In another disgraceful move related to environmental damage, the Australian government has stripped out any reference to the Great Barrier Reef, the Northern Territory’s glorious Kakadu national park and Tasmania’s forests in a report on climate change. Equally disgraceful was the willingness of Unesco to knuckle under to any country that objected to such references in the report entitled “Destinations at Risk: World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate.” The massive “bleaching” of the Great Barrier Reef has horrified people around the world as we watch the loss of this natural wonder to climate change and poor governmental policies, as we previously discussed.
Australia insisted that the references to the Great Barrier Reef “had the potential to cause considerable confusion” because it had gotten the UN to drop references earlier to the reef as “in danger.” However, that move was also denounced since the over-whelming environmental and scientific community view the reef as endangered from mass coral bleaching. So now the report has been whitewashed, leaving it looking much like the reef itself.
