TED Revolution: Rob Stewart at TEDxWesternU

****-Excellent This Ted Talk consists of Rob Stewart himself, a filmmaker and activist describing his adventures creating awareness about climate change. Rob Stewart as a young boy, loved sharks. As he grew up and moved on to post-secondary education, he studied ocean photography at Western University. While swimming with the sharks, he realized that these beautiful animals that we fear the most, have no interest in harming us. For one of his assignments, he went out to the coast of Ecuador; the Galapagos islands which are one of the most protected marine lands in the world. He discovered a fishing line that could stretch all the way to outer space with 16,000 fishing hooks on it. If one of the most protected marine reserves in the world has that many fishing lines, then the rest of the world has way more. He discovered that 90% of all of our sharks have disappeared due to a delicacy called shark fin soup. Shark fin soup was extremely popular in Asian coutries; the #1 consumer of shark fin soup being China. He set out to make a movie called Sharkwater, that includes his battles fought trying to ban shark fining where he also began a movement called fin free. Since Sharkwater has been released, 43 countries have banned shark fin soup. Though, one day at an interview, someone had asked "Why are we saving all the sharks, if all of oceans wildlife will be wiped out by 2048 anyways?" This is a result of ocean acidifcation that Rob never thought to take into consideration. He set out to make his next movie called Revolution, that tackles all climate change issues such as deforestation, over fishing and focuses mostly on ocean acidification. Ocean acidification consists of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere being absorbed into our oceans dissolving our coral reef and making it hard for most ocean wildlife to survive. This Talk continues to explain about the effects that the Alberta Tar sands have on our atmosphere. He concludes his talk by explaining how if we engaged in our governments, we would be capable of creating change in a world that works because if we all try to live as North Americans live, we would need 6 planet Earth's to sustain life. This Ted Talk taught me a lot about the effects of climate change on our atmosphere and how Canada, one of the wealthiest countries who we would think to be on board for reducing our carbon emissions, would rather increase our carbon footprint to keep our country rich. It also made me realize how someone can have such a large impact on the world(43 countries banning shark fin soup after the release of Sharkwater) This Talk made me realize how little I knew about the harsh effects on climate change. This an amazing Ted Talk that I would suggest everyone to watch!