Pearls in a vinegar bottle!

This little guy is only 1cm long (a little under ½ an inch) but he is a vital link in the chain that feeds billions of people. He is eaten by fish that eat other fish and we eat them. Pretty important stuff.

Sea Butterfly.

Tallest cathedrals
rest on a grain of sand.

Sharing the load
across its billions.

Mightiest oceans
rest on a butterfly

Giving its body
to succour humanity.


Scientists (who study these things) are screaming in the wilderness that unless we stop carbon dioxide emissions forthwith this tiny Sea Butterfly and thousands of like species will go the way of the dodo.

How? Like the story of the string of pearls in the vinegar bottle, their little calcium carbonate exoskeletons are melting, as oceans take up 80% of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide and become too acidic for them. For an explanation of the process, click here.

Our children will face that consequence (along with sea level rise, more violent weather extremes etc etc) and here in Australia we will lose the Great Barrier Reef, our most popular tourist attraction.

Now we come to the politics. Following the dumping of ‘Malcolm in the middle’ Turnbull “I will not lead a party that refuses to act on climate change’ as leader of the Conservatives in favour of Tony Abbott “Climate change is bunkum”, the long negotiations between Rudd’s government and the opposition to hammer out an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS), was itself dumped.

So Gillard, Rudd, Swan et al discussed their options. There was a range of views, stretching from ‘dump it’ to ‘forge ahead regardless’. As Rudd said last week; ‘Some folk in the Caucus wanted to throw the ETS out forever’.

Following that mischievous little snippet of the obvious, the hunt was on to name those who wanted to dump it! We have lead stories and aggressive questioning by radio’s most ignorant shock jocks and even the ABC’s prestigious 7.30 Report presenter Chris Ullman wasted precious time trying to bully the Prime Minister into naming names!

Meanwhile back in the vinegar bottle, the whole maritime food chain is in meltdown, Australia’s greatest tourist attraction is a generation away from demise, and there I was again, watching our PM being prevented from explaining the importance of tackling climate change by another egotistical nincompoop. I wanted to cry!