Border protection

The Abbott Government has – with Opposition support – passed legislation and created an infrastructure which has stopped asylum seekers and other migrants from risking their lives in their attempt to reach the Australian coastline by boat. We feel more secure knowing that we have the ability to control our maritime borders.

Yet those seeking a safer and better life continue to use Indonesia as a stepping stone to this country, something which Indonesia might more actively curb. Others, from a variety of Asian countries have tested our resolve only to be turned back by vessels of the Australian Border Force.

What the Australian government does not appear to have done - at least not publicly - is examine the reasons why those seeking to enter our country have to flee their motherland. Indeed the Australian government actually provides financial and material assistance to countries which persecute or discriminate against their own people.

In some countries: Afghanistan, Iran, Burma and Viet Nam for example minorities face active persecution by their governments, though not all "refugees" from those countries are so affected. Refugees from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are more likely to be economic migrants seeking a better life in a country with much higher living standards, good governance and better job opportunities.

The Australian government has put a stop to people crossing our borders by boat and the Opposition Labor Party has largely adopted the policies and practices which have produced this result. But, for how much longer will these prove a deterrent, an effective barrier to those who would prefer to live here rather than in the country of their birth? Possibly less than 30 years or so.

Over the next three decades it is likely that our maritime borders will become increasingly porous and more difficult to defend because of a massive increase in the number of refugees seeking to enter our country by boat. The vast majority are likely to be climate refugees forced from their homeland by coastal flooding and food scarcity.

The million or so refugees from Asia and Africa entering Europe in 2015, will seem like a trickle compared to the hundreds of millions seeking to enter Australia from our immediate north by mid century. They are likely to be far more desperate, far more determined and some of them may be armed.

Dr James Hansen and colleagues, including world renown glaciologists specializing in polar ice sheets have published a Paper which warns of the consequences of continued carbon emissions on climate stability and sea level. They conclude that a rise in average global temperature of 2C above the pre-industrial would produce a dangerously violent climate, accompanied by a multi-metre rise in average sea level.

Unless we curb greenhouse gas emissions and do so rapidly, these developments will occur well before 2100 and become increasingly damaging. As they do so, low-lying coastal plains and the infrastructure built on them will be subject to flooding and damage by both seawater and violent storms.

The result of these events: Low coastal plains bordering the Gulf of Bengal, the east coasts of Australia and China and coastal areas of Indo-China will be flooded by rising sea level combined with severe storm surges. These areas are not only densely populated by hundreds of millions of people, they are also major food producing areas. Inundation by salt water would leave the land infertile for years producing immediate food shortages, starvation and desperation for the resident population.

Although Australia would also be affected by increasing climate severity combined with rising sea level, it has other major food producing areas at higher elevation. Government could maintain food supply, though probably only at the cost of curbing food exports. The coastal plains of north and central Queensland could well experience inundation by mid century. Cairns and other low lying coastal towns may be so damaged as to become dysfunctional, forcing abandonment by their populations in the latter part of this century.

Moreover, loss of rich agricultural land bordering the coast will be permanent and increase. An expected multi-metre rise in sea level by 2100 will continue for centuries, eroding coastlines, destroying more and more human habitat, including all existing coastal cities.

How can this be? The IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report, published only 2 years ago, predicts average global sea level rise of less than I metre by 2100. The short answer is that its estimates are wrong, dangerously wrong. Why? Because IPCC scientists did not adequately take into account all of the factors which affect polar ice sheet stability and so underestimated both the rate at which land based ice is and will melt and its affects on sea level.

Hansen and his colleagues show that average sea level rise by 2100 is likely to be around 5 metres, unless global temperature is kept to less than 2°C above pre-industrial temperature. They note that the rate of greenhouse gas emissions is accelerating and, if it continues to do so, average global temperature by 2100 will be in excess of 4°C above pre-industrial, rendering much of the planet uninhabitable by the end of this century. Temperature increases of this magnitude would produce an extremely violent climate characterized by severe storms, droughts and rainfall.

Australia's response to these dire warnings? Largely to ignore them. Governments of both persuasions continue to approve, indeed encourage building on low coastal land. They encourage and assist development of some of the largest coal mines in the world, thereby ensuring increased greenhouse emissions into the future because the product of those mines will be burned. They pursue policies discouraging solar panel production and sale for either domestic use or large scale power stations. And they entrench on-going use of oil-based fuels for transport.

Per capita, Australia contributes more to greenhouse gas emissions than any other developed country and it does so knowing that the result will be destruction of its own infrastructure, loss of agricultural land, even loss of its towns and cities. These are not outcomes which will effect us next century or beyond. They will start to be felt within a few decades and if we do not pay the price for these follies, our children most certainly will.

Importantly, our contribution to escalating greenhouse gas emissions will create climate refugees in southern and east Asia on an unprecedented scale. With growing urgency they will look to their south, to Australia, a self-sufficient and well fed country, as offering the safest alternative to their own increasingly ungovernable homeland.

Faced with millions of climate refugees, the ability of Australia to protect its borders and regulate, let alone prevent their entry is likely to prove inadequate. Like it or not, climate refugees will land on our shores and, at the very least, demand food and shelter. This is possibly Australia's future, a future which Australian and State governments are actively helping to achieve through their encouragement of new and expanded coal mining and the burning of their product, despite the warnings of climate scientists of the consequences.

Prime Minister Abbot and Premier Palaszczukalike assert that it is essential to increase coal production and promote its use, in order to increase employment opportunities and generate public revenue – and these outweigh the consequences!

This fallacious argument ignores the fact that there are alternative and far safer ways of achieving greater employment which do not cause escalating greenhouse gas emissions or hasten the risk to climate, social stability or loss of agricultural land and infrastructure. How do we create more jobs if not by miming coal? We pursue policies to diversify the economy, adopt new technologies and abandon fossil fuels as rapidly as possible.

Prime Minister Abbot declares that ….. 'coal is our future' and points to the fact that Australia is the worlds leading coal exporter. He even claims that the people of less developed countries can not be lifted out of poverty without coal to generate electricity. This is of nonsense.

Wind and solar are clean, efficient and increasingly affordable energy sources. Unlike coal, they do not emit greenhouse gasses and, best of all, they are free and, with rapidly improving storage technology, provide a reliable electricity source. Climate scientists the world-over repeatedly warn that fossil fuels, particularly coal, must be left in the ground because, if we continue to burn them we, human beings, will not survive the effects on our climate.

Who do you believe – politicians or scientists?