SMH Op-Ed - Surprise! Denying Climate Change Not Working For Australia

[hatrack]

Australia is drying out. We have lived through a decade of reduced rainfall in which dam levels have dropped, bringing widespread water restrictions. We seem to have been asleep, waking to find that just denying climate change did not make it go away. People on the land have been living with drought for several years, hoping there would be enough rain to put some water into dams for stock to drink and to produce feed. But hoping does not solve the problem, so it is back to handfeeding stock and worrying about whether to borrow money to buy more feed or just get rid of them. Many farmers are selling animals because they know they can't carry them over another long, hot and dry summer.

Australian farmers have learnt to live with the unpredictable patterns of droughts and flooding rains, and to manage feed and livestock in these circumstances. However, each dry spell is greeted with what the author Michael McKernan calls "indignant surprise". We've been slow to realise some areas are in drought almost permanently.

Four years ago the Farmhand Foundation was set up, and it raised millions of dollars from the public to help drought-stricken farmers. Yet what has changed? Here we are again. We have kept people in desperate circumstances going for a few more years, and kept up intolerable pressures on a damaged landscape. Urban Australians get a layering of the topsoil when odd showers deposit dirt on their cars and they mutter about not being able to wash it off because of water restrictions. Yet this soil is the main asset of many farmers who watch it blow away with increasing desperation.

EDIT

Climate change is upon us and may get worse. It is time to re-examine our drought policy and see what is appropriate for a drier and hotter Australia.

EDIT

http://www.smh.com.au/news/scorchedearth/time-for-new-ideas-on-climate-change/2006/10/19/1160851062949.html