The tide has finally turned on climate change - Graham Parton

-      by Graham Parton

Graham Parton.

I think the tide has finally turned on climate change.

Three years ago I found there was still some “debate” about whether the climate is changing or not. At the time the (then) Victorian Government had issued instructions to public employees that they were not allowed to use the phrase “climate change” in documents, preferring instead the more obscure and less accurate “climate variability”. Living in a regional area I took no comfort from being surrounded by and working with the last bastion of deniers – middle aged white men, who were quick to explain that “the science is not settled yet” or to have some reason why it was all a conspiracy.

Earlier this week I found myself at a meeting of middle aged white men working in emergency services and we were talking about the local emergency management plan. A key information document was passed around that showed the extent that the bad old days of denial were over, with phrases describing the area as “one of the regions’ most severely impacted by climate change”.

Within the businesslike approach to emergency management it predicted longer fire seasons, dryer soils, hotter winds and up to 50% decreases in rainfall in this area. It wasn’t that long ago that these ideas were dismissed by conservative rural communities, but now farmers plant different crops at different times of the year and some seasons are already finishing at a time when they would previously have just been starting. The farming community is up in arms about the Federal Government stopping funding for climate research.

(Graham now lives in north-east Victoria, was once a keen supporter of Tatura Transition Towns (he worked in the town, lived there during the week and travelled home for the weekends – he now works in the southern parts of New South Wales) and continues to stay abreast of Beneath the Wisteria activities.)