Climate change is not an 'idea', it is a reality

by Robert McLean

Climate change is not just an idea, rather it is a reality.

In a strange contradiction, the public concern about environmental issues fallen down the hierarchy of interests and now seems to worry few people, but at the same time, there appears to be growing concern about climate change.

That dichotomy is fascinating, disturbing as climate change is, because of what it is, the most sweeping, most comprehensive and most damning environmental issue ever to confront humanity.

Most people, it seems, equate an environmental issue as being the inappropriate cutting down of a tree, the contamination of a stream with oil or the disruption of small segment of wildlife through a commercial development.

Climate change is an environmental issue, but is a matter much, much bigger than the inappropriate slaughter of a tree here and there.

Climate change is an environmental issue, an all-encompassing environmental issue that will impact on the wellbeing of most species on earth, including humans, and it is such a pressing reality that we can no longer ignore the unfolding dilemmas.

The Victorian State Government acknowledges the reality on its Department of Sustainability and Environment (DSE) website where it discusses its “Victorian Climate Change Adaptation Plan”.

There is, however, fundamental difficulty with what is argued by the DSE and almost every officially compiled and presented plan for abatement of carbon dioxide emissions and so some slowing of the prime cause of climate change.

The damage humans have caused to earth’s atmosphere through the accelerated burning of fossil fuels has been so great and is so long lasting, that the effects will be with us for centuries if not thousands of years.

Interestingly, most of what is proposed is about preserving life pretty much as we know and any honest and objective appraisal of the science will illustrate that any imagined sustenance of life as we know it is illusory.

Each of us has an intergenerational responsibility and that accountability stretches beyond those already alive and forces us to consider the rights of those not yet born.

The damage we have already done is significant with a two degree increase above pre-industrial global temperatures certain and further increase almost equally certain.

Our reaction to that should be immediate, it should have been three decades ago, but as that didn’t happen, we now need to act immediately and that doesn’t equate with inadequate proposals that suggest such things as we “will reduce CO2 emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 based on 1990 levels”.

Such proposals are hollow ploys aimed at winning populist support as in reality they mean nothing and will have no noticeable impact on global warming.

To have any change of truly mitigating climate change and slowing our carbon dioxide emissions, the world has to reduce those emissions by 80 per cent tomorrow.

Such a dramatic change would cause massive social disruption, food riots and the likely collapse of civil society.

The option of course is to do little, such as settling for the near pointless aims of “will reduce CO2 emissions by 5 per cent by 2020 based on 1990 levels” and do the best we can to hold the human experiment together as hitherto unseen weather events, be they droughts, wind storms, tornados and torrential rains of a magnitude never seen before, leave us with our ill-prepared infrastructure in disarray and dysfunctional.

Rather than battle through all that, and undoubtedly lose, we should be investing in and spending our time creating smaller, tight-knit, robust and resilient communities and stepping away from our energy intensive way of life; the modern life that is root of the difficult that is manifesting itself as climate change.