Sounds like typical computer modeling BS to me

Climate change, fishing and commercial shipping top the list of threats to the ocean off the West Coast of the United States.

"Every single spot of the ocean along the West Coast," said Ben Halpern, a marine ecologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, "is affected by 10 to 15 different human activities annually."

In a two-year study to document the way humans are affecting the oceans in this region, Halpern and colleagues overlaid data on the location and intensity of 25 human-derived sources of ecological stress, including climate change, commercial and recreational fishing, land-based sources of pollution and ocean-based commercial activities.

With the information, they produced a composite map of the status of West Coast marine ecosystems.

Even Al Gore Can't Bring Attention to the Environment and Recession - TIME

The Administration is expected to get corporations to focus on the cost of being poor ecological citizens by giving incentives to companies that create and distribute clean energy and penalizing those that do not change their poor environmental habits [like emitting CO2?] with cap-and-trade or carbon taxes.

Realistically, trying to improve the environment during a recession is a losing game, even if the North Pole ends up having a climate like Cuba in 10 years.