Country Towns Close To Reaching 'Day Zero', As Water Supplies Dry Up In The Drought

ABC News - Lucy Barbour

Farmers have never known Walcha, in regional NSW, to be so dry. (ABC News: Lucy Barbour)

Across New South Wales and Queensland's southern downs, country towns are approaching their own 'day zero', as water supplies dry up in the drought.
Ten towns, including major centres, are considered to be at high risk of running out within six months, if it doesn't rain and if water infrastructure isn't improved.
Councils are rushing to put emergency measures in place, but more than a decade since the end of the millennium drought, water security is still almost non-existent for many rural communities.

Early learnings
In a small country preschool in northern New South Wales, children start each morning with the same lesson: If it's yellow, let it mellow.
Tenterfield preschool director Chloe Daly reminds the students not to flush their number ones.
"Who can tell me why we don't flush the toilet when we do a wee anymore?" she asks.
"Because we're in a drought," they chime.
"And what does a drought mean?"
"It means we're running out of water!"

Tenterfield preschool children learn to soap their hands with the tap off to conserve water. (ABC News: Lucy Barbour)

The children practice how to wash their hands without wasting a drop. The tap stays off while the soap's rubbed in and they count quickly to 10 as the water washes it off.
"Because otherwise the fish will die and we won't be able to drink," they say.
Habits are being honed early because Tenterfield is running out of this most precious resource. The town's dam is two thirds empty and the bore that supplements supply could fail any day.
Locals have had to severely cut back their water use and are not allowed to wash cars or water gardens. Many are following the council's advice and showering less too.
"I don't like to say this, but I have a shower every second or third day, and then it's a really quick one," antiques store owner Elizabeth Macnish explains.
She normally opens her home on Airbnb, but recently closed it because guests were using too much water.
"They just don't care. They say, 'We're paying. Too bad, too sad for you'," she says.

Tenterfield Dam is two-thirds empty, and locals have had to severely cut back their water use. (ABC News: Mark Leonardi)

Flower farmer Mandy Reid also apologises for not showering.
"Luckily it's winter and we can get away with it," she chuckles.
But the laughter turns to tears when she shows the oldest section of her 23-year-old nursery, where decades of toil, love and care have been reduced to lifeless, brittle limbs.
Ms Reid has not set foot in this part of the garden for four months because she finds it too upsetting.
"You only get one chance to build a garden — a good mature garden. This was mine, but it's gone," she says.
Silver birch and snowball trees will have to be ripped out; their leaves crumple in her hands.
"It's all dead," she says flatly.

Mandy Reid, a nursery and flower farm owner in Tenterfield, shows how the lack of water has affected her garden. (ABC News: Lucy Barbour)

She longs for flooding rain, but according to the Bureau of Meteorology's long-range forecast, that is unlikely anytime soon.

Time running out
Tenterfield Mayor Peter Petty recalls a time when the dam was even lower, at just 19 per cent capacity.
"But in one night, it rained and built up 13 inches," he recalls.
Mr Petty's hoping a plan to find new bores, with the help of State Government funding, will save Tenterfield from its "worst-case scenario": trucking in water.
That, for any town, is a hugely inefficient and expensive challenge and he says it would put an extra 1,400 B-double trucks on the road each month.
"If it happens, I'll hang my head in shame that we'd let the community down," Mr Petty says.
But what if it doesn't rain and new bores are not successful?

"We're buggered," he admits.

Bigger centres like Tamworth and Orange, and potentially Dubbo and Armidale, plus smaller towns like Cobar, Narromine and Nyngan are all considered to be at "high risk" of running out within six months if things do not change.
Across the border in Queensland, water shortages are biting hard in towns like Stanthorpe and Warwick, which are inching towards emergency restrictions.
Southern Downs Shire Mayor Tracy Dobie says water may have to be carted from Warwick to Stanthorpe in December, and she fears ratepayers may have to foot the bill.
"We could be looking at anything from $500,000 to $1.5 million per month, to transport the water, depending on how far we have to truck it from," she says.
Trucks are already a big part of the landscape in southern Queensland and northern New South Wales, carting livestock between saleyards and abattoirs.
But water restrictions are making those journeys longer, more expensive and messier, because councils have closed the wash stations drivers use to clean excrement from their vehicles.

Chris Betts worries about the Walcha wash station closing. (ABC News: Lucy Barbour)

The closures have forced trucks to driver further south to Walcha, in New England, where one wash station remains open.
"I think our council understands the importance of the cattle industry around here, that we need to be able to manage our effluent for biosecurity. We just can't keep building it up in the trailer," freight transport company owner Chris Betts explains.
But he's worried about the strain that's putting on his own town's water supply. A dirty truck needs to be hosed down constantly for three hours, and with Walcha sitting on severe water restrictions, Mr Betts knows the wash station could close any day.

Promises and pledges
Walcha is regarded as a high rainfall area, but locals are constantly on water restrictions. The town gets its water from the Macdonald River and flows are pumped into the town's reservoir, but in the past year the river has stopped flowing a record nine times. Now there is 120 days' supply left.
The council is hurriedly finishing a feasibility study to build another off-stream storage in the hope it will drought-proof the town in future.
Long-time locals like stock and station agent Bruce Rutherford support that proposal, but say water storage has been "talked about" for decades.
He and his wife, Sal, have lived in Walcha for 33 years and run a small farm on the outskirts of town. They were drawn to the area partly because of its high rainfall records, but now their dams are dry.
Mr Rutherford writes a column for the local newspaper and recently used it to call out a lack of foresight when it comes to water security.
"Part of the problem has been that local council hasn't been aggressive enough in chasing this as being an end result for Walcha," he says.
"I think governments, periodically, have supported some sort of (water infrastructure) facility to be built here and they seem to run out of money once we get going with the idea."
It is a familiar story for many rural communities, where water projects have been promised and pledged, but the funding and action are too slow to arrive, leaving communities like Walcha dry.

Country towns are rushing to improve their water infrastructure, as the drought dries up supplies. (ABC News)

Walcha Mayor Eric Noakes is confident the latest plan to build a new dam will succeed because "it's easier to get noticed" at the moment.
He has been buoyed by the interest from the New South Wales Government, which has spent $650 million on water infrastructure in the past 18 months.
But regional town water supply coordinator James McTavish says the situation could still get worse.
"The next three months is looking very very dry and we're looking at the potential of an El Nino over summer," he says.
"That'll mean that inflows into those major storages will continue to be less than we would like."
And what if the drought suddenly breaks, filling thirsty dams and rivers?
Bureaucrats quietly say they are worried the current "urgency" to help country towns sure up water supply will be lost.
The Federal Government has a $1.3 billion National Water Infrastructure Development Fund, to help state, territory and local governments fund appropriate projects.
Seven are currently under construction, but in the six years since the fund's inception, nothing has actually been completed.
The sheer cost of water infrastructure makes it too expensive for local governments to manage alone, and red tape and disagreements between state and federal governments often drag the process out.
Mr Rutherford describes the situation as a "political nightmare" and he's frustrated by the bureaucracy.
"In the country, we're always looking to attract industry, but no one's going to come when there's no water."

Pejar Dam, the main water supply for more than 24,000 people in the NSW town of Goulburn, pictured on May 27, 2005. (Reuters: Tim Wimborne)

Pejar Dam has benefited from improved infrastructure and Goulburn residents have become more water wise. (July, 2019) (ABC News: Lucy Barbour)

Successful legacy
One town where benefits have flowed is Goulburn, in southern New South Wales. During the eight-year-long millennium drought, Goulburn residents were stuck on extreme, level-five water restrictions.
"It was almost shower-with-a-friend time," Mayor Bob Kirk recalls with a laugh.
But today the dams are three quarters full. In the depths of that natural disaster, heavy lobbying saw the council win state and federal funding to help raise a dam wall and build a pipeline.
But Mr Kirk says it "absolutely" took an emergency for governments to act.
Since then, new industry has come to town, including a large brewery that co-owner Anton Szpitalak says would not be able to operate "without a guaranteed supply of water."
Plans for a large poultry processing plant are also currently before the council.
But it takes more than big builds and business to drought-proof a town. Mr Kirk says he is just as impressed with the Goulburn community, which has not forgotten the lessons of harsh water restrictions.
"People were standing in the shower with one leg in the bucket to let the water run in. They learnt to make good use of the water, to change their habits and practices, even in their gardening methods and storing water in tanks."
A recent report to council showed Goulburn's water consumption is currently the same as it would be if the town was on level-three water restrictions.
"So Goulburn residents are still adopting water-wise practices," Mr Kirk says proudly.
Proof that hard-won wisdom can become a lasting legacy.

Europe ‘Could Get 10 Times’ Its Electricity Needs From Onshore Wind, Study Says

Carbon Brief - Josh Gabbatiss

Aerial view of a windfarm in Germany. Credit: Leonid Andronov / Alamy Stock Photo.

An increased rollout of onshore wind turbines across Europe could technically provide the continent with more than 10 times its existing electricity needs, according to a new paper.
To make their estimate, a team of German researchers took into account changing wind speeds, all the available land and, crucially, futuristic turbine designs that are already coming onto the market.
While they note that generating 100% of Europe’s power from wind would not actually be feasible due to social, economic and political constraints, the scientists say their estimate gives a “significantly higher” figure than most previous assessments of wind potential.
Their paper, published in the journal Energy, also suggests that, as technology advances, the cost of the resulting electricity will be cheaper than previous studies have estimated.
Some nations, including the UK, have struggled with political opposition to onshore wind. However, with the EU facing ambitious climate targets in the coming years, wind is expected to be the biggest contributor to the region’s power supply within less than a decade.

Renewable goals
As it stands, the EU is aiming to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80-95% by 2050 compared to 1990, amid mounting pressure on member states to agree to a net-zero target.
Achieving these goals will require an enormous shift across the continent to renewable power sources. Germany has already pledged to switch almost totally to renewables by the middle of the century.
Wind – particularly onshore wind – is expected to make a significant contribution to these targets. The International Energy Agency’s (IEA) World Energy Outlook last year concluded wind energy is set to overtake coal, nuclear and gas and become the EU’s largest power source by 2027.
However, as demonstrated by the UK – where cuts to government subsidies and tighter planning rules have effectively blocked onshore wind’s progress since 2015 – political, social and economic factors have added significant uncertainty to the future of this technology.

Installation of the first Vestas V136-3.45 MW® turbine. Credit: Vestas

Various studies have attempted to estimate the wind capacity of the entire continent, adding to the body of evidence concerning the technology’s feasibility. These studies take into account factors such as weather patterns and hypothetical locations for windfarms to gauge the maximum potential wind power has across the region.
These studies have tended to estimate a total European capacity of between around 8 and 12 terawatts (TW), which would result in a total annual generation of between 16 and 21 petawatt hours (PWh). Given the annual electricity generation for Europe – according to BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy – is just 3.6PWh, this already vastly exceeds the amount required on the continent.
However, in their new paper the authors explain that they think this is an underestimate when considering future wind generation potential in Europe.

Futuristic designs
The figure the researchers arrive at is 13.4TW of installable wind capacity across Europe, only marginally higher than previous estimates.
However, the big step up comes from their estimate of average annual generation potential, which is 34.3PWh. This is 13PWh higher than the nearest estimate made by other scientists and 10 times more power than the BP data suggests Europe uses today.
In their paper, the authors attribute this discrepancy partly to their methods of identifying eligible land for windfarm construction and estimating weather. Crucially, they also emphasise their focus on futuristic turbine designs of the type that are expected to become standard in the coming years.

Source	Eligible land [106 km2]	Capacity [TW]	Generation [PWh]	Average FLH [kWh kW1]
This Study	1.35	13.4	34.3	2560
Bosch et al.	1.23	12.4	21.3	1724
Eurek et al.	1.99	10.0	21.1	2117
Stetter	n/a	8.7	21.5	2471
McKenna et al.	0.94	8.4	16.4	1946
Zappa and Broek	n/a	0.543	n/a	n/a
IEA	n/a	n/a	11.5	n/a
JRC	n/a	n/a	n/a	3942

Table showing estimates of total European onshore wind coverage, capacity, generation and full load hours (FLH), as estimated by different research groups. (Ryberg et al., 2019)

David Severin Ryberg, a PhD student at the Forschungszentrum Jülich in North Rhine-Westphalia who led the study, explains to Carbon Brief why this is so important:

“The use of futuristic turbine designs has a major impact on the outcome of these generation potential investigations and, by extension, will drastically change the result of hypothetical energy system design efforts.”

Over the past decade, there has been a steady increase in turbine capacity, hub height and rotor diameter, and these trends are expected to continue. While other studies have used contemporary turbines as their baseline, Ryberg and his colleagues chose instead to use a futuristic turbine that they think will be widespread by 2050.
They say its features represent “conservative estimates” of future norms based on the historical rate of change and note that such a design aligns with a projection described as “likely” by the IEA. Furthermore, such turbines already exist in the form of the Vestas V136, 4.2MW wind turbine, which made its debut earlier this year in Denmark’s first subsidy-free windfarm.
Andrew Canning from trade association WindEurope tells Carbon Brief it is “highly likely” that “better, more efficient and more powerful turbines” will continue to emerge in the near future:

“We’re definitely seeing a trend over the past few years where wind turbines are becoming more efficient. They have grown in height certainly, but they’ve also become more efficient. They can work at slower and higher wind speeds allowing them to capture more of the wind more of the time, meaning they generate more electricity [for a given installed capacity].”

These newer turbines have the potential to be used in the “repowering” of existing windfarms as well. This is where turbines at an old windfarm are replaced at the end of their life, with newer and often larger models.
Canning notes the case of El Carbito onshore windfarm in Spain, which saw its power capacity boosted from 22.8MW to 31MW after 90 first generation turbines were replaced with 15 new ones.

Location and cost
To undertake their analysis, the researchers first ruled out everywhere that was unsuitable for windfarm construction. This included excluding 800m zones around all settlements and 1.2km zones around the most densely populated areas. More exclusion zones were placed around a wide variety of locations, ranging from airports and power lines to protected bird habitats and campsites.
Even after this effort, the researchers were left with a total area of 1.3 million square kilometres – roughly a quarter of Europe’s entire land area – where windfarms could theoretically be built. This is within roughly the same range as past studies.
They then used an algorithm to identify the maximum number of installation sites for turbines and a simulation to determine the hourly generation at those sites over the course of a 37-year lifespan.

Average annual wind capacity factor mapped across Europe, not including any consideration of how suitable land is for windfarms. (Ryberg et al., 2019)

This is where the new projection diverges from previous studies. The combination of increased overall capacity and increased efficiency of the new turbines means it estimates a far higher generation potential. The authors note this significant uptick is not distributed evenly across Europe, with nations benefiting from strong winds, such as the UK, Denmark and Ireland, seeing the biggest potential gains.
Ryberg and his team also consider the cost of wind power under European renewable energy scenarios that have been outlined in the literature. They find that futuristic turbines were able to produce electricity at a cheaper rate than contemporary designs, in part due to their ability to withstand lulls in wind speed better and, therefore, operate with less backup storage. Even in areas where the most windfarms are constructed, they conclude that electricity costs from wind are unlikely to exceed €0.06 per kWh (5p), the study says.

The future of wind
Ryberg notes that their paper is based on a hypothetical situation. While they were careful to exclude unrealistic turbines built “on top of a school”, for example, that does not mean a quarter of Europe would ever realistically be covered in windfarms. He explains why he does not think Europe is heading towards en entirely wind-driven future:

“Much of this technical generation potential would not be economically attractive. Furthermore, the geospatial distribution does not correspond perfectly to all energy demand areas – for example, we find a high wind-generation potential in Sweden, which has a relatively low energy demand compared to Germany, France, Italy and the UK…In addition to this, the ‘intermittency’ of wind is a well-known concept which could make an all-wind European energy system costly – due to energy storage and transmission requirements – and difficult to manage.”

However, this does not mean the paper lacks real-world implications. While politicians in places such as Poland and the UK have resisted onshore wind in recent years, Canning says polls show the European public to be “overwhelmingly” in favour of the technology.
The study conducted by Ryberg and his team shows that not only is an extensive rollout of wind power conceivable, it is likely to be cheap. These facts “speak for themselves”, says Canning, and should influence the decisions of politicians formulating their national energy and climate plans in a bid to meet European emissions goals.
Ryberg says the use of only existing turbine designs when trying to gauge the future systems powering Europe might add bias to their design, putting people off investing in any locations that are not traditionally “strong” for wind power. Using his team’s more up-to-date simulation, he explains the scope can be far broader:

“Since policymakers must rely on these hypothetical energy system evaluations in order to inform their decisions, it is clear that the use of futuristic turbine designs should lead to further proliferation and support for the wind energy sector in Europe.”

Links

• UK onshore wind energy potential could ‘rise by 10%’ with 1.5C warming
• UK needs an ‘Energiewende’, says energy industry chief
• UK needs a ‘smart power revolution’, says Infrastructure Commission
• Onshore wind subsidies: What we know
• Renewable electricity in Africa could outstrip demand in 2030, study says
• UK onshore wind energy potential could ‘rise by 10%’ with 1.5C warming

Pacific Leadership On Climate Change Is Necessary And Inevitable

Sydney Morning Herald - Katerina Teaiwa*

The office of Nei Tabera Ni Kai (NTK), a film unit based in the town of Taborio, in the small island nation of Kiribati, is a small concrete building situated two metres above sea level, 30 metres from the lagoon on one side and 45 metres from the ocean on the other.
Stacked under the louvred glass windows of one of its small rooms are 200 internal hard drives taken from computers over a period of 20 years.
The office has no air conditioning, and the air is salty; there are regular electricity blackouts; and higher than normal wave surges, or “king tides”, threaten the town – and the whole southern end of the atoll, South Tarawa, on which it is located – more frequently than they used to.

Villagers now use the ferry to cross from one part of the village to another at high tide. Credit: Justin McManus

Once a Kiribati household name, NTK has not worked on major projects for a couple of years. One of the co-founders, John Anderson, cameraman and editor, passed away in 2016. His long-time partner, producer, manager and scriptwriter Linda Uan, has been dealing with the loss and reflecting on the best way to preserve their shared legacy.
The independent film unit documented more than two decades of culture, history, creative arts practice, development, and social, heritage and environmental issues across the islands.
In the absence of a national film agency or television media, NTK managed to piece together various sources of funding to work with government and communities to produce educational documentaries, feature films and “edutainment”.
Their output had a significant impact on the scattered Kiribati population – people from other islands travelled to South Tarawa by boat or canoe just to pick up the latest VHS, and later DVD, of their productions.
In March 2019, Uan attended the Maoriland Film Festival in Otaki, New Zealand. During a discussion panel, she spoke passionately about NTK’s work over the years. She ended with a humble request for assistance with archiving, taking one of those rectangular hard drives containing raw footage from her handbag and unwrapping it from a lavalava (sarong), then holding it up for the audience to see.
The group of New Zealand and international filmmakers gasped at the condition of the drive, and the prospective loss of decades of visual chronicles, exposed to the elements in Kiribati.
All but one of the 33 islands in Kiribati are less than two metres above sea level. Large parts of the country are expected to be under water by 2050.
From 2003 to 2016 Kiribati was led by President Anote Tong, who successfully raised global awareness of the climate change threats faced by his country.
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bonn in 2017, Kiribati was described as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries.
Annual temperatures in South Tarawa have increased by roughly 0.18 degrees Celsius per decade since 1950, according to the conference’s briefing paper.
This warming, coupled with increasingly ferocious tidal storms and coastal flooding, is destroying the island’s ecosystems.
Saltwater that floods the islands from storm surges devastates land and property, polluting reservoirs that capture and filter groundwater for consumption.
Salt water also jeopardises resources such as coconuts, pandanus and breadfruit, which residents rely on for food and many other household needs.
In the Kiribati population, there has been a rise in waterborne diseases, among other climate-change-induced illnesses, including cholera and dengue fever.
Warming oceans, combined with increased ocean acidification, disrupts sea life, which is the cornerstone of Kiribati identity and the country’s economy. Kiribati depends almost entirely on its fishing sector for food and revenue, but the catch potential is expected to decrease by 70 per cent by the 2050s.
Kiribati is one of 48 nations in the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of countries most under threat from global warming. These include Tuvalu, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Samoa and the Marshall Islands.

Tebunginako has had to relocate because of rising seas. Credit: Justin McManus

Kiribati once chaired the forum, and under Tong was a vocal proponent for limiting the temperature rise from global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond this temperature, sea levels are expected to increase to a point that would make Kiribati uninhabitable.
Despite global campaigns calling for “1.5 to stay alive”, the Paris Agreement on Climate Change seeks to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. This is devastating for most Pacific island countries.
Anote Tong was vocal about the need for Kiribati to face climate-induced migration “with dignity”. However, the current government, led by Taneti Mamau, rejects this vision of mass migration, instead emphasising local development.
The government aims to develop and increase the land area on South Tarawa by about 100 acres, and on Kiritimati (also known as Christmas Island) by 767 acres. It also owns 22 square kilometres of land on Vanua Levu in Fiji, with potential for forestry, livestock farming and other activities to shore up its food and economic security as Kiribati farmland comes under threat.

Reality too much for many to fathom
The level of carbon now in the atmosphere is more than 415 parts per million.
The last time the Earth experienced these levels was during the Pliocene Epoch, between 5.3 and 2.5 million years ago. Then, global temperatures were 2 to 3 degrees Celsius higher, and the sea levels 25 metres higher.
Pollution from climate change today is on track to push the Earth towards similar conditions.
To many Australian voters, this reality is too much to fathom, presumed to be a hoax, or utterly unknown.

A sea wall in the village of Tebunginako at low tide. Credit: Justin McManus

Prime Minister Scott Morrison might support climate adaptation and mitigation programs in the Pacific through his “Pacific step-up”, but he does not support similar domestic policies, such as increased research on climate change or the introduction of a carbon price, and Australia has no renewable energy targets beyond 2030.
It is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal but faces falling demand as its biggest customers – Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and India – all shift towards cleaner energy.
Burning coal is in Australia a bit like the right to bear arms in the United States: a freedom that causes major planetary harm, but the issue is severely politicised and many are not willing to imagine a future without it.
This protection of the mining industry is not new.
For more than a century Australia has had a relationship with the South Pacific region that furthered its economic interests. Australian mining companies have been present in the Pacific since the beginning of the 20th century, wreaking havoc on ancient cultures and sustainable environmental practices while extracting phosphate as quickly as possible from places such as Nauru and Kiribati.
The value of phosphate, the superphosphate fertiliser it produced, and the growth effects it had on Australian farming production and exports were massive.
In 1983 a monograph produced by the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies described phosphate as “the magic dust of Australian agriculture”.
In the case of Banaba, an island that forms part of Kiribati, the mining infrastructure was left to rust and decay.
 People there live among the asbestos-riddled rubble, in a place that looks more like a post-apocalyptic lunarscape than a Pacific paradise.
When Peter Dutton made his flippant aside in 2015 in response to a quip by Tony Abbott about how islanders are not good at keeping to time (Dutton said, “Time doesn’t mean anything when you’re about to have water lapping at your door”) Tony deBrum, the former foreign minister for the Marshall Islands, posted on Twitter, “Next time waves are battering my home & my grandkids are scared, I’ll ask Peter Dutton to come over, and we’ll see if he is still laughing.”
Former minister for the environment Melissa Price’s words to Tong were also offensive. When she was introduced to him in a Canberra restaurant, it was widely reported – and verified by others in the restaurant – that she said, “I know why you’re here. It is for the cash. For the Pacific it’s always about the cash. I have my chequebook here. How much do you want?”
That kind of attitude towards Pacific island leaders needs to change. Such leaders have been criticising the production and consumption of fossil fuels and their impacts on the environment for almost 30 years.
The former Nauru ambassador to the United Nations, Marlene Moses, wrote in 2016, “For the people of small islands, understanding the importance of the ocean to human survival is as natural as breathing. If the ocean is healthy, we are healthy; if the future of the ocean is uncertain, so is ours.”
The Pacific islands may be smaller states demographically and geographically, but the sea in which they sit covers one-third of the planet’s surface area. Pacific leadership on climate change is necessary and inevitable.

Knowledge a source of resilience for 2000 years
Since 1997, Nei Tabera Ni Kai has produced more than 400 films in both English and the Kiribati language focused on Kiribati knowledge, lives, issues and communities. They have documented what residents call “te katei ni Kiribati” – the Kiribati way.
Their work should be stored in a well-funded archive and maintained for posterity. The name of the unit comes from a female ancestral spirit belonging to Linda Uan’s clan, responsible for women’s health and success. Climate change threatens not only the lands of families and clans such as hers, but the spiritual and cultural spheres associated with these landscapes.
The knowledge inherent in these spheres has been the source of resilience for more than 2000 years in an oceanic environment with limited land, flora and fauna, allowing islanders not only to survive but to produce complex, creative societies.
Australia is now saturated with messages about the existential threat of climate change, but the impacts will cut across all dimensions of human existence – the social, the political, the cultural, the economic, the environmental, and everything else that shapes our identities and relationships.
Climate change is here today, not just in some distant future, and Pacific Islanders who cannot always crawl into air-conditioned, climate-controlled bubbles experience its effects on a daily basis.
While the people of the Pacific are resilient and have survived centuries of upheaval, climate change is already at emergency levels in the region – representing some of the first and starkest signs of the greatest ecological threat to ever face humanity.

*Katerina Teaiwa is an associate professor in the School of Culture, History and Language at the Australian National University. This is an edited extract of her essay "No Distant Future: Climate Change as an Existential Threat" published in Australian Foreign Affairs.

Links

• Australia's Standing In Pacific Has Plummeted Because Of Our Climate Change Failure
• Torres Strait Islanders Ask UN To Hold Australia To Account On Climate ‘Human Rights Abuses’
• Torres Strait Islanders Accuse Government Of Human Rights Breach Over Climate Inaction
• Climate Change Forced These Fijian Communities To Move – And With 80 More At Risk, Here’s What They Learned
• Pacific Shames PM On Climate Policy
• PM Morrison Says Australia Climate Target To Remain Unchanged, Despite Fiji's Criticism
• Climate Change Is 'No Laughing Matter', Fiji's PM Frank Bainimarama Tells Australia During Scott Morrison's Pacific Trip
• Pacific Nations Under Climate Threat Urge Australia To Abandon Coal Within 12 Years
• Australia Only Nation To Join US At Pro-Coal Event At COP24 Climate Talks
• Tuvalu Prime Minister Enele Sopoaga Says Australia's Climate Change Inaction Undermines Its 'Pacific Pivot'
• Chinese expert warns Australia against investing in new coal

'Hasn't Climate Change Always Happened?' Scientists Address The Big Questions

ABC News - Georgie Burgess

Leading climate scientists have addressed questions from the sceptics. (Twitter)

Earlier this year we asked what keeps you up at night when it comes to climate change, and the Curious Climate project received hundreds of questions.

Among the questions — from whether bananas could be grown in Tasmania, to queries on sea level rise, to whether certain areas will have more droughts — there were some sceptical inquiries.
So the ABC Radio Hobart Mornings program took some of your questions to a panel of climate scientists:

• Michael Grose, CSIRO Climate Science Centre
• Jess Melbourne-Thomas, CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere
• Stuart Corney, Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies
• Andrew Lenton, CSIRO ocean carbon modeller

'Hasn't climate change happened throughout history?'
This was one of the most common questions we received.
"Yes, climate has always changed through things like solar cycles, orbit of the earth and natural variability," Dr Grose said.
"It's not a matter of one or the other, it's a matter of both.

"The rate of change due to humans is more rapid than any previous examples from things like ice age cycles."

Dr Corney pointed out that current CO2 levels were 414 parts per million.
"We have seen that in the geological record, but not for millions and millions of years," he said.
"To change from say 300 parts per million to 400 parts per million would take tens of thousands of years.
"We've now seen that change in a little over 100 years."

'Can't the coral just move?'

One audience member asked if coral could move further south to survive. (Supplied: Mia Hoogenboom, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies)

Dr Melbourne-Thomas said damage to coral was one of the best examples of how rapid the effects of climate change were.
She said it was not possible for corals to move further south to survive.
"Corals can't move, they are stationary," she said.
"They can disperse by ocean currents, but whether or not they'll be able to do that is an open question."
Dr Melbourne-Thomas said coral was affected by more than just ocean temperature.
"They are being hammered by many angles as a result of climate change."
Dr Lenton said he accepted that corals were adaptable.
"But one of the challenges here is we don't know what the adaptive capacity is," he said.
"The rates that they'll need to adapt exceeds what we've been able to calculate previously.

"Are we going to wipe out corals? No. But the Great Barrier Reef as we know it today will be a completely different place."

'Two degrees warmer doesn't sound too bad, does it?'

Dr Stuart Corney says higher temperatures will bring more extreme weather events like bushfires. (Supplied: TFS/Warren Frey)

The scientists said the human body — in which a 2 degree Celsius increase meant a person would be very unwell — provided a useful analogy to understand the impact of temperature change in the environment.
Dr Corney said people often commented that a slight change in temperature wasn't a bad thing, especially for those living in southern Australia.
But he said such a change would result in more heat waves and bushfires like Tasmania experienced last summer. "There's a much greater increase in extreme events," he said.

"Just a couple of degrees warmer and the chances of really long heatwaves increase dramatically.

"We'll see bushfires like that occur more in the future."

'Are we really doomed?'

Thousands of students turned out in Hobart's CBD as part of climate change rallies earlier this year. (ABC News: Monte Bovill)

Dr Melbourne-Thomas said while society may not be "doomed" the world does need to act quickly to address climate change.
"More and more of the evidence is suggesting if we don't act now we face some pretty serious consequences in the near future," she said.
Dr Corney said the longer the planet waited to make changes, the worse the consequences would be.

"We're most definitely not doomed — climate change is not going to end life on earth or civilisation for humans," he said.

"But it is likely to have some pretty big consequences for wild ecosystems and for civilisations."
Dr Grose said humans were tenacious and would find ways to adapt.
"We've rebuilt after world wars, people do a lot of good work to overcome problems," he said.
"We need the best minds and organisations working together, but I'm optimistic."

'How do you dedicate your life to this field but increasingly have people telling you that you're wrong?'
Dr Corney said he enjoyed engaging in discussions about whether climate change was a real thing.
"I've been to plenty of family functions where people want to know if climate change is real," he said.
"I enjoy that aspect of being able to explain how we have pretty strong evidence that climate change is happening.
"Most people when they sit down and engage in that conversation react well."
He said some people were reluctant to accept bad news.
"People are scared of change especially when that change is negative," he said.
Dr Lenton said it he found it challenging working in the climate change space, and was concerned for the future of his children.

"We'd love nothing more than a breakthrough that said the climate wasn't warming," he said.

Tokelauns protest against climate change during the Pacific Warrior Day of Action. (Supplied: Te Mana: Litia Maiava)

"We're really hoping we haven't got it right, but the weight of evidence says we are on the side of the truth here."
Dr Grose said most people communicated on the issue in good faith, but the spread of false information was of concern.
"It's a very threatening situation," he said.
He said because the issue threatened industry and innovation and the way decisions were made people didn't want to accept it.
"People have a natural reaction to seek out information that counters that and reassures them that it's not happening," he said.
"I can understand negative reactions."

'I don't believe in climate change'
Dr Corney said he commonly heard the people say they "don't believe in climate change".

"Climate change isn't a matter of belief, it's not a faith system," he said.

"I have seen the evidence and the evidence is overwhelming and I accept that evidence.
"It's not like a religion — if we could prove it's not happening that would be the biggest step forward for anyone's career and you'd be a hero."

Coastal erosion at the Bruny Island Boat Club. (Supplied: Bruny Island Boat Club)

'Why do all scientists sing from the same hymn book?'
Dr Grose and Dr Lenton said scientists relished opportunities to prove each other wrong, but because they see the evidence first hand no scientist could be in denial.
"If one of us was to prove that climate change wasn't real there'd be a Nobel Prize in that," Dr Lenton said.
"We've all seen evidence and we all draw conclusions from that," Dr Corney added.

'Are sea levels actually rising?'
Contributors observed that historical photos from their regions showed beaches and waterways were always changing over time.
Dr Grose said he accepted that sediment moved around, and beaches could look different as sediment was washed away and brought back in.
He said scientists used quality measurements over a long period of time.
"We've seen more than 20 centimetres of sea level rise over the past 100 years," Dr Grose said.
He said it had accelerated in past few decades.
Dr Lenton said when CO2 levels go up, so does the temperature — but the sea level was different.
"Once we put heat into the ocean it takes many thousands of years for the heat to come out again."

*Curious Climate Tasmania is a public-powered science project, bridging the gap between experts and audiences with credible, relevant information about climate change. The project is a collaboration between ABC Hobart, UTAS Centre for Marine Socioecology, the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS), the Tasmanian Institute of Agriculture (TIA), and the CSIRO.

Links

• 'It's happening now': Climate change threatens public health, and we're seeing its effects already
• 'We're seeing metres lost': This is what climate change looks like
• We still have time to avoid record-breaking temperatures for the rest of the century
• Flying fox decline signals dire warning for Tropics in the grip of climate change
• Mass fish kill due to 'exceptional climate conditions', Government's interim report finds
• 'Our climate has already changed': The $1.5b cost of Qld's 'summer of disasters'
• Australia's coal future under threat as more changes hit fossil fuels globally
• Is it time for politicians to listen and promote the planet diet?
• Australia's biggest companies ignore climate change risk: report
• If Pacific nations go under water what happens to maritime boundaries?
• 'It's like Jenga': Evidence of declining insect numbers a 'wake-up call'
• The challenges of understanding impact of climate change in Antarctica