10/02/2020

(AU) Climate Change Could Lead To Increase In Dangerous Firestorms That Were Once 'Rare'

Sydney Morning Herald - Laura Chung | Nick Moir

Scientists fear climate change will cause a once "rare and unique" weather event to become more common, as they race to develop predictive modelling and tools to help them better understand pyrocumulonimbus (pyroCB), commonly referred to as firestorms.
Jason Sharples, a professor of bushfire dynamics at the University of NSW, records the frequency of these storms around Australia and said between 1998, when relevant records started, and 2018, there were 62 confirmed pyroCBs.
But this bushfire season has seen that figure jump.
Lightning from a pyroCB storm breaks through while bushfires rage nearby. Credit: Nick Moir
Since September last year, at least another 30 pyroCBs have been recorded Australia-wide, while a further 15 possible storms are still being investigated.
"It's concerning, obviously, but I think this season comes down to extreme dryness and energy that the fuels were able to put out as they burnt," he said.
He notes that in previous years, the pyroCB pattern was irregular - with one or two events every three years or so, but recently these storms have increased in frequency.


Bushfires can create their own weather, generating ‘pyrocumulonimbus’ clouds and storms.

Professor Sharples is also a volunteer firefighter in the ACT and said he has been through an area ravaged by a pyroCB once. It was in the aftermath of the Black Saturday 2009 fires and he said the scene was "like a bomb had gone off".
"It was like a giant had taken a blow torch to it [the town]. You really get a moonscape feel," he said.

'Phenomenal increase'
A pyroCB event occurs when the intense heat from the fire causes air and smoke to rise and draws in cooler air.  If the air cools enough, the moisture in the plume condenses and forms a pyrocumulus cloud.
Under the right conditions, the cloud can mix with ice particles and cause lightning, producing a thunderstorm - known as pyrocumulonimbus.
The storms can cause unpredictable changes in fire behaviour, making it more dangerous for firefighters and nearby communities.
Fire researcher at the Bureau of Meteorology Mika Peace said over the past few decades, the knowledge about how fire and weather interact has increased.
"Since then, there's been a massive research effort in understanding pyroCBs and more recently predicting them," she said.
Dr Peace said in the 1950s and '60s, fire information focused on what was happening on the ground. Since then, scientists have turned their attention to what is happening above them too.
"This season has been unprecedented [for pyroCBs]... we've seen multiple pyroCBs developing on the same day over individual fires," she said.
In past fire seasons, these incidents were "rare and unique", said NSW RFS manager of the planning and predictive services unit Simon Heemstra.
But this season,  there has been a "phenomenal increase" in pyroCB events.
Dr Heemstra said one of the dangers of pyroCB events is the long-range spotting of fires up to 30 kilometres away from the main fire front.
Photographs show spot fires breaking ahead of the Clear Range Fire along the Monaro Highway on February 1. Credit: Dean Sewell
Other dangers include fire tornadoes, downbursts of air causing the fire to hit the ground and burst outwards and lightning which can cause new fires up to 60 kilometres away.
"Some days, state operations issued five or six alerts for different fires around the state because of pyrocumulus columns. [PyroCB] are a big concern. We'll be seeing more and more as a feature for the future," Dr Heemstra said.
Scientists note climate change will alter ground-level weather and the upper atmosphere, making conditions more conducive to pyroCBs. This risk highlights the need for more predictive modelling and tools.
At the moment, predicting where pyroCBs will hit is difficult, with the RFS erring on the side of caution as the consequences are too severe if something goes wrong.
The Herald's chief photographer Nick Moir, who has spent the last few months documenting the bushfires and their devastation, said he has been close to several pyroCB events this season, including a run-in at the Gospers Mountain fire.
Over this fire season, NSW experienced several pyroCB events, including during the Gospers Mountain fire. Credit: Nick Moir
"I was underneath it when it went pyrocumulonimbus, there was rain, hail and lightning all around the area. I was in a burnt-out area so I was safe, but there were strong winds, and, in particular, lightning ahead of the actual fire front and the storm," he said.
Former Tasmanian fire chief Mike Brown spent 39 years fighting fires and has only seen one pyroCB which was in the 2013 Dunalley fire, east of Hobart.
"It created strong winds and severe updraft, we had an aircraft working on that fire and they reported they had the worst turbulence they had ever experienced," he said.
"You’re organising tactics according to winds going a certain direction, but then suddenly [when the pyroCB occurs] there are unpredictable winds and weather patterns that are causing unpredictable and extreme fire weather conditions."
Mr Brown said at the time fire crews noticed burning material and embers being carried up high into the sky. Following the fire, they noticed scorched birds all along the beaches and believe they were burnt to death when the embers caught them unawares.
While this fire season has been marked by devastation, it provides a unique opportunity for scientists around the world to learn more about pyroCB events: what causes them, the safety risks associated with them and what they mean for the future of firefighting.

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'Good' Climate Policy Can No Longer Be Our Goal. It's Time To Reach For Perfect

The Guardian - Greg Jericho

The Gillard government actually implemented a carbon price. Why are we so lacking in ambition now?
‘Let us be honest: the government is paving the way to climate-change hell with bad intentions.’ Photograph: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP via Getty Images
While listening this week to the Guardian Australia editor, Lenore Taylor, on the Full Story podcast speaking with sadness and exasperation about the past 30 years of climate change policy, I thought about good intentions and perfection.
We often hear that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”. It’s one of those sayings that, when you really think about it, is just a squib.
The reality is these good intentions that are paving our way to hell are not so much good as ignorant, and quite often (such as with much of Indigenous policy) outright racist. They are really considered good only by those seeking to excuse the action in the first place.
And while good people might occasionally do wrong with actual good intentions, there is a much higher strike rate of people with bad intentions doing bad things.
That the road to hell may be paved with good intentions means we should ensure our good intentions are not ignorant or biased; and it sure as heck does not give an excuse to those with bad intent.
We certainly have seen a plethora of bad intent with respect to climate-change policy since 1990.
Similarly, you could probably fill a long list of quotes by people over the past decade or so who have suggested of climate change policy that “we should not make the perfect the enemy of the good”.
And yet rather than this suggesting we need to compromise, what it has come to mean is that we should excuse policy that is bad, because it is not perfect.
If we are so worried about the perfect being the enemy of the good, wouldn’t we at least see some evidence of someone in the major parties actually suggesting a policy that could be described as perfect?
The science of climate change tells us we need to reduce emissions and the sooner we do it the less the impact will be.
And yet rather than see any “perfect” policy with this aim, instead we get supposedly good policy accompanied with caveats – talk of the need for transitional fuels such as gas or that a coalmine is fine – hey, let’s not be perfect! (And please don’t not argue about just how good something has to be before perfect becomes its enemy).
So bad has this become that the carbon price instituted by the Gillard government is now considered some perfect policy too far beyond our political grasp.
Why are we so lacking in ambition?
And given the other side have an ambition fuelled by bad intentions, it might be worthwhile when trying to compromise to ensure negotiation starts from a position rather closer to perfect than just “good”.
Because let us be honest: the government is paving the way to climate change hell with bad intentions.
The government is replete with climate-change deniers who intend to block and retard any action to reduce emissions.
They will do this through obfuscation and outright misinformation – such as the lies about the impact of the ALP’s electric car policy during the last election, or the current lies about the bushfires.
On Wednesday, Peter Dutton told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing that “obviously, as we’ve all pointed out, we’re experiencing hotter weather, longer summers, but did the bushfires start in some of these regions because of climate change? No. It started because somebody lit a match. There are 250 people, as I understand it, or more that have been charged with arson. That’s not climate change.”
It’s also not the truth.
The prime minister has equally betrayed his bad intentions on the issue.
He told the media on Thursday that, “I’m not going to allow a confined, narrow debate when it comes to understanding what it means to live in the climate we’re going to live in. It’s not just about emissions reduction. That’s important. But it’s also about resilience and it’s also about adaptation”
His intent is clearly to actually narrow the debate by excluding as much as possible any discussion of emissions, and instead to focus on building dams as though that is some saviour for a country affected by climate change and by greater periods of drought.
Scott Morrison – and other members of his cabinet – have no good intentions when they suggest Australia is doing well by meeting and beating out Kyoto commitments.
Those commitments are frauds.
The Howard government purposefully ensured Australia alone could include land use because the Kyoto base year of 1990 involved a spectacular level of land clearing, as does 2005, the base year for our Paris agreement.
Saying we will meet and beat our targets is like bragging that you are meeting your target of drinking less beer by comparing how many glasses you drink per day now to what you drank on the day of your 21st birthday party.
Last week Morrison told the National Press Club the United States were doing great because of its increase in gas-produced electricity and that “between 2005 and 2017 US emissions fell by about 13 per cent, that’s just a click over what we have achieved, which is 12.8 per cent by the way.”
What he failed to note was those drops occurred prior to the election of Trump and its withdrawal from the Paris agreement and that it is not on target to meet what were the US’s Paris targets.
His suggestion that Australia is nearly doing just as well is also one of bad faith.
Yes, from 2005 to 2017 we reduced our emissions by 12.8%, just below that of the US, but only if we include land use. If we exclude that very dodgy measure, the US’s emissions still fell by 12%, but Australia’s actually rose by 6.2%.
We are not doing our bit, and you would only argue we are if your intention was to ensure that good policy is not merely blocked but bad policy is pushed.
There has been some talk this week about new Greens leader Adam Bandt’s call for a “Green New Deal” and whether or not Australia should adopt such a US-style political term.
To be honest I’m not all that fussed about the marketing, so long as the policy has large ambition.
We need some good intentions and we need to aim for perfection.
The challenges and forces against action on climate change are large and powerful. As the past 30 years have shown us, being content to argue for a “good” third- or fourth-best policy is no way to win this fight, and neither is allowing those with bad intentions to tell us that what they want is good.

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UK's Kew Gardens To Help Protect Australia's Plants After Wildfire

Reuters - Elizabeth Howcroft

LONDON - Britain is to protect Australia’s plants and trees by helping the emergency collection of seeds in areas devastated by wildfires and storing some of the rarest specimens in the world’s biggest wild seed bank.
Dr Elinor Breman of Kew Millennium Seed Bank poses for a photograph in a sub-zero seed store at a facility in Wakehurst, southern Britain February 7, 2020. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Scientists from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London will help the emergency seed collection and store precious specimens at its Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), a giant trove of seeds which acts as an insurance policy for plants and trees.
Over 2.3 billion seeds from 190 countries are stored in air-tight glass containers stacked in huge -20°C freezers underground and can be used to grow a new generation of plants in years to come. It currently has 41,000 different species.
For the collecting, Kew scientists will work alongside colleagues in the Australian Seed Bank Partnership.
“We ... are pleased to be able to support their efforts, as part of our ongoing partnership to address biodiversity loss through seed-banking in Australia,” said the MSB’s Elinor Breman in a statement.
She added: “Kew’s scientists will work with the ASBP to conduct emergency seed-collecting in areas devastated by the bushfires and longer-term germination research, which will hopefully aid the international effort to restore habitats more quickly in this precious and biodiverse region.”
Kew has worked with Australian seed banks since 2000, sharing expertise on seed collection processes, conservation and research so that the seeds of plant species considered rare or threatened can be banked and conserved for the future.
So far, 12,450 seed collections representing 8,900 Australian species, all of which are saved in local seed banks, have been duplicated and stored in Kew’s MSB.
Australia’s wildfires have burned through an area the size of Greece since September, in what the government there has called an ecological disaster.
The protected species of Wollemi Pines - prehistoric trees which outlived the dinosaurs - survived the wildfires.
Others were not so lucky: wood-chopping company Kangaroo Island Plantation Timbers suspended trading in its shares after severe fire-damage meant 90% of its tree crop was no longer productive.
The collaboration with Kew was announced by visiting British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab.
“This further collaboration between the Australian Seed Bank Partnership and the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, will help protect Australia’s precious biodiversity following the terrible bushfires,” Raab said.
“We stand shoulder to shoulder with the Australian people in the face of this challenge,” he said.

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09/02/2020

Climate Change: Loss Of Bumblebees Driven By 'Climate Chaos'

BBC - Helen Briggs

Bumblebee collecting pollen from a flower. Getty Images
Key points
  • University of Ottawa researchers looked at data from bumblebees over a 115-year period
  • Bumblebees' chances of survival have declined by 30 per cent in a generation
  • The research centred on increased frequency of heatwaves, droughts and other extreme events
"Climate chaos" has caused widespread losses of bumblebees across continents, according to scientists.
A new analysis shows the likelihood of a bee being found in any given place in Europe and North America has declined by a third since the 1970s.
Climbing temperatures will increasingly cause declines, which are already more severe than previously thought, said researchers.
Bumblebees are key pollinators of many fruits, vegetables and wild plants.
Without them, some crops could fail, reducing food for humans and countless other species.
Dr Tim Newbold of University College London (UCL) said there had been some previous research showing that bumblebee distributions are moving northwards in Europe and North America, "as you'd expect with climate change".
He added: "But this was the first time that we have been able to really tie local extinctions and colonisations of bumble bees to climate change, showing a really clear fingerprint of climate change in the declines that we've seen."
Bumblebee declines are already more severe than previously thought, said lead researcher Peter Soroye of the University of Ottawa in Canada. "We've linked this to climate change - and more specifically to the extreme temperatures and the climate chaos that climate change is producing," he said.
North American bumblebee on a flower. Antoine Morin
Bumblebees are among the most important plant pollinators. Declines in range and abundance have been documented from a range of causes, including pesticides, disease and habitat loss.
In the new study, researchers looked at more than half a million records of 66 bumblebee species from 1901 to 1974 and from 2000 to 2014.
They found bumblebee populations declined rapidly between 2000-2014: the likelihood of a site being occupied by bumblebees dropped by an average of over 30% compared with 1901-1974.

'Alarming' losses
Bees have been hardest hit in southern regions such as Spain and Mexico due to more frequent extreme warm years. And, while populations have expanded into cooler northern regions, this has not been enough to compensate for the losses.
Jonathan Bridle and Alexandra van Rensburg of the University of Bristol described the findings as "alarming". Commenting in the journal Science, they said: "The new study adds to a growing body of evidence for alarming, widespread losses of biodiversity and for rates of global change that now exceed the critical limits of ecosystem resilience."
There are around 250 species of bumblebee in the world. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), declines have been documented in Europe, North America, South America, and Asia, caused by a variety of threats that range from habitat loss and degradation to diseases and pesticide use.


Bumblebee decline from the University of Ottawa

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(AU) Delivering Accountability In The Face Of The Climate Crisis

Asia & the Pacific Policy Society - Greg Raymond

The effects of climate change are spurring endless debate on what to do next, but without adequate oversight, governments can’t be held to account for their climate policies, Greg Raymond writes.
The Parliament needs support if it is to make any headway on climate policy. PHOTO: Aditya Joshi on Unsplash
Australia’s institutions of governance are failing. This is the unavoidable conclusion the public has reached as the nation experiences its unprecedented bushfire crisis.
Australian decision-makers have known since at least 2008 that climate change would devastate our country, yet the political process has been unable or unwilling to implement the strategies needed to reduce emissions, nor to exert influence globally to encourage others to do the same. Why is this?
One aspect of this problem is clearly the relationship between science and politics. While science transforms our lives continuously, it only rarely intrudes into politics in significant ways. For the most part, scientific research into vital areas like weapons, medicine, and farming are handled by well-established ministries like defence, health, and agriculture. Each of these has its own policy-making ecosystem, of journalists, think-tanks, and academics feeding experience and expertise into crucial decisions.
It is rare that science comprehensively transforms our lives in a very short amount of time. The rise of science itself in Renaissance Europe was one such juncture when figures like Galileo and Newton changed worldviews fundamentally in ways that eventually relegated religion into a more subordinate place in human affairs.
Dealing with climate change is likely to be a challenge of similarly transformative proportions, touching on all aspects of life. Even a successful transition from fossil to renewable energy may not be enough to avoid the immorality of bequeathing a wrecked environment to future generations.
The importance of science in managing the implications of the Anthropocene – the era in which human actions on planet earth are of equal or greater importance than natural processes in affecting our physical environment – is only gradually being recognised.
Climate change is currently the most crucial aspect of the Anthropocene, since the rapid warming of the planet will almost certainly have devastating consequences for the ecosystems on which our lives depend.
But the all-encompassing nature of this problem, and the scale of the response required, has overwhelmed our political institutions. It is exposing the periodic weaknesses of democracies, where instead of grasping the necessity of leading uncomfortable change, governments and partisan media organisations collude in fostering regressive identity politics.
Accountability is at the heart of successful liberal democracies, and when accountability is not delivered, problems fester. But, accountability can only be delivered where there is agreement on what constitutes success and failure. A significant problem at the heart of Australia’s torrid climate policy debate is the absence of agreed metrics for measuring Australia’s performance.
The concepts required to understand climate change, and to make policies to combat it, are relatively new, and journalists are much less confident in using these to analyse policies and hold politicians to account than in other issues.
Compare the effectiveness of journalists on economic issues to that of climate policy. The language and concepts of managing budgets – like budget deficits or monetary policy – are over a century old. Journalists, quite naturally, are well schooled in these, and it helps them to hold governments to account.
The bushfire crisis has shown us that the environment must surely rank as a concern of importance equal to the economy – indeed, it is inextricable from it, as the economic cost of the 2011 floods, and now the 2019-2020 bushfires, have shown. But journalists and the media, sophisticated and adept in matters of economic policy, the language of debt, deficit, interest rates, and government expenditure, are much less sure-footed when it comes to climate change concepts.
Whether it be the relationship of individual disasters to broader climate trends, or the quality of our carbon abatement policies, both in absolute terms and in relation to what is required globally to avoid catastrophe, they, perhaps understandably, aren’t as familiar with what is required of the government, and so struggle to keep it accountable.
Given that time is running out to address climate change before the planet reaches tipping points – after which natural processes, such as the release of methane from Siberia’s permafrost, will make even the most ambitious policies irrelevant – trying to improve the capacity of our political system to navigate the problem of climate change is imperative.
One possibility that should be considered by the next government, or the current government if it is prepared to undertake real reform, is establishing a Parliamentary Carbon Office (PCO), modelled on the principles of the Parliamentary Budget Office.
APCO would have a similar mission; to improve transparency around climate change and carbon issues, and to evaluate the economic and environmental costs of climate change policies prior to elections.
The PCO would inform the Parliament by providing independent and non-partisan analysis of climate change, emissions policy, and the financial implications of proposals. By developing a standardised approach, a PCO would ease the burden on journalists currently struggling to reconcile the different methodologies employed by various actors with various agendas.
It could also overcome the problem of key ministries such as Treasury and Environment being used to produce partisan talking points for the executive, rather than provide impartial recommendations. It is important to note, this was a key rationale for the founding of the PBO.
The time for ‘business as usual’ thinking has clearly passed. As German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently commented, we must have the “courage to think in new ways, the strength to leave well-trodden paths, the readiness to venture into new territory, and the resolve to act more quickly … guided by the conviction that unfamiliar approaches can succeed.”
Giving Parliament greater capacity for supporting accountability could help sterilise the toxic politics of climate change while moving us towards better solutions for meeting this fiendishly complex existential challenge.

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Antarctica Logs Hottest Temperature On Record With A Reading Of 18.3C

The Guardian - 

A new record set so soon after the previous record of 17.5C in March 2015 is a sign warming in Antarctica is happening much faster than global average
The Argentinian Esperanza base in Antarctica – seen in March 2014 – recorded its hottest day on record on Thursday. Photograph: Vanderlei Almeida/AFP via Getty Images
Key points
  • Experts say Antarctica is one of the fastest warming regions globally
  • Antarctic ice sheet melting increased six-fold between 1979 and 2017
  • Increased temperatures are predicted to cause major sea level rise
Antarctica has logged its hottest temperature on record, with an Argentinian research station thermometer reading 18.3C, beating the previous record by 0.8C.
The reading, taken at Esperanza on the northern tip of the continent’s peninsula, beats Antarctica’s previous record of 17.5C, set in March 2015.
A tweet from Argentina’s meteorological agency on Friday revealed the record. The station’s data goes back to 1961.
Antarctica’s peninsula – the area that points towards South America – is one of the fastest warming places on earth, heating by almost 3C over the past 50 years, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Almost all the region’s glaciers are melting.
The Esperanza reading breaks the record for the Antarctic continent. The record for the Antarctic region – that is, everywhere south of 60 degrees latitude – is 19.8C, taken on Signy Island in January 1982.
Prof James Renwick, a climate scientist at Victoria University of Wellington, was a member of an ad-hoc World Meteorological Organization committee that has verified previous records in Antarctica.
He told Guardian Australia it was likely the committee would be reconvened to check the new Esperanza record.
He said: “Of course the record does need to be checked, but pending those checks, it’s a perfectly valid record and that [temperature] station is well maintained.”
“The reading is impressive as it’s only five years since the previous record was set and this is almost one degree centigrade higher. It’s a sign of the warming that has been happening there that’s much faster than the global average.
“To have a new record set that quickly is surprising but who knows how long that will last? Possibly not that long at all.”
He said the temperature record at Esperanza was one of the longest-running on the whole continent.
Renwick said higher temperatures in the region tended to coincide with strong northwesterly winds moving down mountain slopes – a feature of the weather patterns around Esperanza in recent days.
He said there were complex weather patterns in the area, but the Esperanza reading was likely a combination of natural variability and background warming caused by rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
He said: “The reason the peninsula is warming faster than other places is a combination of natural variations and warming signals.”
Prof Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist at the Australian National University, has carried out research at James Ross Island at the northern tip of the peninsula.
“It’s an area that’s warming very quickly,” she said, adding it can occasionally be warm enough to wear a T-shirt.
Previous research from 2012 found the current rate of warming in the region was almost unprecedented over the past 2000 years.
Abram said: “Even small increases in warming can lead to large increases in the energy you have for melting the ice. The consequences are the collapse of the ice shelves along the peninsula.”
Meltwater can work its way through cracks in ice shelves, she said. Because ice shelves already float on the ocean, their collapse does not directly contribute to rising sea levels.
But Abram said the shelves acted as plugs, helping to keep the ice sheets behind them stable. Melting of ice sheets does contribute to rising sea levels because they are attached to land.
Dr Steve Rintoul, a leading oceanographer and Antarctic expert at CSIRO, said: “This is a record from only a single station, but it is in the context of what’s happening elsewhere and is more evidence that as the planet warms we get more warm records and fewer cold records.”
The lowest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica – and anywhere on Earth – was at the Russian Vostok station, when temperatures dropped to -89.2C on 21 July 1983

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08/02/2020

Climate Emergency: One Degree Doesn’t Sound Like Much, But It Makes A World Of Difference

New Daily - Kelly O’Shanassy

Australia is already experiencing the terrible consequences of climate change. Photo: Getty
Kelly O’Shanassy
Kelly O’Shanassy is the chief executive of the Australian Conservation Foundation
Our planet has warmed by one degree since the Industrial Revolution, when humans began to burn coal in large quantities.
One tiny degree. It doesn’t sound like much.
To those living in southern Australia, it might sound like a welcome reprieve from bone-shivering cold in the middle of winter.
But in Australia that one tiny degree of global warming fuels hotter days that are many degrees above normal summer temperatures.
Penrith was recently the hottest place on Earth, peaking at 48.9C.
And these hot days are not just one-offs, they blend into weeks as heatwaves.
One tiny degree of global warming has dried our continent, ripening it for the horrific fires that have been burning in eastern Australia for months.


Global temperature rises could bring 'destructive' effects, UN warns (Reuters)

Bushfires made worse by climate change are a fact, studied by scientists and directly experienced by brave fire fighters.
There are few climate deniers at the business end of a fire hose.
For people who have lost their homes, communities and livelihoods to the fires, that one tiny degree of global warming is barely liveable.
For at least 33 people and more than a billion native animals, it hasn’t been survivable.
That one tiny degree of global warming is bloody dangerous. So can you image a future with more than three degrees of global warming?
That’s where our planet is headed if countries like Australia don’t take urgent climate action.
The United Nations has calculated that if every country fulfils its current pledges under the Paris Agreement – and some, including Australia, are not on track to do so – the globe will warm by 3.2 degrees.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison is encouraging Australians to adapt to the ‘new normal’ climate we are experiencing.
But in a three-degree warmer world, there are some things to which we simply cannot adapt.
Many elderly people and infants cannot adapt to heatwaves that last beyond a few days.
People who live in the bush can’t adapt to fire seasons that spread across half the year.
Our incredible wildlife, loved by Australians and international visitors, can’t switch on the air-conditioner when we reach 50-degree days.
For all the Prime Minister’s talk of ‘meeting and beating’ our climate targets, they are so weak that Australia is leading the pack to a three-degree warmer world.
We are experiencing a climate emergency and we need emergency-scale action to cut climate pollution.
Climate scientists warn global climate pollution must decline by 50 per cent by 2030 to avoid three degrees of warming. Australia’s targets are nowhere near that.

What Australia does matters
When it comes to cutting pollution, Australia really matters.
For all the talk that Australia is too small to make a difference, we are in the top 20 biggest polluters in the world and we rocket up to fifth if you count the pollution in our coal and gas exports. We matter.


Bushfires add into massive greenhouse gas spike. (Reuters)

Australians are proud of our country and our history of leading to address global problems.
We are reminded of this each year on April 25 as we remember those who died in war to make the world safer.
And we are an ingenious bunch, giving wi-fi, solar panels and the Hills Hoist to the world.
Climate damage is here, now, but so are the climate solutions.
We have world-class renewable energy resources in the sun and wind that could not only power Australia with clean energy but could power the world.
We still have forests that can suck carbon straight out of the atmosphere and vast landscapes, not suitable for agriculture, that can be replanted as new forests.
We have the money to invest, the smarts to transition to new clean-tech industries and the compassion to make sure no one is left behind.
Australia gave the world wi-fi, solar panels and the Hills Hoist. It must now step up to tackle climate change. Photo: Getty
The start of the new decade has been harrowing for millions of Aussies directly affected by the fires or breathing polluted air.
It’s almost enough to throw up our hands in despair and just give up on stronger climate action. Almost.
But we must unite and rally around urgent climate action because it’s the right thing to do.
Because we love our kids and we want them to have a safe future.
Because we can’t imagine Australia without koalas.
And we pride ourselves on the fair go for each other and the world.
Yes, we have entered a period of climate danger.
Decades of climate procrastination and half measures has guaranteed that.
But this coming decade is the most important decade in human history.
It is the decade in which we can transform ourselves, our industries and our planet for the better. It is 100 per cent possible.
We simply need to act – like our home is on fire.

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