The reef is in danger, no matter what politicians say

The Great Barrier Reef is in mortal danger - its magnificent multicolours bleaching white from the impacts of global warming - but Sussan Ley has been dispatched around the world to say the opposite.

And now the minister has succeeded in her cynical mission, with the World Heritage Committee on Friday night ignoring UNESCO's scientific assessment that the reef is in obvious danger from global warming and should be listed as such.

Whether the Great Barrier Reef is in danger should be a question of factual inquiry, not the slimy politics of insider lobbying and tourist-junket diplomacy.

When it comes to the Great Barrier Reef, it is difficult to come to grips with the sheer scope of the mendacity of the Morrison government, given what is at stake.

In May 2019, Scott Morrison actually went so far as to claim that his government had "saved the Great Barrier Reef".

In reality, the Australian government not only refuses to develop a credible emissions-reduction strategy, but also actively promotes the continuation and expansion of coal oil and gas. This means that both by omission and action, as unthinkable as the truth may be, the substantive consequences of Morrison government policy is the destruction of the Great Barrier Reef.

Already by 2012, half of the corals of the Great Barrier Reef had vanished when calculated against a 1985 baseline. Three major bleaching events in the last five years, individually and cumulatively unprecedented, had a devastating effect on vast swathes of the reef. Another major study, in 2020, found that the reef's coral had halved since 1995. The Australian government's own scientific assessment is that the condition of the Reef is "very poor" and deteriorating. The world's peak scientific bodies have warned that without urgent drastic cuts to greenhouse-gas emissions, all of the world's coral reefs will be killed by the impacts of global warming within current lifetimes.

It is criminally absurd that there is any debate whatsoever.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines danger as "the possibility of suffering harm or injury". How can something that is more than half dead, in poor condition, deteriorating further and - unless there is urgent action on reducing emissions - on track to be annihilated, not be considered to be facing the possibility of harm or injury?

The bad-faith behaviour of Australia's politicians is not only a breach of trust to the vast majority of the Australian people who love our Great Barrier Reef, but also a terrible betrayal of our nation's solemn legal promise to the world.

In 1981, it was the Coalition government of Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser who oversaw the Great Barrier Reef's listing as World Heritage - the first Australian site to achieve the honour and recognition. Under the UNESCO treaty, Australia promised the world and future generations that "to the utmost of its resources" our nation would "do all it can" to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

According to the Australian government's own scientists, global warming is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef. The only way the reef will survive is if we rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The greatest drivers of rising emissions are burning coal, oil and gas. If we are to keep Australia's legal promise to the world and to future generations, then Australia must stop extracting and burning coal, oil and gas very rapidly, in line with the best available scientific advice on what is necessary to give our reef a fighting chance of survival. In addition, we should be doing all we can to encourage other nations to do the same, slashing carbon emissions.

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Sussan Ley's odyssey of dishonesty is simply the latest grotesque chapter of deliberate deception in a larger pattern. For years now, Australia's politicians have propagated the big lie that it is possible to give our reef a fighting chance without tackling global warming.

Instead of selling a lie, Australia's Environment Minister should be travelling the world, exhorting greater ambition on reducing emissions by other nations, to save our reef. Rather than being ranked dead last out of 170 nations on climate action plans, Australia should commit to a moratorium on all new fossil-fuel extraction, the closure of all coal-burning power stations by 2030 and net carbon neutrality by 2035. This is both technically feasible and what is necessary to give our reef the best chance of survival.

The abject failure of our politicians can be met with only one answer. The people of Australia have rallied before to save our Great Barrier Reef, and we must continue to do so.

The last best chance for our Great Barrier Reef is the clean energy rebellion against fossil fuels. It is there in the "Save the Reef" signs of the school strikers, the numerous Australian local councils who have declared a climate emergency, the impact investors shifting billions in investment to renewables, and the major Australian businesses committing to buying all of their electricity from wind and solar by 2025 or sooner.

Above all, there is us, the millions of Australian citizens driven to resort to activism by the venality and negligence of our own government. We will never abandon our reef, the future of our children or the chance of our magnificent country flourishing once again.