[Coral-List] Happy Birthday Mike, Keep on Writing Screeds

[Peter Sale]

Hi coral-list and Mike Risk,
Happy Birthday, Mike. Keep on writing screeds.  We all live in a Zone of Interest these days, trying our best to get on with our lives without noticing the daily destruction of the planet we occupy.  Those of us lucky enough to have spent time on coral reefs over more than a three to four year span are vaguely aware that things are not as they once were. Those of us who read the old literature (when it was new and there was less literature overall to read) may remember the evidence for the causes of reef decline (or some of them anyway). We are more sensitized than others to the ridiculousness of many frequent proposals for how to save coral reefs. But our time is also limited and soon we will all be gone.

At some time in the future, perhaps, a new cohort of sentient beings who care about the planet that sustains them may discover some of your screeds. They will marvel that we knew so much about how to fix things (or how to avoid breaking things) and yet continued to break things until all was gone. These sentient beings may be our descendants, or they may be something else entirely. And they may even witness a rebirth of coral reefs.

For now, those of us who do remember can write screeds, or build Facebook pages, or even create TikTok videos in the hope of doing some good. But based on the last 20 years those efforts will do relatively little to stop our collective headlong rush into oblivion. But we have to keep trying, because perhaps...

And those few who are younger than us but have somehow caught onto the truth that a flourishing planet is more important to their lives by far than is a booming economy; to those I say I hope very much that you will prove me wrong.
Peter Sale
University of Windsor