I think people had somehow gotten the sense that we have explored everything, when that isn't the case. We so know so little about the ocean, and so much of it is being destroyed.
We still have 10 percent of the sharks. We still have half of the coral reefs. However, if we wait another 50 years, opportunities might well be gone.
One thing leads to the other. Deforestation leads to climate change, which leads to ecosystem losses, which negatively impacts our livelihoods - it's a vicious cycle.
Loss of natural areas threatens our water supply, national security, farms, and health.
Sometimes it's hard to take everyday concerns seriously when you think about vanished ecosystems that existed 300 million years ago and were eradicated by giant explosions. My goals haven't changed, because my goal has always been to save the world!
A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be - will be - a human zoo. A high-tech slum.
Almost all these hotspots around the world, most have been destroyed to the point where there is no wildlife and very little of the natural world left.
Once a landscape is industrialized, its wild character is lost for good. You can't recreate untouched tundra, mountain meadows, crystal clear streams, and animals that have never encountered toxic waste.
We are too quickly losing important landscapes in this country to development - and I worry that if we do not act to protect them now, future generations will grow up in a profoundly different world.
The vast majority of species that are vanishing, we haven't even discovered yet. How can you possibly put them back in nature if the ecosystem is gone?
This is part of what's driving me, is this feeling like there's so much yet to be discovered in the oceans, and we're destroying it before we even know what's in it.
