The Other Blue Votes
David Helvarg is an oceans advocate, diver, body-surfer and the author of The War Against the Greens and Blue
Frontier—Saving America's Living Seas.
"It's too bad fish can't vote, but then, neither can our children or our grandchildren," frets longtime ocean champion and National Geographic Society Explorer-In-Residence Sylvia Earle.
For those of us who can vote and who live by, earn our livings from, or simply enjoy the pleasures of America's seashores and oceans, Sen. John Kerry's emergence as the probable Democratic Party presidential candidate is promising news.
Kerry is one of the only politicians in Washington who understands the frontier values of America's living seas, and who has offered common-sense solutions to the problems confronting our waters"sometimes in the face of opposition from some of his own constituents. A Navy veteran, former Mekong swiftboat commander and active windsurfer, Kerry has jokingly been referred to as a "new wave Democrat."
"Leadership can put this (oceans) on the table, and there's a huge constituency waiting to act on it," he claims. "I grew up on the ocean and spend as much time as I can out on Buzzards Bay (Cape Cod). If I didn't love it as well as I do, I probably wouldn't be as involved as I am. It's my touchstone, my sense of being and place to re-energize. But it's also a fragile system."
Today that fragile system"and others like it"face a cascading series of disasters that could turn America's and the world’s oceans into dead seas within our lifetime. We’re witnessing the collapse of marine wildlife, with more than 90 percent of our blue planet's large fish decimated by unrestrained fishing for the global seafood market. We’re seeing nearshore waters poisoned by toxic and nutrient runoff from factory farms and cities. Coastal sprawl is degrading and destroying the salt marshes, mangroves, seagrass meadows and barrier islands that act as the filters and nurseries of the seas, while fossil-fuel fired climate change is causing sea-level rise, beach erosion, coral bleaching and intensified hurricanes.
Kerry has responded. He’s helped Boston clean up its harbor with a two billion dollar water-treatment plant on Deer Island (the harbor's pollution had been used in Republican attack ads during the 1988 presidential campaign). Boston’s improved water quality has in turn sparked a multi-billion dollar waterfront revival helped by groups like the Boston Harbor Association. Kerry has also worked for the restoration of state wetlands and introduced legislation to create an ocean and coast conservation fund for the entire nation.
"When you look at what's happening downwater in our bays and estuaries and salt marshes and how at risk they are from contamination, we need to re-educate and re-energize people," he says.
And an election year is a good time to do that. While some environmental issues, such as logging and air pollution, have been in the political forefront before, Kerry now has a chance to make ocean conservation an election issue. A sizeable number of American voters have connections to the coasts and oceans through residence, work or leisure activities. Here's Kerry's opportunity to give credence to their concerns.
Unlike his fellow Massachusetts Democrats Ted Kennedy and Barney Frank, Kerry hasn't pandered to the short-term demands of New England fishermen to open up depleted stocks of fish. Instead he's practiced tough love, advocating a program of voluntary buy-outs for America's overcapitalized fleet, improved fisheries management and selective closures to assure the long-term viability of wild fish stocks, the fishing communities that depend on them and the natural resource base of our public seas. He was instrumental in the 1996 Fisheries Reform Act that identified the need to protect essential fish habitats and reduce wasteful fishing practices.
He has also been a leading advocate for a rapid transition from fossil fuels to non-carbon based energy technologies that will improve our national security and competitive position in the world while also reducing the risks all Americans, but particularly coastal residents, face as the impacts of climate change, including more powerful hurricanes, continue unabated.
Of course, his waffling on a wind farm in the waters off Cape Cod has placed him at some small risk of being labeled another 'Not In Our Back Waters' politician. But compare this with President Bush, who has put the sea lions in charge of the salmon pens. Bush has pushed to privatize America's public seas through massive expansion of offshore leasing for corporate fish farms, natural gas storage facilities, and new outer continental shelf oil exploration in areas that have been protected until now.
His administration has promoted military exemptions to the Marine Mammal Protection Act. It has argued that dolphin-safe labeling should be redefined to include the dolphin-encircling nets that kill dolphins. When it comes to cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico's massive dead zone (the result of ag-chemical runoff) the administration has underfunded and ignored the very type of voluntary action plan between localities, states and the federal government it claims to champion. And the Bush administration has argued that the National Environmental Protection Act (that requires environmental impact studies) doesn't apply on the 3.4 million square nautical miles of federal waters that make up our nation's last great wilderness frontier.
For America's watermen and women"be they surfers, scientists, fishermen and women, dock workers, divers, coastal residents or business owners, beach walkers, boaters and/or voters"now is the time to make sure their issues become the next wave of concern. And John Kerry should jump at the chance to be the guy riding that wave.
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Published: Apr 21 2004
