Dear Editor:

…in addition to a lot more love and compassion, is a new Rachel Carson to write a new “Silent Spring,” this time about the existential threat to the world ocean.

President John Kennedy read Ms. Carson’s book, met with her, and added his voice to the nascent environmental movement that saved our land and waters from DDT, created the EPA, and raised the awareness of millions of people about the complex and delicate webs of all ecosystems.

I cannot picture the current president reading such a book or caring about the marine environment, but the rest of us need to learn the science of carbon exchange between our atmosphere and our ocean.

We must understand that today’s rates of ocean warming and acidification far exceed those of 55 million years ago, during the Paleo-Eocene Thermal Maximum, when half of all species of zooplankton went extinct, disrupting oceanic food webs and creating feedback loops that raised global temperatures. We must act on that knowledge by electing only those candidates for public office who will work to mitigate the catastrophic effects of anthropogenic global warming.

A blue tsunami in the 2018 mid-term elections would be a good start.

For an article-length version of the book imagined above, see Peter Brannen’s “Acid Trap” in Aeon (aeon.co/essays).

Bill Hammond

Trevett