Lillian’s Eden

by Cheryl Adam

  Even delivering the dire news to the lion’s den, however, did not seem to make much difference. Reichelt was not the only one with such a devastating warning. Professor Terry Hughes is arguably one of the most informed coral scientists in the world. After responding so swiftly to the global coral bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef in December 2016, he was named as one of the ten people who mattered most in the world that year. The prestigious science journal Nature dubbed him a ‘reef sentinel’.160

  It was Hughes who had reported the chilling facts on the back-to-back bleaching of the reef in 2016/17 in Nature161 stating that some reefs had lost 80% of their corals and that among the casualties were 50- and 100-year-old corals, which would take a long time to be replaced. Importantly, Terry Hughes had named global warming as the central villain in killing the reef and argued that while protecting the reef from run-off and over-fishing was important, immediate action to curb climate change was the only thing that would limit damage to the reef. Hughes had used aerial and underwater surveys to document the extent and severity of the 2016 year’s bleaching, as well as data from the USA’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite data to examine the cause of the increased sea surface temperatures.

  Hughes and his team of researchers found bleaching occurred regardless of how protected the reef was from run-off and over-fishing. “The only thing that made the difference was the intensity of the heat,” Professor Hughes had told The Science Show on ABC’s Radio National in March 2017 while we were still in India. “That’s an incredibly precarious situation to be in where the health of the Great Barrier Reef at a huge scale depends on a chance weather event.”

  Significantly, 2016/17 was the first ‘back-to-back’ bleaching of the reef to occur and it did not coincide with El Niño, a weather pattern that has been associated with bleaching events in the past.

  “Climate change is already dangerous for the Great Barrier Reef,” Professor Hughes said, adding that even a 2°C global temperature rise (1.5–2°C was suggested in the Paris Agreement) “won’t be a comfortable place for coral reefs.”

  “We’ve got a window of opportunity, but it’s getting narrower and narrower to quickly move away from fossil fuels and curb emissions,” he said.

  Dr Andrew King, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne who studies climate extremes and variability, said Professor Hughes’ research established the strong link between coral bleaching and warmer water.

  “These findings, in conjunction with other studies, point to the fact that warmer waters are damaging the reef and climate change means that large parts of the reef won’t recover,” he said.

  Dr King said recent research looking at the frequency of bleaching events emphasised the need for strong action, as, alarmingly, he forecast that it looked like bleaching could occur every second year on average.162

  Orpheus Island lies offshore from Lucinda, almost halfway between Townsville and Cairns. James Cook University has a research station there. In 2009, I took a group of life writing students to spend five days on the island. One of my students was a child protection worker who had written a compelling piece about his harrowing career: painting evocative images of seizing children from heroin addicted mothers. My student had had a life threatening disease as a child. Following treatment, he had been told he might never have children of his own. A loving, warm open-faced young man, he unburdened his worst images before the class crafting some beautiful words as he attempted to navigate a pathway through his life story.

  Later, we headed to the boat ramp and plunged beneath the surface to see a fairy world of true beauty – some of the best coral I’d ever seen along the eastern coastline. Snorkelling and diving is a solitary experience. An overwhelming, sensory feast. My student had never been snorkelling before. His astonishment and wonder was endearing. Bommie after bommie encrusted with colours that burst forth. Each outdid the other. (A ‘bommie’ is a submerged reef. It is the colloquial Australian word for the official term bombora.) The myriad fish and giant clams competed with radiating colours that were incomprehensible in vibrancy. But that day, I remember a sense of unease. That what we were looking at could somehow not endure – that it was too perfect. Too precious.

  In the winter months, onboard Providence, a 70-year-old woman from England is snorkelling for the first time. Her floating vest is firmly in place and her husband and son are fussing over her as she battles her fear to descend the ladder off the dinghy. Five minutes later, she is in the water clutching a bright pink noodle; a tubular foam to aid swimmers, firmly held by her husband and son.

  I take the plunge nearby. “Put your face in,” they encourage her.

  Jess, our daughter who is our deckie (deckhand) and driving the tender (our support boat), stays nearby on snorkel watch. I am convinced the woman will give up and return to the boat. After ten minutes in the water I swim back to Providence. Instead of the woman, it is her husband who arrives back first, beaming.

  “I need to get our camera. To record this moment. It’s the first time she’s ever managed to do it,” he explains breathlessly.

  Radiant, she is one of the last to get back on board the dinghy.

  “I’ve been to the Isle of Pines in New Caledonia,” she gushes. “I’ve done so many glass-bottom boats but nothing compares to this. Not what I saw down here. Nothing.” Our eyes are locked in the experience we have shared. But I know, because I was also snorkelling near her, that no matter how good it is now, it cannot compare with what was.

  The rotten behaviour we had observed in India from the Adani Group is already seeping into the company’s Australian operations. After Adani contested the fine for releasing polluted water into the ocean around the time of Cyclone Debbie, the Department of Environment found that, while preparing to defend the fine, the company had falsified records. An article in The Guardian reported that a copy of the original laboratory report included a column that had not been included in the document provided to the government by Adani. This column showed suspicions that “an even higher reading of 834 mg/l of coal-laden water had been released.”163

  In September 2017, I fly to Canberra on a second lobbying trip to that wedding cake in the sky (the Australian Parliament) where those we have elected, govern in our interests. Mid-March 2016 had marked my first official lobbying trip to the nation’s capital. Back then I had been accompanied by Charlie Veron who has named nearly a quarter of the world’s corals, and Imogen Zethoven,who I was meeting for the first time. I was wholly unprepared by how devastating our visit was.

  Days of waiting in opulent corridors filled with original artwork (MPs get to choose their own artwork from the parliamentary catalogue), and soundless plush carpets to wait to see the key men – they are all men – who dominate this debate: Greg Hunt, then Minister for the Environment; Josh Frydenberg, then Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia and later Minister for the Environment and Energy; Matt Canavan, then Minister for Northern Australia and soon to be Minister for Resources and Northern Australia; Barnaby Joyce, then Minister for Agricultural and Water Resources and Minister for Resources and Northern Australia. This select group of power brokers bat the key energy portfolios with table tennis aplomb between each other and tightly control the debate – as well as the Prime Minister – on climate change.

  At the time of going to print, in July 2018, some of them continue to chorus from the recently formed ‘Monash Forum’, backed by an increasingly vocal former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, who takes every opportunity to say that we need new coal power plants to be built in Australia. Members of this group, which include 20 backbench MPs, promote the benefits of coal power.

  In April 2018, Canavan, then Resources Minister, went further, saying that coal-fired power stations – if replaced with the more efficient ‘ultra supercritical technology’ – would reduce emissions from current coal power stations by 27% according to articles in The Australian and Guardian, citing Canavan’s own resear
ch commissioned from the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. These numbers were crunched by the Climate and Energy College at the University of Melbourne. Yes, they could, but replacing Australia’s coal plants with new ultra-supercritical technology, would cost AU$62 billion and the equivalent energy from renewable energy would be a lot cheaper.164

  Clean coal became the catch-cry of the government of the day, a particular favourite of Malcolm Turnbull as though all you needed to do was give it a good scrub and it would turn into something more palatable. In her 2017 Quarterly Essay ‘The Long Goodbye’, Anna Krien comments (p. 102):165 “As for the cutting-edge technology, most power stations now operating were already super-critical – ‘ultra’ registers only a minor improvement, with emissions still double those of natural gas.”

  It is clear who Canavan supports. As if there is any doubt, in July 2017, having stood aside as Minister for Resources and Northern Australia, following accusations about his reported dual-citizenship (Italy and Australia), he revealed his unwavering support for Australian miners on his Facebook page saying how much he had enjoyed serving them during his time in office. “Mining and resources are a uniquely Australian success story. From the small, gambling explorers and prospectors to the large, world-beating multi-nationals, the industry provides rich and diverse experiences that can take you from the smallest towns of outback Australia to the biggest cities in the world. It has been such an honour to represent the Australian mining sector over the past year. It is an industry full of fine, hard-working and innovative people.”166 But what of his constituents?

  Meanwhile, Australian Electoral Commission figures reporting on political donations in 2016–17, found that ads spruiking the benefits of coal mining were the biggest political expenditure by third party groups in Australia dwarfing public contributions from unions and GetUp.167

  The men we are scheduled to see mostly sent their offsiders to meet us in corridors or noisy coffee shops, rarely in their offices, during our visit to Federal Parliament. They cluster together supporting each other, adamantly pro-coal and anti-climate change. Canavan, then 36 years old and one of the most outspoken MPs, was Chief of Staff to Barnaby Joyce from 2010–13. Between them, and aided and abetted by a compliant Prime Minister, they control the debate on climate change, transparently trumpeting the interests of the mining industry. They make policies that, according to polls, fly in the face of what most Australians want. In our meetings, their offsiders stare into space occasionally nodding, biding out the meeting time when they can go back to their offices. When Greg Hunt was Environment Minister and flew over the Great Barrier Reef in March 2016 after the back-to-back bleaching with Professor Terry Hughes, he still managed to put out a positive spin on such a catastrophic global event. Confronting the third global-scale event since mass bleaching was first documented in the 1980s, he told the media it wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be.

  In complete contrast, the man who occupied the same plane as Hunt, Professor Terry Hughes, who had flown over 1000 out of the Great Barrier Reef’s almost 3000 reefs, was devastated by what he saw in 2016. He told the Brisbane Times in April 2016 that 75% of corals north of Cairns “are snow white.”168 Hughes has been scathing about the effectiveness of politicians as stewards of the reef to counteract climate change, warning that politicians are doing little to meet the Paris Agreement target to keep the increase of global average temperature well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels. “Really,” he added in a far-ranging interview with Yale Environment 360 published by the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies in April 2017, “what Australia should be doing, in my opinion, as the country responsible for the stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef is taking a leadership role in transitioning away from fossil fuels, but sadly that hasn’t occurred.”169

  After a punishing round of lacklustre meetings, Veron and I retreat to one of the multitude of cafés inside this utopian building where the food is heavily subsidised – main courses are around $10. Charlie, whose real name is John, is in his early 70s. His eyes are pale blue and penetrating. His nickname pays homage to his hero Charles Darwin, reflecting his early childhood obsession with collecting specimens. Veron was the first full-time researcher on the Great Barrier Reef, and later Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science. He has been awarded the Darwin Medal for his work on evolution and his life is now devoted to building a Corals of the World website. When David Attenborough made his recent 2015/16 television series on the Great Barrier Reef, Veron was on screen with him. They share a combined historical experience of respective lifetimes on the Great Barrier Reef. Veron wears weariness like a cloak, but whenever he speaks out about the Great Barrier Reef, it is with a fierce passion. He has been diving there for more than 50 years. We place our coffee mugs on the outside table. When I look up, I am shocked. Veron is crying silent tears.

  “I’m not going to invest in coming here again,” he tells me. “There’s no point.”

  I do not attempt to contradict him. In that moment I see into his soul – the devastation for him – what he has devoted his life to. The powerlessness he feels at failing to protect it. These men we have met have no idea of who Veron is and what he has experienced, nor do they care. It is, he confides later, in his view too late to save the reef. “But, if we say this” – and he leans forward and becomes conspiratorial – “everyone will give up. That,” he adds, “is even harder to bear.”

  During our visit, Veron had spoken at length to Hunt’s adviser. This adviser seemed to care and this gave Veron some solace. However, when he returned from our trip, and aired his views in the media, Hunt phoned him and, Veron told me, “accused him” of not coming to Canberra to discuss his concerns. Hunt was not even aware Veron had been there.

  September 2017 marks my second visit to Canberra. My thoughts, as I look down from the plane, are on the baking earth below: dried in the way that fruit dries until they are a shrivelled form of themselves. Criss-crossed cleared fields, below me, are laid bare by man – white man mostly. It is the softly flowing carpeted hills with native vegetation surrounding the bare patchwork that survives this heat. The dark green colours contrast between what was and what is now.

  Before white people came to this land, there was human habitation 65,000 years ago.170 Some of the oldest geological formations in Australia are in the Kimberley region in Western Australia. I once saw cave paintings on Bigge Island that are said to depict Abel Tasman’s landing on these shores in the 1640s, reportedly the first white man of any note to visit Australia. The Wandjina art, of which this painting is a part, shows a figure reportedly smoking a pipe. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have fished and hunted its waters and navigated between the islands of our Great Barrier Reef for centuries.

  In those intervening years, we have destroyed the landscape rather than preserving it, making a mockery of sustainability. We have one of the highest emissions of carbon dioxide in the world based on the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) created by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency in 2015. EDGAR provides global past and present statistics on greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants by country and on a spatial grid.

  Australia was the second highest country behind Canada for carbon dioxide emissions per capita from fossil fuels and cement production, according to the report, with around 18.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide per capita released in 2015.171 Little wonder as two thirds of our electricity is generated from coal. The study found that one third of all global carbon dioxide emissions came from coal-fired power plants. More recent figures reveal that there is a continuing rising trend for emissions in Australia, which began around 2011 according to consultants NDEVR Environmental which replicates the Federal Government’s National Greenhouse Gas Inventory (NGGI) Reports. While emissions from the electricity sector were the lowest in the last three months of 2017, emissions for transport were at a record high in t
he same time period continuing a steady rise since the records began in 2001.172

  In spite of the facts, there are still some scientists who continue to deny what is happening. As the Climate Council recently pointed out, Larry Marshall, CEO of CSIRO, was quoted in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) as saying poor water quality is the main cause of the recent back-to-back bleaching on the reef.

  Will Steffen, writing for the Council in March 2018 had this to say about Marshall’s statement:

  “Marshall’s comments seem to be aligned to a Federal Government plan to focus on water quality measures. Addressing water quality is just a bandaid solution that is only useful if we also tackle climate change, the root cause of coral bleaching. Yet Australia’s greenhouse gas pollution levels continue to rise (by 0.8% the past year) without credible federal climate policy in place.”173

  Marshall was reported as saying to the AFR that it was a common misconception that coral bleaching meant it was too late to save.174 He said the reef usually grows back two years after a bleaching event, similar to trees after a bushfire, and that the CSIRO had deployed sensors in the reef, which showed most of its problems come from sedimentary run-off from the land, rather than the ocean itself. Steffen, however, said that coral reefs often took decades to repair themselves.

  This time, our visit to Canberra, under the auspices and funded by the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), has a different focus. We are to physically deliver a petition of more than 100,000 signatures to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s office, urging the government to reject any funding application from Adani to build the 388 km railway line linking the proposed Carmichael mine with the coal terminal at Abbot Point.

  Most taxpayers still appear to be completely unaware that their taxes may potentially be funding the proposed Adani railway line linking the port with the pit. The ACF has made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee in charge of the governance of the Northern Australian Infrastructure Facility (NAIF) urging it to ensure it acts in the interests of northern Australian communities as well as focusing on environmental goals. NAIF was set up by former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, to approve loans to northern Australian projects of up to $5 billion to encourage development (such as ports, rail, water, communications) in a bid to stimulate growth. By this time, September 2017, there had already been speculation in the media about the lack of transparency in the way that NAIF is governed. The ACF on its website also noted that NAIF had been resistant to FOI (Freedom of Information) requests and that it was “subject to little in the way of checks and balances.” Geoff Cousins had already alluded to the responsibility of the Directors of the NAIF Board and their duty to serve the public interest while we were in India.