We can’t avoid climate change. It has already begun. The slow motion descent into environmental catastrophe is irrevocable and certain. But, if real action is taken, we can avoid the worst of it.
We’ve seen rapidly increasing global temperatures, melting polar ice caps, the loss of glaciers, raging forest fires, extreme weather events, and a steady climb in sea level. The signs of change have been noticeable for some time, but very few phenomena quite touch the lives of the average, comfortable Australian. And yet, creeping into our news are the local stories of chronic drought; of coral bleaching and loss of tourism revenue; of many of our iconic species becoming endangered and extinct.
Climate change is here and it disproportionately affects the poor — but just give it time (and plenty more emissions) and the lifestyles of the comfortably affluent will also be devastated. Now is the time — or, more accurately, a time far past the time — to mitigate the dire prognosis. We can curb carbon emissions, plant many more trees, invest in a war cabinet to take on this huge challenge. If we do this, perhaps we can limit warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees. We might avoid the apocalyptic outlook of a 4-6 degree rise. We might, if there were political will.
This is why I’m calling on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to immediately declare a climate emergency. I’m calling on you, Scott, to represent all Australians — including those who are too young to vote and those not yet born. I’m calling on you to act on the will of the majority of Australians. I’m calling on you to make a concrete commitment, a willingness to stand together and fight to prevent the largest threat of our times.
Three million Australians have seen their representatives heed the warnings at a local government level. Their leaders recognise that we cannot repair all the damage, but we can mitigate the future effects. Forty five Australian councils have declared a climate emergency (for have no doubt, this is an emergency), and have promised to prioritise the environment and take on climate change. The declaration of a climate emergency is a symbolic gesture and can imply different things for different groups. At the forefront of a climate emergency declaration (CED) is reduction of emissions, a move away from fossil fuels and towards renewable energy, and a reduction in deforestation.
What we really need, however, is a federal climate emergency declaration. Before any measures are taken, we first need our government to acknowledge there is a huge and pressing problem. This is yet to occur, and with that mindset there is no commitment to a green change, no investment in clean energy, in forestation, in recruiting bright minds to innovate and work towards protecting our civilisation and our home.
There is community appetite for climate action — 60% of Australians want steps taken to address climate change even at significant cost; 84% want a switch to renewable energy.
At time of publication, my petition asking the federal government to declare a CED has upwards of 120,000 signatures.
Scott, you’ve declined requests to receive this petition. The Coalition continue to support coal mining and coal power, they have railed against electric vehicles, they have ignored the example of the UK and Germany, both of whom have recognised the climate emergency and responded accordingly.
We remain the largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world. Will there come a point where the majority of Australian councils act responsibly, where state governments move ahead with change, and where the federal government is finally forced to act? Will they heed calls to declare a climate emergency and start fashioning solutions? Or will we all be paralysed like frogs in boiling water until we reach a point where perhaps even governments will be powerless to effect change?
Scott, please, our lives depend on it.
What are some steps the government could take immediately to help address the climate emergency? Write to boss@crikey.com.au with your thoughts and your full name.
Please Scott, acknowledge the scientific facts and act accordingly.
He is Praying all the time, that will take care of it!
Remember Abbott speaking about the forests in Tasmania? To paraphrase “God put them there for us to cut down and use.” Got a rousing reception from the wood industry.
My family until recently had been in horticulture for 140 years in the Orange district of NSW. Changes since my great grandfathers time are significant. However most noticeable and worrying is the rapid changes since the 1960s. Crop harvesting moved forward 4-6 weeks, increasing hailstorms and previously unheard of sun damage to fruit. Now it’s virtually impossible to grow fruit without netting for both hail protection and shade to reduce sun damage cooking the fruit on the tree. Higher minimum temperatures mean more unreliable fruit set as cold temperatures are needed for fruit budding.
As a Rural Fire Brigade Deputy Captain with 40 years experience I’ve seen fires become more intense, the fire season extend by at both ends by months. There’s more damage to crops from birds and fruit bats. A combination of habitat destruction and migration to cooler areas. We used to get 2-3 heavy snowfalls a year. Now unusual to get snow full stop. Growing a more delicate crops like fruit and wine grapes in the area at higher altitude we are more sensitive to change than grains and livestock. The canaries in the coal mine.
Yes the observant agriculturalists is the speaker of truth/reality in contrast to the wreckers in their midst. My similar was as a member of a Pea growers company and how they were having to adjust their plantings to achieve continuity of harvesting by their pea vines. For them it was the change in night time temperatures, pea growth was not slowing down as expected through the night and plantings needed to be earlier in Spring. Basically nights were getting warmer and Winters shorter with less extreme weather.
Yes Ken. I watched a similar pattern of change in the New England area where I lived and worked for over thirty years. Fruit trees flowering much earlier and then burnt by late frost, rhodendrens blooming in April. Massive decrease in frequency and amount of snow. In fact, the last significant falls were in the late 1980’s. We were at 1300 metres. My husband was in our local fire brigade and the same changes in the fire seasons and intensity of fires was occurring. Currently the whole region is in a drought that old timers say they have never seen. I don’t think people living in urban areas have any idea of what is happening and what the impact will be on them. $100 legs of lamb are not far away and it’s not because of a price on carbon as the Federal Member for New England once falsely claimed but because the land can’t take much more as the climate continues to change rapidly and the government fiddles while the country burns around us.
I wonder if Malcolm Roberts would accept your testimonies as “empirical evidence”?
Just so there is no disparagement such as “nimby ockers” – the last Winter in northern Euroland was without precedence.
In visiting friends from Oslo/Stockholm to Berlin/A’dam or Salisbury to Derry, no-one had experienced such crazy Sept-April conditions in their lives, some in the 80s.
In short sleeves above the Arctic Circle watching smoke from forest fires not far enough away, a drought in SW Britain that had people putting out WATER for wild birds in fields & forests in mid winter, even the most delicate of Spring flowers trying their luck in Nov-Dec and in NW Ireland, no-one saw the geese leave.
But to admit such not only takes away this government’s excuses for pushing the coal scuttles of major sponsor/donors, it is also tantamount to admitting the progressive side of politics was right – and if that is true then they may well be “correct” about a few more things – while conservatives have been wasting time as well as opportunities in their wrong-headed Limited News Party governance?
Which would beg the question :- “What bloody good are they?”
klweso – a similar thought occurred to me recently. Shorten’s Labor agenda has wedged the Conservatives across a range of policies. How can the LNP Coalition now address negative gearing, franking credits, electric cars, a price on carbon, etc without a) being accused of seeking to implement policies they opposed when proposed by Labor, and b) taking on the right wing rent seekers in their own ranks?
By proposing a whole swag of sensible policies that seriously addressed a number of challenges – social, economic, environmental – Shorten’s Labor boxed the Conservatives into a corner and has denied them a whole range of policy options.
Maybe that’s Albanese’s strategy, say and do nothing so as to give the Govt room to manoeuvre, just in case they do something in the national interest.
Good luck with your call, I keep hearing from people close to him that Morrison is a reasonable person who is prepared to take good advice.
Sadly I can see little evidence in his actions that this is the case, and my fear that his religious delusions will blind him to the need to act decisively is overwhelming.
I sincerely hope that the Senate cross-bench will severely limit LNP folly and perhaps bring on an early election.
In Oz and NSW in particular land clearing can’t happen fast enough yet in Paris, France and Western Europe the very opposite is happening as a considered response to Climate Change.
NSW has just made it easier for landholders to clear grassy woodlands for agriculture.
Whereas in Western Europe they can’t plant trees fast enough.
https://www.dw.com/en/paris-digs-deep-to-green-up-cool-down/a-49892726?maca=en-newsletter_en_bulletin-2097-html-newsletter
I think you are whistling in the dark in respect of holding to 1.5/2.0C as that degree of increase is already baked into the cake via the Inertia of Change already baked in. There is a lag time of 35/40 years before anything we do today will have impact. That isn’t a council of despair, it simply adds to the urgency. I doubt any of us grasp just how deep the societal organizational changes are going to have to ultimately be, at the moment we are trying technical fixes to allow business as usual to carry on.
Angus Taylor called. He’d like to know where these grasslands are you refer to. He is willing to supply all the roundup required.