Witnessing the unthinkable

Comment by Joëlle Gergis

we not understand that life as we know it is unravelling before our eyes? That we have unleashed intergenerational warming that will be with us for millennia? If this really is the end of days, how can a climate scientist like me make best use of the time I have left?

In recent years, I’ve looked to brave colleagues who are becoming increasingly vocal about the climate emergency. One of the scientists I admire most is Professor Terry Hughes, one of the world’s leading experts on coral reefs, and our foremost authority on the Great Barrier Reef.

In late March, just before the national lockdown took effect, Terry and his colleagues rushed to conduct an aerial survey of the third mass-bleaching event to strike the reef since 2016. It is the first time that severe bleaching impacted upon virtually the entire range of the Great Barrier Reef, including large parts of the southern reef spared during the 2016 and 2017 events. It’s hard to hide from the reality that the entire system is in an advanced state of ecological collapse.

In desperation, Terry took to Twitter, sharing his experience of surveying the carnage: “It’s been a shitty, exhausting day on the #Greatbarrierreef. I feel like an art lover wandering through the Louvre… as it burns to the ground.” By the end of his fieldwork he was a broken man: “I’m not sure I have the fortitude to do this again.”

The honesty of his despair allowed my own to crystallise into a visceral sense of dread that is deepening by the day. We have arrived at a point in human history I think of as “the great unravelling”.

Recently, I shared a statistic with my climatology students as I explained the latest mass-bleaching event: 99 per cent of the world’s tropical coral reefs will disappear with 2°C of global warming. This future no longer feels impossibly far away, it’s happening before our eyes.

Looking around the room, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for them. They have inherited a planetary mess, yet are more distracted and disconnected from each other, themselves and the natural world than any generation that has ever lived.

As each season passes, it’s painfully clear that we are witnessing the destabilisation of the Earth’s climate. There are things we can still save, but it’s now too late for some areas such as the Great Barrier Reef and tracts of ancient rainforests.

In Australia we wear our badge of resilience with a hefty dose of national pride. But scientists on the frontline of the climate crisis understand that some things in life, once gone, can never be replaced. If the new models turn out to be right, there is no way we can adapt to the catastrophic level of warming projected for a country like Australia.

Even placing the new models aside, the 2019 UN Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report” shows that a continuation of current global emission reduction policies could see the Earth’s average temperature rise a staggering 3.4 to 3.9°C by 2100.

If we continue along our current path, by any measure, we will sail past the Paris Agreement targets in a handful of decades.

Some of our most precious ecosystems will never recover, including some of what was destroyed in Australia during our Black Summer. Gutted landscapes will struggle on, trying to regain some semblance of an equilibrium. But the truth is the destruction we have unleashed will reverberate throughout the ages.

We are witnessing the unthinkable. Facing unimaginable.

Psychologically, many people already sense it’s the beginning of the end. But is this the end of the era of fossil fuels, or life as we know it? As the planetary crisis accelerates, we must confront the reality that what we do now will forever alter the course of humanity and all life on Earth.

My dreams are warning me that a metaphorical tsunami is approaching, threatening to destroy all that we hold dear. We must wake up and rush to higher ground before it’s too late.

Mthe

According to A database kept by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, since 1886 Australian governments have held more than 300 inquiries and reviews into natural disasters and emergency management. The decade leading up to 2017 was particularly jam-packed, with 90 such inquiries, delivering more than 2000 recommendations.

In the wake of this past catastrophic fire season, where around 3100 people lost their homes, 33 their lives, and an area the size of Syria burned, Australians may well be questioning just how much we’ve learnt from this abundance of examination.

The Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements, the latest inquiry, was called by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in February. It was a response to the fires, yet given a much broader remit,

Is this the end of the era of fossil fuels, or life as we know it?