The Commander of the U.S. Pacific Command has identifued climate change as the most likely threat to the Pacific region, as ThinkProgress reported:

Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, gave a striking answer when asked about the greatest threat the region faces: climate change.

Locklear told the Boston Globe, the changing climate “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.”

Among the issues that the Admiral cited as most concerning was the possibility that rising sea-levels result in the disappearance of whole countries, producing influxes of ‘climate refugees‘ in neighboring states.

It’s surprising to hear the head of PACOM talk so starkly about the threats we face from climate change, but not surprising to hear this from the military. In 2010, the Quadrennial Defense Review made it clear that climate change impacts U.S. military resources:

While climate change alone does not cause conflict, it may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world. In addition, extreme weather events may lead to increased demands for defense support to civil authorities for humanitarian assistance or disaster response both within the United States and overseas.

Peter Sinclair made a good video on national security impacts in 2010:

Most of those interviewed in that video are retired or former military, which makes Admiral Lockclear’s comments that much more striking.

It’s good to see climate hasn’t slipped from all national security considerations. Last year the CIA closed down its Center on Climate Change and National Security which opened in 2009.

Admiral Locklear went on to describe in his interview how important it was to coordinate multilaterally with China and India to respond to climate impacts:

Read more

by Dana Nuccitelli, via Skeptical Science.

Cherrypicking global surface air temperatures is one of the most common errors associated with global warming. In reality, a very small percentage of overall global warming goes into heating surface air temperatures, while approxiately 90 percent is absorbed by the world’s oceans (in totality, at all depths). Because many other factors influence surface air temperatures on short timescales, the data are noisy, and as a result it’s easy to cherrypick temporary flat periods to wrongly claim that global warming has stopped.

Here’s the average of NASA GISS, NOAA NCDC, and HadCRUT4 monthly global surface temperature anomalies from January 1970 through November 2012 (green), with linear trends applied to the timeframes January 1970 – October 1977, April 1977 – December 1986, September 1987 – November 1996, June 1997 – December 2002, and November 2002 – November 2012:

However, climate contrarians are now more frequently shifting their cherrypicks to the relatively shallow layer of the oceans (the upper 700 meters). The average depth of the world’s ocean is nearly 4,000 meters, but the deeper the ocean layer, the more difficult it is to measure its temperature and heat accumulation.

Fortunately most ocean heat accumulation occurs close to the surface, but accounting for less of the deep ocean layers also means missing more global warming. The best ocean heat measurements are for the 0–700 meter layer, which accounts for over 60 percent of overall global warming. However, only considering ocean heat accumulation to 700 meters also means neglecting 30 to 40 percent of overall global warming.

Similar to surface air temperatures, the warming of the 0–700 meter oceans has slowed in recent years (since about 2003), which has made them a ripe candidate for cherrypicking. This was one of the key findings of Nuccitelli et al. (2012), in which we noted that while heat accumulation in the 0–700 meter oceans has slowed in recent years, at the same time it has accelerated in the 700–2,000 meter oceans.

Overall, there is no sign that the warming of the 0-2,000 meter oceans has slowed. In fact, they have accumulated more heat in the past 15 years than during the previous 15 years. Here’s data from the National Oceanographic Data Center, comparing ocean heat in the 0–700 meter layer and the 0-2,000 meter layers:

It should be no surprise that climate contrarians constantly ignore the accelerated warming of the 700–2,000 meter oceans, pretending that they simply don’t exist. In one recent example, a denialist blog disputed the results of Nuccitelli et al. (2012) by showing the data below (also discussed in this post by Tamino at the Open Mind blog). It shows 0-700 meter ocean heat accumulation from NOAA PMEL using the methodology described in Lyman et al. (2010), with an arbitrary yellow line drawn in an effort to indicate slowed ocean warming:

The ocean heat content data used in Nuccitelli et al. (2012) and the previous graph are from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Oceanographic Data Center (NODC) using the methodology described by Levitus et al. (2012), whereas the data in the graph immediately above are from the NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) using the methodology described in Lyman et al. (2010).

The Levitus methodology fills data gaps with the averaged value of the available data, which has the tendency to underestimate any anomalies. The Lyman methodology infills the data gaps with anomalies from nearby grids. The end result is that Levitus is likely to underestimate any warming trend, as discussed in Lyman (2008). As a result, the data plotted on the denialist blog actually shows more 0-700 meter ocean warming than the data plotted in Nuccitelli et al. (2012). This is illustrated below, with 0-700 meter ocean heat content data from NOAA NODC (Levitus) and NOAA PMEL (Lyman) using the same baseline. The yellow arbitrary denialist line is shown, followed by the linear trends for 2003–2012 and 1993–2012 in red. Standard error bars are also shown:

Despite showing a larger ocean warming trend than Levitus, climate contrarians likely prefer the Lyman data because it does not include the ocean layers below 700 meters. However, even if we cherrypick this shallow ocean data and cherrypick 2003 as the starting point, the 0–700 meter ocean heat accumulation for 2003–2012 in the Lyman PMEL data is equivalent to 1.2 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second over the past decade. For 1993–2012, this rate increases to the equivalent of 3.7 detonations per second, and when including global heat accumulation in Nuccitelli et al. (2012) including the 0–2,000 meter oceans, the Earth has accumulated the equivalent of 4 Hiroshima atomic bomb detonations per second over the past decade.

When we consider all the available data, it becomes quite clear that ocean and global warming continue unabated at a rapid rate. Cherrypicking cannot change that reality.

– This piece was originally published at Skeptical Science and was reprinted with permission.

[Taking the opportunity I'm in the hospital to clear out some old unpublished posts -- JR.]

Lawrence Livermore Lab News Release

A clear change in salinity has been detected in the world’s oceans, signaling shifts and acceleration in the global rainfall and evaporation cycle tied directly to climate change.

In a paper published … in the journal Science, Australian scientists from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory reported changing patterns of salinity in the global ocean during the past 50 years, marking a clear symptom of climate change.

Lead author Paul Durack said that by looking at observed ocean salinity changes and the relationship between salinity, rainfall and evaporation in climate models, they determined the water cycle has become 4 percent stronger from 1950-2000. This is twice the response projected by current generation global climate models.

“These changes suggest that arid regions have become drier and high rainfall regions have become wetter in response to observed global warming,” said Durack, a post-doctoral fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Scientists monitor salinity changes in the world’s oceans to determine where rainfall has increased or decreased. “It provides us with a gauge — a method of monitoring how large-scale patterns of rainfall and evaporation (the climate variables we care most about) are changing,” Durack said.

With a projected temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, the researchers estimate a 24 percent acceleration of the water cycle is possible.

[JR: Actually the projected warming by century's end is closer to 5°C -- see review of literature here -- which would yield a stunning 40% acceleration of the water cycle.]

Read more

by Jessica Goad, Michael Conathan, and Christy Goldfuss

On January 2, 2013 a set of large, across-the-board spending cuts to nearly all federal agencies is set to take place in accordance with the Budget Control Act 2011. These massive slashes—known as the “fiscal showdown” or “sequestration”—are a direct result of conservatives in Congress holding the American economy hostage in order to safeguard tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. While much has been written and said about what this would do to the economy, health care, national security, and other major domestic programs, one relatively unexplored issue is the effect it would have on some of America’s most treasured assets: our oceans and public lands.

The fiscal showdown is the latest in a series of budget conflicts that have come to a head over the last year. Because the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction—the “super committee”—was unable to come to an agreement on how to address the deficit, massive, automatic cuts to federal programs will take place unless Congress agrees by year’s end on an alternative set of budgetary measures to replace sequestration. If they fail to do so, federal spending will be automatically slashed by $1.2 trillion from 2013 through 2021, with approximately $109 billion in cuts coming in fiscal year 2013.

Despite the fact that Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) offered a plan with $800 billion in new revenue, he has not outlined any specific or realistic path to get there and wants to lower tax rates—a plan that heads in the wrong direction. As a result, the country is now in a precarious situation. Only an eleventh-hour deal will prevent cuts that former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—who served under both President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama—has said would have a “catastrophic effect” on national security. Sequestration’s impacts could be equally calamitous for the management of federal programs that safeguard American lives, fuel our economy, and provide treasured sites for rest and recreation.

Congressional Republicans are beginning to wake up to the reality that our financial woes cannot be solved simply by slashing spending—additional sources of revenue must be part of the equation. Several conservatives have recently broken ranks from GOP taxation task-master, lobbyist Grover Norquist, who is most known for the pledge he convinced many in Congress to sign promising to reject any tax increases. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) recently suggested that he is not “obligated” to honor the pledge he made with Norquist to oppose tax increases.

This is good news for the American people who enjoy government services—everything from a strong military to the interstate highway system to public education—because it means that an honest conversation about addressing the deficit that includes both new revenues and cuts can move forward. But unless more conservatives join this trend, sequestration will be inevitable, in which case we are going to have to start making do without some of these vital services we now consider fundamental to our daily lives.

In this issue brief, we examine seven key areas where federal land and ocean management agencies, such as the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, make critical investments on which Americans have come to depend and what cutting these agencies might mean, including:

Read more

by Michael Conathan

On November 7 the American people woke up to a post-election Washington, D.C., that looks an awful lot like pre-election Washington, D.C. President Barack Obama earned a four-year extension on his lease at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and his Democratic colleagues retained their hold on the Senate, and Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and his Republican colleagues still control the agenda in the House of Representatives.

Despite historically bad approval ratings for Congress, which actually dipped down into the single digits as recently as last month, 21 of the 22 senators seeking re-election held onto their offices in general elections—10 others retired, and one incumbent lost in a primary election. And with four House seats still awaiting decisions as of this writing, only 25 of the 382 incumbent representatives in general elections lost their races—40 others retired, and 13 were beaten in primary elections—and five of them were running against other incumbents as a result of redistricting changes.

Yet even with the outward appearance of status quo, a deeper look inside the results of last week’s elections shows that when a few key seats change hands, the effects on our oceans and coasts may be striking. There are some new obstacles to overcome, as well as some great opportunities to cultivate new leaders who will prioritize these issues in the 113th Congress.

The president of the United States

On November 6 all eyes gravitated to the Obama/Romney ticket-topping tilt-a-whirl. Coming as a surprise to no one, oceans—besides former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s mockery of their rise at the Republican national convention in Tampa and a brief rebuttal from President Obama in Charlotte—were absent from the campaign trail. Aside from this one brief thrust-and-parry neither candidate bothered to talk much about climate change at all.

Now, however, following President Obama’s surge to victory in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, climate change is gaining prominence in the national political dialogue. A new Rasmussen poll released the week of the election showed that 68 percent of Americans now view climate change as a “very serious” or “somewhat serious” problem, up from just 46 percent in 2009, continuing a trend that has been emerging in other recent polling showing greater awareness and belief that climate change is a contributing factor to the recent uptick in extreme weather events.

While the two presidential candidates spoke little about climate change during the race, their positions differed greatly. The White House website’s climate change page touts the president’s efforts to combat the problem through efforts including international negotiations, reduction of emissions through a commitment to clean energy, and Environmental Protection Agency regulatory overhauls. By contrast, Gov. Romney’s efforts to downplay the seriousness of the problem came back to bite him in the closing days of the campaign as voters watched dire predictions about the vulnerability of infrastructure in New York City and New Jersey come true with tragic results.

In addition to climate change, President Obama’s re-election means that there is life for his National Ocean Policy—an effort launched by executive order and designed to bring a semblance of cohesiveness to the multitude of federal agencies that have a role in the management of issues that affect our oceans, coasts, and Great Lakes. Despite the policy’s intention to streamline and reduce redundancy in government activity and enhance states’ rights by providing support for individual states and regions that opt to manage their coasts according to the policy’s core set of principles, many Republicans, particularly on the House Natural Resources Committee, lambast the policy as another example of “job killing regulations” handed down by the White House. Nothing could be further from the truth.

It was widely anticipated that under a Romney administration, the policy and the National Ocean Council established to support it would have been shelved. With President Obama still in the White House, the policy’s supporters have at least another four years to prove the value of its underlying principles, primarily comprehensive ocean planning.

The Senate

Read more

The NY Times published a sobering piece recently about Tatoosh Island off the coast of Washington state. Tatoosh is a global “warming bellwether”:

But for over four decades, with the blessing of Makah leaders, Tatoosh has been the object of intense biological scrutiny, and scientists say they are seeing disturbing declines across species — changes that could prove a bellwether for oceanic change globally.

The Makah hold treaty rights to the island.

Among the declines the researchers are noticing: historically hardy populations of gulls and murres are only half what they were 10 years ago, and only a few chicks hatched this spring. Mussel shells are notably thinner, and recently the mussels seem to be detaching from rocks more easily and with greater frequency.

Goose barnacles are also suffering, and so are the hard, splotchy, wine-colored coralline algae, which appear like graffiti along rocky shorelines.

This particular whodunit appears to be largely solved: Humans in the Ecosystem with CO2. Global warming is “capable of wrecking the marine ecosystem and depriving future generations of the harvest of the seas” (see Ocean dead zones to expand, “remain for thousands of years”).

In this case, it’s ocean acidification, a subject we have covered extensively — see, for instance, Geological Society study finds acidifying oceans on track for marine biological meltdown “by end of century,” as co-author warns: “Unless we curb carbon emissions we risk mass extinctions, degrading coastal waters and encouraging outbreaks of toxic jellyfish and algae.”

The major media haven’t been so focused on this major threat to humanity (see ”Kardashians Get 40 Times More News Coverage Than Ocean Acidification“).

So it’s good to see the Times run with this story and explain the climate change angle so clearly:

Read more

by Mindy Selman and Bob Diaz, via WRI Insights

This year’s extreme weather events—a warm winter, even warmer summer, and a drought that covered nearly two-thirds of the continental United States—has certainly caused its fair share of damages. But despite the crop failures, water shortages, and heat waves, extreme weather created at least one benefit: smaller dead zones in the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico.

On a normal year, rain washes pollutants like nitrogen and phosphorous from farms and urban areas into the two bodies of water, fueling algae growth. When this algae dies, it consumes oxygen and creates hypoxic areas, or “dead zones,” which can kill fish and other marine life. Less rain this year meant fewer pollutants making their way into the Chesapeake Bay and Gulf of Mexico. The Chesapeake Bay’s summer dead zone was the smallest since record-keeping began in 1985, and the Gulf of Mexico’s covered one of the smallest areas on record.

But It’s Not All Good News

Which isn’t to say that extreme weather and climatic events decrease the incidence of dead zones overall. In fact, in some cases, extreme weather and climatic events can actually exacerbate dead zones in lakes and oceanic ecosystems.

Dead zone occurrences have dramatically increased over the past 50 years. In 1960, there were fewer than 25 reported dead zones around the world; today there are more than 500, according to WRI’s interactive map of eutrophication and hypoxia. Dead zones in freshwater and coastal ecosystems are on the rise due to the increasing use of chemical fertilizers, manure runoff from factory farms, and sewage and wastewater discharges from urban areas. The frequency and duration of hypoxic events has been exacerbated by several other human and environmental factors, including extreme weather and climatic events. Take, for example, the following cases:

• While this year’s dead zone in the Chesapeake Bay may be one of the smallest, last July’s was the biggest on record, covering more than one-third of the bay. Scientists reported that as a result of snow melt and an unusually wet spring, the bay received as many nutrients in the month of May as it normally receives in an entire year. These nutrients fueled large algae blooms, which eventually triggered the formation of the huge dead zone.
• The Cook Islands in the South Pacific recently experienced a long-lasting dead zone in the Manihiki Lagoon, which decimated the country’s black pearl oysters. Scientists blamed this dead zone on a particularly strong La Niña event. The conditions created by the La Niña—cooler-than-average temperatures and drought—resulted in stratification of the water column. When an algae bloom occurred after a rainfall event, stratification prevented the bottom waters—which had become deoxygenated from the algae die-off—from mixing with oxygen-rich surface waters. A dead zone then formed, causing 100-percent mortality for all shellfish below 16 meters.
• Starting in 2002, Oregon’s coast began to see regular dead zone occurrences in near-shore waters. Scientists believe these occurrences are due in part to climate-driven changes in the California current system that intensified wind-driven upwelling events. Upwellings are natural events where nutrient-rich bottom waters rise to the surface, causing large algal blooms and subsequent oxygen depletion. Summer winds on the Oregon coast historically blew steady for a week or so before dying down and allowing coastal systems to flush the low-oxygen water. However, warmer temperatures attributed to climate change have intensified seasonal northwest coastal winds, which can now last between 20 to 30 days, trapping low-oxygen water near Oregon’s coast. As a result, a dead zone has formed for the past 10 summers, causing marine die-offs.
• In the spring of 2011, the largest toxic algae bloom in decades formed in Lake Erie, leading to a dead zone. In part, this massive bloom was blamed on a wet spring that brought record amounts of rainfall. The rain swept pollutants from farm fields and urban areas into the lake, providing the nutrients necessary to fuel the bloom.

Climate Change May Worsen the Situation

Read more

by Tom Wittig and Michael Conathan

When it comes to the economy of our oceans and coasts, the European Union has set an example we can’t afford to ignore.

Last Sunday, the European Commission adopted an updated version of its Integrated Marine Policy, dubbed the “Limassol Declaration.” The plan details the EU’s need for “a dynamic agenda for seas and oceans that supports… a sustainable blue economy.”

It identifies specific marine industries that can contribute to the Commission’s goals of higher employment, cleaner energy, and economic growth. Under the newly amended policy, increased attention will be given to coastal and marine tourism, offshore renewable energy, and job creation.

Throughout the declaration, the Commission also stresses its commitment to sustainability. In just six pages of text, the Commissioners included the word “sustainable” twelve times, and they clearly emphasize the value of non-extractive and restorative industries, specifying their intention to “recognize the value of marine ecosystem goods and services and the protection of the marine environment as an important element for sustainable development and prosperity.”

Despite such lofty pronouncements, the Limassol Declaration has received criticism from numerous environmental organizations, primarily because in addition to non-extractive or self-renewable industries like tourism, fisheries, or offshore wind energy, the policy also calls for development of seabed mining and aquaculture — activities that don’t sit well environmentalists. Greenpeace and several other groups issued a joint statement, saying, “treating the protection of the marine environment as a mere ‘pillar’ of the Maritime Policy will in not be enough, as healthy marine ecosystems provide the basis for maritime economic activities”

These groups are calling for a policy that includes greater regard for wildlife and habitat, and avoids promotion of extractive industries.

Last June, the Center for American Progress developed a solution to this issue and outlined a policy for the U.S. that focuses on protection as an economic force, not just extraction. In The Foundations of a Blue Economy, we detail the need to focus additional resources on the development of sustainable fisheries, ocean and coastal tourism, offshore renewable energy, and coastal restoration activities.

Our work adds to the growing body of literature extolling the promise of these non-extractive industries and provides a counterpoint to the vision offered by groups like the American Petroleum Institute, which are desperate to convince Americans that the only way to create coastal jobs is to “drill, baby, drill.”

Future reports in the Blue Economy series will take a closer look at specific ocean industries and resources that are already providing great economic value to our oceans and coasts, or have the potential to rival the economic productivity of industries like oil and gas or seabed mining.

Michael Conathan is Director of Oceans Policy at the Center for American Progress. Tom Wittig is an intern on the oceans team at the Center for American Progress.

by Tom Wittig

Developing countries that rely on nourishment from the oceans will soon find their sources of food and way of life threatened, according to an Oceana study released last week. The report, Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World, ranks the top 50 nations most vulnerable to climate change and ocean acidification in the context of their seafood and fish consumption.

Not surprisingly, those nations topping the list are among the least responsible for historic emissions of carbon dioxide.

The Comoros claimed the dubious distinction of most threatened, followed by Togo, the Cook Islands, Kiribati, and Eritrea. Other notable countries in the top fifty include Pakistan (8), North Korea (25), China (35), and South Africa (46). The United States did not make the list.

Just how big is this threat? Over a billion people rely on seafood as their main source of protein. Before mid-century, global population is expected to reach nine billion, creating further demand for ocean-based food. Many nations struggling with nutrition will be further challenged, and citizens of some developing nations will likely turn to inferior foods. The authors elaborate:

Losing [seafood] may mean more dependence on less healthy processed foods that are imported from abroad. Communities that have recently made a shift from eating traditional seafood items to importing cheap, processed foods have suffered widespread health problems. For example, in Pacific Island nations about 40 percent of the population has been diagnosed with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases or hypertension.

The combined rankings were based on three factors: exposure to climate change and ocean acidification, rates of seafood and fish consumption, and adaptive ability. It then predicted these conditions into mid-century for each country.

The report also considers the impacts of climate change and ocean acidification separately. The Maldives are the most threatened based solely on climate change predictions. The Cook Islands, which did not fare much better in the combined rankings, came in at number one in the ocean acidification rankings.

Scientists have already observed disturbing trends in ocean acidification and climate change. Since the Industrial Revolution, ocean pH has decreased by roughly 30 percent. The change in pH spells serious trouble for coral reefs and shellfish that rely on calcium to grow. In increasingly acidic waters, less calcium is available.

Ocean temperatures are also rising dramatically in numerous regions. This change is forcing some marine species to move closer to the poles or into deeper waters. Many fish species are predicted to shift towards the poles at a rate of around 20 miles per decade. Poorer nations do not possess the industrial fishing fleets to chase these moving populations.

Although the United States didn’t make the list, it isn’t safe from these changes. Atlantic cod have shifted farther north to compensate for increasing temperatures, and lobster populations are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disease as waters warm, wreaking havoc on seafood markets. Oceana stresses the effects climate change may have on American fisheries in its report:

Millions of jobs and billions of dollars in revenue are at risk if there are substantial losses in the capture, processing and sale of U.S. seafood due to regional climate impacts. Due to rising temperatures, the continental U.S. is projected to lose an average of 12 percent of its fisheries catch potential.

According to the Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post, ocean acidification is also endangering America’s fisheries. Despite not being the sexiest issue, ocean acidification is receiving increased attention as its effects become more pronounced. Eilperin notes that falling pH is putting pressure on America’s shellfish fisheries. In regions like the Alaska and the Chesapeake Bay, hits to seafood and fish harvests are not just a threat to industry, but a threat to culture.

While the U.S. still lacks the political will to make the necessary changes to adapt and slow climate change and ocean acidification, at least we have the technology and economic resources. The nations atop Oceana’s list do not. Their citizens will have little hope if the seafood and fish they have relied on for generations disappear.

Tom Wittig is an intern with the Ocean Program at the Center for American Progress.

by Justin Guay, via the Sierra Club

The U.S. Ex-Im Bank and its president Fred Hochberg have never met a coal project they didn’t like.

At times it’s so bad we don’t know what century the institution thinks it is operating in. Now, despite a worldwide uproar over the Bank’s interest in one of the world’s largest coal ‘mega-mines’ in Australia, it has been linked to another Australian mega mine that would bring coal across the Great Barrier Reef. Underwriting this potential destruction of the Great Barrier Reef is an unacceptable use of U.S. tax payer dollars — and it’s time Ex-Im Bank came clean on its involvement.

It’s not surprising to hear over-eager developers link the Ex-Im Bank to these projects because the institution has a long history of supporting fossil fuel projects. And that track record is getting worse. It got so bad that the Sierra Club wrote an open letter to President Fred Hochberg after we witnessed first hand the destruction these projects are wreaking on communities and livelihoods (check out our blog on the Sasan coal project in India).

But our pleas were callously ignored as President Hochberg okay-ed a massive expansion of coal finance in every corner of the globe. From Kusile in South Africa, to Sasan in India, to Xcoal in the U.S., to the recently proposed mines in Australia, it appears that Ex-Im Bank cares little for the environmental damage the institution is causing around the world — not to mention the reputation of this administration.

The problem, however, is that the public does. And that public stretches from Australia where the mining would take place, to India where the coal would be burned, to the U.S. where the financing would come from. This global outcry was captured in part by Avaaz’s petition to #savethereef (consider taking a minute to contact Fred Hochberg personally via twitter: @fredhochberg), but also by media scrutiny in India, the U.S., the UK and Australia. It appears that while President Hochberg may consider designations like “World Heritage Site” pesky obstacles, the global public considers them treasures.

Which is why Greenpeace Australia’s recent report on massive coal export expansion plans that would trample the Great Barrier Reef — and the global climate — was so damning. They found that if underwritten by institutions like Ex-Im Bank, the world would add emissions equivalent to a country the size of Canada while increasing traffic through one of the world’s greatest natural wonders. For an excellent visual representation of this lunacy check out Greenpeace’s short video:

Read more