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Its been a tough summer for Australians with bushfires ravaging many parts of the country. Alongside the fires, public and political debate goes back and forth looking at causality and the role of climate change (CC). This is a complex issue and the attempts to oversimplify this topic playing out in the public domain are likely to see Australia miss some positive opportunities to change its path as a nation if not corrected.
Outrider has spent some time over the last 3 months investigating the topic of CC in more detail through the auspices of the Climate Change Teaching Academy, a United Nations lead initiative designed to promote a deeper understanding of what is going on globally in the CC space.
Here are some learnings that are relevant when thinking about Australia's situation within a global community:
- the focus on climate change action is generally divided into 2 parts; mitigation and adaptation
- mitigation focuses on efforts to reduce the severity of future climate change, for example reducing Green House Gas emissions (sources) or finding ways to better absorb emissions to reduce atmospheric impacts (sinks)
- adaptation focuses on efforts to prepare communities to deal with the impacts of increasingly volatile climate events
- the evidence from overseas (Africa, Asia and Europe) is that "mainstreaming", building mitigation and adaptation measures into the fabric of existing government policies (energy, health, transport to name a few) is the most effective way of making sustained change
- the other key feature is that the global approach is not zero sum (as appears to be the underlying assumption in the debate playing out in Australia), most effective CC response policies, if properly targeted, drive broader community benefits as well e.g. better health outcomes from more astute urban planning, improved nutrition from optimised agricultural practices, economic stimulus from the emergence of new business sectors focusing on adaptation and mitigation needs and more.
Whilst Australia has been hit hard in recent months, one of the regions that will be most severely impacted by CC in coming decades is Asia; a region where Australia has many cultural and economic ties. The success of our neighbour's adaptation and mitigation plans will rely heavily on developed expertise and know-how; this is an area where Australia can demonstrate its leadership and ingenuity. Outrider feels there is both a moral and economic imperative to recognise the regional CC needs and prepare accordingly BUT it might be hard to convince others of our good intentions if we unable to sort out a coherent approach of our own.
There is a view that Australia should continue to rely on fossil fuel production to generate future national wealth despite evidence that many parts of the globe are moving in different directions to meet their energy needs. Outrider accept this is a controversial premise, what isn't controversial is taking a distributed risk approach, understanding in more detail the changes happening around the world and preparing with an open mind for the challenges that many anticipate will be coming over the next 50 years. Moving away from zero sum thinking would be a good first step.
There is a view that Australia should continue to rely on fossil fuel production to generate future national wealth despite evidence that many parts of the globe are moving in different directions to meet their energy needs. Outrider accept this is a controversial premise, what isn't controversial is taking a distributed risk approach, understanding in more detail the changes happening around the world and preparing with an open mind for the challenges that many anticipate will be coming over the next 50 years. Moving away from zero sum thinking would be a good first step.