Climate report can't be ignored

Bendigo Advertiser
Saturday 10/2/2007 Page: 18

THE Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change confirmed recently that global warming was a reality, and that the burning of fossil fuels during the past 250 years, together with the destruction of tropical rainforests, was largely to blame for increases in atmospheric temperatures. If emissions of carbon dioxide continue at present rates, the panel says, the result will be rising sea levels, more powerful tropical storms and more intense droughts in sub-tropical countries.

The more than 2000 scientists who contributed to the report conclude that there is a more than 90 per cent certainty that global warming is directly attributable to increased greenhouse gas emissions. The report may be the most definitive assessment yet of climate change, but it hasn't convinced everyone that the situation is as grave as the panel says.

Making long-term predictions is fraught with uncertainty, but it is fair to say that our understanding of climate change has advanced somewhat in 30 years. For those who do accept the report's findings, the picture painted by the panel is alarming, but not without hope.

It suggests that the process can be slowed and the worst effects averted if quick and decisive action is taken now to limit and reverse emissions. But for all its claims that it appreciates the gravity of the problem, the government is showing little real leadership.

Other than a major commitment to funding clean coal technology (and a half-hearted commitment to funding research into renewable energy), this government refuses to back any remedial measures that carry the threat of job losses.

Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd has called for a national summit on climate change, and although Howard might call it an empty talkfest, it's the government that is running the risk of having too little to say on climate change.

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