OCEANIC POLLUTION

Changing something as fundamental as the pH of seawater - a measurement of how acid or alkaline it is - has profound effects. Ocean acidification threatens the corals and every other species that makes its living on the reefs. "According to a new research review by paleoceanographers at Columbia University, published in Science, the oceans may be turning acid far faster than at any time in the past 300 million years. .... The authors tried to determine which past acidification events offer the best comparison to what is happening now. The closest analogies are catastrophic events, often associated with intense volcanic activity resulting in major extinctions. The difference is that those events covered thousands of years. We have acidified the oceans in a matter of decades, with no signs that we have the political will to slow, much less halt, the process." (New York Times, 9 March) With its mad drive for profits the capitalist system is destroying the oceans and all its diverse life forms. RD