Professor David Karoly has questioned the validity and ability of existing Australian institutions to confront and adequately deal with the quickly unfolding climate crisis.
The former University of Melbourne and CSIRO scientist was one of a trio of speakers at the recent Swanpool Environmental Film Festival.
And although Professor Karoly didn’t refer directly to Greater Shepparton City Council, it leapt to the forefront of my mind, for it was almost certainly among the many institutions to which he referred.
He has spoken with council and his guidance undoubtedly influenced its attitude to the declaration of a climate emergency in 2020.
Professor Karoly told me a few years ago that the Goulburn Valley was destined for successive days of 50ºC, something he reiterated at the Swanpool festival.
Well, he didn’t say the Goulburn Valley directly, but in localising his comments for the festival audience, he did say 50ºC days were certain for Swanpool, a place some 50km south of Shepparton and so marginally cooler.
Beyond that, I sat through a recent meeting at which one fellow was concerned that Greater Shepparton’s electricity infrastructure was inadequately protected from flood water, although some serious work was completed recently in response to those events.
And that’s a reasonable concern, considering experience from the flooding of late in the area, when the Mooroopna substation was swamped, leaving significant parts of Greater Shepparton suddenly without power for extended periods.
That plunged many into serious difficulties, but the 50ºC days raise a different problem as the risk comes from within, rather than from an outside threat — our electricity infrastructure could implode as demand for power escalates, with additional pressure on electric-powered cooling systems.
There is a weird and seemingly illogical question about what’s happening (it must be noted that electricity is a state responsibility and so not a weight on the shoulders of local government), but there’s a great push to see everyone go electric, especially with renewable electricity, and yet we are also warned that in extreme heat our electricity system may fail.
Despite that, we are being urged to remove fossil-fuel-powered electricity from popular use.
As illogical as it sounds, it make sense.
And the idea has been taken up enthusiastically by council in that it is actively removing fossil-fuel-powered heating and cooling systems from council-owned and -operated premises.
Council faces many challenges, but two that stand out are the Shepparton Art Museum and Aquamoves at Victoria Park Lake.
Both are heavy users of fossil fuels, and to its credit, council is investigating what it can do to switch both to all-electric power sources.
Heat is the most deadly of all ‘natural’ events, killing more people than any other natural disaster — Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires killed 173 people — but what is rarely, if ever reported or talked about, is that more than 300 died from heat exhaustion in the preceding week.
The cause of this increasing heat is a global problem and cannot be resolved by federal, state or local governments, but our city must be prepared, as best it can.
In Shepparton, council is making serious efforts at greening our urban areas with its One Tree Per Child program — trees have been shown to have a marked impact on cooling and, of course, soak up carbon dioxide as they mature.
But there is more to do: we need to look at eliminating fossil gas from our city; planning needs refreshing to slow geographic sprawl, encouraging cycling and walking; low-rise housing for inner-city spaces; and as in many world cities, such as some in Texas that are presently wrestling with a severe heatwave, create community cooling centres — places to which people without access to cool spaces can retreat.
Many discount the threat of global warming, but not Julian Cribb who, writing recently in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations in the story Our planet is imploding: when will we act to save ourselves?, said:
“Ocean temperatures are raging off the scale, icecaps are melting and seas rising, forests are ablaze across continents, ‘heat bombs’ in heavily populated regions are pushing them into the wet bulb ‘death zone’. Water supplies are running out in scores of countries, food chains are tottering, wildlife is vanishing quicker than it did in the Jurassic and forests falling faster.”
Professor Karoly argues we are not ready; Julian Cribb points to our many fragilities; and Martin Wolf says in his latest book, The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism: “Change is essential, both at home and abroad, but it must build on what is. Indeed, one cannot start anywhere else.”
So remembering the adage that ‘Alone I can go fast, but together we can go far’, each of us needs to encourage and back council as it works to adapt the city and prepare us for 50Cº days, such as those pointed to by Professor Karoly.