very little about this stretch of ocean, but it’s an interesting article:
Moving to protect fragile marine life, President Barack Obama announced plans Tuesday to create the largest ocean preserve in the world by banning drilling, fishing and other activities in a massive stretch of the Pacific Ocean.
Using presidential authority that doesn’t require new action from Congress, Obama proposed to expand the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, which President George W. Bush designated to protect unique species and rare geological formations. The waters are all considered U.S. territory because they surround an array of remote, mostly uninhabited islands that the U.S. controls between Hawaii and American Samoa.
I don’t know if the pacific fleet does much fishing in these waters, nor can I comment on the potential for wiping out fragile species. Still this leads me to believe it is a boondoggle:
Carbon pollution is making the world’s oceans more acidic, pollution is threatening marine life and overfishing could wipe out entire species, Obama warned as he vowed to expand the sanctuary during an ocean conservation conference hosted by the State Department.
Except it isn’t! Seawater is a natural buffer, meaning you dump acid in it, it turns basic and neutralizes it, add base and it becomes acidic and neutralizes it, it’s the CO2 that MAKES the seawater so stable, not the other way around. Plus “Acid Rain”? Really? And you thought calling it “Global Warming” was passe, 1985 called, and it wants it’s hysterical environmental junk science back! Why not talk about “The Greenhouse Effect”, or “The Coming of a New Ice Age” while wearing a polyester pleasure suit and your hair all done up with Jerri Curl?
And then there’s this little recursive logic:
“If we ignore these problems, if we drain our oceans of their resources, we won’t just be squandering one of humanity’s greatest treasures,” Obama said in a recorded video message. “We’ll be cutting off one of the world’s major sources of food and economic growth, including for the United States. We cannot afford to let that happen.”
Got that, BAN FISHING so that we can preserve the food supply and money that comes from FISHING! God at least the eco terrorists and government grant mercenaries on the East Coast are trying to collapse the fishing industry because FISHING IS EVIL! This is the environmental equivalent of “We had to destroy the village in order to save it!”
As I read on, there appears to be little interest in drilling or fishing in this massive chunk of ocean, and given that to erect a “Fence” (what fisherman call the border of Marine closed areas) all one needs to do is set the coordinates up on a map, it probably won’t amount to much.
Still if this is his way of thinking, I am very wary on the NEXT step.
