Scientist Recounts Great Barrier Reef’s ‘Final Battle’

 

BookShelf: Scientist Recounts Great Barrier Reef’s ‘Final Battle’

“In Hot Water: Inside the Battle to Save the Great Barrier Reef”
By Paul Hardisty
Affirm Press, $34.99

Reviewed by Melody Kemp

This is a must-read book.

I have never read anything that so clearly defines the problems of maintaining environmental integrity and the political battles that go on in full view and in shadow.

Canadian-born Paul Hardisty is an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist who once served as chief executive officer of the Australian Institute of Marine Science.

In this courageous book, “In Hot Water: Inside the Battle to Save the Barrier Reef,” he names and quotes hard-core denialists and ego-driven politicians. He provides insights into his own internal reactions, frustrations, rage and, finally, his departure from the Australian Institute he led.

It is rare to find a book that is so rich with revelations, data and adverse quotations. All served to keep me reading.

Somehow, that final battle with real weaponry seemed to characterize and concretize his longitudinal battle with a variety of ecological enemies while on the job.

 

A global treasure, a moneymaker

Nothing grabs the collective imagination like the Great Barrier Reef, situated on Australia’s east coast. Its size, complexity, age (it's estimated to be 25 million years old) and inhabitants, ranging from infinitely tiny seahorses to whales and sharks, all circle above a startling array of corals.

The GBR, as it’s known, attracts visitors from all over the globe and, increasingly, scientists who are attracted to the challenges presented by increasing climate chaos. Scientists value it as an ecological indicator and giant laboratory.

On the other side is the use of the GBR as a money-making, free gift to industry and tourism. Like Hardisty, business interests want to keep this amazing ecosystem resilient. But they have vastly different reasons for doing that while contributing to its demise.

The adjacent mainland is home to agriculture. Runoff from sugar cane and cattle land has been detrimental to the GBR.

 

Why write about nature’s funerals?

Perhaps they typify the global situation

where capital and politics not only do not

accord with science but are often in conflict.

 

So why write about nature’s funerals? Perhaps they typify the global situation where capital and politics not only do not accord with science but are often in conflict.

Money wins every time. One can smell the ego as some scientists rail against contemporary facts not supporting their past reassurances.

And of course, that consistent denial is part of the problem.

In short, the Reef has become a commodity, a source not only of life but of wealth, and with that has drawn the attention of those critical of the basic science, including denialist scientists, political figures and capitalist ventures such as tourism and fossil fuels.

 

Aboriginal care, white destruction

To say that Hardisty has written one of the most down-to-earth books about the threats to this international treasure would be an understatement.

But the one thing that stood out for me was what he wrote about his travels to some of the fringe islands, still the domain of Australia's First Peoples.

Archaeology and paleontology tell us that Australian Aboriginal people have been on the planet for 65,000 years.

While chatting to the elders on one of the islands, Hardisty spots a tall, plain, black-painted pole — the remains of an old tree trunk stripped of branches. Mystified by its stark simple blackness in contrast to the usual spotted symbolism of Aboriginal art, he asks an elder what it represented.

The elder merely points to the top of the pole where a thin white stripe topped the pole.

Hardisty was still none the wiser, so asked what that meant. The elder told him it compared the length of time that the Aboriginal people had lived in and cared for these lands and islands. The white strip represented the time of white occupation — and the destruction that came with it, a pattern replicated in most of Australia where white people took over.

 

Climate change brings bleaching

Hardisty’s frustration and increasing disillusionment are apparent as he tells us about how global consumption of fossil fuels has doubled in the past 50 years and how the rate of deforestation has increased since 2015.

As a result, he notes, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is higher than it has been for 2 million years, and methane concentration is the highest it has been for 800,000 years.

 

Ocean and terrestrial heat have

been increasing since March 2024

and the increased temperatures would

contribute to another mass bleaching.

 

Ocean and terrestrial heat have been increasing since March 2024 and the increased temperatures would contribute to another mass bleaching, Hardisty predicted just before he resigned.

The latest from the Australian Institute of Marine Science: Aerial surveys show 73% percent of surveyed reefs in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park have prevalent bleaching (more than 10% of coral cover bleached) and 6% in the Torres Strait. For the first time, extreme bleaching was observed in all three regions of the Great Barrier Reef.

“In Hot Water” is a book about conflict of interests — even the conflict between various branches of science, not to mention the conflict between long-term survival and short-term profits.

There is an underlying struggle for power, influence and political credibility. Science quietly refutes these tales of wealth and opportunity motives and their (lack of) reasoning.

The book is breathtaking in its candid presentation of sophisticated escapism from responsibility and consequences.

“‘We need the courage to shape the future we want before the future shapes us,” Hardisty concluded.

Melody Kemp is a freelancer and contributing SEJournal editor who has lived in and written from Asia for more than 30 years. Her last review was of a book about destructive mining.

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* From the weekly news magazine SEJournal Online, Vol. 9, No. 38. Content from each new issue of SEJournal Online is available to the public via the SEJournal Online main page. Subscribe to the e-newsletter here. And see past issues of the SEJournal archived here.