Australia's poor planning for climate change will cost the nation over $1 trillion dollars as natural disasters occur more and damage exceeds.
Australia has already been experiencing extreme weather, as a result of the changing climate. Our government does not seem to be taking this as a sign and in the end Australia will be paying for the damage this weather causes.The CSIRO is warning that the damage caused by extreme weather could cost Australia more than $1 trillion.
Environment reporter Jake Strummer states , "You don't have to look far to see the impacts of extreme weather. Sydney has been lashed by storms this week and Brisbnae is still cleaning up after a super cell caused damage to nearly 2,000 homes. Insurers are working out the damage bill in Queensland and the Brisbane mayor expects it could be around a billion dollars."
And professor Andy Pitman from the University of New South Whales , states " Severe storms" have "been hitting Sydney a lot in the last few weeks and have been causing a lot of damage. You don't have to think about climate change to think about how you could reduce your vulnerability to those sorts of storms or flash flooding"
He also explains that, "people are richer, people have built houses in vulnerable places."
He highlights the risk of bushfires, which have occurred in the past and are only going to get worse because of climate change.
Pitman explains that, "If the planet gets really active on reducing emissions we may well be able to keep the increasing costs of insurance down to an increase of 10 to 20 per cent."
"But if we got to high emissions futures, where we're seeing extraordinarily large amounts of climate change and large amounts of changes in extremes, they become so massively large that they're probably prohibitively expensive"
The CSIRO will continue to look for ways that the government can budget to prepare for climate risk, but will the Australian Government do it?
Julie Bishop has intensified efforts to avoid the Great Barrier Reef as being listed as "in danger"
Bishop is using her trip to Lima for the COP20 in order to continue lobbying to avoid UNESCO's plan to deem the Great Barrier Reef as "in danger".
“It would send a message around the world that even if you meet all of the criteria set out by the world heritage committee, there is still a risk that they will place an area on the in-danger list,” she told the Courier Mail , “every country that has an environmental icon that activists seize upon would be at risk.”
Rather than the government lobbying to try and keep the reef off the in danger list, and attacking green groups when Bishop adds , "Every country that has an environmental icon that activists seize upon would be at risk", there be greater efforts to try and turn the effects around rather than blame environmentalists from trying to warn the world about the turmoil the reef is in.
Join us in declaring the Reef in Danger - Click Here.