climate science | organised castle

WARNING: This post is a political piece which contains my personal opinions.

Whether we like it or not the G20 has arrived in Brisbane, the capital city of my home state, Queensland. Today is a declared public holiday for all who work in the Brisbane City Council area. I am included in that number. Even when I was in the city on Monday and Tuesday, there were barricades everywhere and the footpaths were literally swarming with police.

Powerful and influential leaders from nations across the world are descending as I write and the spotlight of the world media will be on Brisbane over the next 3 days. The total influx of people is in excess of 7,000. This includes support and security staff for the world leaders as well as a huge contingent of journalists and other other media staff.

So what is the G20? This link gives a brief, unbiased overview. In reality, Mr Putin is arriving with a flotilla of Russian warships steaming towards Australian waters, the USA and Chinese delegations fly in with the ink barely dry on an agreement to work together on greenhouse gas emissions and David Cameron has come to hang out with his ‘new best friend’.

Who knows what the weekend will bring. The one thing that we will all endure is hot weather. It does not matter whether you are a young child whose home is here or one of the most powerful leaders in the world – it will be hot – probably hotter on Saturday and Sunday than any previous November day on record in our city. This is not a one-off. It is indicative of our changing climate. Already, most of the temperature records are from the past 10 years, despite the fact that records have been kept for well in excess of 100 years in this country.

Mr Abbott does not think that the G20 is the right forum for discussions about climate change. That’s right, just continue to bury your head in the sand. We all know that you do not believe in the science of climate change. You have told us so, yourself.

I will not be protesting this weekend but I am sure that there will be others who do. They will have all sorts of items on their agendas that they want to put in front of this group of powerful and influential leaders.

My weekend will be spent making sure that my garden is kept well-watered and protected from the searing sun and heat as I do my best to ensure the survival of the food crops that I am growing to feed my family. I will also be thinking of those farmers who struggle to make a livelihood while doing battle with the increasingly extreme weather conditions. They do this in order to provide food to you and I. The advertisement below, was one which was banned by the Brisbane Airport Corporation as being “too political” for display during the G20. It features a South Australian grape producer, David Bruer. You can read more here.

While grapes and the end product, wine, may not be essential to our survival, agriculture in the broader sense is most definitely necessary.

Remember, Mr Abbott – without a planet there will be NO economy. Addressing the issues of climate change should be front and centre of any global economic forum.

I was looking for a final quote for this post and amazingly I found this. Need I say more?

This week’s landmark agreement between the US and China to reduce carbon emissions has increased pressure on Australia – the only developed country to have gone backwards in fighting climate change – to put the issue on the summit’s agenda.

However, Mr Abbott – who has scrapped a carbon tax and is trying to reduce renewable energy targets – insisted that the G20 was the wrong forum. “This is the world’s premier economic conference, and I… expect the focus will be on economic reform, economic growth, how we drive growth and jobs,” he said.

The agreement by the world’s two biggest polluters, on Wednesday at the Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation) summit in Beijing, reportedly took Australia by surprise. Veteran political commentator Michelle Grattan said the government had been “ambushed almost on the eve” of the long-anticipated Brisbane conference.

Under the deal, the US has pledged to slash its emissions by 26 per cent to 28 per cent of their 2005 levels by 2025, while China has said its emissions will peak by 2030, at the latest, and then decrease.

Next to those goals, Australia’s plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5 per cent of their 2000 levels by 2020 looks inconsequential. Few believe the government will meet even that modest target.

One of the world’s biggest per capita polluters, thanks to its reliance on fossil fuels, Australia is also the world’s largest coal exporter. Mr Abbott – who once dismissed climate change science as “absolute crap” – horrified scientists and environmentalists last month when he described coal as “good for humanity” while opening a new mine in Queensland.

The government has reportedly been fending off last-minute attempts by the US, France and other European nations to have climate change discussed by G20 leaders.

The meeting is seen by many as an important opportunity to build momentum before next year’s Paris conference on climate change, where it is hoped a new global pact will be hammered out.

Australia’s opposition leader, Bill Shorten, warned that if Mr Abbott persisted in his refusal to allow climate change to be discussed in Brisbane, “he will embarrass Australia in front of the rest of the world”. Mr Shorten accused the Prime Minister of holding “flat Earth” views.

Other critics dismissed Mr Abbott’s claim that the G20 was not an appropriate forum. Ms Grattan, a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra, noted that the joint communique issued by the US President, Barack Obama, and the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, referred to climate change “already harming economies around the world”.

With the European Union agreeing last month to reduce carbon emissions by at least 40 per cent of their 1990 levels by 2030, Australia is looking increasingly out of step with the developed world.