“When up to your waist in alligators, how do you remember that the reason you’re here is to drain the swamp?” an American said several years ago while discussing problems associated with catastrophes.
That’s one of my concerns when we, and that’s all of us here in the Goulburn Valley, are doing all we can to navigate and survive an ever-worsening climate crisis.
Greater Shepparton City Council has a wonderful plan to reduce and eliminate many of the city’s carbon dioxide emissions, but those plans are made on the assumption that our deteriorating conditions will be linear — the collapse will be predictable and so manageable.
Predictions are notoriously unreliable and adhering to that city plan, as good as it looks, will become increasingly challenging, and maybe even unrealistic and even impossible, as the “climate alligators” gather.
Sitting recently through a webinar hosted by the Archbishop of Melbourne, Reverend Dr Philip Freier, a discussion entitled ‘Coping with the climate crisis’ highlighted, for me at least, that many assume we are facing linear changes.
Shepparton’s adopted Climate Emergency Action Plan considers all those sectors important to our community’s welfare, including agriculture, but there appears to be an assumption that unfolding changes will be both predictable and linear.
Science, however, suggests something else, as while it illustrates how and why the Earth is warming, bringing hitherto unseen changes to our weather, scientists are not yet sure how, why or when the linear process will end.
There has been much talk about ‘tipping points’. That moment when linear change becomes, in a geological sense, instant is not yet truly understood, although some scientists say we have already passed many such critical moments.
Writing in her latest book, Humanity’s Moment: A climate scientist’s case for hope, Joëlle Gergis said:
“Right now, things are still in our hands, but the longer we delay, we run the risk of crossing critical tipping points that could see our world radically transformed in just a handful of decades. We are already seeing an escalation of extreme conditions like the rapid melting of the Arctic, the die-off of the Amazon rainforest and mass coral bleaching across the tropics — all clear signs that our world is rapidly changing. The truth is, we are likely to experience more unwelcome surprises as we know that our climate models are missing some important, non-linear processes like permafrost melt, wildfires and ice sheet disintegration that amplify warming, so these things are likely to catch us off guard.”
Referencing again our American friend, his alligators and the swamp; our city council faces a massive challenge in maintaining its focus on the climate emergency as climate-driven changes to our weather system make it increasingly difficult to maintain our sensibilities and the correct, and proper, thought processes.