Tassie students take giant strides for climate change action

REMEMBER that big climate meeting in Paris? Only a few years ago governments from around the world agreed climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. But the issue has largely disappeared from the front pages of our newspapers and, at least in this state, we have become politically complacent about action on climate.

Next week that may all change.

School students across Australia are planning a school strike against climate inaction. The time has come for young citizens to voice their concerns about how we are living on this Earth.

Here is what’s at stake. As we approach the end of this year, 2018 is on track to be the 42nd consecutive year with global land and ocean temperatures above the 20th century average. That means anyone under the age of 42 has never experienced an average year on this planet. Young people today are simply living in a different climate than the one their parents and grandparents grew up in.

In Tasmania we are seeing climate impacts in our backyards. Just talk to anyone who spends time fishing, growing plants, or watching birds. Over the past 50 years Tasmania has experienced a half a degree increase in average temperature. We know a warming atmosphere and ocean results in higher sea levels, more extreme bushfire seasons, and altered rainfall patterns.

The carbon dioxide that you and I produced this week — from driving fossil fuelpowered cars, from cooking on gas stoves and from consuming goods shipped from halfway around the world — will stay in the atmosphere on average for about 100 years. It takes at least that long for heattrapping emissions to be removed naturally.

If we continue polluting at our current rate, projections show that Tasmania is heading for a warming somewhere in the range of 3C above the pre-industrial temperature by the year 2100. That’s way above the safe level being called for by scientists.

While individual behaviour change is an important part of dealing with the climate crisis it’s not enough. We can do so much more collectively and with political action. So, what are the solutions to reducing our emissions? Well, there are plenty of them.

And they are being rolled out across the planet: net zero buildings with smart glass and green roofs in Germany; methane digesters that turn organic waste into energy across Asia; clean cookstoves in the Himalayas and reduced food waste in developed nations; mass transit options including high speed rail and ride sharing in Japan; and alternative ways to decrease emissions from limestone in cement production being trialled in the US.

In countries like Portugal, Denmark and Scotland government initiatives have led to more than half their electricity supply coming from clean, non-polluting renewable energy sources — helping to heat homes, fuel electric cars and provide power to industry and infrastructure.

That is what the students marching next week want as their future. A vision for a healthy, sustainable, and habitable planet. But we are running out of time.

As politicians turn away, children prepare to walk out of school, writes Mel Fitzpatrick

Here in Tasmania over the past three decades, action on climate has stalled. Government figures show we haven’t reduced our fossil fuel use from vehicles (up 10 per cent since 1990), we haven’t made a dent in emissions from soil management practices (also up 10 per cent since 1990), and we haven’t successfully decreased our industrial outputs (some of these have increased by 25 per cent since 1990).

Yet, our current state government is recycling the tired old rhetoric of how we lead the world in emission reductions, because we have reached “net zero”. They calculate this by way of an accounting trick, using a convenient land use change number that dwarfs emissions from all other sectors. It’s an easy thing for them to do, but it’s misleading.

To avoid reaching a climate we may not be able to adapt to, it is clear we need to radically and rapidly reduce our heattrapping emissions from all sources not just by stopping deforestation. Climate change is not a linear, gradual process. Climate records show that changes can be abrupt when tipping points are crossed.

It is a crucial time for action on climate change. In this country, we must somehow stop the political game-playing that has left us without climate policies. We must also challenge a media landscape that controls public discourse and renders the climate crisis invisible.

As a society, we will need to curb our conspicuous consumption, reconsider how we grow our food and retool entire industries. The world has benefited from a past built on cheap but damaging fossil fuels, but it’s not beyond Tasmania to become a global leader — a genuine one — with liveable cities, alternative transport, and sustainable agricultural practices.

For all the students who are striking next week, may your creativity, passion and ingenuity shine through as a message to those in power. It’s beyond time for us all to act on your concerns.

Dr Mel Fitzpatrick is an expert on local and global impacts of climate change with a PhD in geophysics from the University of Washington looking at the role of climate in Antarctica. She has worked for Australian and US Antarctic Programs and Union of Concerned Scientists. Mel lives in Tasmania and works as a wilderness educator and climate consultant. She is a member of independent group Climate Tasmania.