[Coral-List] Bleaching

[Austin Bowden-Kerby]

Yes,

Of course its not, but then, this many people living on the planet
sustainably, with extreme economic injustice between the national, when
money has become the goal of life in the west and east, and to expect that
we can continue indefinitely is also not realistic.  We are eating away at
our own body.

At some point planetary homeostasis causes the Gulf Stream to fail and
Europe becomes difficult to live in, as the planet plunges into conditions
leading to an ice age.    Let's hope they haven't sprayed the upper
atmosphere with some solar deflecting insanity when that happens!   Food
production and processing and distribution systems and economies have
become very fragile. Kiribati, the nation most dependent on reef fish on
the planet, has already lost 95% of its corals and ciguatera has become
epidemic.

But its not only climate change, it is massive destruction of nature-
Brazil has opened the gates to hell, and the governments of little nations
are corruptible and powerless against the corporate onslaught- I can see on
Google Earth the massive deforestation of the Solomon Islands and of PNG
and red stains reaching the offshore reefs. The developed world is driving
the destruction, as it is all export based.   COVID was not nearly enough,
but as it halted tourism, the main industry, the people all went back to
farming and fishing over here, so they showed their resilience.  They only
get paid US ten dollars a day, working what amounts to a10 hour shift, so
most have to farm on the side anyway.

A nuclear autumn or smallpox pandemic are not so bad as alternatives to
mass species extinction and ecosystem death, although a super solar storm
or Tambora type volcanic eruption might also bring it all down.   At this
point I think that governments and economies are unwilling to change, so
nature and the Universe have no alternative.  Sad to see it all so locked
up and unchangeable, and speeding along faster and faster towards the
precipice.  Science and the scientists, in our disunity, denial, and
inaction, have failed as badly as the politicians.

Fiji has been ranked the best country to be in for WW3, in part because the
Southern hemisphere has been shown to receive less than 1% of the fallout
if it goes nuclear, so hopefully my grandkids will survive to see a very
different and vastly depopulated world, where nature is regenerating and
flourishing once again?  Let's hope that a new civilization emerges in the
least impacted areas, based on lessons learned, with new governance and
economic models.

There is one group already applying new models, the 5+ million strong Bahaí
community, quite well established over here and in the least developed
nations, and they have been working on a new model as an alternative for
the past 100+ years. They were the first group to say that the earth is one
country, women are equal, diverse races and cultures are beautiful,
religion without science is superstition, etc. Long ago in the 1800s, they
predicted that a "cancerous materialism" would grow and spread and eat at
the vitals of the planet.  It would upset the equilibrium and societies to
the point that civilization would teeter and would be on the verge of
collapse, and that humanity would be in need of entirely new models, only
receptive once all else failed. Let's hope they are right!

Austin



On Thu, Apr 7, 2022 at 12:22 AM Eugene Shinn via Coral-List <
coral-list at coral.aoml.noaa.gov> wrote:

> Thanks Austin, I have become so used to broken promises by governmens
> and businesses that it just bounces off. I recall many climate change
> authors claiming that if all sources of Co2 were stopped today it would
> take about  half a century for Co2 levels to drop to pre-industrial
> levels. Reducing present levels in 8-years is not realistic. Gene
>
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