Dispatches from the sunburned wastelands

As I am writing this, the temperature in Canberra is soaring past 30 degrees Celsius - ten degrees warmer than the average high for this time of year - In comparison, last year on this day the high temp was 19 degrees. Australia is also gripped by a drought, and the bushfire season has started early, with several large fires raging across the south-east of the country. Although most scientist will not commit to attribute Australia's changing weather patterns directly to global warming, it's a given that climate change is real, and that global warming will increase the frequency of droughts and high temperature days. Coupled with this is the southward shift of rainfall patterns, with most precipitation falling over the southern oceans, and an earlier spring and longer summer. Surely Australia will be amongst the hardest hit when global warming intensifies. And what is the ultra-conservative Australian Government doing? This morning on television, one of their ministers ridiculed the Kyoto Protocol again, calling it "useless". Yes, it's definitely useless - for Australia, that is, seeing that Australia is not part of it...I wonder how many Australians are aware that, way back during the Kyoto negotiations, Oz managed to weasel it's way out of the stricter greenhouse emission quotas imposed on most of the developed nations... And then, feeling very proud of their negotiating skills, they promptly refused to ratify the protocol...The Government is all too concerned about hurting industry, it says, and therefore does not wish to do a whole lot to curb greenhouse emissions. Add to this the fact that Oz is exporting massive quantities of low-grade coal to China, where it is burned in scrubber-less power stations (China is building, on average, one coal-fired power station per week), and you have a regional recipe for an everlasting summer. What use is a strong economy, if there are no water to drink? What use will all your money be, when Sydney, and Melbourne and all your other coastal cities will be subject to increasing storm surges, and higher tides? Remember New Orleans...

Posted by HannesB at 1:27 PM Comments