I would hope readers open the book at the
introduction where I describe the following:
Imagine a sparkling day on Sydney’s
Harbour… eating creamy Sydney rock oysters and drinking a glass of fine
Australian white wine with a light warm salty breeze on your face. Look -
there’s the Opera House with her shells, to your left is the Sydney Harbour
Bridge (the “Coathanger”) that each New Year’s Eve features actual over-the-top
fireworks touted as the first to be seen globally on the first day of a new
year. On the water there’s the crazy skittering of the ferries, sailboats and
kayaks criss-crossing east and west, north and south. Around Circular Quay the
usual huddles of tourists handle the faux Ugg boots and the didgeridoos made in
China. Next to the berth for the ferry to Manly, Aboriginal musicians play
proper didge. Over by the old shipping wharves – now eye wateringly expensive
real estate – some young boys but mainly old women and men fish. Many came from
Vietnam on boats and fresh fish will feed the family. Day-in day-out, they sit
on milk crates fishing under the bridge. Holding all these stories together is
the water of Sydney Harbour – it is normally a color called ‘harbor green’ but
sometimes it burnishes to a shimmering near-turquoise. There’s something like
500 gigalitres of water in the Harbour, an amount that is called one Sydharb. Below
the surface swim some 586 different species of fish. In amongst the local fish
there are now tropical fish who, like the clownfish in Finding Nemo,
ride the East Australia Current over a thousand miles down the from Great
Barrier Reef in the north.
It sounds rather magic, and it often is; at
least on a surface level. The reason why you can now go snorkeling in the
Harbour and encounter tropical fish is that this part of the Pacific Ocean is
warming faster than anywhere else in the world. And unbeknownst to many the
water in the Harbour leads the world in the amount of heavy metals it contains.
Untreated storm water flows into the Harbour carrying pesticides and nitrogen.
Fish get used to the manmade modification of their world and take advantage of
the increased nutrients. They seemingly thrive, and yet they are poisonous for
their human and nonhuman predators.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
I would hope readers open the book at the introduction where I describe the following:
Imagine a sparkling day on Sydney’s Harbour… eating creamy Sydney rock oysters and drinking a glass of fine Australian white wine with a light warm salty breeze on your face. Look - there’s the Opera House with her shells, to your left is the Sydney Harbour Bridge (the “Coathanger”) that each New Year’s Eve features actual over-the-top fireworks touted as the first to be seen globally on the first day of a new year. On the water there’s the crazy skittering of the ferries, sailboats and kayaks criss-crossing east and west, north and south. Around Circular Quay the usual huddles of tourists handle the faux Ugg boots and the didgeridoos made in China. Next to the berth for the ferry to Manly, Aboriginal musicians play proper didge. Over by the old shipping wharves – now eye wateringly expensive real estate – some young boys but mainly old women and men fish. Many came from Vietnam on boats and fresh fish will feed the family. Day-in day-out, they sit on milk crates fishing under the bridge. Holding all these stories together is the water of Sydney Harbour – it is normally a color called ‘harbor green’ but sometimes it burnishes to a shimmering near-turquoise. There’s something like 500 gigalitres of water in the Harbour, an amount that is called one Sydharb. Below the surface swim some 586 different species of fish. In amongst the local fish there are now tropical fish who, like the clownfish in Finding Nemo, ride the East Australia Current over a thousand miles down the from Great Barrier Reef in the north.
It sounds rather magic, and it often is; at least on a surface level. The reason why you can now go snorkeling in the Harbour and encounter tropical fish is that this part of the Pacific Ocean is warming faster than anywhere else in the world. And unbeknownst to many the water in the Harbour leads the world in the amount of heavy metals it contains. Untreated storm water flows into the Harbour carrying pesticides and nitrogen. Fish get used to the manmade modification of their world and take advantage of the increased nutrients. They seemingly thrive, and yet they are poisonous for their human and nonhuman predators.