Coral surrounds a small island on the Great Barrier Reef, located off the coast of Queensland, near the town of Rockhampton, in Australia, November 15, 2018. REUTERS/David Gray
The heartbreaking situation on the #GreatBarrierReef is a sad lesson in adaptation.
EVERY living thing, including humans, has limits to adaptation and when those limits are breached death follows. As we continue to heat more and more of life on earth is going to be reaching its limits.
“We found separation between warm buoyant surface water and cooler deeper water can insulate reefs from surface heatwaves, but this protection will be lost if global warming exceeds 3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.”
"Scientists fear excessive ocean heat – which is bleaching corals in parts of the #GreatBarrierReef – is now hitting the world’s most southern coral reef at the world heritage-listed Lord Howe island."
Assuming our rulers stay on their present course, following the mantra of economic growth at any cost, then the climate and environmental crises will surely continue to worsen with increasingly disastrous results.
What will be their response? Certainly not to end capitalism or even slow things down. That’s unthinkable.
Instead they will almost certainly opt for geoengineering at some point, using technology to alter Earth’s ecosphere in an attempt to allay the damage caused by technology altering Earth’s ecosphere.
That’s senseless and stupid. But that’s what they’ll do.
It may turn out, unfortunately, that some form of geoengineering will in fact be a necessity if we are to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global heating.
But — and this is a very big but — that prospect should NOT be used as an excuse to continue with Business As Usual. It should not be seen as a way to prolong capitalism’s reign over us. We need #Degrowth now.
@breadandcircuses@susankayequinn agreed this is no sub for getting to net zero, but given where we are, my feeling is that research is needed. There are localized and more temporary approaches. Perhaps these could be used to reduce deaths in vulnerable populations from a particular heat wave? Or save the #GreatBarrierReef ?