The unfolding flood disaster on the east coast could become Australia’s new normal unless the government urgently acts to stem the impacts of climate change.
A UN-backed report, released late on Monday, has sounded the alarm, warning the impacts of climate change that scientists forecast two decades ago are happening faster than predicted and are more disruptive.
In Australia, that means unless action is taken to dramatically reduce emissions, extreme weather events such as the Black Summer bushfires could become the norm by 2040.
The report paints a grim picture of what life in Australia is expected to look like if global temperatures rise two degrees.
“The Australian trends include further warming and sea-level rise, with more hot days and heatwaves, less snow, more rainfall in the north, less April-October rainfall in the southwest and southeast, more extreme fire weather days in the south and east,” the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report said.
For people living in Sydney and Melbourne, that could mean temperatures exceeding 50 degrees.
The number of deaths caused by heat in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane will increase from an average 142 per year to as many as 600 per year in the coming decades.
Reducing emissions could halve that figure.
Heavy rain events, like the one experienced across Queensland and NSW, also risk becoming more frequent.
But despite the report’s deadly predictions, climate experts remain hopeful there is still time to protect Australia from the worst-case scenario – especially with a federal election on the horizon.
“We haven’t had a federal election since the Black Summer bushfires and since the floods, so it will be interesting to see how that translates,” the Climate Council’s Dr Kate Charlesworth said.
While the government insists Australia is on track on emissions reduction, the report indicates an aggressive approach needs to be adopted as soon as possible.
“Australia has enormous responsibility,” former IPCC author Professor Lesley Hughes said.
“If all countries in the world copied Australia’s weak response, we would be headed for warming in excess of three degrees.”
Greens leader Adam Bandt said the report left “no room for argument”.
“If we want to stop dangerous climate change, we need to keep coal and gas in the ground,” he said.
“Delay is the new denial. We can’t wait until 2050, and anything less than a rapid phase out of coal and gas means giving up on the 1.5 degrees goal in the Paris Agreement.
“Australia has everything to lose.”
