Maria Gutierrez

On Thursday, November twentieth, we went to forty Barrow street to interview Dr. Maria Gutierrez, an expert on climate change. Even though we were about twenty minutes early, she still welcomed us into her dining room, where we conducted the interview.

When we first arrived, she started off by showing us a plethora of websites about our topic. Some of the websites she directed us to were Pew Trusts, The World Resources Institute, The World Watch Institute, The Environmental Defense Fund, Waterkeeper, Riverkeeper, and NOAA. She showed us much of the information of these websites, and explained most of it in simple terms. While doing this she gave us lots of helpful information on all three of our topics.

There were a few main points that she touched on. One of these points was that the main people causing water pollution are the wealthy and privileged people, the ones in power. They are the ones who can afford to buy water when natural sources are compromised, and so don’t worry about the consequences of their actions. She said that though they are the people causing the situation, they are not affected by it. The people affected by polluted water are the poor people. This can happen in different ways. One way is that the rich people pollute the water in streams and lakes, which is often where the poor get their water. They get their water there because the water companies are charging high rates for water, so the poor people can’t afford it. Another way is that the big fishing companies catch all the fish, and so poor fishing villages can’t get enough fish.

Another big point she talked about is ocean acidification. Ever since the beginning of the industrial revolution, the release of carbon dioxide from both humankind’s industrial and agricultural activities has increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The ocean absorbs about a quarter of the carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere every year, so as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels increase, so do the levels in the ocean. Initially, many scientists focused on the benefits to our atmosphere when the oceans removed this greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. However, decades of ocean observations now show that there is also a downside — the carbon dioxide absorbed by the ocean is changing the chemistry of the seawater, a process called Ocean Acidification.