In this chapter, Kolbert is in Castello Aragonese, a tiny island out in the Tyrrhenian sea, to investigate the rising carbon dioxide levels in the nearby waters. Two marine biologists, Jason Hall-Spencer and Maria Cristina Buia, show her carbon dioxide gas emitted from the sea floor, a result of strong forces, two sets of land pressing onto one another. The closer they get to these vents, the number of marine life begins to decline. This is because the acidity increases the closer you are to the vents, which most of the marine life of the area (and in the world in general) cannot survive under. The diversity dropping in the area due to the carbon concentrations is exactly what we should expect with our human-concentrated carbon emissions if we continue to emit them at a rate faster than they can be filtered. Kolbert makes this point relative by reviewing human’s transition in the industrial age, the start of greenhouse gases becoming ever so prominent in our soil, atmosphere, waters, and lungs of every organic material. On page 123. Kolbert states, “If we are adding CO2 to the air more slowly, geophysical processes, like the weathering of a rock, would come into play to counteract acidification. As it is, things are moving too fast for such slow-acting forces to keep up”. The book mentions that a third of our carbon emissions are being absorbed by the ocean, which produces a more acidic environment to all life that lives in the water. This connects to the APES theme that the earth itself is one interconnected system. When one thing is negatively affected, it can spread through every corner and infect other forms of life. The earth itself may have ways to subside these events, but our impact is something the earth never experienced in its history, and has no way to counteract our effects efficiently If we keep going at the rate at which we are, the world of tomorrow might never see no animal bigger than a mussel
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