World Ocean Radio
WOR is a weekly series of five-minute audio essays on a wide range of ocean issues hosted by W2O's own Peter Neill. Available for RSS feed (bottom of page), podcast, and syndicated use at no cost by community radio stations worldwide.
May 12, 2012
Today we are concerned with the rising cost of gasoline at the pump while we struggle with the implications of our demand, argue for or against more drilling, and despair over clean-up costs and restoration in fragile marine environments. Hidden in this situation is a cost beyond our control: the effect of speculators who inflate the cost of oil as they bid up the price in pursuit of financial gain. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will share a recent article written by...
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May 04, 2012
International climate meetings take place; world leaders converge to address the degradation of our land and sea environment; panels gather to review lack of progress of conservation goals. Yet the work of policy makers, the United Nations and NGOs is seemingly swallowed up by our consumption-based reality. While many countries are at work analyzing the challenges for conservation and management, international and national governance of ocean issues has mostly failed, either directly or by...
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Apr 27, 2012
Beneath almost every environmental challenge we face today lie various conflicts of interest. In the context of the ocean there are examples everywhere: subversion of international fishing quotas to gratify voters with a taste for sushi; oil companies' flagrant disregard for the environment, acceptance of subsidies, and record profits; overfishing worldwide.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the relationship of fisherman and customer; market pressure and the...
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Apr 20, 2012
Today, one of the most startling manifestations of waste is the vast accumulation of petroleum-plastic thought to be no longer useful enough to even be recycled. Our landfills and beaches are littered with plastic, a material designed to last forever yet used each day for products and packaging that have no value at the end of their short life cycle. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the seemingly endless life of this swirling, slowly dissolving petrol-detritus...
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Apr 13, 2012
We are a society organized around apparently insatiable consumption of natural resources and products derived from such resources. This drive has created stress on our terrestrial and marine environments. How do we begin to shift our priorities? Change our behaviors? Alter our patterns of consumption? Make different decisions so as to sustain the resources that remain, and assure our future survival? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will suggest that we must begin thinking...
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Apr 06, 2012
As population continues to grow, the requirements to sustain such numbers of us are enormous. Fresh water demand will increase 70% to satisfy basic water needs, and where will all this water come from? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss outcomes and solutions from the World Water Forum which took place in Marseilles, France in March and will assert that we perhaps need look no further than the ocean as the major contributor to the fresh water cycle and ask that...
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Mar 31, 2012
The concepts of water harvesting and management are not new. In communities where water scarcity is a fact of life, the techniques are essential. How do we envision a hydraulic society with a growing world population which has enormous impacts on climate, watersheds, coastal areas and the deep ocean? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will have us look no further than New York City and the Green Infrastructure Plan as a real and compelling example for sustainability and...
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Mar 22, 2012
How do we protect the ocean? Perhaps the most popular tactic in play today is the marine protected area, a growing number of places around the globe designated and structured to shelter pristine ocean space. But if we are to look for a primary strategy for ocean protection, we must look beyond these distant places and focus closer to home to the mega-cities that are the true point source of the most dangerous and deadly contributors to the ongoing pollution of the world ocean.
In this episode...
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Mar 16, 2012
In most schools today, understanding of the ocean is a partitioned subject with no coordinated understanding through any single department, and in the United States ocean literacy has encountered continuous resistance due to a number of factors. Even in programs designed toward environmental studies, there is a common terrestrial bias which relegates the ocean to secondary importance.
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss his recent trip to India and his...
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Mar 09, 2012
At The Economist's World Ocean Summit in Singapore in early 2012, World Bank Group president Robert B. Zoellick announced that they are turning their attention to the ocean, partnering with NGOs to the tune of 1.5 billion dollars in what will be called The Global Partnership for Oceans.
This "new partnership" is largely comprised of the same organizations and strategies that have been in play for more than a decade. In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss...
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Feb 24, 2012
Ocean research and advocacy organizations are alive and well. However, ocean education receives a mere fraction of overall budgets of these organizations. Educational programs are cut and staff positions remain unfilled. If this situation is so dire, why are we not moving beyond understanding of parameters to get to very specific action and ideas?
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will assert that the time has come to gather teachers and administrators together to take the...
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Feb 24, 2012
Sustainability is the catch word we hear most of late for how to deal progressively with the social and economic challenges resulting from population growth, a global economy, and our appetite for non-renewable natural resources. From the broadest ecosystem view, the ocean becomes an enormous contributor to any new strategy of resilience, maintenance, and enhancement of global biodiversity and capacity, essential to the life-support system of the earth.
In this episode of World Ocean...
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Feb 17, 2012
With the ocean we are, in all likelihood, at the point of no return. We know it would take half a century to reverse the acid base in sea water if we halted emissions today, decades for forests, coral reefs, and coastal areas to regenerate, for species of fish to return to prior numbers. In some instances it is already too late, some species having passed no return into extinction. How much more evidence will be needed, example-by-example, until we are forced to admit that the time for decision...
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Feb 10, 2012
Rachel Carson and Jacques Cousteau's legacies have driven decades of new investigation, research institutes, conservation action and programs in the U.S. and around the world. Their work has inspired increased ocean observation and advocacy and has raised ocean knowledge and planning to its highest level. But is it enough?
In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will discuss the initial phases of the Carson/Cousteau legacy and will argue that if the second phase of that legacy...
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Feb 03, 2012
For centuries the ocean has seemingly received and assimilated our waste of every kind: sewage, garbage, chemical effluent, lost ships, etc. We've given little thought to our power plants and our tailpipes—that these emissions would dissolve into the air instead of the water where it turns into acid concentrated enough to change its pH. Because the ocean is so vast, how could these seemingly little bits of human activity amount to much, and what could dissuade us from the benefits of the...
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Jan 27, 2012
We at the World Ocean Observatory use the belief "The Sea Connects All Things" as the basis for our work to inform citizens and unite to sustain the ocean through change of human behavior on land and sea. What does this sentence actually mean? In this episode of World Ocean Radio, host Peter Neill will deconstruct the meaning of this declaration and will argue that if we truly understood its meaning our values, actions, and behaviors would reflect a more practical, smart approach to...
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