The Intergenerational Report is a betrayal of my generation and a falsification of the future.
I was born in the year the Berlin Wall fell down, the year the Game Boy was first released, and astoundingly, the year the world wide web was invented. I was also born in the year Margaret Thatcher warned the world about a critical threat: climate change.
Interestingly, Margaret Thatcher is one of Tony Abbott political idols. Following her death last year, Tony Abbott called her “one of the most significant world leaders of our time.” According to Abbott, Thatcher’s great success as a leader was that she not only fought staunch public opposition, but “she ensured the British people no longer simply dwelt on the glories of the past but could enjoy a strong and prosperous future.”
Yet Tony Abbott’s battered, often unbelievable, government has released an intergenerational inquiry that almost forgets to mention the very threats his political idol cared so much about. Even worse, it indicates a deep-seated fallacy at the heart of the Abbott government. The report’s brief mention of “climate change” in its “Research” section begins with the unbelievable opening, “Some economic effects may be beneficial” (p. 42).
While there is a fraction of a chance that increased rainfall in the North West of Australia may increase its agricultural potential, what does that say of the back-breaking droughts, fires, floods, rising sea levels and storm surges that the whole of Australia is predicted to face over the next 50 years? It also fails to indicate that the government is going to do anything more than it is already pretending to do to combat climate change over the next five decades.
Apparently my generation is just going to pull up the deck chairs and literally watch the tides roll in.
Where are the joint findings of the CSIRO and the Bureau of Meteorology from February this year, which predict a catastrophic future for Australia if we do nothing? Their findings indicate that Australia could be looking at a five degree rise in temperature by 2090. For the Sydney region alone, they’re predicting “two to three times the average number of days above 35C” as well as “increased intensity of extreme rainfall” and much “harsher fire-weather”.
Now, it doesn’t take an economist to tell you that this will have massive implications for not only our health, but also our economic future.
Speaking of the economy, this intergenerational inquiry came only a day after the Bank of England warned insurers across the UK that their investments in fossil fuels could take a “huge hit”. The warning came from the mouth of Paul Fisher, the deputy head of the bank’s prudential regulation authority (PRA) and who is in charge of making sure banks and insurers across the UK avoid creating systemic risks to the economy. Had the Australian government been listening, you would have to assume that their “Intergenerational Inquiry”, backed by a premise that fossil fuels will guide the Australian economy through the “beneficial” age of climate change like a walk across a hot boxing day beach, would have to go through another draft.
This announcement came on the same day that Agriculture Minister Barnaby Joyce told the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences that Australia would “go broke” without coal.
This antiquated vision of the Australian economy may also be the reason why farmers in the Hunter Valley are now fearing for their livelihoods as it was revealed that the government has secretly planned 16 new open cut mines in the region. This is according to leaked studies prepared by the Office of the Environment and Heritage and 11 major mining companies, which notes that coal output in the region could increase from about 145 million tonnes a year now to 243 million tonnes by 2022.
Under Barnaby Joyce’s supervision, this type of expansion would not only further degrade some of Australia’s prime agricultural land, it could also come at the expense of the local communities. Just two weeks ago, the Climate and Health Alliance showed that burning coal in the Hunter Valley was already causing health impacts costing upwards of $600 million each year. How can our Agriculture minister say that the Australian economy would “go broke” when his own constituents, some of Australia’s oldest agricultural communities, are literally “going broke” paying the health costs of coal?
If we were to include the social cost of coal, we would be telling a totally different story. Research released in the latest version of the Nature Journal of Climate Change highlights that when we actually add in the impact that coal has on local communities, and in the atmosphere, it actually becomes the least-economic fuel source available.
Not that the communities of the Hunter Valley needed to be reminded of that.
In December last year, the Productivity Commission concluded its findings into Australia’s natural disaster funding. Just like the Human Rights Commission’s report into children held in immigration detention, this report is also being held back until what will probably be the latest possible release date. I can imagine it will be announced after the budget, and definitely not anywhere close to this intergenerational inquiry. However, a draft report released in September last year noted that current funding arrangements were inefficient, inequitable and unsustainable. According to Commissioner Jonathan Coppel this is due to the fact that “current funding arrangements are prone to cost-shifting, ad hoc responses and short-term political opportunism.”
What’s more troubling is that this statement is in relation to the current Natural Disaster Relief and Recovery Arrangements and doesn’t even begin to address the potential funding implications that will be incurred as the impacts of climate change become more and more apparent.
As noted by the Commissioner, “The funding arrangements overwhelmingly tip the balance away from planning for and mitigating against natural disasters and towards waiting for expenditure to rebuild destroyed assets.”
This supposed intergenerational report is another perfect example of the shortsighted, reactionary response that this government has taken towards disaster preparedness. If we do not act to change current policies in Australia, my generation will become as much of a stranded asset as our rapidly out-of-fashion fossil fuel supplies.
It was over a generation ago that Margaret Thatcher showed the world the need to combat climate change.
This current government is preparing to sacrifice my generation to the very threats its Conservative icons sought to defend against.
This piece was originally featured in The Big Smoke