Robin Williams

Oh, I lower my voice.

Because the doom, the thought that the world might lose the Great Barrier Reef, because you're going to lose a universe, really, of every form of water life that you can think of.

And everybody knows how wonderful the Barrier Reef is.

Perhaps not everybody knows what a key it is to the whole life of the oceans.

And if you lose those reefs, you lose the nurseries where the young or so many fish grow up.

And the disaster would be just unspeakable.

And I'm not sure what can be done about it.

It's the rising sea levels that are causing these initial problems.

Of course, people have got the vague idea that the reefs have been dealing with sea level rise for a long time and they could just move, go south or grow further up or go further down.

No.

The sea level is only one problem.

I mean, the even bigger problem is the acidification of the water, really.

The increasing levels of carbon in the atmosphere, which is absorbed by the sea, is in the form of CO2, which turns into carbonic acid, which changes the acidity of the oceans, which are key to the survival of corals.

And if that acidification goes on,

And it's difficult to know how these corals, as we know them, can survive.

The point, of course, is that these changes of this magnitude are just a moment in the geological record, but a moment where only human beings are only here for a geological record.

As for the generation, my generation, your generation, and our grandchildren and so on, that's hardly registered at all.

And within that timescale, this disaster could happen.

And if the reefs were to recover, that's not going to be for centuries.

What would you like to see happen to make them safe?