West Australian
Monday 11/9/2006, Page: 12
WA's agriculture industry could be devastated by the middle of the century and Perth's water crisis would only get worse if climate change was not tackled as a matter of urgency, former US vice-president Al Gore said yesterday.
In Australia to promote his confronting documentary An Inconvenient Truth, Mr Gore, 58, said he was well aware of new statistics showing the State's south to be drying up faster than anywhere else on Earth because of rapid climate change.
He said WA's highly productive grain belt stood to lose a third of its soil moisture within decades, similar to that predicted for the US grain areas, if people continued to pollute the planet with global warming toxins.
His remarks were in response to questions about the Australian Senate's bipartisan rural and regional affairs committee report, released last week, which contained the dismal data on WA's water shortage.
"I'm familiar with those statistics," Mr Gore said. "It's been predicted and now it's happening. "In the US, the grain areas are predicted to lose up to 30 per cent of all the soil moisture within 40 years if we continue with this global warming pollution agriculture would come to a stop.
"The consequences for Australia will be equally devastating. The evaporation of soil moisture is one of the issues that has a particularly harsh effect on Australia. It is already the driest inhabited continent.
"You have crafted this fantastic civilisation here, notwithstanding the meagre supplies of soil moisture, and you've been very ingenious in doing it.
But if we continue to turn the thermostat up on the entire world, one of the places that's affected the most is dry soils because the moisture is pulled out of them. The harsh effect on agriculture is quite severe.
"To take Perth as another example, the availability of drinking water there is getting dangerously low."
Mr Gore said Australia was more at risk than any other nation because of climate extremes already experienced. Those extremes were predicted to get worse if global warming continued unabated. But he said the climate crisis could be solved.
Describing global warming as the most serious crisis the planet had faced, he said the challenge could be met if individuals, industry and governments acknowledged the immediate threat and turned to alternative and renewable energy sources. Referring to John Howard as a friend, Mr Gore said he disagreed with the Prime Minister on the issue.
Last week, Mr Howard questioned how serious a problem climate change was while reiterating his long-held view that Australia could not risk damage to its economy by taxing the coal industry or making energy more expensive.
Mr Gore said Mr Howard should be taken to task for his position.
"If he is sceptical about the science you all should ask him why," he said. "The Australian National Academy of Science is clear on it. Don't they stand for something? Every national academy of science in the industrial world is clear on this, including China."
He also said China and India were ahead of the US and Australia in taking economic advantage of the crisis by investing in solar and wind power.
"This is madness, for us to continue putting 70 million tonnes a day of global warming pollution into the Earth's atmosphere and turning the thermostat up and up," he said.
"The truth about this is inconvenient, especially for the largest polluters the coal industry, the oil industry."
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