"The first Climate Change natural disaster in the developed world"

The photos in this post are from our property "Uamby" during the recent drought which started in 2002.

That was also the year Australia refused to ratify Kyoto, refused to take Climate Change seriously and followed the USA out the door. Ironically we were slipping into what has been described by the Independent newspaper in Britain said the drought "what could be the first climate change-driven disaster to strike a developed nation."

"The irony of Australia, the Kyoto refusenik, being one of the first nations to be clobbered by climate change, will be lost on no one," wrote another Independent columnist wrote in April.

People in the regions have no reason to thank the Howard government for its record on Climate Change. Farmers in the west and central west are in the frontline of the war on Climate Change. We are the first casualties of this war."

The drought - the long drought, the 1000 Years Drought - that we thought was over has returned. Or it never really left. It beggars belief but there are many in the country who don't believe in Global Warming. (AT least half John Howard's Cabinet - including the PM himself - are climate sceptics. Howard was forced by public opinion to change his political stance.

The Independent reports: "Until a few months ago, Mr Howard and his ministers pooh-poohed the climate-change doomsayers. The Prime Minister refused to meet Al Gore when he visited Australia to promote his documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. He was lukewarm about the landmark report by the British economist Sir Nicholas Stern, which warned that large swaths of Australia's farming land would become unproductive if global temperatures rose by an average of four degrees. Faced with criticism from even conservative sections of the media, Mr Howard realised that he had misread the public mood - grave faux pas in an election year."

Environmentalists point to the increasing frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, blamed on global warming. They also note Australia's role in poisoning the Earth's atmosphere. Australians are among the world's biggest per-capita energy consumers, and among the top producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Despite that, the country is one of only two industrialised nations - the United States being the other - that have refused to ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol. The governments argue that to do so would harm their economies.


Columnist Michael McCarthy reports on the performance of the Howard Government's Climate Change hitman, Alexander Downer. "Two years ago at a lunch in the Australian high commission in London, with Sidney Nolan's paintings of the sunburnt country on the wall, I heard the pugnacious Australian Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, explain why his country would not ratify the Kyoto protocol on climate change.
Australia was being asked to screw down its greenhouse gas emissions, he said, while its immediate industrial competitors, such as Indonesia, were not. ... If Australia jacked up taxes on the electricity used by its aluminium plants, say, to cut back on CO2, but Indonesia didn't, the Australian plants would simply become uncompetitive and go bust, and the business would move to Indonesia, where environmental regulation was very much laxer - and just as much carbon was being emitted.Who was that helping?
To be honest, I thought it was a pretty solid argument, given Australia's particular circumstances. But the flaw in it was the implication that these circumstances gave his country a convenient get-out - and with global warming, there are no get-outs. It is a truly worldwide phenomenon, and even if you don't feel you need to act to prevent it, you will be affected just the same. The irony of Australia, the Kyoto refusenik, being one of the first nations to be clobbered by climate change, will be lost on no one. The lesson is that collective action on the climate, from the developing and the industrialised countries together, is the great imperative for the world."



How UN warned Australia and New Zealand

Excerpts from UN's IPCC report on the threat of global warming to Australia and New Zealand:

"As a result of reduced precipitation and increased evaporation, water security problems are projected to intensify by 2030 in south and east Australia and, in New Zealand, in Northland and eastern regions."

* "Significant loss of biodiversity is projected to occur by 2020 in some ecologically rich sites, including the Great Barrier Reef and Queensland's tropics. Other sites at risk include the Kakadu wetlands ... and the alpine areas of both countries."

* "Ongoing coastal development and population growth in areas such as Cairns and south-east Queensland (Australia) and Northland to Bay of Plenty (New Zealand) are projected to exacerbate risks from sea-level rise and increases in the severity and frequency of storms and coastal flooding by 2050."

* "Production from agriculture and forestry by 2030 is projected to decline over much of southern and eastern Australia, and over parts of eastern New Zealand, due to increases in droughts and fires."

* "The region has substantial adaptive capacity due to well-developed economies and scientific and technical capabilities, but there are considerable constraints to implementation ... Natural systems have limited adaptive capacity."