subject: Fires and worst drought in 100 years wake Australia up to the reality of climate change posted: Sat, 14 Oct 2006 13:55:58 +0100
[..jacking in from the "You Had It Coming" port, Australia's drought
has finally made the international news. I wonder whether signing up
to Kyoto would have helped at all? - Stu]
Fires and worst drought in 100 years wake Australia up to the reality
of climate change
By Kathy Marks in Sydney
Published: 14 October 2006
Australia is confronting its worst drought in a century with rampant
fires devastating agricultural areas, rivers drying up, crops
failing, and farmers forced to sell off their livestock.
The bushfire season has begun months early and the government has
pledged financial aid for despairing farmers, already laden with debt
after five straight years of drought. Some may earn no income at all
this year, and there are fears that the suicide rate in the
countryside, which is already high, will soar further.
The federal Treasurer, Peter Costello, said the countryside was
facing a "rural recession".
But some politicians and environmental groups say that sympathetic
words are not enough. They point to the increased frequency and
severity of drought-causing El Niņo weather patterns, attributed to
global warming, and to Australia's leading role in poisoning the
Earth's atmosphere with greenhouse gases.
Australians are among the world's biggest energy consumers, and the
country is one of the top per capita producers of carbon dioxide
emissions. Nonetheless, it is one of only two industrialised nations,
along with the United States, that has refused to sign the 1997 Kyoto
Protocol, arguing that it would harm the economy.
Now the economy looks likely to get a good shaking, as a result of
the unseasonably high temperatures and pitifully low rainfall in
recent months.
In New South Wales alone, 92 per cent of the state is officially in
drought, and farmers have begun offloading stock before the hot, dry
summer sets in, forcing them to buy feed and water. Sheep sales in
the state are 70 per cent higher than last year, and at one saleyard
last week, a record 67,000 sheep were sold in one day.
Agricultural economists, meanwhile, have slashed their winter crop
forecasts by more than a third, and wheat exports have been suspended
to meet domestic demand.
While some farmers are braced for their first total crop failure in
half a century, consumers in urban areas are being warned to expect
significantly higher food bills.
The Prime Minister, John Howard, said the drought would almost
certainly affect gross domestic product, which has been growing at an
unprecedented rate for more than a decade. But he urged Australians
to retain a sense of perspective, saying that "the country overall is
still doing very well".
Bushfires, meanwhile, were raging throughout south-eastern Australia
yesterday, although summer does not officially start for more than
six weeks, and fires of this ferocity are not normally seen until
after Christmas.
With the vegetation tinder-dry after one of the driest winters on
record, hundreds of fires were burning across four states, fanned by
high temperatures and strong winds. Much of the south-east was on an
extreme fire danger alert. In Tasmania, scores of homes were
threatened by fires advancing on the suburbs of Hobart, the state
capital, this week.
Scientists warned the bushfire threat would increase over coming
decades, as climate change brought more frequent hot weather,
accompanied by less rainfall.
Penny Whetton, of the government's own scientific body, the
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, said:
"The frequency of days of very high fire danger are increasing 20 to
30 per cent over the next few decades."
Phil Koperberg, New South Wales fire service commissioner, said it
was "virtually unheard of" to have fires at this time of year in
places like the Snowy Mountains and Kosciusko National Park. "I've
been in the business for 40 years ... it's a spectacularly unusual
event," he said.
Some scientists and environmental groups are predicting that the
drought is here to stay, and are calling for better land and water
management practices.
Australia is one of the world's driest continents. But a national
audit of water resources, released yesterday, found that dwindling
water supplies were being wasted, despite restrictions imposed in six
major cities, including Sydney.
Thanks to the drought, dams are drying up. One dam alone in New South
Wales has lost a volume of water equivalent to Sydney Harbour,
because of evaporation. River beds in bone-dry rural areas are empty
and cracked. One newspaper yesterday carried a front-page photograph
of a little girl jumping over a muddy trickle on her parents'
property - all that remains of the once powerful Darling, Australia's
longest river. The river is part of the Murray-Darling system, which
feeds the country's food basket. The National Climate Centre warned
that without rain, the rivers will soon run dry.
The leader of the Green Party, Bob Brown, blamed government policies
for helping to create the bushfires and droughts. He accused Mr
Howard's conservative government of encouraging Australian industries
to burn coal, while starving renewable energy scientists of funding.
Greg Hunt, the parliamentary secretary to Ian Campbell, the
Environment minister, said thatAustralia was meeting international
targets for reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and investing in
renewable energy and clean coal technology.
