Scientists' warning ignored for decades

Adjunct Professor at Southgate Institute for Health, Society & Equity, Flinders University

In 1980, the Australian Academy of Science held a conference in Canberra to review the emerging science about the potential for humans to change the global climate. To promulgate the findings, Dr Brian Tucker edited a short monograph. Concern was heightened by a crucial 1985 world conference in the Austrian town of Villach. The research presented showed that burning fossil fuels and clearing land was changing the atmospheric concentrations of the 'greenhouse gases' that trap heat, together with evidence that the climate was changing.

In 1987, CSIRO scientists convened a national conference to consider potential impacts of climate change on every aspect of Australian life. The following year, the Commission for the Future worked with CSIRO on Greenhouse ’88, a national effort to inform the community about these serious issues. I gave many presentations that year and was persuaded by Henry Rosenbloom to write a paperback for Scribe Books. So in 1989, Living in the Greenhouse summarised the science: what was known, what was projected with some confidence, what remained uncertain. It was already clear that human activity was changing the climate: increasing average temperatures, more very hot days, fewer very cold nights. There was also evidence of changing rainfall patterns and rising sea levels. It was projected with some confidence that the warming trend would continue, that sea levels would continue to rise and we would experience more extreme weather events: longer dry periods, more intense rainfall, stronger tropical cyclones. There was then some uncertainty about fire risk, which increases with higher temperature and stronger winds, but is significantly affected by rain. So it was projected that in some areas the hotter and windier conditions could be counterbalanced by increasing rainfall, while in others decreasing amounts of rain would lead to greater risk of fires. By the time I wrote Living in the Hothouse, the devastating 2003 Canberra fires had caused a revised assessment. The CSIRO regional climate model projected increasing fire intensities and reducing time intervals between major fire events. A study by Dr Barry Pittock and his colleagues noted that extreme fire danger is correlated with drought conditions and very hot days before concluding 'Both these conditions are expected to increase… under all plausible scenarios, at least in southern Australia'. So we have known for at least fifteen years that climate change would produce the conditions for the catastrophic fire events we have seen in recent months. It has also been clear for decades that these events create feedback loops. Because it is hotter and drier, bushland is more likely to burn. That puts more carbon dioxide in the air, leading to hotter and drier conditions, making fires still more likely. The worry is that the appalling fires this summer are a consequence of an increase of about one degree in average global temperatures. The Paris Agreement sought to limit the increase to two degrees, with an ambition to keep it down to 1.5 degrees. But the 2019 conference in Madrid revealed that Paris commitments would not achieve even the less ambitious target. It also found that many countries do not yet have policies that would allow them to honour their Paris goals. Embarrassingly, the Australian Government was arguing for an accounting trick to fudge our already inadequate target. Minister Angus Taylor told world leaders that we had met our commitments under the Kyoto Protocol with room to spare, so we should be allowed to count that as credit toward our Paris target. But those with long memories know that we only achieved our Kyoto target because it was uniquely generous. I was there, cringing with shame as the Howard Government delegation said we would only sign the Kyoto Protocol if we were allowed to increase our emissions by 10 per cent, when other OECD nations were agreeing to reduce theirs.

Even worse, when the targets had finally been agreed at 4 o’clock in the morning, our delegation argued that land use change should be included in the agreement. They wanted that because there had been huge amounts of land clearing in Queensland in the Kyoto baseline year of 1990. Pushing for what became known around the world as 'the Australia clause' meant that we could increase our greenhouse gas emissions by about 40 per cent when the rest of the developed world was reducing, then claim we should be given credit for achieving our Kyoto target! For chutzpah, that ranks with the apocryphal tale of the man who murdered both his parents and begged the court’s mercy on the grounds that he was now an orphan. As the open letter that I signed last year said, the science is clear. We can’t continue to violate the fundamental laws of nature or ignore the basic science with impunity. If we continue on the current path, our future is very bleak. Australia’s current climate policies and practices are dire. Rather than making the urgent structural changes necessary for a sustainable and just transition toward zero emissions, the Australian Government is continuing to prop up and expand fossil fuel industries. I hoped history would record the 2019-20 fires as the tipping point that forced governments to respond to the crisis. But as I was writing, Scotty from Marketing was telling the National Press Club we need to burn more gas to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Like his claim we will halve our per capita emissions, that is just nonsense. ◆

Ian Lowe is an emeritus professor, prominent environmental scientist, and past president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.