What has no beginning, end, or middle and touches every continent? If you answered "the ocean"- correct! Jules Verne even called it the "living infinite" in his novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. It is the story of three men who set sail in search of a giant sea monster but were instead captured by Captain Nemo aboard the world's first submarine, The Nautilus. Together, they embark on an extraordinary undersea journey, encountering amazing deep-sea creatures, and even discovering the lost city of Atlantis.

Following in the footsteps of the Nautilus, the latest episode of Societe Generale's 2050 Investors podcast is not an attempt at "finding Nemo" (pun intended) but rather dives deep into the mysteries of the oceans, aboard the modern-day Nautilus, the Nautile, the submersible that explored the Titanic's wreck underseas.

The oceans are a major component of Earth's climate system. Over thousands of years, they have played the principal role in the climatic balance that the planet has experienced: taking up heat and redistributing it across the globe, increasing atmospheric humidity, taking up and storing large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere. Without the ocean, Earth's maximum temperature would exceed 100°C, and the average surface temperature, which is currently around 15°C, would instead be around 50°C.

Unfortunately, this formidable force of nature, the living infinite, is reaching a tipping point because of global warming through marine heatwaves, rising acidification, and plastic pollution threatening marine biodiversity on a massive scale.

Later in the episode, Nisha Bakker, director of partnerships at The Ocean Cleanup, shares some of her insights. The Ocean Cleanup is a non-profit foundation working daily to rid the world's oceans of plastic. Nisha emphasises the need for a global effort to change the system of plastic production and waste management.

(c) 2024 City A.M., source Newspaper