' "I was a climate change skeptic, at first," he says. He realized that climate change was "serious" in the mid-1980s, and around 1990 he became "alarmed" about its impact on coral reefs.
..
His certainty is partly due to the fact that the oceans are only now seeing the impact of carbon emissions from the late 1990s, so Veron says even if we stop burning fossil fuels now, the oceans will continue warming for at least two more decades.
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The biggest driver of increased carbon emissions in the atmosphere is burning coal, he says, and that's something he thinks Australia is not doing enough to stop.
"It's very political, because no country is as addicted to coal as Australia is," he says. "We're making a fortune out of coal."
Australia was the world's largest exporter of coal in 2017 and although the country is signed up to the Paris Agreement on climate change, this week the Australian government withdrew its National Energy Guarantee (NEG) legislation -- which included targets for lowering carbon emissions -- saying there was a lack of support for the bill.
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"Coral bleaching is driven by carbon dioxide -- unless you stop pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, it'll go on. It's as simple as that," Veron says.'
- CNN,
The ‘Godfather of Coral’ predicts a ‘planetary catastrophe’, August, 2018
Context(Global Healing 2020 - 2050) - Global Greening - the rise of agro-forestry - '..global attempt to plant and restore forest land..'