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Stories from people who are religious minorities on the edge of extinction in Iraq.

At first I was taken aback by the claim that the lack of tourists could harm the coral reef. How could less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions harm an endangered reef, after all. Then, I got to read the morbidly depressing news that without a chance to swim next to the pretty colors, humans have little motivation to save a reef they themselves have destroyed. If we do not want the human race to go extinct, or if, at the bare minimum, we don't want to kill off every other species then we must completely reshift the way we think about climate change. Global warming is unchangeably tied with our capitalist system, which produces beliefs in money and individualism over the safety of every living thing.

This is such an interesting take on the impact of the coronavirus and Climate Change. Like Cooper, I originally thought that the general decrease in travel emissions and tourists would have a positive impact on the reefs. However, I had never considered how visiting the reefs in person provides very real motivation for people to appreciate them and contribute to their well being. It seems that coronavirus has allowed us to distance ourselves from very real problems like these, and make us that much less likely to take action. I thought it was also interesting how much Australia relies on tourists from other countries and how coronavirus has revealed how interdependent different countries are.

Like Cooper and Anya said, I would never have thought that tourism was actually beneficial to the coral reefs. Although this seems almost counterintuitive, reading this article brought to my attention how complicated the relationship between capitalism and the well being of some things in nature is.