Australia’s apathy could wipe the Great from our Barrier Reef

Scientists claim that if the Carmichael coal mine in Queensland will be built, it will devastate our climate, our Great Barrier Reef and groundwater. Sherryl Caulfield urges us to protest where we can and act now before it’s too late.

The following smoggy closed in view is the world famous UNESCO World Heritage site of Ha Long Bay circa 2008. Ever since I had seen the mesmerising cinematic masterpiece Indochine, I had longed to sail through this iconic landscape and its tranquil, pristine waters.

I was expecting otherworldliness. I was expecting romance and mystique and the timeless charm of silent teak junks. I was not expecting this.

To say I was repulsed and disappointed does not come close. I was heart-sickened.

This environmental backwash was far from the motorcycle metropolis of Hanoi. Yet, industry clamoured and tourism raged. Doldrum conditions cloaked us in an inversion layer of man-made contamination. Factory fumes, diesel splutters and garbage burn-offs obliterated the briny air.

Distraught, we wrote to UNESCO, urging them to visit Ha Long Bay. Did we get a response? Sadly, no. Has the situation improved? Judging by Trip Advisor, it’s worse than ever, with water pollution – litter and sludge – detracting from everyone’s great expectations.

I write today lest Australians think what happens in the skies and seas of Vietnam – over 7000 kilometres away – has little bearing on what happens in Australia and our own prized UNESCO World Heritage site, the Great Barrier Reef.

It has immense bearing. Although tourism is measured, there are not enough safeguards to restrain industry and the greed of investors, miners, ports and freight companies ready to dredge the hell out of the reef and drag dirty coal fossil fuels through our brilliant barrier-less sea.

See, the thing is, people don’t go to the Great Barrier Reef because it’s a world heritage site. That’s an aside. We go for the promise of beauty, for the opportunity to create lasting memories and for the pleasure of communing with nature. Yes, nature. We drift above the vibrancy of tropical fish and hear them munch on coral. We swim with ancient turtles and giant gropers as they cruise past. We understand we are not the centre of the world and that it is infinitely more layered and creative than we can ever be. In short, we go to be awed and humbled.

At last year’s G20 in Brisbane, US President Barrack Obama took a stand for The Great Barrier Reef, telling us he wanted his children’s children to be able to come here and enjoy the delights of our coral splendour. Hear hear.

I would argue the UNESCO label is moot and their ability to hold Australian politics to account over the state and future of the reef is largely ineffectual. And, as an Australian, I have lost faith in our state and federal environment ministers – both Tony Burke and Greg Hunt – to do the right thing by the Great Barrier Reef.

This month Hunt gave India’s Adani Group the go ahead to build one of the biggest coal mines in the world on our Queensland Coast, and apparently hidden in the approval document was permission for Adani to change its plans without approval from the Minister.

Scientists claim the coal mine will devastate our climate, our Great Barrier Reef and groundwater, draining 12 billion litres of water. It will spew out more carbon pollution than all the cars, planes and trains in Australia combined.

Our politicians, environment ministers and major corporates are failing us when it comes to the Great Barrier Reef and in other matters that are at the real soul of who we are. Witness Charlie Phillott and George Bender. Many Australians are so over our political and corporate system that does not value our farmers, our environment or new, greener technologies.

We often feel like we don’t have a voice. It can be discouraging but together we have more chance of having one than having none at all.

So I urge you: Please don’t give up. Protest where you can. Pledge money if you have it. Support organisations like Greenpeace and GetUp. Do what you can now. Don’t be apathetic. Don’t sit back and think: Oh well, if worse comes to worse, UNESCO will safeguard the future of the reef. That is folly.

Ha Long Bay is still listed as a World Heritage site. It is not on any watchlist.

I nearly wrote my headline as:

Australians despair as the great and the beautiful are wiped from our Barrier Reef

I know many of us do despair today, but I think many more will, if we don’t act.

What say you?

0 Comments

1. 

   Russell Lee

   October 29, 2015 at 3:01 pm

   Powerful enemies against change.

   Hello, I see designs for generating energy using only gravity, and have put them on the internet (Pinwheel Generator, Power Multiplier Device), and have for over a decade, with no interest generated. I'm afraid that the monetarist system, and its globalism pogrom, will prevent any real solutions to the problems we face with industry destroying the environment. In the U.S., both fracking and monoculture farming are poisoning the ground water at an alarming rate, along with the coming population explosion topping one billion within 50 years. The design of the Grow-Live Tower, a greenhouse apartment building where the bottom levels are for the residents, and the top 40 levels are greenhouse levels providing the food the residents need has also been ignored. Both the designs of the generators, and the tower, would together eliminate global hunger, famine, 85% of global disease through improved living condition, elevate water conservation by 10,000%, plus much more. There are solutions for our problems if we could only wake up and see this system where there is an invented thing called money, and with it an invented 'assigned money value for everything' system called monetarism that exists to enslave the people. Industry has no conscience, it will continue to destroy until the planet is too poisoned to support life, greed blinds and kills. Russ
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