What does the IPCC report mean for Hobart?
People often tell me I have a calm demeanour. I attribute this to the way my parents raised me. They taught me to keep things in perspective but also to have a sense of agency - to believe that it’s always worthwhile to take action in the face of challenges.
I confess that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to remain calm about climate change, which threatens to unleash conditions that will disrupt and dominate our lives. The comprehensive report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released last week is truth telling on a grand scale.
More than 200 of our most qualified scientists, drawn from 65 nations, have strengthened their advice after eight years of collaboration. Their chilling finding is that major climate change is both inevitable & irreversible. The fact that human activity has caused rapid changes to the climate - including sea level rise, melting polar ice and glaciers, heatwaves, floods and droughts - is ‘unequivocal’.
We need to be honest about what this most recent IPCC assessment means for our future. We need to take it seriously - but not let ourselves become so overwhelmed that we simply give up. While it is devastating to accept that our lives and our children’s lives will be disrupted by climate change, ignoring it and hoping it will go away is not an option.
When you dig into the details of the report, it’s hard to find any good news about what climate change means for Australia. It is certain that we will continue to experience more intense and more frequent fire weather events. It’s also likely that severe storms, heavy rainfall and flooding will increase, and that our iconic coral reefs will be threatened by marine heatwaves and ocean acidity. Not only that, many of our coastal areas will be at risk from sea level rise.
Here in Hobart, we may currently enjoy a temperate climate, but we know from the work done as part of the Climate Futures for Tasmania Project that we are not immune to the effects of a changing climate. Over the coming years we can expect to see longer dry periods and an increase in extremely hot days (over 40C) which will enhance the occurrence and intensity of bushfires. We know from painful experience the havoc that bushfires can wreak on our beautiful state.
I believe strongly that every action we take as individual citizens can make a difference. Our decisions about what we do and don’t buy, how we invest, and how we get around can all have a positive impact. Good decisions will help reduce the severity and extent of future damage from climate change.
It’s also crucial that we use our votes and our voices. We can elect politicians who put climate change at the heart of all their decisions. We can speak out and challenge climate deniers, and in doing so we can lessen the damaging impact of their views.
This is also THE moment when every person of influence - in local, state and federal politics, media, business and industry - needs to think about how to pivot their assumptions and plans. How they will cast off old habits to be ready for a new world that’s coming faster than we expect.
This pivot means that decision-makers need to be transparent with their communities. They need to be upfront about the fact that governing in such times of unprecedented global change will become extremely difficult. Old policies and old approaches will not help and will likely hinder the new reality.
To give a personal example: I am extremely proud of the work that the City of Hobart is doing on bushfire management. We spend almost $2 million each year on fire prevention and management, and we have an exceptional group of trained firefighters. We are already going above and beyond what is seen in many cities. But I know that this is still not enough.
As the Mayor of an extremely bushfire prone city, I am advocating that emergency services develop and promote an in-depth Evacuation Plan for Hobart based on a full range of plausible scenarios. This plan does not currently exist, and its development needs to be an urgent priority.
I fully understand that emergency responders need to adapt to the realities of a situation as it develops - and that some decisions can only be made on the day when we have a full understanding of the conditions - but it’s not good enough to wait until we are in the middle of a bushfire situation and make evacuation plans for an entire city in the heat of the moment.
It would be irresponsible not to consider the lessons to be learned from fires that have caused immense destruction across the northern hemisphere. Authorities in Canada, the United States, Greece and Turkey have been caught on the hop as the evacuations of thousands of people have been more urgent, difficult and complex than they could have possibly imagined.
Desperate measures have been needed to shift people out of harm’s way - using ferries and fishing boats, buses and helicopters - as wildfires turbo charged by climate change closed in on small cities.
I do not want to see the same happen here in Hobart.
This is not about generating debilitating fear. This is about acknowledging the realities of the world we have created with our pollution, and taking responsibility for the extreme conditions it has now caused.
An evacuation plan for Hobart needs to:
Understand residents' intended evacuation behaviours and build a deep community awareness. Evidence suggests that local populations are not engaging with the traditional and underfunded community education programs.
Consider a range of potential evacuation scenarios, including the need to shift and provide shelter to thousands of people from several dense suburbs within 4 or 5 hours. Fast-moving fires mean that an early, orderly and safe evacuation response may not always be possible.
Investigate whether our infrastructure is adequate for plausible but more extreme scenarios.
I have said often that when it comes to bushfire preparedness, everyone has a role to play. While I believe the highest priority in Hobart is for the emergency services to develop detailed Evacuation Plans for a range of scenarios, it’s also clear that the rest of us have a responsibility to do what we can too.
As a community we need to be better prepared, and there’s a range of practical, low-cost schemes to help - including financial incentives - that I think would help with that. I commit to advocating for these programs and progressing them in any way that I can.
Fire and emergency management professionals across the world have spoken about how the climate change fuelled conditions are worse than they have seen before. Fires everywhere are becoming less predictable and more extreme. It would be wishful thinking to assume that the same won’t occur here.
We have left much of our response in the hands of emergency services - and their best efforts will always be needed - but now the task of keeping communities safe needs all of us. I call on you all - citizens, policy makers, and businesses - to do what you can in the face of climate change - the greatest challenge of our lifetime.
