Professor Clive Hamilton would probably have less than complimentary things to say about Greater Shepparton City Council’s newly adopted budget.
Along with his co-author, George Wilkenfeld, the Charles Stuart University professor has just written and published a book arguing that local governments need to prepare their communities to live comfortably and successfully in a warmer world.
Hamilton and Wilkenfeld argue there is little or nothing Australia can do, practically, to help the world avoid the worst of climate change, but local governments, they argue, need to prepare for the impacts of climate change, that is understand and prepare for adaptation.
Although council declared a climate emergency four years ago, it appears that the unfolding climate threat is not really central to its concerns.
Evidence of that can be found in council’s newly adopted budget for the year ahead, which, according to council’s own website, will spend just one dollar in every $100 on environmental management and drainage.
I’m unsure how, why or where drainage fits with environmental management.
Taking note of what Hamilton and Wilkenfeld said and what I heard just last week on a webinar organised by the Australian National University about disaster solutions for 2024, that in terms of adaptation, the $1 in every $100 is absolutely inadequate.
Council says its 2024/25 budget strives to maintain financial sustainability while delivering services, facilities and a full capital works program to ensure the region continues to thrive now and into the future. The budget outlines the most practical way forward for the next financial year to ensure the region’s continued success and prosperity.
Comforting? Yes. Appropriate? Most certainly not. As council says on its website: “The climate emergency situation refers to catastrophic changes to the world’s climate caused by human activity and resulting in a loss of a safe climate, which threatens all life on earth.”
So I can’t help but ponder and ask, is $1 in $100 what we need to spend in an answer to this exploding challenge, something that “threatens all life on earth”?
Shepparton’s October 2022 flood event illustrated the role of local councils in responding to emergencies and, of course, the demands such events place on councils’ capability and resources.
Should you not believe in climate change, then I urge you to take a look at your home insurance premium, which I’d suggest has increased, in some cases substantially.
Shepparton’s 2022 flood had no impact on my home (we didn’t even have water in our street), but our home insurance premium subsequently jumped.
Complaints about such increases based on facts that we escaped completely any direct impact from the 2022 flood carry no weight, as our part of the world is high-risk as we live in a recognised flood plain and in one of the highest-risk electorates in Australia.
Australian companies offering insurance to Shepparton homes cover their potential losses through re-insurance with international companies, which set their rates and spread their risk based on the cost incurred from climate-driven worldwide fires, floods, droughts and storms.
Hamilton and Wilkenfeld have rightly pointed out that Australia can do little, or nothing, about resolving climate change, but we can adapt and with the community’s support and endorsement, our council can initiate those necessary societal changes.
The views and opinions of the authors don’t mean we abandon our mitigation efforts, for as Hamilton recently told me, we need to press even harder to have our decision-makers end fossil fuel projects (that’s gas and coal) and demand higher emission reduction targets.
Robert McLean is a former editor of The News.