Great Barrier Reef declared dead at 25 million years old.

[Warren DeMontague]

24. It's a tactic I've seen time and again, and I think it's deeply counterproductive.

Hyperbolic bullshit in the cause of furthering environmental awareness does NOT create new environmentalists; rather, it causes people to be more likely to consider all environmental warnings bullshit.

I worked with the Rainforest Action Network in the 80s-- I remember one piece of breathless nonsense I would hear repeated as gospel "scientific" truth; "Planet Earth will not be able to sustain any life more complex than a cockroach, by the year 2000"

Obviously that was not the case, was it, fellow cockroaches?

A similar scenario took place several years ago when people said the Himalayan Snowpack would be gone in a decade, or so.

The problem with this 'approach' is, it does not cause people to go "OH MY FUCKING GOD I BETTER DO SOMETHING RIGHT NOW" which, I presume, is the intent- rather, it makes them throw up their hands and even worse, when they discover they were lied to, to not take any environmental warnings seriously-- like, yes, rainforest depletion and global climate change ARE real problems that deserve serious attention.

Same with ocean acidification and warming.