By Bjorn LomborgGuest contributor\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Sept. 6, 2026 3 AM PT <\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s marine scientists released their annual audit of the Great Barrier Reef last month, and it contains news you almost certainly haven\u2019t heard: Coral cover held steady or increased<\/a> across most of the reef. The scientists measure the percentage of living hard coral cover, and in the 40 years of systematic study, the five best years on record are the five most recent<\/a>. That is the sound of a catastrophe not happening.<\/p>\n You haven\u2019t heard the good news because the reef has an entire public relations industry built around predicting its imminent demise as a result of global warming. In 2012, researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science reported that the reef had lost about half its coral cover since the mid-1980s \u2014 falling from 28% to just 13.9% \u2014 and projected that cover could halve yet again by 2022<\/a>. In 2014, the Guardian published an interactive obituary<\/a> for the reef. In 2016, Outside magazine agreed, declaring the reef dead<\/a> at age 25 million.<\/p>\n The patient, it turned out, hadn\u2019t read the notices. By 2021, coral cover was higher than at any point since measurements began in 1986. It stayed at unprecedented levels through 2022 and 2023 and climbed to a new all-time high in 2024<\/a>. The reef answered two decades of death sentences with more coral than anyone had ever measured.<\/p>\n The scientists even stopped publishing the reefwide statistic \u2014 making it harder for the layperson to easily see that the reef was defying long-held predictions. But researchers from AIMS continued publishing regional averages, making it possible to effectively re-create<\/a> their reefwide average \u2014 which clearly kept increasing.<\/p>\n This posed a problem, which the doomsayers solved with a new annual ritual: Report the positive news and number, then smother it in warnings. When coral surged back in 2021, the monitoring institute insisted the outlook remained \u201cvery poor.\u201d<\/a> When 2022 set records, the BBC granted that cover was the highest in 36 years but still \u201chighly vulnerable.\u201d<\/a> In 2023, with the reef still near record highs, the official report was headlined as a \u201cpause\u201d in recovery.<\/a> At 2024\u2019s peak, scientists declared the reef one disturbance away from losing it all.<\/a> The reckoning was always due next year. Next year kept arriving, and so did the coral.<\/p>\n In 2025, the media decided the reckoning had finally come. \u201cG<\/a>reat Barrier Reef suffers worst coral decline on record,<\/a>\u201d<\/a> announced the BBC. CNN pronounced the reef \u201cdevastated.\u201d<\/a> What the headlines omitted was that the drop came off the highest level ever recorded, and 2025 still ranked as the fourth-best year in four decades of measurement. In any other field, a fourth best-ever result would be a triumph.<\/p>\n The doomsayers pressed on, undeterred. In July, two prominent marine biologists warned the reef faced a very high risk of \u201cecosystem collapse.\u201d<\/a> Weeks later we now have the actual data: coral growing again in the north and center, stable in the south, helped by a late monsoon that cooled the water<\/a>. The collapse has been rescheduled, as it is every August.<\/p>\n When catastrophe fails to arrive, a second story stands ready: Take a bow and send the bill. Australia\u2019s federal and Queensland governments have spent more than 5 billion Australian dollars on reef programs since 2014, and when UNESCO declined in July to put the reef on its \u201cin danger\u201d list, Australia\u2019s ministers hailed the decision as recognition of the country\u2019s world-leading reef management.<\/a> It takes nerve to spend decades forecasting an ecosystem\u2019s death and then claim credit for its historically high coral cover and remarkable resilience.<\/p>\n The reef\u2019s swings have little to do with Canberra\u2019s checkbook. The main spending that has a proven impact on coral cover is dealing with the crown-of-thorns starfish. When populations spike, these predators consume massive amounts of hard coral. The best estimate is that Australia\u2019s spending on killing these starfish has delivered half a percentage point more coral cover. That is clearly not the main reason for the reef\u2019s 10 to 25 percentage point rebound.<\/p>\n Coral cover falls when cyclones, heat waves and crown-of-thorns starfish strike, and rebounds because fast-growing branching corals do what they have done for millennia. Government spending does not summon the monsoon. And if the billions spent really did explain the record years, what would explain the 2025 drop? Did the money briefly stop working?<\/p>\n None of this means the reef faces no threats. Bleaching events have hit six times since 2016.<\/a> Coral cover fluctuates, and next year\u2019s survey may well be lower. But fluctuation is not death, and an ecosystem that has just delivered the five best years in its 40-year record cannot plausibly be called moribund.<\/p>\n Every August the audit arrives, the doom does not, and those who predicted the reef\u2019s demise go unchallenged. That should change because the exaggeration is not harmless. Crying wolf has a well-known ending. Despite years of funeral music being blasted by the world\u2019s media, the Great Barrier Reef is still going strong.<\/p>\n Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, visiting fellow at Stanford University\u2019s Hoover Institution and author of \u201cFalse Alarm\u201d and \u201cBest Things First.\u201d<\/p>\n Insights <\/p>\n L.A. Times Insights<\/a> delivers AI-generated analysis on Voices content to offer all points of view. Insights does not appear on any news articles. <\/p>\n Viewpoint This article generally aligns with a Center Right<\/b> point of view. Learn more about this AI-generated analysis<\/a> Perspectives <\/p>\n The following AI-generated content is powered by Perplexity. The Los Angeles Times editorial staff does not create or edit the content.<\/p>\n Ideas expressed in the piece<\/p>\n Different views on the topic<\/p>\n\n
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