Tuna Farms in Costa Rica

Costa Rican courts just approved the construction of giant tuna cages just offshore of the Golfo Dulce, one of the planet's most biodiverse regions and near the epic waves at Pavones and Punta Banco. Young wild tuna are captured at sea in nets and towed to be fatted in tuna cages. In Chile, the captive salmon farming industry nearly collapsed last year after major problems with disease and ecosystems collapse created by farming pollution.
This seems like an extremely bad idea for Costa Rica's surf and fishing communities. More information here. Visit savethewaves.org and pretoma.org.

Above: what a tuna farm would look like on Costa Rica's coastline.

Sailing the Seas of Plastic

In May 2006 I sailed from San Francisco to Kaua'i on a 42-foot Hans Christian wooden sailboat. It was, we thought, a slow boat: 19 days on the high seas and numerous near-disasters made for a truly epic trip, the best fun and adventure I've ever had. However, the above video is much heavier: these guys took 45+ days to get to Hawai'i, on a tiny boat made of plastic and junk!

I can attest to the Great Pacific Plastic Patch - I sailed through it on my way to Kaua'i. Solution: stop using plastic! We might as well throw away life if we're using throw away plastics. It's pretty easy, too - just stop buying everything (since it's nearly all wrapped in plastic)!
;-)

A Simple Short Talk by Paul Hawken

Today I turn this space over to another writer:

Paul Hawken's Commencement Address to the Class of 2009
University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009:

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.

Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, "So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world." There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen.

Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. "One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice," is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not "out there" somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a "little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven."

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

~~~~~

Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author. His books include Blessed Unrest. Thanks to Drew Kampion for sharing this.

Plastic Appendages

We are killing ourselves with our plastic consumption habits. Would you like a plastic bag to carry home your bag of chips and that hermetically sealed single-use plastic water bottle? Who came up with this disposable plastic stuff? And why the hell is it still everywhere in the world of commerce and trade? Come on, this is frickin' ridiculous. Stop. STOP. Using. STOP. Plastic. STOP.

Time, No Time, Twitter, Overpopulation, Work and Parties for the Ocean

There is too much to do after our epic Life Is A Wave fundraiser last week. No time to blog. So for now follow us on Twitter - twitter.com/savethewaves - who has time for even 140 characters?!

Or better yet - do nothing, it encourages creativity. Turn off your computer and stop reading this, it will save the environment. Why do we always have to be doing something important to save the planet? The earth will ultimately take care of herself in spite of our best, and our worst, efforts. Go planet!

If you're still reading this then go check out our brand-new Save The Waves website! It's as fresh and as cool as an ocean breeze. www.savethewaves.org

Marine Protected Areas in California

This Thursday, May 14, the California Fish and Game Commission is holding a public hearing in Sacramento regarding a soon-to-be-enacted network of "marine protected areas" and the state's Marine Life Protection Act. This Thursday is a critical day for the public and stakeholders to voice exactly how and to what extent we want our coastline protected.

Frankly I think that conservation groups have done a terrible job at promoting the Marine Protected Areas, partly because there are several different proposals being considered, some more conservationist than others, some more friendly to commercial and sports fishing interests. It's a mix of proposals and counter-proposals and no one is making it really clear what means what. However, the "Integrated Preferred Alternative" - more info here - will actually protect the coast more than any other and create a network of "underwater Yosemites":

Although as a surfer and fisherman I feel emotionally torn and frustrated about closing certain coastal areas to local sports fishing and abalone diving - ab diving is already one of the most heavily state-regulated ocean activities in California - the harsh truth is: our local ocean, fish and coastline are in serious decline, there are less fish in California coastal waters than ever before, and we must do EVERYTHING in our power to protect coastal sea life and its ecosystems and habitats.

Support the "Integrated Preferred Alternative" Marine Protected Areas in California. The "IPAs" guarantee total protection for coastal sea life and habitat. Go to Sacramento tomorrow, May 14, and voice your concerns. More info at www.caloceans.org. To travel to Sacramento tomorrow for the public hearing you can contact Paul Hobi at phobi@oceanconservancy.org

Party!

"Life is a wave" - Albert Einstein



This is another shameless promotion of our epic fundraiser auction raffle event, Life Is A Wave, this Thursday, May 14 in San Francisco. Buy your tickets now at this Brown Paper Tickets link because the event will eventually sell out at the door on the "night of".

See more information, and a list of epic raffle and auction items, at this link here. The ladies and the dudes will be in full attendance - so bring your "A" game and your check book for this fun-draiser.

"Life is a wave" - Albert Einstein

Slow Wave

Amazing slow motion recording of waves, coming soon on BBC:

Plug-In Hybrids: The Dirty Elephant in the Parlor

If you have read much of my blogging you'll notice that I feverishly oppose coal as a source of electricity. Our new film Keeping Coast delves into the environmental and social problems of coal-fired power plants in coastal Chile, where I've witnessed firsthand the major pollution they create in communities and ecosystems. Living back in the USA I'm hearing lots of people, including Barack Obama, promote plug-in hybrid electric cars. (this is a hybrid gasoline-electric car that runs on rechargeable batteries until they run out, then switches over to gas. Purported to provide 100 mpg although there are major doubts about their 100 mpg claim, too) I'm introducing the "elephant in the room" on this issue:

Where is the electricity coming from that powers the plug-in hybrid car? Mostly from dirty coal. Forty to 50 percent of US electricity comes from coal burning power plants. Coal electricity is one of the largest contributors to global warming; it destroys mountains and valleys in the coal mining process, and dirties rivers and coastlines with pollution; coal releases highly toxic sulfur dioxide and heavy metals into the air where they create birth defects in babies and destroy clean drinking water. Not to mention the toxic solid waste and ashes created by coal burning plants.

That sexy 100 mpg plug-in hybrid car that greenies and car manufacturers and politicians are hyping is actually more polluting and creates more global warming due to the coal-powered electricity connection. For now I'm still sticking to walking, biking, carpooling with friends and using public transportation. I meet cool people that way. Clean coal is a dirty lie and plug-in cars will create more demand for coal.

Dios mio, imagine the amount of coal we would have to burn to fuel Obama's vision of 1 million plug-in hybrids on the road by 2015. It makes one wonder if the coal lobby is actually pushing plug-in hybrid cars to create more demand for their shitty product. Maybe plug-in cars will help usher in the "end to the age of oil in our time" as Obama hopes, but it will also create a revisit to the Age of Coal. What an incredibly bad idea.


USA Today even published an article about this hybrid car coal connection. Treehugger.com also has a "sort of" balanced article on the issue, even though they conclude that plug-ins are still cleaner based on a lot of circumstantial evidence and subjective analysis.

Let's promote solar and all other forms of totally clean renewable energy, because I'm never buying a plug-in hybrid if it means more demand for coal.

Coal for electricity is a disaster and it will kill the human race:

STWitterers On Twitter

Yes, Save The Waves is now on Twitter so follow us at twitter.com/savethewaves

Carbon Trading: Does It Do Anything Besides Make Money?

I've always had serious doubts about carbon trading and whether it actually helps reverse global climate change. This blog by forestry industry critic Chris Lang is a great explanation of how carbon trading doesn't do much besides make money for the same old bankers. I'd even suggest that carbon trading makes matters worse by wasting huge financial resources that merely contribute to more carbon consumption. Global climate change and rising sea levels are a major threat to civilization, coastal communities, biodiversity, and the surfing community. Read my blog post here about possible future scenarios facing us coastal citizens and the rising of the oceans. The reality of rising ocean levels from a surfer's perspective.


Photos in this post by William Henry.

Lost Prophets

The film Lost Prophets is a collaboration from Corban Productions that involves the surfing and musings of some of our friends - Hans Hagan, Chris del Moro, and mysterious dolphin man David Rasta Pasta Clownovich - coming to a screen and DVD player near you in August.
View the trailer at this link:
Lost Prophets