http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/no-one-country-can-save-the-ree...

SLASHING Australian greenhouse gas emissions will not, on its own, save the Great Barrier Reef, and its future will depend on an international agreement among the world's biggest emitters.

Julia Gillard's key climate-change adviser, Will Steffen, has warned that nothing short of securing an effective global agreement to tackle climate change can save the reef, while one of the world's leading reef scientists, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, has said Australia will be left with "the great weedy reef" unless the world cuts emissions.

The warnings follow the release of a Climate Commission report that found that unless global emissions began falling within a few years, the world would face a near-impossible task to limit global warming to 2C by 2050 - the target scientists say will limit damage to the reef and avert dangerous climate change.

As the Prime Minister yesterday invoked the welfare of the reef as a reason to introduce a price on carbon, the scientific comments show that the nation will remain dependent on a global response to avoid the worst ravages of global warming, even if it manages to slash its own emissions.



Professor Steffen, the executive director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University, said it would be extremely difficult for the Great Barrier Reef to adapt to higher temperatures and only global action could rescue one of the nation's key tourist and marine attractions. He said the best unilateral action that Australia could take was to focus on reducing other stressors to the reef, including minimising fishing pressures and toxic run-offs into the ecosystem. If the reef continued to deteriorate, scientists could be forced to consider the costly and risky task of trying to transplant some coral south to re-engineer the reef.

Chief Climate Commissioner Tim Flannery said "no one country" alone could rescue the Great Barrier Reef. "This is a long process, no one country or action can solve it," he said. "The point is, this is the first step in a long trajectory of change."

Speaking on the ABC's 7.30 last night, Professor Flannery added: "What needs to happen is the developed countries need to get their emissions trajectories going down this decade, the larger developing countries need to follow the next decade and then the very poorest countries the decade after that."

Amid the dire warnings about the reef's future, New Zealand tourist Donald Heckler, who snorkelled the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns yesterday with his wife, Nicola, and their son Oscar, 5, said it would be a "huge shame" if the tourist destination was affected by climate change.

Mr Heckler said he was taken aback by the beauty of the reef.

"What we saw today, it looked magic, really", he said.

which generates $6 billion revenue from tourism and sustainable fishing. She said the study confirmed "the Great Barrier Reef has already sustained significant damage and the report says ocean acidity is expected to increase, which will have severe consequences for marine life".

Not much news here, time to move on.

cods wrote on May 24^th, 2011 at 8:43am:


A tax can only help if it destroys our coal mining industry (the one that no one wants to destroy, sometimes), and of course, providing that this famous tax, is also a system of stealing from hard workers, and giving the "proceeds" to bludgers, this would protect the reef.

cods wrote on May 24^th, 2011 at 8:43am:


A good tax cures everything cods if we were to swallow the tripe served up by the scam artists.

cods wrote on May 24^th, 2011 at 8:43am:

Constant focus on the reef would have to be advertising for tourism.... go advertising!