Page 213 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

18 CONCLUSION: ONE MONTH IN THE LIFE OF THE PLANET … 209

in the affluent West, manufacturing centres in emerging economies are
unlikely to fully enforce relevant environmental and health and safety reg-
ulations. Secondly, pollution generated in specific locations is never only a
local issue since it is dispersed to other regions on global air currents. They
calculated that 108,600 premature deaths in China can be linked to con-
sumer demand in North America and Europe, including demand for smart
phones and other digital devices, adding to the deaths attributable to the
hazards associated with salvaging saleable materials from electronic waste at
the other end of the production cycle.
New research released in March addressed another fundamental climate
process, the accelerating ocean warming that contributes significantly to
overall planetary temperatures, the likelihood of intense rainfall events and
the bleaching of coral reefs (Cheng et al. 2017). Employing improved
techniques for measuring ocean temperatures the authors demonstrated
that over the last 60 years the oceans have been warming 13% faster than
previously thought and that since 1990 warming has penetrated to depths
below 700 metres. The world’s most famous reef is the Great Barrier off
the north-east coast of Australia. As a government commissioned report on
the state of the Australian Environment published in March 2017 noted,
record high water temperatures have caused widespread coral bleaching,
habitat destruction and species mortality between 2011–2016 (Jackson
et al. 2017: xii). In 2016, mass bleaching killed 22% of the coral on the
Great Barrier Reef, with an aerial survey on 09 March 2017 confirming
that a second mass bleaching event was underway caused by an underwater
heat wave (The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority 2017). The
construction of the planned Carmichael coal mining complex, addressed by
Benedetta Brevini and Terry Woronov in their chapter, will have a major
adverse impact.

CONVENIENT UNTRUTHS
The complex, comprising six open-cut pits and additional underground
mines, would be the world’s most extensive exploitation of untapped
global coal reserves. The project is being proposed by The Adani Group, a
diversified conglomerate headed by one of India’s wealthiest and most
influential men, Gautam Adani. It comes at a time when there is a growing
consensus that halting all new extraction and ‘keeping it in the ground’,in
the resonant slogan promoting The Guardian’s campaign (described in
Alan Rusbridger interview), is absolutely essential if the target for cutting