Climate change is affecting every single aspect of our world, and now it seems that it’s having an impact on the Pokémon world. If you’re one of those people who plays Pokémon to switch off from all the garbage news of the world, then I’m sorry to tell you but you might not find and solace in Pokémon Shield.
Remember Corsola? It’s the adorable pink coral looking Pokémon that’s been in various versions of the game since it first appeared in Pokémon Gold and Silver back in 1999.
In those other versions, there has been a warning that Corsola needs clean water to live – they don’t like pollution or dirty water, and will move if they can. If they can’t move, they’ll lose their colour and get sick.
You can probably see where this is going.
Pokémon Shield has a new regional variant of Corsola, specific to the Galar region of the game, and it’s… depressing. Galarian Corsola isn’t the cute, pink Pokémon that it once was. Nope, Galarian Corsola is a miserable looking, bleached white Pokémon.
To really drive the message home, original Corsola was a dual rock and water type Pokémon, but the Galarian version is a ghost type.
The Pokédex entry confirms what we all assumed. “Sudden climate change wiped out this ancient kind of Corsola. This Pokémon absorbs others’ life-force through its branches.”
It’s a grim reminder of what we’re doing to the planet. Since 1980, we’ve lost as much as half of the world’s coral, and the Great Barrier Reef has been struggling to recover from two mass bleaching events in 2016 and 2017 that bleached half of the reef to death.
For the love of everything, climate change needs to be addressed. If the threat of real life death and destruction won’t sway people to get off their asses and do something, then maybe the fate of poor old Corsola will.