Sparks: Almost every shallow-water coral reef on the planet faces ecosystem collapse by 2075, UN advisors say

In the Maldives I watched men build reefs of coral stone for their houses, and now the learned men of the age tell me the living reefs themselves will be gone within fifty years, which is a strange thing to consider when the same stone has been the foundation of every guesthouse I have slept in.

A nation that depends on the sea for its trade and its food cannot treat the death of the sea as a distant inconvenience to be lamented at international conferences while its own subsidies accelerate the destruction.

The reef does not collapse because of malice but because every government that could have restrained the causes found it more convenient to commission another report than to constrain the interests that funded its election.

You have known for thirty years that the water is warming, and you have built your houses and your holidays and your dividends upon that knowledge, and now you will gather in conference to express your sorrow at the very thing you chose not to prevent.

How long, I ask, will the nations of the earth continue to consult, to deliberate, to issue declarations of concern, while the very reefs that shield their coasts from storm are reduced to rubble beneath the warming water they refuse to restrain?

The report expresses profound concern that the world's reefs will vanish by 2075, which is the sort of deadline that allows every minister to retire before the invoice arrives.

Things that are beautiful and doomed: a coral reef in the shallow water, the color of it in the afternoon light, the small fish that have nowhere else to go.

You cannot rescue the reef by mourning it; you must go back into the water, find the routes that still run cool, and carry what can be carried to safety before the whole house falls.