Award-winning climate scientist Dr Joelle Gergis depicts what we’re likely to face in plausible detail in Highway to Hell: Climate Change and Australia’s Future. Photo: Supplied.
“How many disasters does it take to wake people up to the fact that Australia’s climate is becoming more extreme, with today’s destruction set to be dwarfed by things to come? Do people realise that adapting to climate change won’t be possible in some parts of the country?”
Award-winning climate scientist Dr Joelle Gergis asks some pertinent, thought-provoking questions when it comes to climate change in Quarterly Essay 94.
Highway to Hell depicts in lucid, sincere detail our likely future and how Australia is at particular risk. It’s a dire warning: Australia is in peril. Do we truly grasp the impact of a warming planet? As temperatures rise, the climates of our capital cities will change. The sea will rise, and we will see increased fire and drought. Australia is the third-largest exporter of fossil fuels in the world, so what we do over the next handful of years really, really matters.
An internationally recognised expert in Australian and Southern Hemisphere climate variability and change, Dr Gergis confronts Australia’s climate policy inertia and visualises the impact of climate change on the nation’s cities and coastlines.
She outlines how far Australia is from keeping its promises to cut emissions. She takes aim at false solutions and the folly of ‘’adaptation’’ rather than curbing fossil fuel use. Since serving as a lead author on the latest United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, she has become increasingly vocal about the threats Australia now faces.
She takes aim at government policy apathy and what is at stake for all of us. It’s about getting real, in the face of an unprecedented threat. She shows what rising temperatures will most likely mean for the Australian continent and coastline, and outlines clearly how far Australia is from its most recent promises, let alone what is required.
“For most people just trying to get on with their lives, thinking about climate change feels too complicated and overwhelming, especially in an era of war, pandemic and financial pressure,” Dr Gergis says.
“But the problem is that governments around the world are making fateful decisions right now that will shape our planet’s future. Meanwhile, most Australians aren’t aware how bad things are and how much worse they will get. But when we tune out, we squander the most powerful thing we have to influence our society: our vote.”
Few topics have divided Australians more than climate change. Since we have always had dramatic swings in our weather, some people think that the increasingly destructive climate we are now experiencing is simply part of a “natural cycle”.
“Apparently, we’ve been through it all before; it’s just a bunch of greenies trying to scare our kids. Whether or not everyone understands the science behind global warming is irrelevant – our climate is changing because of what humans have been doing to the planet throughout the entire course of our history.”
Working from the science, Dr Gergis examines the world’s and Australia’s efforts to combat climate change. She outlines how far Australia is from keeping its promises to cut emissions. This is an essay about ”government paralysis and what is at stake for all of us”. It also touches on the gargantuan gap between current policy and the unequivocal science.
“Despite Australia being one of the most climate change-exposed countries in the world, our political response to addressing the issue has a long and chequered history of delay and denial. We are in the embarrassing position of being the only nation to have successfully introduced a carbon price and then revoked it with a change of government.”
Dr Gergis’s research focuses on providing a long-term historical context for assessing recently observed climate variability and extremes.
Highway to Hell: Climate Change and Australia’s Future, by Joelle Gergis, Quarterly Essay/Black Books Inc., $27.99
