Wednesday 10 March 2010

What's so special about coral?

It is suggested by some that non-existent global warming will cause carnage to coral reefs. There has been mass panic among the tree huggers when reports have come of some part of a coral reef dying, and silence when another part of the same reef grows by more. Screams of anguish are heard at the thought of coral being bleached by some mystical process associated with keeping our homes warm and our people fed. What I want to know is, why?

As I understand things, coral has not existed since the world began. At some time, I care not when, it formed. Before then there was no coral. And you know what? The earth still turned and the sun still shone despite coral being an unknown substance. And you know what else? There hasn't always been the same amount of coral in the same places. Are you shocked? Of course you are because you are delicate souls who cannot bear the thought that something was once different from how it is today. Let me shock you again. The aquatic creatures that make their homes in and around coral reefs haven't always done so.

Coral is nothing but an underwater fluffy bunny. Latched onto by the wet non-thinkers as a poster child for their latest scenario of doom. We mustn't do anything nasty to fluffy bunnies because they are, well, fluffy. We mustn't do anything nasty to coral because it is wholesome and pretty, just like a fluffy bunny.

Fluffy poster children are essential to the cause of the doommonger. He will get nowhere by saying "global warming will cause the death of millions of scarlet lily beetles and wasps". The whole world would stoke up their coal fires. He needs a fluffy victim to point to so that we feel guilty. Frankly, I couldn't care less about coral. I have no desire to see it destroyed for the sake of destruction but if the cost of feeding people and keeping them warm is that a bit of coral somewhere suffers adverse consequences, so be it. It really doesn't matter. Any displaced water dwellers will settle elsewhere in the same way that their ancestors left their previous habitat and moved to the coral. That it will cause wailing and gnashing of teeth among the tofu-knitting community would be an added bonus.

Far more likely, of course, is that the threat to coral from industrial activity is as illusory as the threat to Arctic and Antarctic ice, to Himalayan glaciers, to polar bears, to Saharan water and to the volume and intensity of hurricanes. All the direst predictions have been exposed as either exaggerations or plain lies. So, I predict, is the position relating to coral. Perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps one of the fluffy poster children really is endangered. I'm not expecting any of the doommongers to risk a penny of their own money betting on that being the case. Nonetheless, even if they are correct I still ask, "so what"? It really doesn't matter, it is just something some people think is pretty and which is given an elevated a status in the emotions of the vapid. There is absolutely no need for any fuss.


2 comments:

john miller said...

Speaking as a human being, I am so glad that dear old Tyrannosaurus Rex didn't practice conservationism.

On an even sillier note, how people think that they can freeze all the fluffy bunny species in place for ever is beyond me.

circus monkey said...

Dear John Miller, what about agile, entertaining monkeys?