Climate change is the biggest single issue confronting Australia and the world and represents a significant threat to our standard of living and our natural environment.

Many people that I have spoken to have some doubts as to the veracity of some of the claims being made about climate change.

There are very good reasons about why doubts still exist in the community in regard to climate change. What I’ve attempted to do below is to describe my journey from being a climate change sceptic to a climate change champion and to describe the latest science that I found so compelling.

From Sceptic to Climate Change Champion

As a Geologist, I was initially sceptical about climate change – both the degree to which it was happening, the degree to which it was likely to happen and the degree to which human activities contributed to it. 

I considered myself an “expert” in the field, having studied the science of climate change at University. Note that I use the term “studied” in its loosest sense. I felt that the warming that we were seeing was a simple reflection of the fact that we had been on a long warming trend coming out of the last ice age 10,000 years ago.

The Earth has undergone cyclical warming and cooling phases over millions of years, so why should we think that anything that humans do could possibly have anything to do with climate change.

I often debated with my wife Toni on the issue, and used my self-proclaimed expertise to beat her into submission (those of you who know Toni well will understand that this is simply not possible – however I did try). 

As a scientist, I failed to keep up-to-date with the latest findings in climate change research, and was content to continue to rely on my studies from 20 years previous.

All that changed when was waiting in a Doctor’s surgery in March last year. To keep myself occupied, I picked up a Time Magazine. The front page of the magazine had a photo of a polar bear standing on a melting iceberg. The front page headline was “Be Worried. Be Very Worried”. Fortunately for me, the Doctor was running late that day, so I had the opportunity to read two articles on the topic of climate change. 

 

The first article was a summary of the latest science surrounding climate change. This was the first time that I had seen the most recent data and I was quite frankly scared by what I read. The science was compelling – CO2 levels in the atmosphere at 380ppm, higher than at any time in the last 650,000 years. 19 of the 20 hottest years on record occurring since 1980, positive feedback loops from the melting of polar ice and much more - not only was climate change happening, but it was happening at an alarming rate, and we needed to act urgently to avoid catastrophic consequences. 

Fortunately, before I could leap straight from denial to despair, I read the second article which focussed on what forward-thinking governments, companies and individuals were doing to combat climate change. This was inspiring as it showed that we don’t necessarily have to wait for Kyoto to come into effect, or for the USA or Australian Governments to get on board in order to make a significant difference.

I walked away from the Doctor’s surgery a changed man – and not by the Doctor. Within a month Toni and I had sold our Toyota Prado and replaced it with a Toyota Prius hybrid, thereby reducing our CO2 emissions from ground transportation by 70%. We convinced Toni’s parents to sell their 4WD and buy a Prius also. 

We started talking about what we could do to reduce our household emissions, a conversation which eventually led us to our move to the hills. I sent scanned copies of the Time Magazine article to my work colleagues and urged them to take personal action also.

In late 2006, I resigned from my role as Global Manager for BHP Billiton’s Six Sigma program. The goal of this program was to improve the profitability of the company by US$1Billion per annum, primarily through increased production and improved efficiencies. 

While my primary reason in resigning was to spend more time with my children, I was also becoming increasingly uncomfortable with the clash between my personal beliefs about climate change and with my role in contributing to an acceleration of climate change by helping a natural resources company produce more product faster, thereby effectively producing more CO2 emissions faster.

With my semi-retirement and our move to the hills, I had even more time to think about climate change. It was hard not to. Hardly a week went by when there wasn’t some new, alarming revelation about the increasing speed of climate change – the Greenland glaciers melting twenty times faster than previously thought; the arctic ice cap melting 20% more during the northern summer of 2007 than at any time in history; the first ever hurricane forming in the South Atlantic; crippling drought in Australia. 

Toni and I wanted to do more, so we joined the Australian Conservation Foundation. We wrote letters to our local parliamentarians.  We replaced all our incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescents. We signed-up for Green Power with Synergy. We offset all our remaining household emissions.

However I was dismayed by the degree to which people still believed that there was doubt as to the veracity of climate change. I read Al Gore’s book An Inconvenient Truth and found out why this doubt existed. A review of 928 peer-reviewed articles on the science of climate change published in scientific journals during a 10 year period found that not one of the articles expressed any doubt at all about the cause of global warming. However a similar review of 636 articles printed in the four most influential newspapers in the USA showed that 53% of the articles expressed doubt about the cause of global warming. No wonder people are confused. 

You may ask how it is possible that there can be such a discrepancy between the science and the press on this issue. This discrepancy is due to a deliberate campaign of disinformation run by powerful lobby groups with links to the biggest polluters of CO2 on the planet – the coal, petroleum, aluminium, electricity and car industries. One of these lobby groups had the stated objective to “reposition global warming as theory, rather than fact.”

This is not just happening overseas, it is happening in our own backyard. Australia has the highest per capita emissions of greenhouse gases of all industrialized nations – 25% higher even than the USA. This is primarily due to our reliance on coal-fired power stations (90% of our electricity is generated in this way). Lobby groups in Australia, funded by the biggest polluters, have duped the Federal Government into paying lip service to climate change. 

Australia has a wonderful opportunity to take advantage of the current resources boom to really invest in the future of our country by taking climate change seriously. I truly believe that even our resource companies can benefit from embracing climate change. If you don’t believe this, I have written a section on how BHP Billiton, as one example, could be even greater.

There is no longer any doubt about the cause of climate change. It is being caused by human activity – through the emission of greenhouse gases – predominantly Carbon Dioxide, but also Methane and Nitrous Oxide. If the current levels of greenhouse emissions remain unchecked, temperatures are projected to increase by up to 2°C by 2030 and by up to 6°C by 2070. 

If you are wondering what impact such a temperature rise might have on our environment, just look at the impact that a 0.63°C degree rise (the increase in global temperatures since industrialisation) has had on our glaciers, the Murray Darling, the Arctic etc.

These sorts of temperature increases are projected to cause sea levels to rise by up to 1m. This may not sound like much, however consider the following satellite photographs of Mandurah. The photograph on the left shows the current coastline. The photograph on the right shows the projected coastline following a 1m increase in sea level. While it is uncertain how quickly this sort of sea level rise will occur, many scientists are now saying that if we don’t start cutting emissions now, such a rise is possible over the course of this century. 

 

While it is true to say that we have seen many periods of warming temperatures over the course of Earth’s history, in the vast majority of these instances the changes occurred over thousands or tens of thousands of years. Due to our activities, we are now seeing these sorts of changes over tens of years.

Due to my frustration that so many people were still confused and uncertain about climate change, I volunteered to participate in a program whereby 160 people selected from around Australia were to meet in Melbourne over a weekend to be trained by Al Gore in how to deliver his climate change presentation. I was privileged to be selected to participate (more than 2000 people volunteered), and I came away from that training at the end of September fired up to start delivering Mr Gore’s message. 

However there was one thing that was niggling in the back of my mind. It is all well and good to get the general community fired up about climate change, however I felt that we also needed change at a corporate and political level if we were going to succeed in this fight.

I was also starting to despair about who I was going to vote for in the 2007 Federal Election. 

I am fiercely proud to be an Australian. As a country of just 20 million people we punch way above our weight in many spheres – in sports, international politics, our economy (14th largest in the world) and even on environmental issues such as whaling and the preservation of Antarctica. However, our response to climate change makes me feel ashamed to be Australian. As the biggest per capita polluters on the planet, and as a relatively wealthy nation, we have an obligation to lead the charge in fighting climate change. Instead, we are doing the opposite.

The Liberal party let down all Australians by refusing to ratify Kyoto and refusing to set targets for greenhouse gas emissions. They put all their hopes in clean coal technology, which is unlikely to be contributing significantly to reducing our emissions within the next 15 years, if at all. They are missing the opportunity to embrace the future by helping Australia develop a vibrant renewable energy industry. 

Unfortunately, the Labor Party is not much better from a Climate Change perspective than the Liberal Party. Yes they have ratified Kyoto, and they have also set a target for a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 and they have said that they will introduce an emissions trading scheme by 2010. However, it didn’t take much courage for them to do these things. What is really required is a commitment for targets for reducing CO2 emissions by 2020, and also a target for reductions during the next term of office. This would be a true demonstration of commitment.

Unfortunately for The Greens, while they have many good policies from a climate change perspective, their effectiveness in fighting climate change is limited by the way in which they are perceived by the very people who we need to get on board in order to make a real difference – the “captains of industry” and the more mainstream politicians – and their views tend to be summarily dismissed by these people. I believe that The Greens play a vital role, and am grateful for the way in which they have been fighting what, until relatively recently, has been a fairly lonely fight. 

However my belief that there was a need for more and different voices to be heard at a political level for us to be successful in fighting climate change led me to run for the Climate Change Coalition in the senate for the 2007 federal election. Sarah Bishop joined me as my running mate for the election and we went in with slight hopes of getting enough votes, and a good flow of preferences that would get us over the line. Unfortunately, we didn't get the votes or the preferences we needed. We ended up with just under 3,500 first preference votes, and after distribution of preferences, ended up being the eighth last party to be eliminated from the counting. While disappointing, this was a respectable result given our late entry to the race.

Since the election, I have been ramping up with my Al Gore Presentation work, facilitating Living Smart workshops and working with on a range of environmental and climate change initiatives with groups such as Friends of the Environment, Nature Reserves Preservation Group, Sustainable Energy Now and the Conservation Council of WA.

I remain committed to continue to educate as many people as possible about the threat of climate change, but also what we can all do to help combat climate change.