A key role of government is to save lives. It has done this admirably for Covid-19 at huge expense. It will need to do the same regarding climate change adaptation if we are to protect human health and lives.
It is widely thought that behind the Federal Government’s inadequate policies to tackle climate change lies the need to retain Coalition unity and thus its hold on power. If this is so, it is unconscionable that power overrides saving lives. It is a similar situation in the Labor Party.
Both major parties ignore projections by the Climate Council which show that by 2100, annual deaths from extreme heat worldwide will outstrip all Covid-19 deaths recorded in 2020.
Climate adaptation is urgent, yet no money is on offer. Governments are prioritising huge spending to return the Covid economy to ‘normal’ when they should be financing a ‘new normal’ economy – the economy that climate change and sustainability requires.
Global scientists have called for economic stimulus to tackle both climate adaptation and Covid-19. They say: “Business as usual is no longer an option. Climate change is real. It is harming people now. We need a massive effort now to adapt to the climate change to which the world is already committed and move rapidly to prevent it from becoming worse”.
And why is Covid-19 linked to this urgent call? Essentially because, like Covid, climate adaptation is about preventing deaths. The facts on climate change are clear and delaying action has terrible consequences.
As the global scientists say:
“Our failure to adapt and mitigate Covid-19 parallels the disruption to come if we do not act immediately to mitigate and adapt our world in response to our changing climate.”
Moreover:
“If we continue with the unfettered destruction of our natural environment Covid 19 will not be the last pandemic to upend our lives and climate change will extend beyond the capabilities of nature and humans to adapt.”
The global scientists have pointed out that the past three years of climate-related disasters have cost the world $650 billion. A United Nations scientific report has warned that by 2040, damage associated with climate change could soar to $54 trillion.
In Australia, the Climate Council indicates the cost over the past decade has been A$35 billion, the brunt of which has fallen on Queensland and NSW. The cost is predicted to rise to A$100 billion per year by 2038.
However, a United Nations Adaptation Report indicates that no country is yet funding these forthcoming costs adequately.
Australia’s action and commitment to date are abysmal. The lack of understanding is reflected in “Gotcha” moments, when politicians are attacked because they cannot put a figure on the cost of acting on mitigation or adaptation.
Clearly the cost of adaptation depends on the performance of mitigation strategies, which in Australia have been desultory. The cost of doing nothing is always going to be greater.
Australia also lacks a co-ordinated national approach to climate change adaptation, with little specific leadership, governance or funding at the federal level. A National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility was established in 2008 by the Commonwealth Government to generate key information, but funding ceased in 2017.
In 2015, the government adopted a National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy, which will be refreshed this year “to provide a roadmap for successful adaptation and resilience”.
Australia will also sign up to two international agreements: the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment and the Call for Action: Raising Ambition for Climate Adaptation and Resilience.
The 2015 adaptation strategy covers eight key sectors: coasts, cities and the built environment, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, water resources, natural ecosystems, health and wellbeing, disaster risk management and a resilient and secure region.
It is not apparent what has been achieved. For example:
Water: Australia does not have a national water policy. In general the states and territories use myriad legislative frameworks, statutory and non-statutory planning instruments and institutions, and we struggle to tackle systemic connections such as between water and energy/mining developments; water quantity and water quality; natural resource management; and land use planning.
Natural ecosystems: the recent Samuel Report exposes their fast, unabated deterioration over many years but the supposed solutions, such as devolving to the states the power to make decisions are questionable. The political response offers little hope of national management based on scientific expertise that is so essential in the reform of agricultural practice.
Death by a thousand cuts – EPBC Act needs a powerful cop on the beat
Human health and wellbeing: responses to the NSW parliamentary inquiry into rural and regional healthcare confirm the deplorable state of rural health services, which are needed for these communities to deliver a sustainable future in agriculture. Vital adaptation measures are required in communities. One simple example would be heat shelters across rural Australia. This is a federal responsibility in design, funding and delivery. Currently, the number of deaths from heatwaves in Australia are greatly underestimated. The ‘new-normal’ post Covid economy must rejuvenate employment and living conditions in rural and regional areas to create a sustainable Australia.
Responsibility for climate adaptation is shared among Commonwealth and the states, territories and local governments. Some states have relevant programs and achievements; some have done little. Local governments also demonstrate a similar disparity in response. For example, compare the plans and actions of the Adelaide Hills Council since 2015 with that of Alice Springs https://alicesprings.nt.gov.au/community/environmental initiatives/climate-action-plan dated from 2018.
Then there is the Victorian town of Tarnagulla, population 133, which has a self-generated Resistance Action Plan. An example to all towns and, indeed, to the Federal Government.
In 2020 a bright star appeared in the troubled firmament of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Warringah Independent MP Zali Steggall‘s Bill has extensive community and industry support and strong support from the Australian Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment Australia.
Crucially the Bill proposes a Climate Change Commission that “is empowered, independent and accountable” and cannot be directed by Government. It will require the Government to set five-year national adaptation plans that consider a range of economic and social issues.
The Bill, if enacted, would face a range of complex problems of interlocking national issues crossing the boundaries of numerous government departments that would have to cooperate to deliver adaptation. These are the key issues detailed above, and none of the departments currently delivers adaptation. Action will require administrative structures, scientific expertise and directives that are immune from political expediency.
Once adopted the Climate Change Bill may need to embrace other sustainability issues to form a National Sustainability Commission which will apply independent action on the neglected interlocking spheres of ecology, the environment, water management and the stability of productive land. This is why we have to question the relevance of democracy in its present form when government cannot deliver sustainability for our life support systems.
David Shearman is Emeritus Professor of Medicine at Adelaide University and previously held senior academic positions at Edinburgh University, where he qualified in Medicine and Biological Science, and at Yale University. He is author of many books on climate change and related issues. He has served on the IPCC, has been President of the Conservation Council of South Australia. With the late Professor Tony McMichael he founded Doctors for the Environment Australia in 2001. He is author and co-author of several hundred scientific and medical papers.
Comments
7 responses to “Does the desire for power over-ride saving lives by acting on climate change adaptation?”
We need to move way faster on this than we are doing. For a country that will experience the wrath of climate change faster and in worse ways than many others, we are way behind in even acknowledging the threat we are facing. We are literally living in a dream state that does not fit the prognosis, our federal Coalition government has misinformed us, Australians have been targeted with anti-climate change pseudo-science from the fossil fuel industry and mining sector, and we also are reluctant to turn away from our hedonistic lifestyles. I note every time unusual heat waves and extreme temperatures come our way the media treats it like a day at the beach or swimming pool so it is mistakenly projected as an opportunity for pleasure. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Climate scientists are well used to having the door shut in their faces, even though in Australia we have some of the most highly respected and well qualified experts in the world. Their message however, is similar to a doctor giving out a diagnosis of terminal cancer, one that offers a prognosis of little time to do much, and so they have become easy targets for people who do not want to accept the facts.
All too often they are seen as people that are ‘anti-jobs’ that want to throw many out of work, but the fact is that they do not spend their lives studying and researching scientific principles and climate change to do that. If they were medical doctors, immunologists, or brain surgeons we would pay far more attention and accept their warnings. Yet the message that climate scientists promulgate is that climate change through its effects will cause more job losses than anything we have ever seen before in this country and throughout the world.
It’s sobering just to entertain one prediction, and that is about 60% of Australia will be subjected to extreme events, high temperatures and severe drought which we still have not seen the likes of. These areas may very well become uninhabitable. We could lose 2/3rds of our food production, while in the best years we have exported 2/3rds to the rest of the world.
In Australia the states are acting to some degree, but we can’t continue to use and export fossil fuels as we do and think the world has endless capacity for the production greenhouse gases. Fracking is highly destructive in that so much methane is lost to the atmosphere due to the fissures created in the rocks that leak and are caused by the methods in which it is mined.
Federally speaking, we have just lost nearly 8 years arguing to do nothing and achieving it, pushing a gas and coal led recovery while Australians were distracted with Coronavirus, and Morrison and the Coalition show no capacity to even take the problem seriously. The IPA wheel out their experts on climate change, but often it is in the form of commentators with doctorates in Spanish and history. Not science. It is so easy to fool the people.
It’s ordinary Australians and some state governments that have led the charge for action and have acted with buying solar panels and insulation etc., and the children of this country well aware of their futures who came out to demonstrate while Morrison told them to go back home and be quiet Australians. They and Labor are up to their necks in donations from the fossil fuel industry, and finding even more ways to attract money from donors by hiding the classification in which donations are made. It is hard to think that this is not pure corruption. Even the Bureau of meteorology now receives financial support from the fossil fuel industry.
At 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 we already reached the point where climate change was likely to be unstoppable, we can only mitigate its effects. But now, despite Coronavirus slowing down international transport and sections of industry, we are at 415 ppm.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
Adding other greenhouse gases, N2O and CH4 and the figure is more like a comparative 500 ppm Co2. That is a figure not seen for millions of years when mass extinctions took place, and temperatures were unlivable. Now we also reach a tipping point where permafrost and polar ice melts are releasing methane at exceptional rates. It is a far more dangerous gas in terms of global warming than CO2. It’s also toxic to human health in larger quantities.
While people reject concern for the extinction of many species we are likely to observe, they do not know that today, by weight of animal species alone (biomass), 67% accounts for domesticated animals, 30% for humans and only 3% wild animals living in nature.
And while climate scientists argue for change, which is countered by the cry for “what about jobs”, they also offer many solutions for mitigating some of the frightening consequences most people still do not know about. Within that there are literally millions of jobs on offer. These are huge scale projects that would require many years to complete and provide employment for far longer in continued operations. But serious money and commitment is needed.
It is the duty of our leaders, especially federally, to act, plan and facilitate the conversion of workers jobs into new opportunities towards action. It is highly understandable that no one wants to go without work, but if nothing is done to prepare in advance, there will be so many out of work it will contradict the argument for keeping Co2 producing jobs now. Governments must also prepare us for a future that acknowledges the threat of climate change, no one else is elected to do it.
To do this we actually need to shift more money away from military spending, we need that much in employment programs and technological action. We need to clearly demonstrate on the world stage that we agree with the science, be prepared to be proactive internationally, and actually commit to genuine action.
Meanwhile over at SMH Nine ‘Entertainment’ media, Jamie Packer’s casino woes take the most important place on the online version’s front page.
Thank you David for the excellent article.
The supposed “zero emissions by 2050 target” apparently does NOT include coal and gas exports, which constitute the bulk of where Australian-originated emissions are going, ending up in the planetary atmosphere. Australia being the world’s third biggest exporter and fifth biggest miner of fossil-related emissions.
By 2050 global CO2 levels would already reach about 500 ppm, leading to further irreversible breakdown of the large ice sheets and a further rise of sea levels. The current atmospheric level of above ~415 ppm CO2 is already triggering amplifying feedback and release of carbon from land and oceans, through warming oceans (and thereby reduced CO2 intake from the atmosphere), release of methane from permafrost and marine sediments, desiccated vegetation and extensive fires releasing CO2 .
The common assumption of a uniform warming trend is in question since expansion of cold ice melt waters in the oceans (https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-019-02458-x) and consequent clash of masses of warm tropical and cold ice melt waters as well as contrasted temperature air masses is already leading to extreme storminess, with major effects on continental margins and islands.
Yes it is very convenient to sell other countries fossil fuels then point the finger and blame them for burning it.
It is like the drug pusher entirely blaming the heroin addict for the problem.
Pointing the finger does nothing to abate greenhouse gas emissions either.
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/joseph-goebbels-on-the-quot-big-lie-quot
Nowadays we are talking about “alternative facts”, ” and “manufacturing consent”, redefining reality…
I totally agree. Its as much an ethical problem as anything else too. There are a lot of choices we have to make now, since so much time has been wasted.
I very much enjoyed reading your 2020 Event Horizon book despite the sober and frightening, yet evidenced-based tale it tells. I have been reading widely around it too, and delving into some of the references you provide as I have read it.
I could not agree more with your conclusions in the book.
And if we don’t like lockdown, and cannot see how many free services that we already have on this planet provided by nature, the entire escape into space is a folly. Also if we cannot organize ourselves here on Earth, already on a far more spacious space craft, how could we do it under much more restricted conditions?
I’m also surprised to see at Mauna Loa the CO2 ppm readings appear to reflect little change in trend given the reduction in international travel, lockdowns, and slow down in many industries.
Thanks George
The small decrease of carbon emissions due to COVID-19 is swamped by larger-scale effects, including amplifying feed backs activated by the current high atmospheric level of above ~415 ppm CO2, which is triggering release of carbon from warming oceans (and thereby reduced CO2 solubility and intake from the atmosphere), release of methane from permafrost and marine sediments, desiccated vegetation and extensive fires releasing CO2 .