The Largest Living Thing on Earth in Mortal Peril

It's so big it's plainly visible from space. At 2,300 miles in length it's the largest living thing on the planet.

It could be about to die off.

The Australian people have been told they'll have to choose - coral or coal. I suppose it comes down to one letter, "r."

The Great Barrier Reef will not survive a massive coral die-off if ocean temperatures continue to warm.


The Great Barrier Reef will not survive coral bleaching if current sea temperature trends continue, according to a new report charting increases over the past three decades which blames manmade climate change for the problem.

“The likelihood of the reef being able to survive through that is extremely low,” the report’s co-author, Scott Heron of the NOAA, told Guardian Australia. “If annual severe bleaching was happening across 98% of global reefs, it is very unlikely the Great Barrier Reef would be maintained.”

The Green Devil - Australia's One Man Environmental Wrecking Crew

Tony Abbott is a man going to war.  His chosen target is Australia's environment and, according to Foreign Policy, he means to do it in.

Located at the bottom of the world, Tasmania is a bioregion so unique that it is listed as a World Heritage site by the United Nations for "outstanding universal value." It satisfies more criteria for that designation than any other World Heritage site on Earth.

But for Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, this remarkable natural legacy isn't worth protecting. Instead, it should be stripped.

Soon after being elected in September 2013, Abbott started making plans to fulfill his campaign promise of removing some environmental protections on Tasmania's forest and opening it to industry, specifically logging. In March, he invited loggers to Australia's Parliament House and told them that members of the country's Green party were "the devil" and that "the environment is meant for man." The loggers were thrilled.

A few months later, however, Abbott had to convince a different audience of his proposal -- and this time, the response was not enthusiastic. When the World Heritage Committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) met in Doha in June 2014, it unanimously rejected Abbott's plan to remove 74,000 hectares of Tasmanian forest from its list of cherished sites. One delegate said the move would have set an "unacceptable precedent." Thedecision took less than 10 minutes.

While the old growth forest of Tasmania might have been spared, Tony Abbott is proceeding apace with other plans.  One of them is to dredge a new coal port and then to dump the millions of tons of dredged soil and sand into the Great Barrier Reef.  Honestly, this guy believes that's a sane thing to do.  To Abbott, trashing Australia is merely taking the fight to the socialists.

Australia's opposition leader, Bill Shorten, has called Abbott an "environmental vandal," and university researchers have said his first year in office has been nothing but an "environmental train wreck." This dates back to his very first day in office, when Abbott introduced legislation to repeal a carbon tax on Australia's most polluting industries. Soon after, a document created by Abbott's cabinet surfaced, stating that his administration would no longer tolerate "any measures which are socialism masquerading as environmentalism."

And Abbott is increasingly and eerily coming to resemble our very own environmental Beelzebub.

Feel like a sauna?  You betcha.

For Abbott, all environmental regulations are merely "green tape" that hold back corporate profits. He has hacked away at that tape by gutting the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, the legislative process for determining whether a development project is environmentally safe. Instead oil, gas, and mining permits are now funneled to other agencies where they can get a green stamp.

To make sure no one can adequately challenge his dictums, Abbott has eviscerated federal funding for programs such as the Environmental Defenders Offices (EDO), independent legal centers that operate in the public interest. 

It sounds as though Harper must have slipped Abbott a copy of the Conservatives' own environmental dirty play book.

Environmental author Bill McKibben has written that Americans who traveled abroad during George W. Bush's administration should have sympathy for Australians right now: "[I]t's not easy being citizens of countries run by international laughing stocks." The comparison is apt: Like the Bush administration, Abbott chooses to ignore or undercut federal and international law when it doesn't suit his interests.

Yet he has no qualms about using the law as a political hammer to quash the opposition: In Tasmania right now, Abbott's Liberal Party government is backing a new bill explicitly drafted to stop environmental protesters. The Workplaces (Protection From Protesters) Bill is aimed at quelling those who "prevent, impede or obstruct the carrying out of business activities." Mining and logging industries are mentioned by name, but the bill is written so broadly that it could cover nearly any business. It includes a sweeping list of prohibitions against "protest activity," with fines up to $10,000 if demonstrations interrupt business -- and mandatory prison sentences for a second offense.

I don't mean to be cynical but I'd guess the only thing preventing Harper from passing his own, protection from protesters act in advance of the Northern Gateway pipeline is the cut lip and bloody nose he's earned in past encounters with the Supreme Court of Canada.  I have to assume that Abbott has the benefit of a weaker constitution and a more compliant court.

Poisoning the Great Barrier Reef

Australia has become one of the most affluent countries in the world.  It's economic miracle is anchored to a much larger economic miracle to the north, in China.   Australia has been reaping a vast fortune selling coal to China.

How much coal?   Enough to deposit about a million tons of the stuff annually onto Australia's Great Barrier Reef.

This has gone on for the past decade and is set to almost quadruple in the coming years as Australia accelerates its great coal rip off.

Australia’s coal industry admits that it loads 50 million tons of coal every year onto its trains at the mine faces and unloads 49 million tons onto the coal ships at its main port in the heart of the Great Barrier Reef.

The wind and rains take the million tons of coal dust lost in transit out into the waters of the worlds largest surviving coral reef complex, a World Heritage Site, already under threat from rapidly warming ocean waters.

Of course you wouldn’t know this if you watch CNN’s environmental series featuring  Phillipe Cousteau. No, he blamed the typhoons hitting the Great Barrier Reef and failed to mention how in a few years its expected to see up to 5 million tons a year of coal dust polluting the great reef.

Coal dust is particularly toxic to living things containing nasty elements like mercury, lead, cadmium and chromium just to name a few deadly agents and the residents and fishermen living around Australia’s main coal export port can no longer eat their local sea life, at least not if they care about their health.

As the coal dust continues to blow offshore or be washed into the currents flowing along the great reef we should expect to see ever greater environmental devastation. Every new typhoon stirs up the coal dust on the bottom and this poisoning will just keep on keeping on destroying the great reefs complex ecosystem for centuries to come.

When I think of Australia I sometimes recall Nevil Shute's 1957 novel, "On the Beach" about an American nuclear submarine crew in an apocalyptic world following nuclear war taking refuge in the last intact place on the planet - Australia.   Good thing Shute wasn't writing that book today.

Australians herald their newfound fossil fuel wealth as their "golden energy age" even as they acknowledge it will cost the world dearly.   The chief economist for the International Energy Agency, Dr. Faith Birol, is getting close to throwing in the towel.

Rising global demand, though, will come with a hefty climate cost. Energy-related greenhouse gas emissions - now about two-thirds of the total - are likely to rise by 20 per cent to 37.2 gigatonnes by 2035, according to IEA's mid-range scenario. ''Some people talk about the 'green growth' in Asia. When I look at the numbers … it's black growth,'' Dr Birol said.

Those emissions will put the world on course for a long-term average temperature rise of 3.6 degrees, far above the internationally agreed 2-degree target. Without current efforts to limit emissions, temperatures would rise 5.2 degrees, Dr Birol said.

By the way, 3.6C warming will not be survivable for most of the planet.