By James Moylan
We have just seen a huge coral bleaching event critically impact sections of the northern Great Barrier Reef. The seriously damaged areas stretch all the way from Papua to Cairns. This is not evidence of a pending problem. Nor is it an isolated event. We are in the midst of a climate change catastrophe of our own making.
Our scientific community have been up in arms and screaming about this looming catastrophe, in no uncertain terms, for many years. Yet the response of our politicians has been to downplay and dismiss these warnings. They continue to offer meaningless ‘solutions’. They say that it is a global and not a national problem. They constantly repeat the mantra that we are ‘doing our bit’.
They are lying. Sometimes they lie knowingly but more often they lie due to simple ignorance. Most of our politicians have their heads so firmly wedged up their own backsides they just cannot see reality. They inhabit a world filled with worries and priorities that bear little resemblance to the problems faced by the majority and remain largely insulated from all of the actual perils most average citizens face.
Even now while the predictions of the scientists are being realised, as we watch parts of the reef die, the response of these same politicians and press outlets has been to continue to ignore the problem or even actively distribute misinformation about the unfolding catastrophe. We have all been witness to simultaneously seeing footage of acres of white skeletonised coral on our television screens while also reading in our major papers that there is no big problem at all. Aussies are being told to simply discount the evidence provided by their own lying eyes. Everything is under control.
Our politicians are proposing ten year tax plans and arguing about superannuation breaks for the rich while the reef dies. Snow now falls in parts of central Queensland regularly during ever colder and more tempestuous winters. Earlier and later cyclones of greater intensity are crossing the coast. Tasmania just ran out of hydro power due to the driest winter on record. We continue to experience ever longer periods of ever more extreme heat across ever greater stretches of our continent. Yet still our political class and our mainstream media refuse to admit to the reality we are experiencing. Perhaps future generations will curse us for our negligence and apathy? If there is still a developed society left?
First we have to acknowledge that the future will be different. Then take immediate action to limit the extent of the damage that we are now causing. We must admit to the damage already inflicted and realise that we are in the midst of an ongoing catastrophe – not an isolated event. We cannot ‘fix’ the problem on the reef. Anyone who intimates that we can do so is just selling you a fond dream. The continued degradation of parts of the far northern and northern sections of the Great Barrier Reef is certain, whatever we decide to do from here.
The consensus of scientific opinion is that huge sections of the far northern reef system will simply disappear over the next twenty years. This is an inevitable consequence of global warming. We can expect the mean average base temperatures in these regions to continue to rise. So we can expect the likely impact of the next event to be at least as critical as the one we have just witnessed. This last event will eventually be considered as just one of many, more frequent, bleaching events. Therefore the northernmost barrier reef systems will simply no longer have enough time to recover between storms and bleaching events.
So even if every country upon the face of the globe took immediate and determined action, right now, to scale back their carbon and other pollutant emissions: the far northern sections of the reef are already irreparably damaged and will invariably suffer further damage, before eventually disappearing. Over the next eight to ten months those sections of reef that are already most badly damaged will crumble away. Wave and tidal action will quickly sandpaper these white jagged outcrops into fine sand. Storm-surge and tidal flows will seek out these new gaps and further undermine what is left. Slowly what was once a massive saw-toothed breakwater will be reduced to scattered battlements, then it will slowly crumble away. Where once were vibrant acres of intense colour, darting fish, creeping, stalking, burrowing and slithering animals, will be bare sea.
Yet while we are in the midst of one of the greatest environmental catastrophes that has ever been witnessed by modern man; our media and our politicians seem to be obsessed with the housing market and superannuation matters? And when they do deign to mention the bleaching of the reef they treat it as if it is an isolated and isolable problem.
The problem is not coral bleaching. The problem is with the way in which we manufacture energy.
When you are deep in a hole, the question of how to get out of the hole can be argued about, but first you have to stop digging. Our political class are not even prepared to consider that we should stop digging – ever. They are currently all arguing that we can get out of the hole we are in even while we continue to dig at an ever faster pace. Then whenever anyone suggests that we should stop digging an ever deeper hole they are shouted down as being dangerous radicals.
The reality is that we must not only wean ourselves off using coal to generate electricity; we have to close down all of our coal mines and walk away from them. We must acknowledge that we are in the midst of an unfolding global environmental emergency and that the world cannot afford our coal however much money might be offered for it.
We must learn to acknowledge that coal is as bad for the lungs of the planet as asbestos is for our lungs. So both substances must be left undisturbed in the ground. Eventually this will become the common sense opinion of every politician in Australia. However until such a time arrives we will continue to inflate the problem we are facing instead of acting to solve it.
Climate change is the greatest moral, economic, and environmental challenge of our age. So we deserve better than petty party politics. At the very least we deserve to have a political class and a media who are willing to describe the problems and required solutions in an honest and forthright manner. Instead we are being sold snake-oil by a bunch of self-interested fools who have their priorities bought and paid for by vested interests.
The bottom line is that there are no jobs on a dead planet. Without a healthy environment we can have no healthy economy.
Already we have lost most of the northern sections of the Great Barrier Reef: how much more are our politicians willing to sacrifice before they eventually succumb to doing the right thing on behalf of the planet and the public interest?
