For hundreds of years, since early Maori explorers first landed their waka in the sheltered bays of the Marlborough Sounds, the area’s cool blue waters have provided a seemingly limitless source of fish.So, in April, New Zealanders were stunned to learn that the country’s largest salmon farming operation had, for months, been taking hundreds of truckloads of its prized export-bound Chinook species and dumping them in a nearby landfill — victims of a rapid rise in water temperatures.Grant Rosewarne, chief executive of New Zealand King Salmon, told the national broadcaster that, in terms of global warming, cold-water fish are just the canary in the coal mine.The US president’s top climate envoy, John Kerry, was similarly direct when he told an audience of global leaders in Davos last month that the world was atop a “precipice”. He pointed to the disastrous effects of the planet’s addiction to fossil fuels, including 15mn annual deaths from air pollution and the gathering pace and intensity of natural disasters including droughts, fires, mudslides, floods and storms.“We’re dealing with a crisis here, folks,” Kerry said. “It is a crisis made by human beings.” He was speaking to members of the World Economic Forum high in the Swiss Alps but, on almost every metric, the battle to stop global warming will largely be won or lost far to the east: …
