Time to combat Climate Change Dr Ken Marriott believes it’s time for leisure and recreation planners and providers to drive effective action on climate change Image courtesy 2021 Climate Council report: Rising to the challenge: addressing climate and security in our region.
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t is now known with a high degree of certainty that climate change and the severe ravages of ‘weather change’ that this brings, will irreparably damage and change the world in less than the next 50 years. The 2018 United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted potentially ‘catastrophic’ and long term impacts lasting ‘for centuries to millennia’ with the impacts projected to vary in intensity across different parts of the earth. Impacts include higher global temperatures, greater temperature extremes, increases in the frequency, intensity and amount of heavy rain, greater flooding, increases in the frequency and intensity of drought, sea level rises of 0.26 to 0.77 metres by 2100 (with rises to continue well beyond that year), species loss and extinction on land and in the oceans, increased ocean acidity and reduced oxygen, ice shelf melting and an ice-free Arctic. From a human perspective, there are projected to be severe impacts on health, livelihoods, water supply, food security, human security and economic development. The 2018 report has now been endorsed and strengthened by a further Intergovernmental Panel summary report, released in mid 2021, with the full report due in late 2022. The 2021 report has prompted a UN ‘red alert’ for life on earth (IPCC, 2021). It predicts that the 1.50C global temperature increase projected to be reached by 2050 could now be reached within nine years. It also indicates that change is occurring faster than predicted and that the impacts will be more severe than projected. The report provides details down to the level of specific sub-regions in Australia and will be carried forward to the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) to be held in Glasgow later in 2021. Unless dramatic and far reaching action to reduce greenhouse gases is agreed to at that conference, the impacts of climate change could take hundreds if not thousands of years to overcome. Research by the Australian Climate Council (2021) and the Australian Academy of Science (2021) endorse the IPCC findings, the latter arguing that ‘the only way to reduce the risk 62 Australasian Leisure Management Issue 146
of…unpredictable and dangerous (climate change) outcomes is…a substantial reduction in the emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere’ (Australian Academy of Science, 2021) The Academy argues that unless urgent action is taken, the world could well warm by 30C or more by 2100, double the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change objective of 1.50C. Ahead of the rest of the world, and one of the regions expected to be most severely hit by the already-emerging changes, Australia has already warmed by 1.40 degrees. What is of major concern is that even if the world reaches net zero emissions by the UN target of 2050 or sooner, the atmosphere will still hold trillions of tonnes of CO2 and other greenhouse gases which will continue to create global warming. It has been estimated that ‘drawdown’ of these gases at a rate of 10 billion tonnes annually will be needed up to 2050 if not until 2100 to start to achieve stability. Reafforestation, cessation of land clearance, ocean greenhouse gases capture, soil biology improvements and technology-driven carbon capture and storage will be critical to drawdown. Unfortunately, natural processes are slow while technology-driven techniques have yet to move beyond the experimental stage, despite Australian government assertions to the contrary. The world’s most advanced project to date, based on the Gorgon gas fields off the Western Australian coast, is designed to capture and bury 80% of CO2 mining emissions (but not those from gas liquifying processes). In mid July 2021 it was announced that the scheme had captured little more than half its initial five year target of 9.6 million tonnes. Critically, that is from mining operations where CO2 concentrations are as much as 15%. In the open atmosphere, where concentrations are generally only 0.04%, the process is much more difficult and the gases captured have still to be compressed and stored or transshipped to be used for other industrial purposes. This paper argues that there is now a critical urgency for leisure and recreation planners to take more targeted action to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, to adapt existing leisure
