Oil Companies Knew Coral Reefs Would Dissolve. In 1978.

1
00:00:00,049 --> 00:00:04,100
In 1978, an Exxon scientist stood
in front of company management

2
00:00:04,100 --> 00:00:05,770
with a list of research questions.

3
00:00:05,876 --> 00:00:08,186
One of them was written
in capital letters.

4
00:00:08,293 --> 00:00:13,476
It asked, "Are shallow water carbonates
dissolving?" Shallow water carbonates,

5
00:00:13,616 --> 00:00:17,416
that's the scientific name for
the thing a coral reef is made of.

6
00:00:18,016 --> 00:00:20,356
So let me put the question
in plain language.

7
00:00:20,376 --> 00:00:25,036
In 1978, one of the biggest oil
companies on Earth was asking, on the

8
00:00:25,036 --> 00:00:29,396
record, whether burning its product
would dissolve the world's coral reefs.

9
00:00:29,873 --> 00:00:31,083
They had the question.

10
00:00:31,483 --> 00:00:34,323
Over the next ten years,
they got the answer.

11
00:00:34,589 --> 00:00:39,229
And then they spent decades paying
people to tell you the answer was no.

12
00:00:39,869 --> 00:00:44,040
This is a story of a paper trail, and by
the end of it, you're gonna know something

13
00:00:44,040 --> 00:00:48,429
most people don't, plus one specific
thing that you can do with it this week.

14
00:00:49,148 --> 00:00:51,888
You're listening to the How to Protect
the Ocean podcast, and I'm Andrew

15
00:00:51,888 --> 00:00:55,881
Lewin, and this is the show that is
about one thing, the actions, big

16
00:00:55,881 --> 00:00:58,601
and small, that keep our ocean alive.

17
00:00:58,828 --> 00:01:01,818
If that's your kind of thing, hit
that follow button so these episodes

18
00:01:01,818 --> 00:01:03,738
land in your feed every weekday.

19
00:01:04,349 --> 00:01:05,809
Okay, let's get into it.

20
00:01:06,359 --> 00:01:08,819
Here's the question
driving today's episode.

21
00:01:09,089 --> 00:01:12,839
If one company knows its product
will destroy something and stays

22
00:01:12,839 --> 00:01:17,043
quiet, and then funds people to
muddy the water, who's responsible

23
00:01:17,043 --> 00:01:18,973
when that thing actually dies?

24
00:01:19,453 --> 00:01:21,723
That's not a hypothetical
question anymore.

25
00:01:21,939 --> 00:01:25,463
In June 2026, researchers at the
University of Oxford's Climate

26
00:01:25,463 --> 00:01:29,736
Litigation Lab published a study on
the journal NPJ Ocean Sustainability.

27
00:01:30,066 --> 00:01:34,146
They dug through more than fourteen
thousand pages of historical fossil

28
00:01:34,146 --> 00:01:38,209
fuel industry documents, and they
found something clean and damning.

29
00:01:38,506 --> 00:01:42,256
The carbon majors, the biggest oil
and gas companies in the world,

30
00:01:42,296 --> 00:01:46,373
understood by the 1980s that their
products could wreck coral reefs

31
00:01:46,373 --> 00:01:49,783
multiple ways in writing internally.

32
00:01:50,419 --> 00:01:52,609
So today's episode is in three parts.

33
00:01:52,853 --> 00:01:55,226
First, what they knew and when.

34
00:01:55,636 --> 00:01:59,279
Second, what they did about it
once the public started catching up.

35
00:01:59,473 --> 00:02:03,183
And third, what's happening to the
reefs right now and where you fit in.

36
00:02:03,533 --> 00:02:05,583
So here's part one, what they knew.

37
00:02:06,243 --> 00:02:10,083
Let's start with the reef itself,
because the science matters here.

38
00:02:10,453 --> 00:02:13,713
A coral reef looks like a rock,
but it's built by animals.

39
00:02:14,019 --> 00:02:17,049
Tiny coral polyps pull calcium
and carbonate out of the sea

40
00:02:17,049 --> 00:02:21,119
water and lay down a skeleton made
of a mineral called aragonite.

41
00:02:21,463 --> 00:02:26,006
It's a form of calcium carbonate, the
same basic stuff as chalk or seashells.

42
00:02:26,343 --> 00:02:30,373
They build slowly, upward toward
the light, layer on layer.

43
00:02:30,453 --> 00:02:34,443
For thousands of years, that's
the reef that we know and love.

44
00:02:34,963 --> 00:02:37,913
Now, here's the chemistry that oil
companies understood decades ago.

45
00:02:38,463 --> 00:02:41,213
When you burn fossil fuels,
you release carbon dioxide.

46
00:02:41,526 --> 00:02:43,946
The ocean absorbs a huge amount of CO2.

47
00:02:44,239 --> 00:02:48,076
And when CO2 dissolves into
seawater, it makes the water

48
00:02:48,076 --> 00:02:51,516
more acidic, and it pulls down the
amount of carbonate floating around.

49
00:02:51,516 --> 00:02:54,603
Carbonate is the exact
building block corals need.

50
00:02:55,133 --> 00:02:58,093
Take it away, and corals can't
build their skeletons as densely.

51
00:02:58,533 --> 00:03:01,683
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
researchers showed the mechanism

52
00:03:01,683 --> 00:03:03,743
in detail under more acidic water.

53
00:03:03,890 --> 00:03:07,919
Corals keep growing upward, and their
skeletons get thinner and weaker.

54
00:03:08,439 --> 00:03:12,139
Easier to snap in a storm, easier
for the organisms to bore into.

55
00:03:12,516 --> 00:03:15,656
Their modeling found that skeletal
density in major reef-building corals

56
00:03:15,686 --> 00:03:20,016
could drop by up to twenty percent
this century from acidification alone.

57
00:03:20,456 --> 00:03:21,786
That's the modern science.

58
00:03:22,076 --> 00:03:24,176
Now, here's the part that should stop you.

59
00:03:24,716 --> 00:03:27,276
Exxon knew the shape of
this in the late 1970s.

60
00:03:27,686 --> 00:03:32,866
That 1978 document with the capital letter
question about dissolving carbonates, that

61
00:03:32,866 --> 00:03:34,936
was Exxon reviewing research priorities.

62
00:03:35,006 --> 00:03:37,826
And then around 1982, Exxon
scientists went further.

63
00:03:38,079 --> 00:03:42,043
They'd found a natural gas field near
the Natuna Islands in the South China

64
00:03:42,043 --> 00:03:44,076
Sea, and this field was strange.

65
00:03:44,343 --> 00:03:46,933
It was more than 70% carbon dioxide.

66
00:03:47,263 --> 00:03:50,776
If they vented all that CO2 while
producing the gas, it would've

67
00:03:50,776 --> 00:03:53,956
been the single largest point source
of carbon dioxide on the planet.

68
00:03:54,516 --> 00:03:57,496
So Exxon's own scientists modeled
what would happen if they injected

69
00:03:57,496 --> 00:03:59,746
that CO2 into the deep ocean instead.

70
00:04:00,436 --> 00:04:05,416
Their conclusion, in writing, it would
spike the acidity over an area of around

71
00:04:05,426 --> 00:04:10,146
1,000 square kilometers, and it would
dissolve aragonite and calcite structures.

72
00:04:10,339 --> 00:04:11,279
That's coral.

73
00:04:11,629 --> 00:04:14,973
They wrote that the chemistry
of CO2 and seawater was, quote,

74
00:04:15,123 --> 00:04:16,983
"well understood" in 1982.

75
00:04:18,129 --> 00:04:18,949
Then there's Shell.

76
00:04:18,989 --> 00:04:22,019
In 1986, Shell's internal
greenhouse effect working group

77
00:04:22,049 --> 00:04:24,009
completed a confidential report.

78
00:04:24,316 --> 00:04:26,936
It walked through what rising
CO2 would do to the ocean.

79
00:04:27,276 --> 00:04:32,396
And it said, "In nearshore areas, shells
and corals would be exposed to water

80
00:04:32,396 --> 00:04:37,523
rich in CO2 and low in pH." And that,
quote, " Massive deaths of organisms"

81
00:04:37,653 --> 00:04:43,523
was, quote, " not unrealistic." The same
report listed a potential disappearance

82
00:04:43,553 --> 00:04:47,776
of complete coral islands as a
socioeconomic impact of global warming.

83
00:04:48,196 --> 00:04:49,816
And it wasn't just acidification.

84
00:04:50,336 --> 00:04:54,616
In 1988, a conference in Washington
co-sponsored by the fossil fuel interests,

85
00:04:54,616 --> 00:04:59,203
including Texaco and the American
Petroleum Institute, NASA scientist James

86
00:04:59,203 --> 00:05:03,463
Hansen and others laid out that Caribbean
corals can't survive when water pushes

87
00:05:03,463 --> 00:05:07,929
past thirty degrees Celsius, and that
warming would drive more intense storms.

88
00:05:08,143 --> 00:05:12,863
Another presenter warned that warmer
water made what he called hot snaps,

89
00:05:12,993 --> 00:05:17,883
marine heatwaves, more likely and
pointed straight at the 1987 Caribbean

90
00:05:17,883 --> 00:05:19,473
bleaching event as the preview.

91
00:05:19,863 --> 00:05:24,073
So by the end of the 1980s, pull
it all together, the industry had

92
00:05:24,073 --> 00:05:27,753
internal knowledge of all three of
the big killers we watch destroy

93
00:05:27,773 --> 00:05:29,153
coral reefs today: acidification,

94
00:05:30,353 --> 00:05:32,283
heating and bleaching and stronger storms.

95
00:05:32,823 --> 00:05:36,403
Years, in some cases, before the
world's climate scientists said

96
00:05:36,403 --> 00:05:38,443
it out loud in the IPCC report.

97
00:05:39,061 --> 00:05:40,071
We're gonna have a quick pause here.

98
00:05:40,071 --> 00:05:42,841
If this is landing for you, if
you're sitting there going, "Wait,

99
00:05:42,901 --> 00:05:44,521
they actually wrote this down?"

100
00:05:44,701 --> 00:05:47,918
Do me a favor and send this episode
to one person who needs to hear it.

101
00:05:48,081 --> 00:05:50,661
That's how this story grows, and
that's how this story spreads.

102
00:05:51,061 --> 00:05:52,051
Okay, part two.

103
00:05:52,338 --> 00:05:54,738
What happened once the
public started to catch up?

104
00:05:55,421 --> 00:05:57,031
Here's the turn in the story.

105
00:05:57,121 --> 00:05:59,801
Knowing something and
hiding it is one thing.

106
00:06:00,098 --> 00:06:02,488
What the researchers
documented next is worse.

107
00:06:02,791 --> 00:06:04,351
The industry didn't just stay quiet.

108
00:06:04,391 --> 00:06:06,261
It funded the opposite message.

109
00:06:06,761 --> 00:06:08,131
Jump to two thousand twelve.

110
00:06:08,621 --> 00:06:12,291
A think tank called the Cato Institute
published a two hundred-page report.

111
00:06:12,821 --> 00:06:16,288
Cato has been funded over the
years by ExxonMobil, the American

112
00:06:16,288 --> 00:06:19,438
Petroleum Institute, and the Koch
family foundations among others.

113
00:06:19,905 --> 00:06:23,825
This report was designed to look
almost identical to an official

114
00:06:23,825 --> 00:06:25,465
US government climate assessment.

115
00:06:25,651 --> 00:06:29,305
Same title, nearly the same cover
graphics, and it was positioned as a

116
00:06:29,305 --> 00:06:31,535
superior correction to the real thing.

117
00:06:31,945 --> 00:06:36,055
On coral reefs specifically, the report
reassured readers that the science did

118
00:06:36,055 --> 00:06:40,325
not support, in their words, "alarming
statements about losing reefs."

119
00:06:40,885 --> 00:06:44,605
It suggested bleached corals were
simply adapting to warmer water.

120
00:06:44,931 --> 00:06:49,381
On acidification, it leaned on the study
that conveniently stopped before the area

121
00:06:49,381 --> 00:06:51,441
of heaviest oil fossil fuel pollution.

122
00:06:51,581 --> 00:06:55,401
And it even floated the idea that
warming might help corals grow.

123
00:06:55,915 --> 00:06:58,605
Now, hold that against what the
industry's own scientists had written.

124
00:06:58,798 --> 00:07:02,875
Shell's people said massive deaths
of organisms, not unrealistic.

125
00:07:03,151 --> 00:07:07,101
The public-facing message funded
by the same industry was, "Relax,

126
00:07:07,101 --> 00:07:10,268
the reefs are fine." And here's
the detail that makes it land.

127
00:07:10,548 --> 00:07:14,811
By two thousand and seven, five years
before the Cato report, the IPCC had

128
00:07:14,871 --> 00:07:18,851
already warned in its fourth assessment
that all coral reefs would bleach below

129
00:07:18,851 --> 00:07:22,981
two degrees of warming, and that we would
see the extinction of the remaining coral

130
00:07:22,981 --> 00:07:25,191
reef ecosystems around three degrees.

131
00:07:25,761 --> 00:07:28,261
The word coral appeared in
that report's impact volume

132
00:07:28,261 --> 00:07:30,231
more than seven hundred times.

133
00:07:30,648 --> 00:07:33,798
The reassurance wasn't a
genuine scientific disagreement.

134
00:07:34,178 --> 00:07:38,335
It contradicted the settled consensus,
and it contradicted what the industry had

135
00:07:38,335 --> 00:07:40,495
known internally for twenty-five years.

136
00:07:40,801 --> 00:07:44,721
That's the pattern researchers
call knowledge, denial, delay.

137
00:07:45,161 --> 00:07:49,771
Learn it early, deny it publicly,
delay the response as long as possible.

138
00:07:50,321 --> 00:07:53,031
And every year of delay
is an emissions year.

139
00:07:53,501 --> 00:07:54,741
It's warmer water.

140
00:07:54,961 --> 00:07:57,666
It's another bleaching
event All right, part three.

141
00:07:57,896 --> 00:07:59,016
What's happening now?

142
00:07:59,616 --> 00:08:03,046
So where are the reefs today
after all of that delay?

143
00:08:03,466 --> 00:08:08,306
Between January 2023 and mid-2025,
the world went through the fourth

144
00:08:08,326 --> 00:08:11,749
global coral bleaching event, and
it was the largest ever recorded.

145
00:08:11,949 --> 00:08:15,909
According to NOAA, bleaching-level
heat stress hit about 84% of

146
00:08:15,909 --> 00:08:17,329
the world's coral reef area.

147
00:08:17,606 --> 00:08:21,476
Mass bleaching was documented in at least
83 countries and territories across all

148
00:08:21,476 --> 00:08:23,646
three ocean basins that contain reefs.

149
00:08:24,006 --> 00:08:27,886
Just to put that into scale, the first
global bleaching event back in 1998

150
00:08:28,006 --> 00:08:30,326
hit about 21% of the coral reefs.

151
00:08:30,499 --> 00:08:31,679
This one is 84.

152
00:08:32,712 --> 00:08:36,382
The heat was so far off the charts
that the main forecasting system,

153
00:08:36,382 --> 00:08:40,132
NOAA's Coral Reef Watch, had to add
three new levels of its bleaching

154
00:08:40,132 --> 00:08:44,412
alert scale because the old top level
didn't describe how bad it was getting.

155
00:08:44,829 --> 00:08:50,329
The new top level signals a risk of more
than 80% of the corals on a reef dying,

156
00:08:50,379 --> 00:08:54,736
not just bleaching, 'cause a reef can come
back, but dying because of the bleaching.

157
00:08:55,126 --> 00:08:57,866
And here's a line from NOAA that
I can't stop thinking about.

158
00:08:58,086 --> 00:09:01,899
When they announced the event had likely
ended in 2025, the coordinator said,

159
00:09:01,899 --> 00:09:07,149
"We are now in an era where reefs bleach
on a near annual basis." Near annual.

160
00:09:07,499 --> 00:09:10,029
Reefs need years to
recover between these hits.

161
00:09:10,589 --> 00:09:12,509
We're not even giving them years anymore.

162
00:09:12,839 --> 00:09:16,129
Remember, roughly one billion
people depend on coral reefs for

163
00:09:16,129 --> 00:09:19,362
food, income, and for physical
wall of a reef that breaks the

164
00:09:19,362 --> 00:09:21,162
waves before they hit the coast.

165
00:09:21,469 --> 00:09:24,499
Reefs shelter more than a quarter
of all named marine species.

166
00:09:24,786 --> 00:09:26,222
This isn't a postcard problem.

167
00:09:26,366 --> 00:09:29,356
It's a food and safety problem
for a huge chunk of humanity.

168
00:09:29,789 --> 00:09:33,259
But I promise that this show doesn't
just do doom for the sake of doom.

169
00:09:33,719 --> 00:09:36,349
So let's talk about where this
story is actually moving because

170
00:09:36,349 --> 00:09:37,639
there's a real opening here.

171
00:09:38,063 --> 00:09:41,293
The Oxford study wasn't written
just to make you angry or

172
00:09:41,293 --> 00:09:43,883
sad or feel just exhausted.

173
00:09:44,153 --> 00:09:48,193
It was written to be used because that
paper trail, the internal memos, the

174
00:09:48,193 --> 00:09:52,093
funded disinformation, is exactly the kind
of evidence that the courts care about.

175
00:09:52,343 --> 00:09:56,003
And climate lawsuits that cite
coral reefs are already live.

176
00:09:56,439 --> 00:09:59,759
In January twenty twenty-six, a court
in The Hague ruled on a case brought by

177
00:09:59,759 --> 00:10:03,513
Greenpeace Netherlands and residents
of Bonaire, a small Caribbean island

178
00:10:03,513 --> 00:10:04,683
that's part of the Netherlands.

179
00:10:04,869 --> 00:10:06,239
Bonaire's reefs were bleaching.

180
00:10:06,259 --> 00:10:09,519
Its coastline is at risk, and up
to a fifth of the island could be

181
00:10:09,519 --> 00:10:11,069
underwater by the end of the century.

182
00:10:11,409 --> 00:10:15,249
The court found that the Dutch government
was violating human rights by not doing

183
00:10:15,249 --> 00:10:19,156
its fair share to keep warming below
one point five degrees, and it ordered

184
00:10:19,156 --> 00:10:22,706
the state to adopt a real climate
adaptation plan by twenty thirty.

185
00:10:22,983 --> 00:10:25,606
Dying coral reefs were part of
the evidence the court accepted.

186
00:10:25,826 --> 00:10:29,256
That ruling was declared enforceable,
even if it gets appealed.

187
00:10:29,689 --> 00:10:30,589
That's the shift.

188
00:10:30,629 --> 00:10:33,629
For decades, the story was
they knew and nothing happened.

189
00:10:33,999 --> 00:10:38,269
Now, the knowing is becoming evidence,
and evidence is the leverage.

190
00:10:38,659 --> 00:10:40,819
Here's what I want you to walk
away with from this story.

191
00:10:41,359 --> 00:10:44,029
The collapse of coral
reefs was not a surprise.

192
00:10:44,089 --> 00:10:47,799
It was foreseen in writing by the
companies whose product caused it,

193
00:10:47,893 --> 00:10:49,673
and then it was actively obscured.

194
00:10:50,046 --> 00:10:51,386
That's not a reason to give up.

195
00:10:51,396 --> 00:10:52,219
It's the opposite.

196
00:10:52,429 --> 00:10:55,219
It means this isn't a mystery
we're helpless in front of.

197
00:10:55,659 --> 00:11:00,559
It's a situation with a cause, a paper
trail, and a growing set of legal tools

198
00:11:00,559 --> 00:11:02,179
pointed straight at accountability.

199
00:11:02,586 --> 00:11:04,796
Reefs are tougher than
we give them credit for.

200
00:11:05,113 --> 00:11:07,443
Corals that survive a bleaching
event can recover if we give

201
00:11:07,443 --> 00:11:09,123
them cooler water and time.

202
00:11:09,463 --> 00:11:10,883
They need the time to recover.

203
00:11:11,333 --> 00:11:14,133
The single most powerful thing
that buys them both is cutting

204
00:11:14,133 --> 00:11:15,533
the emissions that warm the water.

205
00:11:15,849 --> 00:11:19,779
Everything else, the restoration projects,
the marine protected areas, buys time.

206
00:11:19,976 --> 00:11:21,596
Emissions give them the future.

207
00:11:22,129 --> 00:11:24,595
Now let me give you a couple of
concrete things, and I'll be

208
00:11:24,635 --> 00:11:26,265
honest with what each one is worth.

209
00:11:26,779 --> 00:11:29,219
One, know the story
well enough to tell it.

210
00:11:29,369 --> 00:11:32,789
The most underrated ocean action is
being the person in the circle who

211
00:11:32,789 --> 00:11:36,789
can explain calmly and accurately
that this was foreseen and hidden.

212
00:11:37,169 --> 00:11:40,179
That's not going to save a reef
by itself, but shifting how people

213
00:11:40,189 --> 00:11:43,912
understand the cause is what makes
the bigger stuff, the policy, and

214
00:11:43,912 --> 00:11:46,152
the lawsuits politically possible.

215
00:11:46,802 --> 00:11:47,892
Share this episode.

216
00:11:47,952 --> 00:11:49,592
That's a small, real win.

217
00:11:50,105 --> 00:11:52,562
Now two, support the accountability work.

218
00:11:52,702 --> 00:11:55,839
Groups like Climate Litigation
Lab at Oxford and organizations

219
00:11:55,839 --> 00:11:59,589
tracking climate cases are turning
documents into legal pressure.

220
00:11:59,852 --> 00:12:03,265
Following them, amplifying their
findings, and where you can,

221
00:12:03,265 --> 00:12:07,175
supporting them feeds the pipeline
that makes the Bonaire ruling possible.

222
00:12:07,695 --> 00:12:11,195
Three, push your own emissions lever
at the scale you actually have.

223
00:12:11,589 --> 00:12:14,489
For most of us, the bigger
lever isn't the metal straw.

224
00:12:14,722 --> 00:12:16,352
It's the votes and the pressure.

225
00:12:16,745 --> 00:12:19,615
Contact the people who represent
you and tell them that ocean warming

226
00:12:19,615 --> 00:12:21,405
emissions are a voting issue for you.

227
00:12:21,912 --> 00:12:25,645
If you have a pension or investments,
ask where that money is sits.

228
00:12:26,385 --> 00:12:28,225
These are the most modest actions.

229
00:12:28,509 --> 00:12:31,039
I'm not gonna tell you one email
ends fossil fuel expansion.

230
00:12:31,389 --> 00:12:34,489
But reefs are dying from thousands
of small decisions upstream,

231
00:12:34,552 --> 00:12:36,192
and they get saved the same way.

232
00:12:36,592 --> 00:12:39,442
A thousand small decisions
pointed the other direction.

233
00:12:39,849 --> 00:12:43,162
Four, if you can, get in
the water respectfully.

234
00:12:43,509 --> 00:12:45,199
People protect what they love.

235
00:12:45,279 --> 00:12:49,942
Snorkel a reef, support a local reef
organization where you travel, follow

236
00:12:49,942 --> 00:12:52,032
the marine biologists doing restoration.

237
00:12:52,355 --> 00:12:55,845
Falling in love with the reef is a
legitimate first step for fighting for it.

238
00:12:56,419 --> 00:12:57,739
Now, that's the episode for today.

239
00:12:57,999 --> 00:13:00,762
If you got something out of it, follow
the show, and share it with one

240
00:13:00,762 --> 00:13:04,232
person who still thinks all of this
has just sort of happened by accident.

241
00:13:04,585 --> 00:13:07,685
It didn't, and they
knew, and now you do too.

242
00:13:08,025 --> 00:13:11,905
If you wanna support the show and support
all the stuff that I do with this podcast,

243
00:13:11,915 --> 00:13:16,535
with our YouTube channel, the Instagram
and TikTok channels, please feel free

244
00:13:16,535 --> 00:13:23,155
to go to speakupforblue.com/patreon and
support the work that I do on Patreon.

245
00:13:23,421 --> 00:13:24,625
Speakupforblue.com/patreon.

246
00:13:24,779 --> 00:13:27,769
I wanna thank you so much for
joining me on today's episode of the

247
00:13:27,769 --> 00:13:29,009
How to Protect the Ocean podcast.

248
00:13:29,105 --> 00:13:30,175
I'm your host, Andrew Lewin.

249
00:13:30,345 --> 00:13:31,005
Have a great day.

250
00:13:31,005 --> 00:13:33,215
We'll talk to you next
time, and happy conservation.