BBC News
- Simon Atkinson
In the past two weeks, floods in eastern Australia have killed at least 21
people. Thousands of homes have been left uninhabitable by one of
Australia's worst natural disasters.
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Sophia Walter with flood-damaged items on her Brisbane street.
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Wading through filthy, waist-high floodwaters to escape her apartment, Sophia
Walter says her first emotion wasn't fear. It was fury.
"What I felt was a real anger. Anger that this was happening again."
In January 2011, Ms Walter watched "the hill I lived on turn into an island" as
Brisbane suffered floods described as a once-in-a-century event.
"I remember thinking to myself, well at least I've gotten it out of the way."
Barely a decade on, she is standing among mountains of abandoned furniture,
destroyed electricals and sodden toys, all dumped on the footpath.
A "rain bomb" of intense downpours saw the city's overflowing river and creeks
cause billions of dollars of damage. At least five people in Brisbane have died.
Grim warnings
With impeccable timing, as cars were being submerged, homes
inundated and ferry pontoons cascaded wildly downstream, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was publishing its latest update on the state of
the planet.
Among its many grim warnings: extreme rainfall (as well as droughts and
bushfires) will become more and more common. And the window of opportunity to
act is closing fast.
"There's no way people can ignore it anymore," says Guy Mansfield, a
videographer who scrambled at midnight to save equipment and hard drives before
floods consumed his basement office.
Precious photographs and music memorabilia were lost. A stack of destroyed
furniture and books is piled outside the Brisbane home he only bought five years
ago.
"It seemed astute to move into a flood area after the last flood, because it's a
little bit cheaper and we could afford a place here," he says.
"We just thought it might flood again in 30 years or something like that, and
we'd totally avoid it. But yeah, here it is. We couldn't believe it."
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Guy Mansfield says he lost many precious items.
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Flooding on the outskirts of Brisbane earlier this month.
Getty Images
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Ms Walter - a climate campaigner - aims her anger at Australia's government for
being slow to cut carbon emissions and invest in renewables.
"Despite the fact that we're now seeing natural disaster after natural disaster,
that this has become the new normal," she says.
"I want to see more ambition, I want us to stop subsidising fossil fuels and to
take up the job opportunities there can be in regional communities from
renewable energy. Instead, it just feels like we're languishing at the bottom of
the pile."
A report published at the COP26 global summit last year backs up that
assessment. It ranked Australia last among 60 countries for policy responses to
the climate crisis, largely down to a stubborn reliance on coal-powered energy
and coal exports.
Like any standalone weather event, we can't say how much a changing climate
contributed to these specific floods.
But scientists are united in their view that global warming is making severe
floods more likely in northern Australia.
Warmer oceans increase the amount of moisture moving from seas to the
atmosphere, says Australia's CSIRO government science agency. That will "most
likely increase the intensity of extreme rainfall events".
Brisbane got 80% of its average annual rainfall in just three days, with more
water dropping on the city than typically falls in London over a year. Sydney
has had its wettest start of the year on record.
But elsewhere in Queensland and New South Wales (NSW), flooding has been even
worse. To the north of Brisbane, swollen rivers continue to cut off the town of
Gympie.
In Lismore in northern NSW - where some residents scrambled to roofs and waited
for 24 hours or more to be rescued - rebuilding will take years.
"Australia is getting hard to live in because of these disasters," said Prime
Minister Scott Morrison on a visit to the town on Wednesday.
"We are dealing with a different climate to the one we were dealing with before.
I think that's just an obvious fact."
Watch footage of New South Wales floods in the past two weeksChallenged on his climate record, Mr Morrison said the country had
committed to reaching net zero by 2050 (though Australia was widely panned for
not raising its crucial 2030 targets).
And he repeated his well-worn argument that reducing Australia's 1.3% share of
worldwide emissions would achieve little without a global response.
But campaigners say this ignores that Australia's emissions are large for its
population, while also neglecting that stronger action would send a message to
the international community.
"There's been no meaningful climate action in eight years. This is a resounding
failure," said Amanda Mackenzie, chief executive of the Climate Council.
Reconsidering future
In May, Australians are likely to vote in national elections - the first since
the Black Summer bushfires.
With these floods fresh on the mind, the costs of climate change -
environmental, human and financial - seem certain to play a big part.
Flood insurance claims look set to reach A$2bn ($1.5bn), putting them on par
with those bushfires.
Mr Mansfield says he is not fully insured, but did at least have some coverage.
Neighbours were even less fortunate.
"A lot of people around here are uninsured. Some companies won't insure you.
Those that do, it's just so expensive. You're looking at A$1,000 a month."
Justine and Jeff Douglas moved into their home in the riverside suburb of
Fairfield in December 2010, two weeks before the last major floods.
Now they're assessing water damage to a basement, that also wrote off a car, and
reconsidering their future.
"In 2011, we were asked if we'd think of moving out and I said, no way," says
Mrs Douglas.
"But the second time round, yeah, we are. We will."
Climate will only be one factor at voting time, she adds. During the pandemic,
government tax breaks and support for small businesses "helped us out
greatly".
"It's a tough one. And everyone has to really dig deep and make some really big
decisions on where to go from here."
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Jeff and Justine Douglas say this flood will prompt them to move
house.
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For her husband, even water lapping at his door for a second time has not
convinced him that more extreme weather is necessarily linked to a warming
planet.
"I neither believe or disbelieve, I'm terribly on the fence with climate
change," Mr Douglas says.
"For as long as we know, we've had tragic events. We've had awful floods, we've
had awful weather events. I think there needs to be a lot more work done on
it."
But climate scientists say the evidence is clear.
In different times, news of these floods would have made far bigger headlines
globally.
"We are all frustrated and we simply have to get the message out that we simply
can't afford any more delay," says Prof Lesley Hughes, a climate scientist and
pro-vice chancellor at Macquarie University.
"This is the most important existential threat to humanity ever. There are lots
of things that grab our attention, like the crisis in Ukraine, and those are
shocking tragedies.
"But in the long term, climate change is it."
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