Border protection

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?