Save the Polyps--

Very few of our industries are sustainable--when we harm the least of our species on this planet, we stand to do harm to all of our species. We need to avoid overfishing, poor irrigation/fertilization farming methods and reduce CO2 emissions to cut down on ocean acidification, among other things, to preserve an important part of our oceanic ecosystem. Those goals are kind of overarching and remote to regular people, but what it means in little is--take a hard look at fish aquacultures and whether we can sustainably maintain our consumption of them (or whether we need to rely on better farming of land-based protein sources). We need to use land better and that does not mean "better living through chemicals." When I visited my folks in Calabria, I was surprised by the non-bougie use of composting. It was just a regular thing. Although in Pennsylvania I don't have quite the same climate benefit, I have determined yard wastes aren't a bad start for mulch. Seriously--we live in communities where organic material is bagged and landfilled like it somehow wasn't part of the circle of life. Peels and cores and whatnot are still full of minerals that could go back to the soils they came from.

And we need to be more energy-smart. Maybe it means conservation, or alternate fuel sources, or just lowering carbon use by making machines better. But if we can prevent whole ecosystems from dying--what shouldn't we do, really?  Doesn't it make sense to do all we can?