Climate change: here, now – Part II the human toll
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From National Geo:
What will happen when the climate starts to change and the rivers dry up and a whole way of life comes to an end? The people of the Murray-Darling Basin are finding out right now.
I’ve noticed a rapid shift in the reportage of climate change, both in terms of the new scientific reports, and the human toll.
We have already talked about the how the toll of Climate Change is now being felt and also how we can expect it to get worse, here, here, here and here.
The effects of climate change are no longer some distant thing that scientists talk about. They’re starting to affect people, now, after working their way into the climate system and feedback loops for many years.
I don’t care what anyone says, we really need to act on this, now, and stop stuffing around, or else the scenes below are going to become more commonplace.
Still, the most poignant gatherings are out of public view. One takes place in a modest farmhouse near Swan Hill. A government rural financial counselor sits at the kitchen table, advising a middle-aged stone-fruit farmer and his wife to declare bankruptcy, since their debt exceeds the value of their farm and a hailstorm has just ravaged their crop.
Holding his wife’s hand, tears leaking out of his eyes, the farmer manages to get out the words: “I have absolutely nothing to go on for.”
The woman says she checks every couple of hours to make sure her husband is not lying in his orchard with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in his head. When the meeting is over, the counselor adds their names to a suicide watch list.
Back in Barham, Malcolm Adlington sits alone in his truck going nowhere—watching his herd dwindle, his meadows receding into desert scrubland. All he can do is watch.
The world’s most arid inhabited continent is perilously low on water. Beyond that simple fact, nothing about Australia’s water crisis is straightforward. Though Australians have routinely weathered dry spells, the current seven-year drought is the most devastating in the country’s 117 years of recorded history. The rain, when it does fall, seems to have a spiteful mind of its own—snubbing the farmlands during winter crop-sowing season, flooding the towns of Queensland, and then spilling out to sea. To many, the erratic precipitation patterns bear the ominous imprint of a human-induced climate shift. Global warming is widely believed to have increased the frequency and severity of natural disasters like this drought. What seems indisputable is that, as Australian environmental scientist Tim Kelly puts it, “we’ve got a three-quarters of a degree [Celsius] increase in temperature over the past 15 years, and that’s driving a lot more evaporation from our water. That’s climate change.”
This will become all too common.
Similar Posts:
- Australian heatwave – linked to climate change?
- Australian drought
- The Effects of Climate Change – a reality check
- To survive, we must change everything, now.
- Why snow guns are bad, and global water shortage = water wars?
