Flood and fire: this is the future

So we need to rethink how we provide the essentials for life. Our essential water supplies and food growing areas are already under threat, and food reserves globally are diminishing. Even if we could maintain adequate trading relations as the global crisis worsens, there simply may not be the food available to buy.

The first task for Australia, and the governments we elect, will be to make sure flood and fire are not followed by thirst, famine, disease, mass homelessness and mass death. The second task is to achieve a transformation of our way of life to accommodate the new realities of environmental emergency.

These measures must begin with the next national government. It must strengthen emergency services, rebuild the transport and communications infrastructure, gear up the health system, boost funding for relevant education and training, overhaul the economy and take an active role in global control measures. It must mobilise the entire nation to the task of renewal with a sense of urgency.

Katrina and California were warnings to the whole world: if it could happen there, it could happen anywhere. We will face such things in Australia as the climate becomes less benign, but we must make sure they remain unusual events, and not just part of an overall process of national destruction.