Reef alarmists jump the shark

Australia now faces a developing economic crisis that may well become the most serious in our history. We have the most expensive housing, rapidly rising food prices and smallest manufacturing sector of any OECD nation. The resource boom that has sustained our prosperity appears to be deflating, and serious economic problems elsewhere mean recovery is more likely to take years than months. There are numerous other more real and important needs for our reduced government revenue than maintaining a few hundred bureaucrats and academics on a permanent Barrier Reef holiday.

If the reef alarmists are right, any "resilience" the reef may have had in the past has not been enough to prevent the loss of half the coral. Now, with even less resilience and an accelerating rate of alleged coral loss, the reef is clearly doomed and we need to face that fact. Continuing to throw massive resources into the ocean to maintain a pretence of "saving" it is both futile and stupid. The reef needs to be put on palliative care with major reductions in expenditure on management and research while maintaining only a modest effort to monitor any further changes in condition.

On the other hand, if the whole business of threats to the reef has simply been grossly exaggerated then it is also time to end the charade. In addition to rent-seekers there is abundant evidence of a variety of other unhealthy influences being involved as well. These include media sensationalism, political pandering for green votes, postmodern scientific corruption, "noble cause" corruption, ill-informed eco-evangelism and bureaucratic empire building.

Jumping the Reef Shark

In 1977, after several years of high ratings, the popular U.S. TV sitcom Happy Days was losing viewers. To recapture audience attention the writers came up with the idea of having the star, Fonzie, jump a shark on water skis. Since then "jumping the shark" has come to refer to desperate but somewhat silly stunts to regenerate interest in a fading brand, product or activity. It seems that with the level of eco-threats becoming so inflated by climate-change hype, the reef-threat industry has been losing popular interest to the climate catastrophists. However, jumping the shark by ratcheting up the reef threat to the level of imminent demise of the GBR looks desperate, not very credible and likely to entail substantial unintended consequences. Certainly it raises a serious doubt about the actual quality of any expertise involved.

To give credit where due, though, reef alarmists have at least managed the extraordinary feat of jumping the shark while shooting themselves in the foot at the same time.

Regardless of the reef-salvation industry's industry's motives, its efforts can only be viewed as either honest but incompetent or duplicitous and self-serving. It is time to severely cut the funding for this elaborate and costly farce. By their own reckoning the reef saviours have failed miserably and we can no longer afford them.

Personally, I suspect that the surest way to save the reef would be to cut funding for management and research by half and link future cuts or increases to the balance of economic and environmental outcomes. I have little doubt that would soon effect a miraculous recovery.