Reality, bleached
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

White.
It isn’t a colour that usually strikes one’s mind when asked to describe what our world looks like. Mother Nature has always been one to use all the colours of the spectrum, from the blue sky we are greeted with during the day to the innumerable hues of flowers. From orange coloured poisonous toads to the bright pink flamingos. The world we are born in, and have come to know, is a colourful world.
Humans as a species have also had a bit of a bias towards colourful things. I mean, there is rarely a room in a modern household where one colour dominates. So it comes a quite a surprise that, when we do a reality check, the truth is that we have been busy stripping the colour out of nature.
Corals are a unique set of creatures that have been on the Earth for quite a while. In simple words, they can be called as a joint venture of sorts between an animal and a plant. The plant makes the food for the animal while the animal protects the plant from the environment. These corals can grow only in specific regions of the world where there is rock as well as sunlight penetrating through the water.

As we continue glorifying and increasing our use of fossil fuels, the global average temperatures are rising at an exponential rate. Year after year, humanity keeps on setting a new records for highest global temperatures. For 3 consecutive years, we broke the record for highest temperatures (2014, 2015, 2016), and it seems to be that we are aiming for a 4th. These rising temperatures are causing the water of the oceans to heat up significantly.
There are 2 big impacts this has on us
First, our storm behavior will change. Storms like hurricanes are fueled by water vapor that come from the water bodies the form on. More vapor = stronger storm. With rising temperatures, the increase in the amount of vapor being released is unprecedented. Is it a coincidence that one of the strongest tornadoes and one of the strongest hurricanes struck within one year of each other? They will get stronger. There will be more of them. And they will be merciless. To sum it up, as Allison Stone said, “What was a once-in-a-lifetime storm is now a once-a-year storm.”
Second, our corals are boiling away. While humans might find a 1 degree rise in ocean temperatures trivial, to corals and many other ocean inhabitants, it’s like jumping from the pan into the fire. They are absolutely intolerant to any significant changes to their environment. The rising heat causes them to expel the algae (the plant part of the coral) out of their skeleton. It’s analogous to a man throwing out his food in a fit of rage. Without the algae, the corals turn white as the Calcium Carbonate in their exoskeleton get exposed. Without the algae, the corals don’t live very long, and they soon die from starvation, leaving an endless, desolate graveyard of white bones and corpses. The inhabitants of the reef (which by the way number in the 10s of thousands) are all evicted. In places like the Caribbean where corals are the only things breaking the waves, the gloomy fate awaiting them is inevitable as the islands lay in the open ocean like sitting ducks. It takes years if not decades for reefs like the Great Barrier to reach the size they are today. Once dead, they will take take decades to reform.
If Ever.

As 2017 crosses that halfway mark, let’s make it a point to be a little more considerate. To those around us, to the environment around us. Remember, the smoke from your car could kill people on the other side of the globe.
“There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all Crew.”
-Marshall McLuhan
