Uh, who we vote for certainly, um, it’s a tragedy in the United States that, that environmentalism continues to be a, a partisan issue. Um, it wasn’t always this way. Think of Richard Nixon, who passed the Clean Air Act extension, the Clean Water Act, the mal Protection Act, he started the EPA he founded NOAA, um, you know, uh, uh, Uber Republican administration did these things, because conservation environment was not a, a, a partisan issue, really, until the Reagan era. Um, and so, uh, you know, we need to get back to that and recognize that as, as voters of, of any party, anywhere in the world, you know, we all need clean air and clean water. Um, we all need a stable client . uh, excuse climate. Um, and so, thinking about you know, who we vote for and advocating, um, that the politician set aside those differences from an environmental perspective.
I think, you know, one of the problems that we face that needs to be solved is that the bread and butter for the environmental movement has been doom and gloom, which is a, a great short term motivator, um, but not a good long term motivator. And we need long term motivation, we know psychologically, that, that doom and gloom will perhaps get you to make a donation or take a short term action, but in terms of inspiring people to change their behavior and, and, and take long term action, um, it, it, it has its limitations. We’re big believers that while we face extraordinary problems, and you know, listen, that, that we are headed pell-mell towards, um, a, a catastrophic climate change, we have seen a 50% decline in, in biodiversity on this earth in the last 40 years, a, a decline of over 60% of living creatures on this earth in the last 40 years. Um, you Florida servicing payday loans know, coral reefs are collapsing, 90% of our fisheries are over fished, or fished to capacity, lots of bad news out there, plastic pollution, etc, etc.
Um, but I do believe that there’s also cause for, for, for, for hope, and optimism
Um, we have the tools, for example, that we know work, to help restore the ocean to help restore the environment, and that nature is extraordinarily resilient. We know that as well. I saw it, uh, my wife Ashlan and I were co-hosting a, uh, special for discovery Shark Week, a few years ago, and we went to the Marshall Islands in, you know, often the far middle of the, the Pacific Ocean. And we, um, we did this documentary, because we had heard rumors that the, and a particular area called the Bikini Atoll, which had been the site of, of, of extensive nuclear, uh, bomb tests by the United States in the 1950s and ’60s. That, that 60 years ago, of course, after dropping 23 nuclear bombs, everything above and below the surface was destroyed.
Now there’s still radiation on the islands and the Atolls in the area
But we’d heard rumors that there was life and schooling sharks and healthy reefs around Bikini and we thought to ourselves, “How can that be, it’s only been 60 years, since literally, everything was devastated by all these bombs that we dropped?” And, um, and so we, we chartered a, a boat for this documentary, and we went up to Bikini Atoll, um, and from the first moment we set foot in the water, we were astounded at the abundance of life. Uh, but the radiation in the water has dispersed. The name of the documentary was Nuclear Sharks, which was catchy, but no, our number one question we got from people was the sharks were not glowing, the sharks were not radioactive. Um, but what had happened was, that area had essentially become a de facto marine protected area. No one had been there for decades. No fishing, no exploitation, nothing.