A future where climate change is taken seriously everywhere — where batteries trump fuel tanks and forests stay intact — is easy to picture. But for too long, ideas of a sustainable planet have focused on what we can do on land, and not planned for what the ocean could help accomplish.
That’s the argument put forth by the High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy, a group of 14 heads of state from countries that are particularly reliant on the high-seas for their way of life. The right choices about how we use the ocean (and what parts we leave alone) could account for 21 percent of the emission reductions needed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C by 2050, according to a related policy forum in the journal Science. The authors say their proposal is the first in-depth, quantitative look at how the water that covers ...
