Trump Admin Is Turning Ocean Into a Gas Station and Garbage Dump, Expert Says |
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We’re joined by ocean policy expert David Helvarg to discuss the Trump administration’s dismantling of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, the “cutting-edge eyes [and] ears” of the ocean. The program’s closure, proposed in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s second administration, involves the decommissioning of a vast network of ocean floor sensors that collect data on marine ecosystems, ocean currents and global climate data, protecting the world’s oceans and providing critical information about extreme weather. In their place is the increasingly unregulated expansion of resource extraction driven by the fossil fuel industry, “essentially developing the ocean for offshore oil drilling and mining — basically, as a gas station and a garbage dump.”
Helvarg, the author of Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp, also discusses “the world’s other forest crisis”: the loss of over half of kelp forests to warming ocean temperatures, throwing coastal ecosystems deeply out of balance. “We have an ocean,” adds Helvarg. “It’s full of life. It’s at risk. And we need to better understand the other 71% of our blue marble planet to protect it — and not to let a few individuals and corporations destroy it.”
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The Trump administration has begun dismantling the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a network of more than 900 ocean floor sensors that collect critical data on marine ecosystems, ocean currents and global climate data. The deep sea sensors were installed a decade ago at a cost of $370 million, funded by the National Science Foundation. The independent NSF board has since been dismantled by the Trump administration. The decommissioning of the sensors has already begun and is expected to be completed next year.
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Meanwhile, the Trump administration has pushed to expand deep sea mining and loosen fishing regulations. The closure of the Oceans Observatories Initiative was recommended by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook for Trump’s presidency. Scientists warn the move will severely degrade efforts to monitor changing climate patterns and could negatively affect weather forecasting and extreme weather alerts.
For more, we’re joined in studio by David Helvarg, executive director of Blue Frontier, an ocean policy group, co-host of the Rising Tide: Ocean podcast and an author. His latest book is just out, Forest of the Sea: The Remarkable Life and Imperiled Future of Kelp.
Well, we won’t be talking as much........