Huon Pine Trees Live For 3,000 Years But Climate Change Could Wipe Them Out In The Next 50

ABC News - Felicity Ogilvie

Huon pine has been around for thousands of years. (ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie)

Key points Huon pines are the second oldest living trees in the world Experts fear in 50 to 100 years the tree could go extinct Scientists are taking samples of tree cores to study how the climate has changed

The rare Huon pine, which has existed on Earth for thousands of years, could go extinct due to the effects of climate change, experts warn.
uon pines are the oldest living trees in Australia and the second oldest in the world — only the North American bristle cone lives longer.
Huon pines can live for 3,000 years, meaning some were seedlings before the Greeks invented democracy and well before Julius Caesar was born.
Professor Tim Brodribb from the University of Tasmania is one of those concerned about what carbon dioxide emissions could mean for the giant tree.
"If the emissions continue to rise as they are at the moment, then this species [Huon pine] and a lot of species in Tasmania will be extinct in 100 years for sure," he said.

"The timescale [could be] 100 years or 50 years, depends on how our carbon dynamics work."

Professor Brodribb recently visited a Huon pine forest on Tasmania's West Coast with University of Melbourne scientist Kathy Allen.

Professor Tim Broadribb is concerned about what carbon dioxide emissions could mean for the giant tree. (ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie)

Dr Allen has been using an instrument called a dendrometer to take data every 15 minutes to see how the trees grow.
She is also taking samples of the tree cores to study how the climate has changed.

Kathy Allen takes data every 15 minutes to see how the trees grow. (ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie)

She has observed that in the past 1,000 years, there were only a few hot summers — but that has changed since the 1950s.
"The change you're seeing since the 1950s record is unprecedented," she said.
Professor Brodribb also said the West Coast — where Huon pines grow — is facing a triple threat of increasing temperature, decreasing rainfall and more bushfires.
The old trees are rarely cut down but the timber is rot-proof, enabling sawmillers to salvage logs from the forest floor and river beds.

Sawmiller Bern Bradshaw thinks scientists have got it wrong. (ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie)

Sawmiller Bern Bradshaw, 90, has been working with Huon pines most of his life.
He thinks the scientists have got it wrong and that the trees will survive climate change.
Mr Bradshaw also looked at the tree rings of Huon pine logs.

"I think it's just coped with very warm weather and its also coped with very cold weather," he said.

But his colleague Dianne Coon is terrified about what could happen to the tourism industry and the timber industry in a region that is reliant on tourists taking cruises up the Gordon River to see giant Huon pines.
"If we are to lose something that takes so long to grow and embodies so much history it would be a shame on us all," she said.

Huon pines grow on the West Coast. (ABC News: Felicity Ogilvie)

Links

• 500yo forest giant among trees reduced to 'pile of ash' by summer bushfires
• How much has Tasmania's climate changed in the 100 years to now?
• Predicted changes to Tasmania’s climate
• Climate Futures for Tasmania
• Climate change in Tasmania
• Tasmanian Climate Change Stories
• Climate Futures for Tasmania

Global Heating Made Hurricane Dorian Bigger, Wetter – And More Deadly

The Guardian - Michael Mann | Andrew E Dessler

We know that warm waters fuel hurricanes, and Dorian was strengthened by waters well above average temperatures

‘As climate change has melted glaciers and ice around the world, that water has gone into the oceans.’ Photograph: Ramón Espinosa/AP

Authors Michael Mann is is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University and the author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines. Andrew Dessler is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and holder of the Reta A. Haynes Chair of Geosciences at Texas A&M University. His most recent book is Science and Politics of Global Climate Change: A Guide to the Debate.

The Bahamas, for those who live there, is simply a place to call home. For many Americans, it’s a dream vacation spot. But Hurricane Dorian turned that dream into a nightmare. And the worst part is this is only the beginning. Because unless we confront the climate crisis, warming will turn more and more of our fantastic landscapes, cities we call paradise and other dream destinations into nightmarish hellscapes.
While the science has yet to come in on the specifics of just how much worse climate change made Dorian, we already know enough to say that warming worsened the damage. Because it’s not a coincidence that Dorian was one of the strongest landfalling storms ever recorded in the Atlantic, with the strongest sustained peak winds east of Florida, and the strongest ever to hit the Bahamas. This comes less than a year after Florida withstood the first landfalling category 5 hurricane in decades, on 5 October – the latest ever in the season for a storm that strong.
On a basic physics level, we know that warm waters fuel hurricanes, and Dorian was strengthened by waters well above average temperatures. The fact that climate change has heated up our oceans means Dorian was stronger than it would have been had we not spent the past 150 years dumping carbon pollution into the atmosphere. Sea surface temperatures were more than 1C warmer in the region where Dorian formed and strengthened than they were before we started burning fossil fuels.
Empirically, there is a roughly 7% increase in maximum sustained wind speeds of the strongest storms for each 1C of warming. Since destructive potential is proportional to the third power of the wind speed, that corresponds to a 23% increase in potential wind damage. We saw that wind damage in the heartbreaking scenes of total devastation that have come in from the Bahamas.
We know that the warmer air gets, the more moisture it can hold – and then turn into flooding rains in a storm like this. And we know that as climate change has melted glaciers and ice around the world, that water has gone into the oceans. The extra water, along with the expansion of water as it’s warmed, means that sea levels have been raised. That means when a storm like Dorian makes landfall, there’s more water for its storm surge, already bolstered by stronger winds, to push further inland.
All that extra water makes hurricanes even more deadly, since it’s generally not the wind but the water that kills people. So although Dorian’s 220mph gusts were incredibly dangerous (and sped up thanks to climate change), it was the 20-plus feet of storm surge and torrential rains that were the most destructive elements.
But there are two other ways that warming has probably worsened Dorian’s damage. One is that all that warm water allowed for the storm to ramp up quickly, undergoing what is known as rapid intensification as it exploded from a moderate category 2 to extreme category 5 over just two days. A recent study has shown that this is getting more common because of climate change, and indeed the past few years have seen many similar examples of this effect in action. Dorian was the fourth category 5 storm in just the last four years.
So while climate change is making it so hurricanes can spin up quickly, it may also be slowing down how fast hurricanes move. Instead of moving across a coast and dissipating as normal, in recent years these storms are lingering longer in place, which means more flooding as the water piles up. For example, that’s exactly what we saw in Houston during Harvey, and in North Carolina during Florence.
Had Dorian been moving at a regular pace of a few miles an hour, the devastation in the Bahamas would have been much less severe. But because it sat in place, basically stationary, the damage has been catastrophic. Again, Dorian is far from unique in moving slowly, as a study last year found a 10% decrease in speed for storms like this globally, while a similar study found a 17% decrease along the east coast of the US. While neither of these studies directly tie that slowdown to climate change, the theory that climate change is changing the jet stream in ways that would lead to stalling storms (a phenomenon one of us has researched) is growing increasingly convincing.
When all these factors combine in one storm, as it has for Dorian, it is truly a nightmare scenario – and a preview of the climate crisis to come. The only question is whether we have the foresight to address it.

Links

• Hurricane Dorian edges 'dangerously close' to Florida after battering Bahamas
• How much destruction is needed for us to take climate change seriously?
• Climate Change Fills Storms With More Rain, Analysis Shows
• Hurricanes Are Lingering Longer. That Makes Them More Dangerous.
• The Hurricanes, and Climate-Change Questions, Keep Coming. Yes, They’re Linked
• The Climate Crisis Movie Isn’t Out Yet, But We Just Saw The Trailer
• Hurricane Florence Is A Climate Change Triple Threat
• Conflict, Climate Change Choke Efforts To Cure Poverty, Inequality: U.N.
• Hurricane Season May Be Even Worse In 2018 After A Harrowing 2017
• First Harvey, Then Irma and Jose. Why? It’s the Season.
• Texas Wind Turbines Went Right On Turning Under Harvey’s Impact, As Refineries Shut Down
• Insurance Industry Prices Warming Into Hurricane Harvey Cost
• The Truth About Harvey And Climate Change Is In The Middle
• Harvey Didn’t Come Out Of The Blue. Now Is The Time To Talk About Climate Change.

How Has Climate Change Affected Hurricane Dorian?

New York Times - John Schwartz

Hurricane Dorian seen from the International Space Station on Monday. Credit NASA/EPA, via Shutterstock

The links between hurricanes and climate change are complex, but some aspects are getting clearer.
Tropical storms draw their energy from ocean heat — and more than 90 percent of the heat trapped by greenhouse gas emissions is being stored in the ocean. Storms that survive the cradle of formation can intensify quickly and become immensely powerful.
While it’s common to hear the question, “Was it caused by climate change?” scientists argue that this is an unhelpful way to look at the issue. As Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, put it recently on Twitter, “that’s the wrong question. The right one is, ‘how much worse did climate change make it?’”

"Was it caused by climate change?" is the most common question when we hear about an extreme event. But when it comes to hurricanes, that's the wrong question. The right one is, "how much worse did climate change make it?" (thread)
— Katharine Hayhoe (@KHayhoe) August 31, 2019

Like so many hurricanes, Dorian’s origins were unassuming. At 11 a.m. on August 24, the National Hurricane Center in Miami announced a new tropical depression east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles. At the time, it was just Tropical Depression Five.
Now, as that same storm slowly moves away from the Bahamas — which experienced a nightmare scenario of a Category 5 storm stalling over it for 24 hours — it begins its slow roll toward the East Coast of the United States.
A number of recent storms have stopped in one place for extended periods of time, including Harvey, which sat over Houston for days in 2017 and caused unprecedented flooding.
Recent research suggests that climate change has made stalled Atlantic storms more common since the mid-20th century, and that they are more dangerous because they stay in one place for a longer period of time, potentially concentrating their destruction.
Jennifer Francis, a scientist with the Woods Hole Research Center, said, “This is yet another example of the kind of slow-moving tropical systems that we expect to see more often as a response to climate change. Upper-level steering winds are slowing over the continents during summer, so stalling weather systems are more likely.”

Officials at the National Hurricane Center in Miami tracking Dorian last week. Credit Johnny Milano for The New York Times

Hurricanes are steered in part by high-atmosphere winds not directly related to the storm. Dorian slowed to a crawl — about one mile an hour — because the tropical winds that were pushing it westward over the Bahamas weakened, said Joel Cline, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in Silver Spring, Md.
Climate change is making hurricanes more destructive in many ways.
Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said that some of the links between hurricanes and climate change are still being worked out. But, he said, some attributes of storms, particularly the increasing amount of rainfall associated with many of them, has reached a very strong consensus.
A similarly solid consensus has developed about storms getting stronger. There is somewhat less consensus, he said, around the idea that storms are likelier to stall.
The problem with looking for answers in individual storms, he said, is that “because these are rare events, it’s really hard to get good statistics. Picking out trends is difficult.” And so the field draws conclusions from physics and models, and “physics rules the system.”One of the other characteristics of Dorian: Its course has, at times, been difficult to forecast. Gabriel Vecchi, a professor of geosciences at Princeton University, said that forecasts of the storm’s path have actually been “in relative agreement,” but that the people find the remaining degree of uncertainty unsatisfying. “The problem is our standards have gotten so high, because the forecasts have gotten so good,” he said.Mr. Cline said that over the previous two days, Dorian’s track had more closely matched the forecasts. As it travels up the East Coast the storm’s behavior may become even more predictable, he said, as it encounters the typical west-to-east wind flow that defines most of the weather in the Mid-Atlantic region. That should drive Dorian increasingly to the northeast, he said.
Dr. Vecchi warned against trying to attribute too many elements of an individual storm to climate change right away, however, since attribution science has so far been most successful in terms of rainfall. He cautioned against saying that every intense storm was made more powerful because of global warming, since “there have been intense storms in the past.”
Instead, he put it this way: Dorian “looks like what we’re going to have more of in the future.”

Links

• Climate Change Fills Storms With More Rain, Analysis Shows
• Hurricanes Are Lingering Longer. That Makes Them More Dangerous.
• The Hurricanes, and Climate-Change Questions, Keep Coming. Yes, They’re Linked
• The Climate Crisis Movie Isn’t Out Yet, But We Just Saw The Trailer
• Hurricane Florence Is A Climate Change Triple Threat
• Conflict, Climate Change Choke Efforts To Cure Poverty, Inequality: U.N.
• Hurricane Season May Be Even Worse In 2018 After A Harrowing 2017
• First Harvey, Then Irma and Jose. Why? It’s the Season.
• Texas Wind Turbines Went Right On Turning Under Harvey’s Impact, As Refineries Shut Down
• Insurance Industry Prices Warming Into Hurricane Harvey Cost
• The Truth About Harvey And Climate Change Is In The Middle
• Harvey Didn’t Come Out Of The Blue. Now Is The Time To Talk About Climate Change.

Climate Activists To Argue They Can Break The Law In Order To Save The Planet

ABC The Signal - Stephen Stockwell | Ange Lavoipierre

Emma Dorge was arrested in Brisbane during climate change protests. (Supplied: Will Bri)

Key points Four climate activists will plead not guilty, arguing that climate change poses an "extraordinary emergency" The defence has been used by activists successfully in other countries, but never in Australia The four were arrested during protests last month in Brisbane

When 23-year-old Emma Dorge appears in court to enter her plea, she will be relying on a unique defence.
Charged with traffic offences for blocking Brisbane streets during a protest, she will argue she should be allowed to break the law because she is saving the planet.
"I'm pleading not guilty on the basis of the extraordinary emergency defence, which basically allows for people breaking the law in an extraordinary emergency," she told The Signal.
"We're in the midst of a crisis and that's the climate crisis, we believe we've essentially been forced to break the law to avert a far more catastrophic outcome."
On Wednesday, Ms Dorge will be joined by three other climate change activists in Brisbane Magistrates Court.
They'll all be relying on the defence and hoping to set a new legal precedent.

What did Emma do?
Ms Dorge is a member of the Extinction Rebellion, a global organisation of environmental activists.

Emma Dorge joined a protest organised by Extinction Rebellion, a group of environmental activists. (Supplied)

The group's activists have occupied the Scottish parliament and even glued themselves to the front of banks in Manchester in a world-wide campaign of civil disobedience meant to force governments into action on climate change.
On August 6, members of the group in Brisbane marched through the streets, with some activists sitting down to block a major intersections in the city's CBD.

Hundreds of people marched along the road in the middle of the city last month. (ABC News: Dan Smith)

Police had just pulled a protester from a group blocking George Street when Ms Dorge said she threw herself into the gap, linking arms with the remaining activists.
"A police officer almost immediately jumped on me and pushed me down," she said.
The officer arrested her for a traffic offence and put her into a nearby paddywagon.

The Signal Breaking the law in a climate crisis A Queensland court is about to hear a case that climate change is a good enough excuse to break the law. It's an argument that's worked overseas, but never here. So could that change?

The protest ended with 70 people charged by police.
"Signing a petition or making a phone call does not force action to happen," said Ms Dorge.
"But taking to the streets and sitting down and not moving, once you get that mass of people, business as usual can not continue and Brisbane can't continue to function as a city.
"Politicians will be forced to listen to us and to act."

What is the defence?
The extraordinary emergency defence has been used for centuries, according to Dr Nicole Rogers from the School of Law at Southern Cross University.
"It's origins actually lie in a case where various individuals were accused of murder," she said.
"There had been a shipwreck, they were all in a boat and a decision was made basically to kill and eat the weakest, youngest member of the crew, on the basis they all needed to survive."
It's not often used to defend cannibals these days, and is more likely to be argued when someone breaks a road rule so they can save a life, for example.
Climate activists have taken an interest in the law, said Dr Rogers, because of how the statue uses the phrase, 'extraordinary emergency'.
"We're seeing this ongoing process where parliaments and governments and universities and even the Pope are all making declarations of climate change emergency," she said.
"So we're seeing it recognised publicly and framed as an extraordinary emergency.
"It's interesting to see this particular section of the Queensland Criminal Code being activated by climate activists."
In fact, the defence has worked before, just not in Australia.

Police made dozens of arrests when Extinction Rebellion protesters blocked traffic in the Brisbane CBD. (ABC News: Dan Smith)

Many common law jurisdictions around the world have a similar statute to "extraordinary emergency" and climate change activists in the United Kingdom successfully argued such a defence in 2008.
"Greenpeace activists who scaled the chimney of a power station and painted graffiti on it actually were acquitted on the basis of statutory version of necessity in the UK statute," Dr Rogers said.
"It hasn't been followed by similar examples until this year. One of the founders of Extinction Rebellion and his colleague were acquitted, again it was graffiti damage that they'd been charged with and the jury was quite prepared to accept their argument that the climate crisis justified their actions."

Will it work?
Even if judges accept the argument from activists that there is a climate emergency, the defence still has a long way to go, according to Dr Rogers.
"Judges are coming back and saying, 'Well there are all sorts of legal avenues that are available to activists," she explained.
If activists are to win they would have to prove actions, like blocking roads, are the only options left to them.
Regardless of the outcome of Ms Dorge's case, Dr Rogers believes activists should continue to test the extraordinary emergency defence in courts.
"The question of what is reasonable behaviour is shifting and also what is lawfulness in light of the extraordinary emergency of climate change," she said.
"I think inevitably it will change. I don't know when, I don't know how, but I think the resilience of legal norms in the face of climate change is questionable, so I think law as we know it is going to change."

Links

• Extinction Rebellion: Hitting A Nerve At Australia's Climate Flashpoint
• 'Can't Rely On Governments Alone': Atlassian Leads Push For Staff To Attend Global Climate Strike
• Politics-As-Usual Can’t Fix The Climate Crisis. Maybe It’s Time To Try A Citizens’ Assembly
• Rising Force: How Extinction Rebellion Hopes To Make A Difference
• Australia's Climate Change Inaction Is Now Bipartisan. Protest Is All We Have Left
• Some ‘Sinister Tactics’ Those Brave Protesters In Queensland Could Have Used But Also Didn’t
• Queensland Police Arrest 56 Climate Change Protesters In Brisbane
• Queensland Police To Get New Powers To Search Climate Change Protesters
• Police to crack down on protesters using 'locking devices' laced with booby traps
• More than 200 people arrested in London climate change protests
• 'We cannot be ignored': Scores of activists charged over Brisbane climate protest

'Can't Rely On Governments Alone': Atlassian Leads Push For Staff To Attend Global Climate Strike

Sydney Morning Herald - Michael Koziol

Tech giant Atlassian will encourage its 3500 employees to take part in this month's global strike for climate action in a move it hopes will reverberate through corporate Australia.
The firm's billionaire co-founder, Mike Cannon-Brookes, said companies had to take their share of responsibility for the "climate crisis" and warned Australians in particular could not rely on governments "at all" to address the problem.

Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes says Australians can't rely on government "at all" on climate  change. Credit: Steven Siewert

In an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, he said prominent politicians such as Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, who has been critical of corporate activism in the past, should "stick to [their] knitting", something Mr Dutton has previously told chief executives to do.
Millions are expected to walk out of work or school on September 20 as part of "Strike 4 Climate Action" – inspired by 16-year-old Swedish schoolgirl and activist Greta Thunberg – to demand global action on climate change ahead of a major United Nations summit in New York the following week.
A dozen other firms will support staff who wish to take part in the strike, including fossil-free superannuation fund Future Super, which will shut its doors on the day, and reusable coffee cup company KeepCup. Atlassian employees can use part of the week's leave they receive each year to do charity work.
Mr Cannon-Brookes said Australia had "no credible climate policy whatsoever", noting carbon emissions continued to rise despite the Morrison government's insistence it will meet its 2030 targets under the global Paris Agreement.


Prime Minister Scott Morrison will forge ahead with his government's climate change policy. Hear what he has said on the topic, after his election win.

"Politicians can try to put whatever spin on it they want," he said, referring to Energy and Emissions Reduction Minister Angus Taylor's recent explanation that emissions increases were due to growth in liquefied natural gas exports. Mr Taylor in June said the figures did not acknowledge Australia's contribution to lowering emissions in other countries through exports of LNG, which creates fewer emissions than coal.
"I was very amused by the spin that absent that - the increase in LNG exports - [emissions] would have gone down," Mr Cannon-Brookes said.
Coalition ministers have previously criticised student climate strikes and corporate activism. Resources Minister Matt Canavan warned striking students would only learn "how to join the dole queue", while Mr Dutton said it was "unacceptable that people would use companies and the money of publicly listed companies to throw their weight around".

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School strike 4 climate Church backs climate strike for its 10,000 students

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But Mr Cannon-Brookes said as corporations were directly affected by climate change, it was in their own capitalistic interests to encourage stronger political action.
"Corporations have to deal with it; they have to deal with their own impact and their own footprint as companies," he said.
"It's a crisis that demands leadership and action. But we can't rely on governments alone - sadly, in Australia, we can't rely on them at all."
Mr Dutton has previously suggested chief executives wishing to debate "moral issues" such as same-sex marriage should "become a politician, resign your job at $5 million a year, come on to $250,000, if they can tolerate that".
But Mr Cannon-Brookes rejected the idea of entering politics. "I'm a little too honest for that. I'd be a rubbish politician," he said.
In addition to supporting the strike, Atlassian will screen Damon Gameau's climate change documentary 2040 at its offices in Sydney, San Francisco and Austin.

Links

• Church backs climate strike for its 10,000 students
• 'No other way': Student climate activist Greta Thunberg's strike call
• Global Climate Strike Sep. 20–27
• School Strike 4 Climate Australia
• FridaysForFuture
• Climate change protest will lead to dole queue, minister tells students
• Australia's greenhouse emissions set new seven-year highs on gas boom

Climate Change: Hungry Nations Add The Least To Global CO2

BBC - Matt McGrath

Burundi has contributed little to rising temperatures, but will be hit hard by some of the effects. Getty Images

The impoverished African nation of Burundi comes top of a list of the world's most food-insecure countries says Christian Aid.
The charity argues that Burundi and others are now keenly feeling the impacts of climate change on their food production systems.
But Burundi's contribution to rising temperatures is marginal, say experts.
In fact, the annual carbon emissions of one Briton is equal to the CO2 produced by over 200 Burundians.
Scientists and government officials from all over the world are meeting in Geneva this week to consider how climate change impacts the land and how the lands and forests impact the climate.
Their detailed report will be released on Thursday.
However, researchers at development charity Christian Aid have put together a study showing how that climate change is now having a disproportionate impact on the food systems of the countries that have done least to produce the carbon emissions that are driving up temperatures.

Burundians produce 0.027 tonnes of CO2 per person per year. Someone living in Saudi Arabia produces the same as 718 people in Burundi. The equivalent number for the US would be 581 and for Russia 454.

Their study says that the top 10 most food insecure countries all generate less than half a tonne of CO2 per person, and in total just 0.08% of global emissions.

Interactive tool: How much warmer is your city? Select from 1,000 major cities around the world

As well as Burundi, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Madagascar, Yemen and Sierra Leone make up the top five countries.
The rest of the top 10 includes Chad, Malawi, Haiti, Niger and Zambia.
Burundians produce 0.027 tonnes of CO2 per person per year. Someone living in Saudi Arabia produces the same as 718 people in Burundi. The equivalent number for the US would be 581 and for Russia 454.
The report's authors draw a clear link between rising global temperatures and increasing food security issues.
"Our research shows that rising concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere are reducing the nutritional quality of the food we eat and that the most vulnerable people to these impacts are those least responsible for rising global CO2 concentrations," said Dr Samuel Myers, principal research scientist at Harvard University's department of environmental health.
"From this, and other research, what is quite clear is that climate change is not only a global health crisis, it is a moral crisis."
Other researchers say that the report on food insecurity is a warning for rich and poor alike, that climate change is having profound effects on our ability to feed the planet.
"These are warning signals that all of us ignore at our peril, for agriculture ultimately is one of the most threatened of our economic sectors and most fundamental for the healthy functioning of our societies and our communities," said Dr Doreen Stabinsky, professor of global environmental politics at the College of the Atlantic in Maine, US, who was not involved with the study.
"Both the Christian Aid report and the upcoming IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land begin to make clear how serious a threat this is, and how urgently we need to act."

Links

• Climate activists glue themselves to bank
• UK birds 'winners and losers' of climate change
• Drought-tolerant barley could future-proof whisky
• Extinction Rebellion 'grew from bus lane protest'
• Climate protesters set up camp on city centre road
• Amazon fires: How bad have they got?
• Great Barrier Reef outlook is 'very poor'
• Big lifestyle changes 'needed to cut emissions'
• 'This is a fight across borders, across continents'
• Stop abusing land, scientists warn
• July confirmed as hottest month on record

Australian Medical Association Declares Climate Change A Health Emergency

The Guardian - Katharine Murphy

Exclusive: AMA points to ‘clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities’

AMA president Tony Bartone says climate change will affect health by increasing the spread of infectious diseases and through more extreme weather. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

The Australian Medical Association has formally declared climate change a health emergency, pointing to “clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities now and into the future”.
The AMA’s landmark shift, delivered by a motion of the body’s federal council, brings the organisation into line with forward-leaning positions taken by the American Medical Association, the British Medical Association and Doctors for the Environment Australia.
The American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians recognised climate change as a health emergency in June 2019, and the British Medical Association the following month declared a climate emergency and committed to campaign for carbon neutrality by 2030.
The World Health Organisation has recognised since 2015 that climate change is the greatest threat to global health in the 21st century, and argued the scientific evidence for that assessment is “overwhelming”.
The AMA has recognised the health risks of climate change since 2004. Having now formally recognised that climate change is a health emergency, the peak organisation representing doctors in Australia is calling on the Morrison government to promote an active transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; adopt mitigation targets within an Australian carbon budget; promote the health benefits of addressing climate change; and develop a national strategy for health and climate change.
The AMA president, Tony Bartone, argues the scientific evidence is clear. “There is no doubt that climate change is a health emergency. The AMA accepts the scientific evidence on climate change and its impact on human health and human wellbeing,” he says.
Bartone says the climate science suggests warming will affect human health and wellbeing “by increasing the environment and situations in which infectious diseases can be transmitted, and through more extreme weather events, particularly heatwaves”.
“Climate change will cause higher mortality and morbidity from heat stress,” the AMA president says. “Climate change will cause injury and mortality from increasingly severe weather events. Climate change will cause increases in the transmission of vector-borne diseases. Climate change will cause food insecurity resulting from declines in agricultural outputs. Climate change will cause a higher incidence of mental ill-health.
“These effects are already being observed internationally and in Australia.”
Bartone told Guardian Australia the motion adopted by the federal council had followed an ongoing discussion among stakeholders, and medical practitioners within the AMA membership.
Health and medical groups, including Doctors for the Environment, the Climate and Health Alliance, the Royal Australian College of Physicians, and the Australian Medical Students’ Association wrote an open letter to all political parties in April pointing out the “significant and profound impacts climate change has on the health of people and our health system”.
The AMA president said the decision to pass the motion followed on from those events both domestically and internationally, and was “pretty much unanimous” internally. “I don’t recall anyone speaking against it,” he said.
Asked whether the current government was pursuing ambitious enough policy action to combat the risks of climate change, which the Morrison government argues it is, Bartone said “it’s really difficult to say because this issue is clouded in conjecture and conflicting reports”.
He said all of the political groups in the Australian parliament had a responsibility to move past the toxic partisan politics that had characterised the debate and find durable solutions to a difficult public policy challenge.
Bartone said the AMA would continue to assess the evidence about climate change as it emerged and update its stance to reflect the science.
The latest official data released last week confirms that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise in Australia. National emissions increased by 3.1m tonnes in the year to March to reach 538.9m tonnes, a 0.6% jump on the previous year.
Emissions in Australia have increased every year since the Abbott government repealed a national carbon price after taking office in 2013.

Links

• Major Medical Groups Release Call to Action on Climate Change
• WHO calls for urgent action to protect health from climate change
• Climate change poses an unprecedented threat to the health of people in Australia and across the world (pdf)
• Australia's carbon emissions rise again, largely thanks to LNG industry
• Accepting anecdotes more readily than climate science is wilful ignorance
• EU to push Australia to clean up petrol standards as part of free trade deal