Climate change action

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the world’s leaders are more intent on a talk-fest at COP27 in Egypt, as Greta Thunberg says, than actually doing anything meaningful about the situation.

We are giving millions of dollars to starving children and those caught up in situations not of their own making where their crops either fail or get ruined by excessive rain. We know this is only a short time solution – next year will be the same and the next.

People living in areas of known future inundation should be moved to other, hopefully nearby, areas where they can maintain their traditional lifestyles. Likewise those where the rainfall is now insufficient for crops. We know where these places are. Giving food aid is not a viable long term solution.

We are not good at treating marginal minorities with any kind of logical compassion. Take prisoners in Australia. We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars keeping them in jail and virtually nothing about helping them when they get out.

The result is that they cannot survive outside and commit another crime. If we spent more on rehabilitating those who are deemed able to live successfully in the community we could save both money and lives.

Many refugees come from much drier countries than Australia and are therefore ideal to be rehoused in remote communities here – small country towns, for instance. Their combined expertise would be a major asset for this country.

Refugees who get here have demonstrated that they are self-sufficient and are therefore able to adjust more easily to our environment than most. Although our politicians claim otherwise, we produce more towards climate change per head than most others world wide.

It is therefore logical that we should do more to help those who are suffering because of our way of life – the islanders who are seeing their countries slowly disappear; those who no longer have enough rain to grow enough to eat.

We do not even look after our own people. Many of those who are being flooded out in NSW and Queensland are there because they were allowed to build homes, even towns in known flood areas. Whether this is because of local government inaction, the greed of developers or their own stupidity in buying there is beside the point. Not everyone is able to overview the situation when they move into a new area.

The insurers have been aware of this for some time now and have adjusted their rates to manage foreseeable losses. However, it appears that home buyers do not check insurance rates before purchase. It is human nature not to want to abandon a home one has put so much time and effort into making, but climate change is here to stay and will, not may, get worse.

We have to adjust or perish and to adjust as a species we have to do a lot more to help those who, often through no fault of their own, have found themselves homeless and sometimes even stateless which if you think about it is a frightening situation to be in.

Will our leaders get us out of this mess? It now seems very unlikely. The communities in this country which have survived best are those in which the residents have organised themselves to help each other – to work together effectively, accepting help from others and the government but doing what is necessary themselves, basically ignoring external authority. The locals know best what is needed.