A report issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) described how a warming world would threaten billions of people with thirst and malnutrition, endanger more than half of wildlife species with extinction and initiate a melting of the Greenland ice cap that could raise global sea levels by more than 22 ft.
- British Sunday Times Science Editor Jonathan Leake, writing in "UN unveils full danger of climate change" on 18/11/2007 - on page 7 of the paper, next to a story about the Queen's 60th wedding anniversary, one about government corruption in Nigeria and a story about German helicopter pilots in Afghanistan refusing to fly at night (headed "For us ze war is over by tea-time, ja").

The Howard Government's script on climate change might have been written by Saint Augustine. Lord, make me chaste - but not yet. The long-awaited report by the Prime Minister's emissions task force says it is too early to set targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and that national carbon emissions trading cannot begin before 2012. That action on climate change might be premature beggars belief. Last year, a group of high-profile Australian corporations - not environmental activists - tallied the economic costs of doing nothing. Rising temperatures will hit two of Australia's largest exports, tourism and agriculture, especially hard, jeopardising at least 250,000 jobs and reducing inland livestock capacity by 40 per cent - projections backed by the CSIRO. The longer the delay, the higher the final bill. The Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change was willing to set a terget, a 60 per cent cut in emissions by 2050.
- from editorial in Sydney Morning Herald, 2 June 2007.

The world has been delivered its strongest warning yet that human actions are causing global warming and that greenhouse gas emissions must be reined in by 2020 if humanity wants a chance to avoid catastrophic climate change.
A turbulent future of violent storms, devastating drought, higher temperatures and rising sea levels is inevitable, according to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which released its 1200-page report in Paris last night.The work of 2500 scientists over six years, it is considered the most authoritative evaluation of climate change ever produced.
- Opening of "World wakes to calamity", lead front-page story in the Sydney Morning Herald for 3-4 February 2007.

... the Prime minister. John Howard, yesterday brushed off an accusation from the Australian of the Year, Tim Flannery, that his government had dragged the climate change chain. Mr Howard said that he was not "bowled over by some of the doomsday scenarios".
- Peter Hartcher (Political Editor), in "On the brink of climate disaster", Sydney Morning Herald, January 27 2007.

The peaking of oil production is approaching at a time when the world is facing many challenges, such as rising temperatures, falling water tables, and numerous other damaging environmental trends. Adjusting to a shrinking oil supply is part of the economic restructuring needed to put the economy on a path that will sustain progress.
- Lester Brown, in Plan B.

But the thought that worries me most is this. As people in the rich countries - even the professional classes - begin to wake up to what the science is saying, climate-change denial will start to look as stupid as Holocaust denial, or the insistence that AIDS can be cured with beetroot. But our response will be to demand that the government acts, while hoping that it doesn't. We will wish our governments to pretend to act. We get the moral satisfaction of saying what we know to be right, without the discomfort of doing it.
My fear is that the political parties in most rich nations have already recognized this. They know that we want tough targets, but that we also want those targets to be missed. They know that we will grumble about their failure to curb climate change, but that we will not take to the streets. They know that nobody ever rioted for austerity.
- George Monbiot, in Heat: How to Stop the Planet Burning.

This uncertainty is central to the difficulty of tackling the problem. Since the costs of climate change are unknown, the benefits of trying to do anything to prevent it are, by definition, unclear. What's more, if they accrue at all, they will do so at some point in the future. So is it really worth using public resources now to avert an uncertain, distant risk, especially when the cash could be spent instead in goods and services that would have a measurable near-term benefit?
If the risk is big enough, yes. Governments do it all the time.
- From "The Heat Is On", Economist, Sep 15 2006.

As befits an information age, more is now known about the world in which we live than could once have even been imagined. It is easy to get lost in the detail, to be uncertain about the science and confused by the rhetoric. It is therefore important to acknowledge that the institutionally conservative great national associations of scientists are united in their diagnosis that the evidence is pointing to dramatic changes in climate that are likely to affect the way we live in future. Most still hold out the hope that something can be done - by adopting renewable energy, modifying behaviour, limiting population growth, taxing unsustainable actovities and developing new technologies - but increasing numbers of experts are adopting an even more pessimistic view: it may already be too late.
- Julianne Schulz, in the Introduction to the Griffith Review for Winter 2006.

Yet despite the dire warnings politicians and transport planners still delude themselves that global warming is something that can be eliminated or at least brought under control in 10-20 years. The fact that we have already switched on what I calculate to be the equivalent of a net of heaters around the planet at a density of one kW every 10m2, that we cannot switch these off and that we are annually adding further heaters still seems to elude people.
- Malcolm Buchanan, in his paper to the AITPM 2003 National Conference Achieving sustainable land use and transport systems ... Time to stop deluding ourselves and face the choices

In 1999, Australia produced 1.5 per cent of the world's total energy-related carbon emissions. Transport accounted for around 14 per cent of Australia's greenhouse gas emissions. Over the past decade, greenhouse gas emissions from transport have increased at a slightly faster rate than total greenhouse gas emissions (20 per cent compared to 17 per cent). Road transport is responsible for about 85 per cent of total transport sector emissions. Over half of these emissions are due to passenger vehicles, while road freight accounts for around 30 per cent of road transport emissions.
- from Greenhouse Policy Options for Transport, Bureau of Transport and Regional Economics, Canberra 2002.

The Howard Government's assertion that greenhouse gas emission controls will damage Australian industry is a tired, flawed excuse for inaction. It is, however, about the only excuse Australia has left for refusing to ratify the Kyoto protocol, which is expected to introduce legally binding protocols across much of the industrialised world by the end of this year. Australia now stands isolated with the United States - the world's largest and most unapologetic polluter - on climate change. Morally, there is little honour in lining up with Washington in putting short-term, economic self-interest ahead of the greater global good. The economic argument, however, is more complex than the immediate fortunes of high-emission industries, such as aluminium smelters. In the longer term. Australia may face economic risks if it stays outside a new global trading system defined by environmental controls. ... perhaps the greatest unknown is whether Australia will face trade sanctions on the grounds of the "unfair competitive advantage" uncontrolled emissions offer its industries in a post-Kyoto global trading environment ...
- from editorial in Sydney Morning Herald, June 7 2002

When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which might then have effected a cure.
There is nothing new in this story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong - these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.
- No, this wasn't someone talking about greenhouse emissions and climate change. Who do you think said this and what was he or she talking about ?

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