[Coral-List] What's really killing the corals.

Magnus L Johnson M.Johnson at hull.ac.uk
Mon Jul 3 13:20:02 EDT 2017


Hi All,

Some folks have bigger feet than others.  Americans/Europeans and Australians should definitely wear condoms. 6-8 Indians ~ 1 American/European in terms of resource use.

I used to run the Hofstra Marine Station in Jamaica (about 20 years ago when Eugene Kaplan was the director).  We did a bit of outreach work with local kids.  We ran a session once where we showed a video on coral reefs and fish.  At the end of it a wee girl (probably about 9-10years old) came up and ever so shyly asked "Was that real?"  I almost cried.

Those are the problems.  We in the west use too much and spew CO2 into the atmosphere.  Those inhabiting the areas with reefs predominantly don't have a chance or the resources to appreciate what they have.

Education, education, education.

Cheers, Magnus

From: John Ogden [mailto:jogden at usf.edu]
Sent: 03 July 2017 17:29
To: Peter Sale <sale at uwindsor.ca>; coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov; Magnus L Johnson <M.Johnson at hull.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: What's really killing the corals.

Hi Peter and all,  OK, I think we pretty much agree and probably have for decades.  But if policies are going to change, we need a focal point on something that has a good chance of being achieved.  Right now ICRI is working on the materials for the announcement of the third International Year of the Reef (IYOR) in 2018.  Presently, the goals look disturbingly like those of the first IYOR in 1997.  Is there a policy focus suitable for  IYOR 2018 that can be achieved?   For example, is it conceivable that the global coral reef community could rise up with one voice to push the Paris COP climate agenda?

On 7/3/2017 12:02 PM, Peter Sale wrote:
Hi Magnus,
I think I said it clearly some years ago:  Save a reef; use a condom.
There are more elegant ways of saying so, but until humanity grapples effectively with our over-sized footprint on this planet, coral reefs and most other ecosystems are in for a very rough ride.  Eventually, we will be shuffled off and the planet will soldier on, but I'd like to believe humanity is capable of the wisdom needed to do a much better job of managing our negative environmental impacts than we have been doing of late.  It takes a strong ethical belief that other life has rights, considerable humility, plus some technical expertise - these are all attributes we can develop, if we want to.

Peter Sale
University of Windsor
sale at uwindsor.ca<mailto:sale at uwindsor.ca>
petersalebooks.com





--

John C. Ogden

USF Professor Emeritus, Integrative Biology

190 18th Avenue North

St. Petersburg, FL 33704 USA

Cell: 727-641-4673

Email: jogden at usf.edu<mailto:jogden at usf.edu>

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Ogden3

http://biology.usf.edu/ib/faculty/jogden/


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