Page 22 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 11 February 2020
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It may well be that we look back at this summer with nostalgia: how good was it? Most of the time the air quality was only poor, and we had hazardous air quality all day on only a few days. We desperately need to start adapting to the changed and changing climate. This time last year I moved a motion seeking action to make our buildings more suited to the new climate, but that was watered down to little action by the other parties. We need to start building for our future, not for our past.
We need also to look at where our food comes from. One of the local casualties of the fires has been the town of Batlow, where 10 per cent of Australia’s apples come from. As we know, Batlow and the orchards around it have largely burnt. What I did not realise is that apparently it takes eight years for an apple tree to start producing. If I were a Batlow apple farmer, would I have enough faith in the future climate to plant again? And even if I did, I imagine very few would have the financial resources to take on this huge risk.
In the world in which we now live, we need to acknowledge how we feel. I very much thank the Chief Minister for moving this motion, to give us all the chance to acknowledge our feelings and the feelings of the community, both local and wider, that we live in. Coming back after the new year, everyone in Canberra seemed literally shocked and really despondent. Most of us have got back into the year, and the fires and smoke seem more normal—more like things we can live with. We are sort of happy with the air quality, or at least resigned to it being poor, because it is so much better than it was before.
We have to remember that it is important for our mental health to talk about what we feel, and not all of that talk has to be positive. It is very important for the health of the planet that those of us who have seen how our climate has changed tell the story of what has happened to our friends and family. These are the sorts of conversations that will change our society’s actions. We need also to have conversations with the traditional custodians of this land, not just here but all over Australia. They have looked after our country, our shared country, for over 60,000 years, and they have done it in a vastly more sustainable way.
I would also like to acknowledge and speak about one of the ways that many of us are coping. Thousands of Canberrans and people all over the country have taken to the streets to show our concern about the bushfires and the climate emergency. These actions are really important and will be part of the way that we have effective action in the future.
There are scientific conversations that we need to have. The journal Nature quotes Professor Tim Lenton, who is the director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, as saying:
A decade ago we identified a suite of potential tipping points in the Earth system, now we see evidence that over half of them have been activated.
These include the loss of the Amazon rainforest, and the great ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland are melting much quicker than anticipated. The permafrost across the
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