the effects of ocean acidification

I think sometimes it is difficult for people to make changes that will help the environment because in our time now we are not seeing the direct effect as much as hearing about what the effect will be 50 or 100 years from now. It’s hard to drastically change your lifestyle when you aren’t even seeing the consequences of your actions yet. It is especially hard to address a problem that has future consequences when those consequences may not even directly affect you. This is the exactly what is happening with ocean acidification, it is a topic that people know little about and do not fully understand what it means and how we are making it worse. If we continue raising our carbon dioxide emissions, the trend of higher acidity water in oceans will get worse.

“Reefs provide habitat for fish species upon which the Filipino population depends for 50 percent of its animal protein intake,” (White, Vogt, and Arin 2000). Ocean acidification will most directly affect marine species like coral reefs and fish, but it will also indirectly affect humans because of the food source the fish provide to us. In the past 30 years, coral reefs all over earth have been deteriorating as a result of ocean acidification, and could soon be destroyed all together if our carbon dioxide emission levels continue to rise.

Although it is much easier to only think about yourself and make changes as needed to better your own environment, people need to think about earth as a whole because the truth is our actions as a species affect the whole earth, not just our own small environments and lives. This means that we have to make changes that will better our environment now and our future environment, because even if a consequence of our actions does not directly impact us, there is a good chance it will somehow indirectly affect us in some way.