The release today of the long-awaited report on sea-level rise is an opportunity for everyone to get informed.
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Yes, it is a 14-megabyte file, but if you want to make sound decisions, it is worth reading every word.
Two independent consultancy firms have reviewed the most current science and say local governments have no choice but to accept climate change is happening.
Agree or not, anyone with an opinion should test it against that detailed report, now available at the shire’s libraries and on the Eurobodalla Shire Council’s website.
The authors have downgraded the projected rise by 2050, as previously published by the NSW Government, from 0.35m to 0.26m, but their position is unambiguous: “sea-level rise is real”.
The council has an obligation to plan for rising seas and ever-worse impacts on coastal areas over time.
Clear in the report is the dour assumption that governments have failed, and will continue to fail, to take action quickly enough to reduce carbon emissions.
That is worth repeating: the predicted sea-level rise by 2050 and 2100 is based on what will happen if we continue to tread water on climate change.
People may squirm and squeal about the planning consequences of these projections, but one sure way to make the numbers more attractive is for industrialised countries to move to a post-carbon economy.
We cannot have it both ways.
We may not like our coastal property to be subject to planning restrictions, but if we continue to reject the science, despite study after study, we only have ourselves to blame.
The jury is no longer out on climate change and sea-level rise.
Local government would be negligent to ignore this latest report.
Planners and politicians risk bankrupting the shire down the track, by refusing to act in time.
Federal and state governments risk bankrupting our entire planet’s future by refusing to take the short-term political pain that action on carbon requires.
- Kerrie O’Connor