“A Sea Change”: Film Shows What CO2 Is Doing to the Oceans (tags)
Barbara Ettinger’s film “A Sea Change,” shown at the First Unitarian-Universalist Church in San Diego August 5, shows the other side of the climate change issue: what all that carbon dioxide is doing to the oceans, which absorb much of it after fossil-fuel burning and other human activities release it into the atmosphere. It turns into carbonic acid, which alters the pH of the sea and threatens plankton, coral and other small marine life crucially important to the life cycles of fish and marine mammals. “Imagine a world without fish,” says the publicity material for the film, which was followed at this screening by a discussion with two graduate students from Scripps Institute of Oceanography who expressed their frustration at the political opposition to taking climate change seriously.
Congressmember Davis Speaks at Orderly Town-Hall Meeting (tags)
Elsewhere in the country Democratic Congressmembers are being heckled and sometimes driven off the stage when they try to hold town-hall meetings to explain the health-care reform bill the House is currently debating. Not in San Diego August 11, where Congressmember Susan Davis was able to hold a meeting in peace and discuss the issue in a polite, civil manner. This was largely due to the strategy of the sponsoring organization, the Hillcrest Town Council, which admitted their own members and Hillcrest residents first -- thereby assuring Davis a mostly liberal audience that wouldn't try to disrupt her meeting.