The task of avoiding dangerous climate change

Climate change is already having a significant impact on Australia’s natural ecosystems, farming, water supplies, coastal planning and myriad other activities. This, and the climate change already locked in to the climate system, demand that we think and plan for how we can adapt. However, adaptation will be costly, increasingly difficult the more we allow climate change to increase in severity and potentially too late for many of our native plants and animals.

We must do all we can to limit climate change now. This means large and rapid reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases from all sources.

Keeping as far below 2°C as possible

To give the planet its best chance of long term survival the current scientific thinking supports keeping global temperature increases to less than 2°C, above which the impacts will be extremely damaging.

To stay under this 2°C ‘target’ international environment groups are calling for global emissions to peak by 2015 and for industrialized countries to reduce emissions by at least 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). This is a phenomenally challenging target.

This ‘peak and decline’ approach comes from the panel of scientists set up to advise the United Nations on Climate Change. Known as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these scientists (numbering over 400), ran a number of global emissions scenarios and their impacts in their fourth assessment report on climate change.

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The longer that global emissions continue to grow, the more warming is injected into the system, the steeper (or more abruptly) declines in emissions are needed, and the risk of missing the 2°C target grows.

Australia’s 2008-2012 Kyoto target allows it to increase its emissions from 1990 levels by 8%. Australia is currently struggling to achieve this target and yet it is clear that the Kyoto targets (agreed to in 1998) are far from adequate to address the current climate situation. Developed countries such as Australia and the United States must therefore follow the lead of countries in the European Union in committing to serious rates of emissions reductions, of the order of tens of percent per decade.

Admittedly this is a tall order, but it is achievable with the necessary will to act. It will involve significant changes in how we do things, in efficiency standards and lifestyles, in completely shifting our development expectations away from carbon based fuels and into the rapid growth of new technologies and renewable energy systems, and in protecting our natural carbon stores such as forests and bushlands. If we get this right, we can transform Australia into a place that wastes less resources, is more self-sufficient, is cleaner and less polluted, where we have built more sustainable urban villages with healthier lifestyles and where our natural environment is properly protected.

The Wilderness Society is an active member of Climate Action Network Australia. Read the CANA report, Turning Down the Heat for a comprehensive look at what Australia can do to address climate change.

There are three things you can do to help:

1. Actively support campaigns to save our wild places. This means ending land clearing and most native forest logging – a guaranteed, immediate and cost-effective way to stop carbon pollution – and creating more protected areas to give habitats and wildlife a better chance to cope with climate change.

2. Help The Wilderness Society to make sure Australia doesn’t choose a nuclear future. Nuclear is the wrong answer to climate change.

3. Help reduce greenhouse emissions from energy use.

   
   

Six simple things you can do at home to reduce your energy consumption and help reduce climate change:

   1. Save energy at home: use appliances with 5-star energy ratings and turn them off at the wall; change over to compact fluoro light globes and turn lights off when you don’t need them; install solar water heating; and choose accredited Green Power electricity suppliers!

   2. Drive less: take a bus, train, walk or ride a bike – every 5 kilometres driven creates 1.5kg of carbon dioxide.

   3. Reduce, reuse, recycle: cutting down on packaging and recycling your waste can save thousands of kilograms of greenhouse pollution for each household.

   4. Buy local: transporting products creates huge amounts of greenhouse pollution – buy local and cut down on carbon emissions!

   5. Turn down the air conditioning: Australians spend tonnes of greenhouse gases to heat and cool our homes. By building and insulating more efficiently, and learning to live with our natural environment we can make a huge contribution to reducing global warming.

   6. Plant some trees: each tree can absorb a tonne of carbon dioxide over its lifetime. Fill your garden with water-wise natives and help make a difference.