Jan 28 2008
Climate Change
Sydney could resemble a desert town like Alice Springs, with temperatures five degrees higher than today, lacking drinking water and yet battered by rising seas and ravaged by bush fires of the utmost ferocity.
That’s the news released in a publication from the UN by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This predicts that in 30 years the Barrier Reef could well be dead, a victim of rising sea temperatures coupled with bleaching of the fragile coral.
Climate change is taken seriously in most areas of Australia. In Queensland state residents will be drinking recycled sewerage from next December.
Continued reliance on electricity from from coal-fired power stations is causing a dramatic increase in the Earth’s temperature with environmental impacts such as rising sea levels, an increase in freak weather events like drought and severe storms, and massive changes to the habitats that species rely on to survive.
As Australians, we are the highest per-capita greenhouse gas polluters in the world, because most of our electricity comes from burning coal.
The Great Southern Ocean itself is under extreme duress. Until recently, the inhospitable climate of Antarctica protected it from the worst excesses of human exploitation but the last few decades have seen all that change.
With the ice-shelf melting and glaciers shrinking, there can no longer be any doubt that the Antarctic is getting warmer. If the climate continues to hot up, scientists predict that krill populations could be devastated - undermining the entire Southern Polar food chain.
As a close neighbour of Antarctica and the Southern Ocean, we have a particular responsibility to look after this precious place, and to protect it from exploitation.
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