The year: 2022. The ocean is dying. The Earth swelters under another blistering summer. The cities bake until the concrete is hot to the touch and the asphalt is soft. Hoards of homeless roam the streets searching for food and waiting for Tuesday, Soylent Green day.

The Soylent Corporation provides food every Tuesday. A new product, Soylent Green, advertised as a “high-energy vegetable concentrate” is hungrily awaited.

“You don't understand. I've seen it happening. The ocean is dying, the plankton is dying... It's people! Soylent Green is made out of people. You gotta tell 'em - Soylent Green is people,” warns Sol in the 1973 science fiction film classic, Soylent Green.

The year: 2011. The ocean is dying. But this time it's not a sci-fi film. A report by The International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) exceeded scientists worst fears. The study finds that we're “at high risk of entering a phase of extinction of marine species unprecedented in human history.”

There is only one ocean; a global ocean with seven large islands, continents, dotted with tens of thousands of smaller oases of land. And this ocean is sick. It, like the Earth, is overheating.

During the past 16 years the ocean has warmed more than 1 degree Fahrenheit. That doesn't seem like much, but to coral reefs it's too much. Highly sensitive to warming, the reefs are “bleaching out” at an alarming rate. Algae and fish are similarly stressed.

Ocean temperature reflects atmospheric temperature that has climbed 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880 and the rate of increase is accelerating. Glaciers are feeling the heat. Worldwide more than 90 percent of the moving ice sheets are in retreat. Glacier National Park, namesaked for its 150 glaciers is down to 26 glaciers. By 2020 it will be zero.

It's widely agreed that the atmosphere is getting hotter because of an accumulation of carbon dioxide in the air trapping the sun's heat. This, in turn, is due to the ever increasing burning of fossil fuels. China, for example, builds one new coal-fired plant for electricity every week.

Rising global temperatures in the air and sea are one cause for the ocean's poor health. But acid rain has an even bigger deleterious effect.

Burning oil, coal, and natural gas releases sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, methane, along with carbon dioxide. These chemicals form powerful but dilute acids that combine with atmospheric water (rain, snow, clouds, fog) to form acidic rain.

Acidity is measured in pH. Common household products have a wide range of pH from bleach with a pH of 12 (highly basic), water measuring a pH of 7 (neutral), to lemon juice with a pH of 2 (highly acidic). The ocean is basic at a pH of 8.14.

But during the past two centuries the ocean's pH has decreased from 8.25 to 8.14, becoming less basic. However, it is the current speed of a decreasing pH that has marine scientists most concerned. Ocean acidification has the potential to disrupt the entire oceanic ecosystems, even collapsing the food chain.

Already there are gaping holes of life in the ocean called “dead zones.”

Dead zones are areas where the oxygen is too low to support life. In the '60s there were 50. Today there are more than 400. A major cause is fertilizer runoff from coastal farmlands. The fertilizer nourishes algae causing algae blooms. The algae die and are consumed by microbes that consume oxygen until a anaerobic dead zone forms.

Rising ocean temperatures, increased acidity, proliferating dead zones: How will this affect food production in a world with a population increasing at an exponential rate?

The deteriorating condition of the ocean, added to overfishing have endangered the world's fish stocks.

It is estimated that 25 percent of fish stocks are over-exploited. Another 52 percent is in danger of collapse. That's 80 percent of the ocean's food supply is either over-exploited or in a state of collapse.

Couple this with extreme climatic conditions created by global warming - droughts, floods, cat 4 and 5 hurricanes - and you have the making of a worldwide food crisis.

According to a report issued by IPSO, “We are looking at consequences for humankind that will impact in our lifetime.” Could those “consequences” be a 2022 future and the “miracle food,” Soylent Green? But that's too extreme. After all, it's only science fiction - isn't it?

Sincerely,

Bob Scroggins

New Milford, PA