The emotional enterprise of environmental sociology

Lockie, Stewart

Abstract

[Extract] A senior professor at my university recently announced, via social media, that on sharing research data with a group of colleagues he and everyone else present wept. Scientists don't usually cry over data and they certainly don't, as a matter of course, let others know when they do. In this case, the data in question came from an aerial survey of coral bleaching across the World Heritage listed Great Barrier Reef (GBR). Unusually warm sea water temperatures from March to April 2016 (themselves a product of the combined impacts of anthropogenic climate change and the El Niño phase of the Pacific Ocean's natural warm and cool cycles) led eventually to the death of 22% of corals across the GBR as a whole with much higher rates in northern sections of the Reef (GBRMPA 2016). Such bleaching has not, unfortunately, been isolated to one reef system. According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2016 marked the third year of a global bleaching event that shows no immediate signs of easing (NOAA 2016).

Journal

Environmental Sociology

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2325-1042

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Taylor & Francis

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DOI

10.1080/23251042.2016.1237794