Ocean Policy Task Force

An executive order establishing a national ocean policy for the practical use and long-term protection of our public seas could be one of Barack Obama's outstanding achievements.

We humans have been in a comfortable denial, enjoying the convenience of throwaway items with no thought to the consequences. Now we face a planet despoiled by toxic plastic.

The new framework for America's Marine Spatial Planning policy sets a solid time line for progress by identifying which coastal areas should be used for industrial purposes, and which need restoring and preservation.

Creating a Dept. of the Ocean incorporating the Coast Guard and NOAA might be the bold action that could take the President's Ocean Policy initiative into the mainstream.

More than 40 years after Woodstock it's the ocean that's on a bad acid trip. It's been scraped raw, emptied out, overheated, poisoned and abused, not a good time to be ingesting dangerous chemicals.

Like the passage of a Clean Air Act or a Clean Water Act, President Obama is in the process of creating a landmark national healthy oceans policy and plan of action for our seas.

Obama's new ocean policy task force, launched in June, is exactly what is needed: a coherent national policy based on science and informed by local economic interests.