Australians More Worried About Climate Change Than Terrorism

By John Seed Northern Star Feb 1 2007

The most intensive study of climate change by 2,000 of the world's leading climate scientists has just been released in the fourth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

They report that the effects of human-induced climate change are now apparent everywhere in the world. As well as rising temperatures on land, the scientists report that man-made emissions of greenhouse gases have increased ocean temperatures, rising sea levels, temperature extremes on the land and abrupt melting of Arctic sea ice.

The report predicts that global temperature rises this century of between 2C and 4.5C are almost inevitable and much larger increases are possible due to positive feedbacks such as the inability of warmer water to absorb as much of the 70 million tonnes of CO2 which humans pump into the atmosphere each and every day. They note that CO2 levels are the highest that the Earth has experienced in 650,000 years, that is since before Homo Sapiens evolved
The IPCC scientists predict more heat waves such as the one that killed over 30,000 people in Europe a couple of years ago. They also warn us to expect more severe cyclones and the spread of malaria and other infectious diseases into areas previously off limits.

Luckily, Australians are waking up to this issue in an unprecedented manner. Latest evidence for this comes from a report last week of a survey of over 3000 Australians by Coredata and news.com.au. This survey found that Australians are more worried about climate change than terrorism or any other global issue
A large majority said they did not trust the Government on the environment, 68 per cent said Australia should sign the Kyoto Protocol and 82 per cent - said that Australia should go even further than the Kyoto treaty to deal with the climate problem.

Some 60 per cent of Coalition voters said the Government's climate change efforts thus far have been unsatisfactory and more than 82 per cent do not believe companies make the right decisions to protect the environment.

It is heartening to note that only 26.5 per cent of respondents agreed nuclear power should be used as a means of tackling the effects of climate change and clearly the Government’s spin in this direction is not changing Australias long-standing antipathy to nuclear power.

The Rainforest Information Centre’s “Climate Change, Despair & Empowerment” roadshow which was launched at Woodford last month by Ruth Rosenhek and myself, has now completed its first series of events – Coffs Harbour, Bellingen, Port Macquarie and Bundagen. Climate Study/Action groups were formed at each location and in Coffs, where the event was sponsored by the City Council, all 270 seats at the Jetty Theatre were filled and large numbers had to be turned away.

This roadshow will come to the Far N Coast in late February, preceded on Feb 9-15 by 9 presentations by Australians trained by Al Gore to give an Australian version of his “An Inconvenient Truth” presentation. More about that next week. Johnseed1@ozemail.com.au