Climate of hunger

The bit the world's policymakers don't seem to get is that these impacts are synergetic and cumulative – that they reinforce and compound one another. They cannot be solved by one-off 'fixes' like water markets, fuel subsidies or GM crops.

To put this in personal perspective, you consume each day 4.1 litres of diesel fuel, 29 kilos of soil and 2.2 tonnes of water in the form of food. If any of these things run short, here or globally, your supermarket bill will tell you all about it. Yet governments here have quietly been dismantling Australian landcare, irrigation and agricultural science as if they did not matter.

Such complacency mirrors the attitudes of governments globally on climate change – either in preparing for the worst or in attempting to prevent it. Humanity, paralysed by an incoherent and acrimonious media debate where ideology predominates over evidence, knowledge and wisdom, is sliding helplessly towards what PriceWaterhouseCoopers policy expert Jonathan Grant terms "the carbon cliff".

On the brighter side, however, PWC clearly identify green technology as the most likely driver of the next big global investment wave – as China and Germany are already demonstrating by their huge swing to solar. Australia, the nation with more free photons per square metre than anyone else on Earth, still lurks among the also-rans and ne'er-do-wells: what is it with us, that cloudier countries see more opportunities in sunshine?

However it is food, not energy, that will deliver the ultimate wake-up call – to Australians, Chinese, Americans, Indians, to everyone alike. That is the message which needs to come out of Doha. Climate change is getting personal. It's already on your dinner table and in your wallet.