Waiting for catastrophe means we are too late: Ian Dunlop

Ian Dunlop.

(Ian Dunlop was formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chair of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a member of the Club of Rome)

Why is nobody in authority talking about the issues which are really defining the future of this country? Politicians and corporations create much sound and fury around tax reform, industrial relations and, ad nauseam, the election – all important but essentially second-order issues. Beyond the Australian goldfish bowl, the greatest structural change in human history is rapidly unfolding bringing unprecedented risks and opportunities. Yet our leaders are oblivious, intent upon minimising our opportunities and maximising our risks.

In the 1970s, the combined effect of population growth and consumption began to exceed the capacity of planetary ecosystems to meet human demands. To the point where today we need the annual biophysical capacity of 1.6 planets to survive. This unsustainable pressure is now hitting global limits which we can no longer circumvent, manifesting itself in two immediate pressure points.

First, increasing energy costs. Economic growth and wealth created since the Industrial Revolution totally depended on the availability of cheap energy in the shape of fossil fuels, first coal, then oil, then gas. But cheap fossil fuels have dried up. Their cost has increased steadily as we used up the "low-hanging fruit" and now rely on more expensive sources such as deepwater oil, tar sands, shale and coal seam fracking.

Read what he has to say in this comment piece in the Melbourne Age - “Climate change: waiting for catastrophe means we will be too late to act.”