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Nation's economy to be hard hit in global warming struggle10 Years AgoSource
The
effects of global warming on Australia are well documented, and some are
already being seen in the form of dry winters, unusual summer heat and early
spring bushfires.
In
the longer term, according to the CSIRO, the Bureau of Meteorology and
universities, we can anticipate damaging sea level rises, changes in local
weather that disrupt agriculture, and ocean acidification expected to severely
deplete the Great Barrier Reef.
But
the most immediate effects on Australia are likely to be financial.
The
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report is explicit: human greenhouse
gas emissions are the dominant force in recent temperature rises.
The
world has used up 54 per cent of its total carbon budget, the amount of C02 it
can put in the air if climate change is to be held at safer levels. At the
current rate that mark will be passed in the next 30 years.
This
budget crisis has serious implications for Australia's coal and gas industries,
both of which are planning for expansion.
Essentially,
the nation's resources industry is on a collision course with climate change,
and most of the known fossil fuel reserves will have to be left in the ground
if Australia is to play even a very modest part in preparing to tackle the
worst effects of climate change.
As
Professor Lesley Hughes of Australia's Climate Commission, since abolished,
said: ''How people react to this is up to the policymakers and governments, as
well as investors. It isn't our job to reconcile the politics of this with the
science. We are simply presenting the facts as best we know them.''
The
price of tackling emissions - whether by an emissions trading scheme, a
''direct action'' payment plan for polluters, or a carbon tax - will be
expensive. And the longer the nation waits, the more the cuts are likely to
cost, according to the Garnaut Review of Climate Change - still the most
comprehensive analysis of the economics of cutting carbon.
Professor
Neville Nicholls, of Monash University's School of Geography and Environmental
Science, said the IPCC report left little room for doubt about the need to
address the problem, because of real-world signals.
''We
have just seen the hottest 12 months for Australia on record,'' he told the
Australian Science Media Centre. ''As well, over the last decade or so,
thousands of people have died in unprecedented heat waves and bushfires around
the world. And the best tools we have for projecting climate tell us to expect
more warming, more defrosting, more sea level rise, and more heat waves in the
future. We can hope that these projections are wrong. But planning for a warmer
future seems the safer, more conservative option.''
An
IPCC contributing author, Professor Colin Butler of the University of
Canberra's Faculty of Health, said there was no real alternative to emissions
cuts. ''We have an ethical responsibility to act on climate change. This is
also in our long-term self-interest,'' he said.
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