Climate Change
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Make no mistake, climate change is real and is arguably the biggest problem our civilisation faces. However, the good news is that it is solvable. If we look back at what mankind has achieved over the last century or so, it gives us hope based on our ability to innovate and implement change. We have, in a relatively short period of time, developed huge airplanes that commercially service nearly every part of the globe and allow us to travel freely, more than any of our ancestors could have ever dreamed. And we have explored space, putting man on the moon way back in 1969. When John F Kennedy announced in 1961 that his country should commit to achieving that goal within a decade, sceptics thought it would never happen, but he achieved it two years sooner than hoped.
That demonstrates leadership. Inspiring the nation, committing to a plan, financing it, and then following it through to make it happen. Ralph Lauren is quoted as saying “A leader has the vision and conviction that a dream can be achieved. He inspires the power and energy to get it done”. Sadly, we don’t see that type of leadership demonstrated in Australia (or in many other countries) when it comes to solving the climate crisis. Our leaders think our economy is the most important thing for them to address, and yet a sustainable economy can’t happen in isolation without a sustainable society and a sustainable environment. In their most recent “Climate of the Nation” report published by the Climate Institute (an independent, non-partisan research and communications organisation focused on highlighting the impacts of climate change and finding solutions to how to tackle them) they found more people now believe climate change is real (70%) than in any other year since their reporting commenced. |
They also found “For the first time, more Australians support carbon pricing (34%) than oppose it (30%). This change appears to be driven mostly by a realisation that the policy has not been detrimental to the economy or to households’ bottom line.”
So what is climate change? Surely we have had times of drought and flood and heatwaves and freezing winters in the past? It could be argued that climate change is a naturally occurring event as our climate is always changing. In the current context we are talking about long term climate change, already evidenced by consistent patterns via a range of indicators, including rising temperatures, more frequent and severe extreme weather events, bushfires of increasing intensity and occurrence and rising sea levels. All of these have been carefully measured and documented by climate scientists and government scientific organisations worldwide. All the information any person would need is available to us to refute any climate sceptics and fully understand the extent of the problem. Had we taken note of our scientists when CO₂ levels began to rise significantly nearly fifty years ago, our world may be a much different place than it is today. The rate of climate change is now occurring at an alarming rate and it will take hundreds of years to rectify the damage mankind has caused to our planet. In the meanwhile all we can do is adapt and hopefully mitigate the extent of the changes so not only our species, but many others will also survive. The sooner we start repairing the damage, the sooner we will achieve a remedy. While it is certainly going to cost a significant sum of money to attack the problem, that sum will only increase the longer we delay as the problem continues to get worse. |
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