We can’t pretend we’re doing enough if we want to give the Great Barrier Reef a chance to survive. With mass bleaching events so frequent, the prognosis is bad. Australia must lead with its actions on emissions and phasing out fossil fuel development. What will it take for us to collectively pay attention? Not a new question, but a reasonable one after the official declaration that the There is no clearer visual demonstration of the climate crisis than what is happening to the reef.
It’s a globally unique landmark, made up of thousands of individual reefs and islands and an extraordinary and eccentric array of species. It has been growing into its modern form, spread across an area the size of Italy, for about 8,000 years. People travel from across the planet to witness it. And we can literally see the impact of climate change on it as it changes colour and loses life in real time. Widespread mass bleaching was not recorded on the reef before 1998, but has now happened seven times. The last five were in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 202