On Tuesday the 17th of January me and my group interviewed Edward Stern. He is on the board of the Environmental Defense Fund which is an organization which believes that politics, business and money can solve the environmental problems all around the world. This is one of the biggest environmental organizations in the world. Edward, or Eddie, is on the ocean preservation committee. He told us about how the EDF works and gave us a whole new perspective on ways to fix the environment. What they do is they partner up with governments and businesses to help the environment. One example is they patterned up with the Chinese government to help air pollution, as we all know China is experiencing probably the worst environmental problem their has been ever in the world and it is getting worst. Another example is the fishing industry. The EDF had a project called the Effective Fisheries Management. The EDF wanted to control the amount of fish aloud to be fished. One way they did it was with strict rules or season lengths. The EDF created fishers rights, fishermen have goals and the control to maintain and restore the fish populations they rely on for a living. Fish stocks that were using the rights had significantly lower cases of overexploitation when compared to other fisheries around the world. A study found that the Fishers rights/ Rights Based Managment  implementation “halts, and even reverses—-widespread fishery collapse.” This stops overfishing, allowing fish stocks to rebuild. And more fish left in the sea for future fish generations. This is a great example of the EDF making a big difference with Politics and Business. This was a special fieldwork because of the whole other view we got on ways to fix water pollution. After learning that politics can help we asked if Trump will make it much harder for the EDF and other organizations to help. Eddie talked about how Trump has many climate change deniers on his cabinet. He also put someone who hated the EPA as the head of the EPA. That is really going to make it hard for these organizations. Also Eddie gave us an example of water pollution that the EDF is aware about and is try to help right now. He explained a lot about the science behind it. In the gulf of Mexico and many other coastal waters around the world there are places called dead-zones that are places caused by farm run-off and sewage going into the water. What the dead-zones are, are places where there is to much nitrate that creates algae and the algae consumes up all the oxygen in the water making the water inhabitable for fish and other orginisms.