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We have an atmosphere that is roughly 21% oxygen. The rest of it is largely nitrogen. There's just enough carbon dioxide (CO2) to drive photosynthesis. That has been, throughout the history of our species, pretty stable. Until recently.

Sylvia Earle

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Sylvia Earle
Age: 89
Born: 1935
Born: August 30
Biologist
Botanist
Explorer
Marine Biologist
Oceanographer
Gibbstown
New Jersey
Sylvia Alice Earle
S.A.Earle
Atmosphere
Dioxide
Drive
Roughly
Species
Oxygen
Rest
Largely
Pretty
Recently
History
Carbon
Enough
Stable
Photosynthesis
Throughout
Nitrogen

More quotes by Sylvia Earle

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Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you're lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you're in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don't see sharks.
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We've got to somehow stabilize our connection to nature so that in 50 years from now, 500 years, 5,000 years from now there will still be a wild system and respect for what it takes to sustain us.
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It's baffling why the issues relating to climate change - [which] have far more obvious and tangible and much more clear-cut evidence about the cause - have been slower for people to accept as a given.
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We are not only warming the ocean and the planet as a whole, but we are also acidifying the ocean and changing its chemistry.
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What we once used as weapons of war, we now use as weapons against fish.
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In terms of personal choices, let's all think more carefully about where we get our protein from.
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Places change over time with or without oil spills, but humans are responsible for the Deepwater Horizon gusher - and humans, as well as the corals, fish and other creatures, are suffering the consequences.
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I've spent thousands of hours under water. And even in the deepest dive I have ever made, 2.5 miles (about 4 kilometers) down, I saw trash and other tangible evidence of our presence.
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The oceans deserve our respect and care, but you have to know something before you can care about it.
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Use your power to do whatever it takes to secure for humankind an enduring place on this little blue speck in the universe - our only hope.
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Even our rules and regulations, our laws, our policies, favor the destructive nature of taking too much from the ocean and using techniques that are horribly destructive. We know they don't work. We know it's not sustainable.
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The opportunity that is unique [to our] time is what inspires me to do everything I can to move things forward. This is the first time that we have the capacity to understand our place in the greater scheme of things to the extent that we do.
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My parents moved to Florida when I was 12, and my backyard was the Gulf of Mexico.
Sylvia Earle
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Knowledge is the key to making a difference.
Sylvia Earle
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The most important thing for people to know about the governance of the Arctic is that we have a chance now to act to maintain the integrity of the system or to lose it. To lose it means that we will dismember the vital systems that make the Arctic work. It's not just a cost to the people who live there. It's a cost to all people everywhere.
Sylvia Earle
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The ocean is our life support system. No blue, no green. It's really a miracle that we have got a place that works in our favor.
Sylvia Earle
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When I first ventured into the Gulf of Mexico in the 1950s, the sea appeared to be a blue infinity too large, too wild to be harmed by anything that people could do.
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The observations that have developed over the years have given us perspective about where we fit in. We are newcomers, really recent arrivals on a planet that is four and a half billion years old.
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Childcare is a huge issue for young women whose work may require them to leave their families for weeks at a time.
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Fish from all over the world, from deep in the sea, wind up in countries from Germany to Japan. That is just crazy.
Sylvia Earle