The Australian government uses falsehoods to defend its decision to damage the Great Barrier Reef for a new coal terminal.

The big threat to the Great Barrier Reef is the CO₂ that the coal will release into the atmosphere. CO₂ dissolves in the ocean and makes it more acidic. This and the higher temperature both kill coral. In a twisted way, this is rational. If you assume that coal is going to be burned, the Great Barrier Reef is toast and there's no use protecting it. (This is the same assumption that the US State Department used to disregard the harm that the Keystone XL pipeline is going to do.)

This is tantamount to assuming that billions of humans and millions of species are going to be wiped out. The temperature will keep rising (from CO₂ already in the atmosphere, methane released from melting permafrost, etc.) long after civilization is no longer functioning sufficiently to transport coal from Australia to China.

Here are some other ways that global heating threatens extinction.

If the heating took place across a period of millennia, organisms might adapt to it. If so much land were not occupied by humans and their farms, organisms might move to new places to find the conditions they need. But this can't happen now.