Name: 【TED】David Lang: Let's protect the oceans like national parks (Let's protect the oceans like national parks | David Lang)
Uploaded: 2018-11-05T16:47:23.000Z
Duration: 12 min 14 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

And that is the time that my brave parents

rented an RV, packed it with me and my brothers,

and drove west from our house in Minneapolis,

We saw all the sights, like the geysers, we stopped at the Badlands,

but more than any of the places, I remember this as an adventure.

This was my introduction to the Wild West.

and I learned more about the National Park System

people had the foresight to set aside the very best places,

the very best ecosystems in the country, for everyone.

And to really appreciate just how prescient that idea was,

and you have to look at the history of the National Parks Service.

So, a lot of people know, the first national park was Yellowstone, in 1872.

A lot of people think of John Muir, the poet, naturalist,

in getting people inspired by the idea of conservation --

that we need to take the best places and protect them.

He had an audience in very high places --

there's a great story of Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir

going hiking, in Yosemite, during his presidency,

four days, completely off the grid, just the two of them.

actually just going completely off the grid for four days?

But he had a great impact on Theodore Roosevelt.

hundreds of thousands of square acres of national wildlife refuges.

It was an important administration, but it wasn't a done deal.

Even less than 10 years after he created all of those new places,

the future of those places was very much in doubt.

And it wasn't until this guy, Stephen Mather,

wrote an angry letter to the Department of the Interior, saying,

"You guys aren't doing a good enough job protecting and preserving these places."

The Department of the Interior wrote him back.

"Mr. Mather, if you care so much about this,

why don't you come to Washington and do it yourself?"

He took a job at the Department of the Interior,

but more importantly, he started a campaign.

He actually had a meeting two blocks from here, in 1914,

and he brought together the park superintendents and a few other people

who cared about this idea of conservation.

And they put together a plan, they hatched a campaign

that eventually led to the National Park Service in 1916.

Because it went from an idea that we should protect these places

a way for people to enlist and carry that idea forward

so little kids like me can go and have these amazing experiences.

That is the history of the National Parks on land.

The ocean, what I want to talk to you about today,

And we are almost precisely 100 years behind.

So, the first marine sanctuary was in 1972,

people got interested in taking that concept

and applying it to underwater environments.

We've had our own John Muir, who's Dr. Sylvia Earle,

for creating these marine protected areas around the world.

So, I know there's a lot of bad news about the ocean,

there's plastic pollution, coral bleaching, over-fishing --

But this idea of setting aside places for nature is working.

Science tells us that if you set these places aside,

nature will come back and we can keep the oceans healthy.

And Dr. Sylvia Earl has been influential, like John Muir,

George W. Bush and Obama were both fantastic ocean presidents,

creating marine protected areas all around the country.

This is not a conservative idea or a liberal idea,

And now the administration is proposing to roll back a lot of the progress

We need to do what Stephen Mather did 100 years ago.

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【TED】David Lang: Let's protect the oceans like national parks (Let's protect the oceans like national parks | David Lang)

engage

access

progress

infrastructure