Kylee Luckett
BIO 106
Dr. Harper
4/10/2012

“The World is Blue” Sylvia Earle Review and analysis by: Kylee Luckett “It is our choices...that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” -Albus Dumbledore

They say only a few will ever speak loud enough to be heard over the other seven billion voices on the planet. Today someone is shouting. Screaming off of the pages of “The World is Blue” is Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Society’s Explorer in Residence, and vast contributor to the effort to preserve the planet’s oceans. Earle’s book is not an inconvenient truth, fueled by politics and funding, but rather, by Earle’s heart for the ocean, and
The book even features the text of Earle’s testimony before Congress on the recent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. It is not the spills, the pipelines, or the seeping of the oil that sets a tic for Earle… it’s the use of the oil itself. The subject everyone has heard about, even if they didn’t want to. It doesn’t take Al Gore to make one think or hear about climate change.
The 1950’s were a time for poodle skirts, milkshakes, and good old fashion family values, along with cigarettes, seat beltless cars, and DDT. My point is it should not stun anyone that emissions are impacting the planet in a “negative” way. Earle seems to feel the same. “Civilization currently thrives on oil based economies, and is continuing to do so despite herculean efforts to move away from fuels that pollute the planet today and will potentially shorten the number of tomorrows our species will have.” (Earle) Sylvia Earle is not an extreme leftist; she is an educated woman who has worked beside oil engineer leaders, government officials, and offshore experts. I believe it is these credentials that make her so magnetic, and tune readers’ thoughts to her direction. Her powerhouse chapter on oil has an Achilles’ heel, her lack of insight on solution. It is not as though she has an answer and it is not as if she is not willing to share, it is that no one has a surefire way to reroute the flight of