Let’s talk about climate change and wild weather. While our sympathies are with the victims of the floods, we also need to understand why they are so big again. Mining coal and burning it as a source of energy releases carbon stored for millions of years below ground up into the atmosphere.
80 million tonnes a day, or 30 billion tonnes each year of CO2 is emitted this way. About a third is absorbed on land by soils, plants and forests, and a third by the oceans (which are becoming more acidic as a result). The remaining third stays in the atmosphere.
CO2 is a known, tested, no-doubt-about-it greenhouse gas. The greenhouse is the layer of gases high in the atmosphere that acts like a blanket, keeping us warmer than we’d be without it, but not so warm we cannot cope. The slowly thickening greenhouse layer is trapping more of the heat that reaches us every day from the sun. This is global warming. If we do nothing to slow it down, the earth will continue to heat and things will get worse. We already are in the early stages of global warming and we can see this in the more extreme weather events around the world. Global warming acts on top of natural climate forces, to super-charge short-term weather events.
So when we are in a naturally wet season (called La Nina because the system is so big it extends to South America) we see longer, more intense, more frequent and more extensive rains and storm events, bringing more destruction and suffering. A warmer atmosphere has more energy and holds more water vapour.
In a while, we will enter an El Nino phase, a naturally occurring dry season for Australia, however with global warming this will bring more severe droughts and bush fires. They too will be more intense, more frequent and extensive and will last longer, because of human-induced climate change. The explanation is complete – extreme weather events are the result of both natural forces and human-induced global warming.
If we don’t act now, with other countries, it will get worse. The destruction, suffering, economic and environmental losses we are now seeing are just a taste of what’s to come.
So let’s call it for what it is. The future of our world is up to you. Australia has a plan which starts low and goes slow but will achieve some good cuts to carbon pollution. Since the latest climate change talks in December, all other countries in the United Nations are committed to come up with plans to make sufficient cuts to their pollution levels to keep global warming to just two degrees, considered to be the safe limit (we’ve already warmed nearly one degree and record high temperatures continue to be set from year to year so there’s not much room to move). Australia already has a plan, which starts this July.
However, cutting pollution is only one strategy to slow climate change. We also need a major increase in clean renewable energy and a smart grid combined with more energy savings, to change the way we get our electricity and reduce demand for it during the transition from coal. On the roads, we need vehicles that use less fuel (and therefore emit less pollution and cost less to run). These are matters for governments to take very seriously because one of their prime responsibilities is to protect us, and ensure our future food, environmental and economic security. The dots are joined. I cannot put it more clearly. It’s up to you.
Harry Creamer
President of Climate Change Australia (Hastings)
Port Macquarie
