As Earth’s population heads to 10 billion, does anything Australians do on climate change matter?

As unprecedented bushfires continue to ravage the country, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his government have been rightly criticised for their reluctance to talk about the underlying drivers of this crisis. Yet it’s not hard to see why they might be dumbstruck.

The United Nations predicts the world will be home to nearly 10 billion people
by 2050 – making global greenhouse emission cuts ever more urgent. 

The human race has never had to grapple with a problem as large, complex or urgent as climate change. It’s not that there aren’t solutions available. There are already some hopeful signs of an energy transition in Australia. As Professor Ross Garnaut has explained, it would be in Australia’s economic interests to become a low-carbon energy superpower.

To successfully tackle climate change will require some painful transitions domestically, and unprecedented levels of international coordination and cooperation. But that isn’t happening. Global action to cut emissions is falling far short of what’s needed – and meanwhile, though it’s controversial to mention, the world’s population quietly climbs ever higher.

Read the story from The Conversation by the Professor of International Politics from the University of Western Australia, Mark Beeson - “As Earth’s population heads to 10 billion, does anything Australians do on climate change matter?”