11/04/2016

Great Barrier Reef: David Attenborough Ignores Politics And Appeals To The Heart

The Guardian - Gay Alcorn

Documentarian's message rings especially loud for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this natural wonder
The reef surrounding Heron Island as seen in Great Barrier Reef with David Attenborough. Photograph: Mark Tipple/BBC/Atlantic Productions/Mark Tipple 
"Do we really care so little about the Earth on which we live that we don't wish to protect one of its greatest wonders from the consequences of our behaviour?"
At the very end of Sir David Attenborough's three-part documentary on Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the 89-year-old asks this simple question, in his polite way, not pointing fingers at anyone in particular, just wondering.
It is all that has gone before that gives his question such force. We have seen the remarkable, beautiful and wondrous reef in a way that makes political spinning over its health and future seem hollow.
We have seen the reef, but we have also felt it. The wonder of the once-a-year synchronised coral spawning, millions of sperm and eggs shooting into the ocean. The extraordinary sight of coral polyps battling each other in territorial wars.
We have felt the effort of 100kg green turtles hauling themselves onto the sands of Raine Island in north Queensland after 40 years at sea, there to lay eggs in the same place they hatched themselves. We can sense how every creature – every polyp, crab, fish, manta ray and shark – depends on every other.
Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime
At the end of this series, whether you're a fan of nature documentaries or not, you will have learnt things, sure, but you will have witnessed and felt magical things.
Attenborough's Great Barrier Reef has already been broadcast in the UK, but the first episode screened in Australia on Sunday on the ABC. There is a special poignancy watching it here, because Australia is the reef's home and we are its guardians.
The opening episode is about the reef itself, how the 2,300km chain of coral reefs and islands formed between 10,000 and 14,000 years ago towards the end of the ice age. Water flooded the continental shelf and what remained was shallow and warm enough to be perfect for coral, the heart of this underwater city.
The local Indigenous people living near Cairns have told through music and dance a similar story about how the reef was born for thousands of years.
Attenborough is an old man now, and one of his themes is time and change. Sixty years ago, dressed in little more than swimming shorts, flippers and a snorkel, he first explored the reef, and maintains that the "unforgettable beauty" of that experience remains the most magical moment in his career.
The black and white footage of that adventure is nostalgic, even innocent. Nobody imagined in those days that the reef could be degraded, even disappear, in one man's lifetime.
Time has brought technological advances that allow Attenborough and his crew to explore the reef, as he tells us often, like never before. Down he goes in an explorer submarine – a Triton submersible – to remote corners of the reef rarely, if ever, filmed. The footage is as beautiful as you will ever see, the narration very Attenborough with its mix of information and drama.
After laying "one of nature's great wonders" before us, Attenborough uses the third episode to outline the threats to the reef. Some of these, like cyclones, are natural events and the reef has proven extraordinarily resilient to many periods of exposure and regeneration over thousands of years.
That's the critical difference this time. Climate change is wreaking havoc because about 30% of the carbon dioxide we pour into the atmosphere is absorbed in the oceans. The rising temperatures and increased acidity it causes is happening too fast for the reef to cope. In the last 30 years, almost half the coral has disappeared.
"The greatest concern now is that we might lose the reef altogether," Attenborough says.
The scientists he meets are passionate and committed, doing all they can to protect and reef and its inhabitants. It has got to this: scientists at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in north-east Queensland are desperately trying to selectively breed a new kind of coral they hope might be able to withstand the worst effects of climate change. Perhaps we could place this laboratory coral created on the reef to regenerate areas that have died. There's something so sad about this well-intentioned scramble. As one scientist says: "This is really a last resort option."
Attenborough doesn't get into the politics of climate change, either global or local.
He doesn't analyse the Australian government's support for coalmines, especially the Indian company Adani's enormous Carmichael mine in Queensland, and its potential threat to the reef.
He doesn't get into the need for ambitious renewable energy targets or which is best method of reducing carbon emissions.
And his series came too late to capture the latest severe coral bleaching in the north of the barrier reef marine park, a result of warming temperatures.Attenborough's gift is to take us beyond politics, to what matters.
It is an especially loud message for Australians, who have the privilege and duty to look after this "eco-system like no other".
"The Great Barrier Reef is in grave danger," Attenborough says. If temperatures continue to rise at the present rate it will be gone with in decades. What was once unthinkable is now happening on our watch. At the end of this series – perhaps Attenborough's last big on-the-road documentary – he says without hyperbole, "That would be a global catastrophe."

Links
Posted by at
Labels:

No comments :

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )

Lethal Heating is a citizens' initiative