Climate crisis leaps out of the shadows and is ready to stare us down

The climate crisis has leapt out of the shadows and is about to stare us down.

Prof Roger Jones and Prof Lesley
 Hughes at the Melbourne event.

It was just on Thursday night that a panel of acutely qualified people talked about difficulties for humanity arising from the impacts, adaptation and vulnerability discussed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change fifth assessment report when another paper was released on Monday.

Thursday’s event, presented to a packed Sunderland Theatre at the University of Melbourne, was organized by the Australian Meteorology and Oceanographic Society.

The five speakers – a Professorial Research Fellow at the Victoria Institute for Strategic Economic Studies (VISES) at Victoria University, Coordinating Lead Author (Chapter 2: Foundations for decision making), Professor Roger Jones;

Ecologist at the Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Councillor, Climate Council, Lead Author (Chapter 25: Australasia), Professor Lesley Huges; Professor and Australia Research Council Future Fellow in the Department of Resource Management and Geography, Melbourne University, Lead Author (Chapter 12: Human security), Professor John Barnett; Associate Professor in Environmental Earth System Science and Associate Director of the Center on Food Security and the Environment, Stanford University, Lead Author (Chapter 7: Food production systems and food security), Dr David Lobell; and Dr Kathleen McInnes – Research Scientist, CSIRO, Lead Author (Chapter 5: Coastal systems and low-lying areas), Dr Kathleen McInnes – each discussed their role in the compilation of the fifth report.

 

MC for the evening was Environmental Entrepreneur and Chairman of UNESCO Western Port Biosphere, Chair of Wildlife Victoria, Advisory Board Member Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, Mr Rob Gell, who asked the speakers for a one minute summary of the evening touching on their “light bulb moment”.

Naturally all those “moments” were different, but there appeared to be a theme about encouraging all those listening initiate conversations that would lead to mitigation.

Hard on the heels of the Melbourne event is the release of the report discussing the mitigation of climate change.

This report ends four years of intense scientific collaboration by hundreds of authors from around the world responding to a request from the world’s governments for a comprehensive, objective and policy neutral assessment of the current scientific knowledge of mitigating climate change.

The report has been extensively reviewed by experts and governments to ensure quality and comprehensiveness. The quintessence of this work, the Summary for Policymakers, has been approved line by line by member governments at the 12th Session of IPCC WG III in Berlin, Germany (7-11 April 2014).