What's Destroying the Great Barrier Reef? w/Louie Psihoyos | Joe Rogan

What is taking out the Great Barrier Reef? We're heating the planet, we're heating the water, it's bleaching. So there's a couple things, there's multiple insults. You have run off from fertilizer and pesticides from agriculture. You have the heating of the water, these events. When I say it's dying, it's dying. It's not like, oh it's going to come back. Once the coral's dead, that's it. It's not going to come back. Does sunscreen play a part in that as well? Probably not there. It's fairly remote, like in Hawaii it would, or the Caribbean. But it's pretty remote. You have to get out several miles at the Great Barrier Reef. The further north you go, the more isolated it is. We went the entire length of the Great Barrier Reef and it didn't look... It got slightly better as you got north. But there's only a couple boats there. It's not like you have thousands, hundreds of thousands of tourists out on the beach. The other thing is acidification. The burning of fossil fuels is acidifying the oceans. It's now about 30% more acidic than it was 50 years ago. And when you make... There's more carbonic acid in the water, it makes it harder for the corals to survive. And it's basically, you have these multiple insults going on at the same time. It's probably not just one thing. But there was a massive bleaching event two years in a row in the Great Barrier Reef. And so it's disappearing in our lifetime. But if you look at... We have a... The last coral barrier reef in America is down in Florida. And they have like semi-treated sewage coming out of these offfalls that they could swim through. I've been out there on these beaches. You could literally talk to somebody on the beach or scream to them on the beach. And they have this green water coming out of sewer pipes 200 meters away, 300 meters away. And so they're dumping semi-treated sewage on the last reef in America. This is going on all around the world. And what we do, I don't know, but we... This is the last generation that we have that can actually do something about it. Because we're seeing it disappear in our watch. And that's what I'm trying to do, is try to not just create the awareness that something's going on, that we have to do something, try to create action. Now, when you say semi-treated sewage, what do you mean by that? Well, that's what they reported. So it smells like sewage. It smells like crap. But if you go to the website, it says it's just semi-treated. I don't know. They're not putting it through the aerators. They're not going through the whole system. But it smells like shit to me, you know? You come out of the water and it's like, you know, we all stink. You smell like shit. This is... By the way, this is on the Hollywood-Fort Lauderdale border. How is that legal? I mean, this is not a third world country. How is the United States allowing them to pump semi-treated sewage? That's a very good question. There's so many things to work on. I know the activists down there are working on this. They're just trying to get people to see it, to know that this is going on. And I think they close the beaches down when the wind shifts and then it starts to push it on shore. Jesus Christ. If you saw, if you were on the beach and you saw what was going on there, you wouldn't be sending your kids there. You wouldn't be going to Florida if you knew what was going on on that beach. We can make arguments about whether or not you should go to Florida all day long. And I'm with you 100 percent. But I just can't imagine that they would allow this. And that, I mean, how much more would it cost to treat it versus semi-treated? How much more would it cost to not do what they're doing? That's a good question. It's fucking insane. And then that they close the beach when the water shifts and the wind shifts and heads towards the shore? And people get sick and they probably don't even know it. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I mean, you know, we'd be out there when we were at one outfall. That's what they call them, an outfall. It's basically a sewer pipe. You know, nothing's happening. And all of a sudden you can start to hear this rumble and then you see this green. Oh, God. And we're not talking like a little drain pipe, too. Like literally you could swim through it. Not stand in it, but it's big, like four feet, five feet tall. Now, why, I mean, why are they allowing? I mean, does anybody have an argument for why that's money? Money. Because it costs less. Because it costs money to treat sewage. Jesus Christ, though, that's insane. Well, there's a lot of things like that going on right now. But it seems like someone should be held accountable for that. Like whatever cost benefit that they've decided is worth polluting the ocean by pumping sewage into it. Well, you know, it's a good question. When we did, now that I recall, this is like five years ago, we tried to get an interview with the key people down there, but try to, like, if you're going to talk to somebody about this, nobody wants to go on record to talk about it because it's really bad for tourism. And it's not good for the political record. Is there video of it? Can we show video? Oh, yeah. You got something? He's got something here. I need to see this. It's in racing extinction. The second film I did. Florida. This is, it was impossible. Oh, look at this. Oh, yeah. Look at that. There we go. Oh, that's so disgusting. Four months ago, maybe. Wow. It is just a gigantic pipe pumping green shit into the ocean. Why is it green, by the way? Well, it's a picture. It could be the color under the water, too. But you said it was green when you saw it as well, right? Yeah. Well, yeah. That's the treated. That's it's treated. It's much better that way. Well, everything in the spectrum down there is a little bit blue or green. It's probably food coloring. Look at that. Fuck. What is that fish? Yeah, fish love it. Chewing on the sewage. They can eat, eat crab. Oh, Christ. Yeah. And then the fishermen, fish on it, too, when the outfall is going. Oh, Jesus Christ. To catch fish that are eating shit. Look at that. That is insane. We're looking at this pipe and it looks like a cloud of poison is being jettisoned out of this pipe and into the ocean. The important part is if you came up, you would see people on the beach. Oh, God. I mean, we're not talking about like, you know, miles out of sea. We're talking about. How in America, I mean, I know Florida is barely America, but how in America is that possible? It's a really good question. We try to, you know, we try to explore some of these issues, but trying to get somebody to talk on the record about this is really difficult. Is there any other part of the country that has something like that? Not that I know. Fuckin' Florida. Jesus Christ. I mean, of course it's Florida. I mean, is there a place that is so worthy of all the stereotypes like Florida is? It seems like every time you think you've had enough, look at all these fish just swimming into the shit. That surface looks like it's boiling when all the water comes up. Oh, God. Shit boiling. Shit boiling in Florida. And look at the ground. It's all just covered with algae. Well, that's kind of the point. Like what I'm saying is like, you know, we always think somebody else should be doing something about this. Right. So that's why we do films, is not just to create the awareness and, you know, to try to get something done about it.