Australia’s chief scientist Cathy Foley has issued a stark warning on climate change during an appearance on Q+A.
Key points:
- Concerns were raised that Australia could face a tough fire season
- Australia’s chief scientist says carbon production needs to be cut by eight times the current rate
- Politicians were called on to do more than simply create plans on how to tackle climate change
With wildfires having razed Maui’s historic Laihaina town, resulting in the deaths of nearly 100 people in an area not usually prone to fire, Dr Foley said the incident should act as a further warning that action, not planning, was needed now.
“It is really tragic, seeing what has happened in Hawaii,” Dr Foley said.
She then added that with fires occurring more frequently across the globe, including in Greece and Canada, governments must act on the science.
“This [fires] is a consequence of it and that’s really requiring governments to make decisions.”
“They’ve got a plan — well, they are working on continuing to have plans, we [scientists] have a target.
“There is a realisation that we’ve got to do something fast, an energy transition at a rate that we have never seen before.
“This will have a huge impact not just on governments making decisions, but everyone will have to think about the way we live.”
Asked if governments were moving fast enough on action to affect climate change, Dr Foley answered in the negative before calling for a dramatic increase in carbon reduction.
“At the moment the requirement is we need to be reducing by 16 megatons of carbon a year, we are doing two, we need to increase by eight times,” she said.
Other panellists then implored people to not see some of the world’s most iconic cities covered in an orange haze as the new normal.
Comedian and author Adam Spencer backed up Australia’s chief scientist as he called for immediate action.
“Remember three years ago those iconic images of the Harbour Bridge, you couldn’t see it because of the smoke and that shocked the world,” Spencer said.
“Celeste Barber raised $52 million from an assortment of Hollywood stars and The People’s Alliance for Justice.
“She got so much money, she didn’t know what to do with it, the world was shocked.
“What has happened in Hawaii is tragic, but no-one is surprised.
“When you just have the hottest day, hottest week and the hottest month ever measured, you can’t pretend to be surprised by what’s happening in Hawaii.
“I don’t know what else scientists could do to tell the story of: ‘Look here, people. Look at the data, look at the graphs, look at the models, look at the mathematics, look at the projections. This is all going in one direction’.
Spencer then said people were getting complacent about climate change but that “the clock is genuinely ticking now”.
‘Long-term issue’
Asked if we had reached the point of being complacent about global warming, science journalist Angela Saini said she hoped not.
“I was there [New York] when the sky went orange and that was pretty scary,” Saini said.
“We see it on the news all the time and suddenly it is the new normal.”
Saini said one of the major problems with addressing climate change was that governments adopted a model of short-term thinking to get themselves elected, and argued that had to change.
“The problem with climate change … because it is a long-term issue … the way that democracies work, obviously is they are not thinking in the long-term ways, they are just thinking about, “how can I make sure that I win the next election’.
“Those big decisions just aren’t being made when they need to be made.
“That inability to think, to act long-term, I think, could be what destroys us ultimately.
“Why are we not acting?”
That comment got the panel talking on whether politicians needed to think more about long-term problems, rather than short-term political gain.
Former ABC managing director and current Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Mark Scott, said the summer to come may cause politicians here to think about the need to hasten climate change policy.
“You think of what has happened in Hawaii and you think of what has happened in the United States and you anticipate the Australian summer to come,” he said.
“There has been so much rain, so much growth and now it is drying out very quickly and you look at the heat there in the northern hemisphere, it feels terribly ominous.
“I think that puts an imperative on political leaders to look beyond the immediate and short-term and engage more fully in the tough decision-making that climate change really demands.”