• The Publisher’s Notebook •

Malibu Connections

BY ANNE SOBLE

The recent hard-fought battle to protect the southern coast from the BHP Billiton Cabrillo Port liquefied natural gas floating facility forced Malibuites to become more aware of Australian financial and political forces, as well as that nation’s environmental concerns, or lack thereof. So too will assessments of where the community should stand on other LNG projects that are proposed by energy and resource behemoths from down under. It will not suffice to determine the potential impact of a proposal on Malibuites (the backyard issues), but we must question how it impacts the populations and ecosystems that are directly affected. This is an indirect part of the focus of a group of dedicated environmentalists, including locals Daryl Hannah and Leonardo DiCaprio. The Reef Check Foundation is trying to raise awareness about the crisis conditions in the coral reefs and in the rocky reefs ecosystem in California (Reef Check California). The group is planning a local fundraiser in mid-September.

More than 5000 people from 110 countries have signed an International Declaration of Reef Rights and hope to draw attention to the need to preserve remaining coral reefs and try to rehabilitate damaged reefs globally. Reef Check estimates that as much as 20 percent of the world’s coral reefs have been irreparably damaged or completely destroyed in the last two decades. Obviously, protection of imperiled areas won’t occur in a “reef check” vacuum. If a company wants to do business in California and its provision of resources, such as LNG, comes at a cost to native populations, or coral reefs, or other fragile and endanger habitat, that has to be factored into the project’s cost to the people of California and must be part of the public policy debate about whether this state needs or wants resources that come with an environmentally devastating price tag. Companies that owe their power and wealth to extracting resources from nature are driven more by the concepts of “exploit and discard” than they are by the notions of “protect and nurture.” When projects are stopped in their tracks, the giants pay attention. But we have to be certain they understand why.