If there's one thing I'm taking away from this conference, it's that we need to get serious about the environment, and most specifically the oceans.
One of the creatures in serious trouble is the shark, due to, as you may know, shark fin soup.
Sharks have been around for 450 million years, and have survived five major extinctions. As Rob Stewart said today (he made Sharkwater documentary), everything in the oceans is below them in the foodchain, so they were responsible for the rebuilding of the ocean ecology. "Shark tested" as it were.
And because the sharks are in trouble, some troublesome and very large squid have now expanded their range up and down the western coast of North America, and will round the cape to the east soon.
Estimates of the death of the oceans are by 2048, and some even sooner, within 25 years.
I was so impressed, however, by the passion and brains of the Millennials that spoke, that I hope they can mobilize the rest of us to do the right thing.
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Worst one-liners:
Yesterday I was having a perfectly delightful discussion with Preston Manning, who spoke brilliantly about human rights. And a strange man came up and entered our conversation with these words, directed at me: "The trouble with women is..." It was such a bizarre thing to encounter at a conference about ideas.
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Best one-liners today:
"People always make the right decision when they're given the facts."
"If the oceans fail, so does our species. We have to make a choice."
Squids: "Earth's resident aliens."
"Success is not about how much money I have in my bank account," -- from the guy who ran across the Sahara, Ray Zahab
"It's not about outdoing yourself. It's about expanding your personal limitations."
"That's when I got it. These people [scientists] had stuck with those boring classes and now they could do cool stuff." Ben Gulak, inventor of the Uno.
"It's like being on a personal cloud."
"Being in the joy business."
"Governments and corporations do not have long-term human survival at heart."
"People that know what's going on have escape plans."
"The wild lies all around us + we take it in like breath. Our lives are inseparable from the lives of insects."
"I am a philosopher, which means I know nothing about anything."
"Why should we now block the further evolution of our species."
"Genes are nature's nanotechnology."
Back to listen to a Klezmer band, and then one more session of speakers before we all roll off to the last party. This is a conference that spoils you for other conferences. Even the jaded among us are in awe of the science, the personal stories of struggle and achievement, and the passion of the speakers.
