Garnaut: the devil is in the detail

The polluter lobby must not set the terms of the debate around climate solutions. Climate change is too important and the costs of inaction will affect every aspect of our economy and our lives.

Indeed, this is perhaps the section of the report that has been overlooked in the media discussion - how climate change will affect our lives. There’s a scary table on p.177-178 that summarises climate change impacts on Australia by 2100 with unmitigated climate change. Here are a few:

• 92 per cent decline in irrigated agriculture in the Murray Darling basin;
• catastrophic destruction of the Great Barrier Reed;
• snow-based tourism in Australia no longer viable;
• up to 35 per cent increase in cost of supplying urban water;
• significant risk to coastal buildings from increased storm events and sea-level rise - leading to coastal and flash flooding and extreme wind damage;
• up to 9,500 heat-related deaths in Queensland each year;
• 5.5 million Australians exposed to dengue virus;
• sea-level rise causing major dislocation in coastal mega-cities of Asia and small island states, leading to climate refugees.

As Garnaut says on page 2 of his epic 600-page report:

While an effective response to the challenge would play out over many decades, it must take shape and be put in place over the next few years. Without such action, if the mainstream science is broadly right, the Review’s assessment of likely growth in global greenhouse gas emissions in the absence of effective mitigation tells us that the risks of dangerous climate change, already significant, will soon have risen to dangerously high levels.