Jeremy Jackson's Acceptance Speech

A long time ago—it seems like a long time ago to me—I published Jeremy Jackson's short lecture How we wrecked the ocean. 

Now, five years later, I see that Jackson received a lifetime achievement award by the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. I've embedded his acceptance speech below.

You will recognize many DOTE themes in his remarks, especially near the end. Listen for his reference to his "pollyannish" wife as he talks about fixing our wrecked oceans.

At least, I hope you will recognize DOTE themes in his remarks. I'm not feeling optimistic about that or anything else lately. For good reason, I might add.

 

Comments

[Jim]

The hair! The hair! Phew, that's out of my system.

Jackson briefly mentions a major problem with modern science - the silo-ization of each scientist. There are a bunch of people studying highly specific subjects, but very few engaged in systems thinking. We're seeing the trees, but not the forest.

This is just conjecture on my part, but it's likely easier to get funding for the highly specific subjects, rather than a systems approach, and perhaps that's because most of them pretty much know the systems analysis will be bad news. There's no optimism there, and it treads into politics and multiple fields of study that few, if any, are really qualified to do.

"The arrogance of the present" is also a good subject. Pretty much everyone works from the assumption that their reality, and specifically their current reality, is of greatest importance, when if they had a broader perspective, they might be able to judge their present with greater reality.

I also watched applause moments. Optimistic comments had applause - realist comments were met with dead silence. And these are people neck-deep into this stuff, not the vast majority who think if they buy cod with a particular label then it's all good.