Dire warning for northern WA in new climate report

3 weeks ago 3

Northern Western Australia faces increasing danger from heatwaves, stronger cyclones, and bushfires as the climate warms, with its population “significantly exposed” to climate hazards.

The federal government’s National Climate Risk Assessment report, released Monday, also warns that by 2070, manual labour in Perth will be “dangerous to perform” on 15 to 26 days a year for agricultural or labour-based work due to increasing heat and humidity.

Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen speaking at Parliament House in Canberra on Monday.

It also warns that, under a scenario of 3 degrees of global warming, heat-related mortality in Perth will rise by 312 per cent.

Under 1.5 degrees of warming, increased bleaching and acidification from ocean warming meant Ningaloo Reef – already reeling from the longest, most intense heatwave on record for WA – was projected to lost 62.5 per cent of its species. Shark Bay, under the same level of warning, could lose as much as 96 per cent of its seagrass species to marine heatwaves.

The world has already seen warming of 1.2 degrees driven by greenhouse gases since the industrial revolution.

Tropical cyclones may decrease in frequency, but more will be severe category 4 or 5 systems, the report warns, while WA’s south is predicted to see the highest increases of time spent in drought under all future warming scenarios.

The report also forewarned of hefty economic impacts, including a fall in property value across the nation of up to $611 billion by 2050, and between 700,000 and 2.7 million extra days lost due to hot weather making it difficult to work outside.

Tropical cyclones alone were predicted to cost Western Australia $11.5 billion by 2050.

Curtin University professor of sustainability Peter Newman said the next phase of climate action will be shaped by the need to consider climate impact, “as it is already happening in ways that are economically and politically obvious”.

“The biggest climate impact outlined in the report is mortality due mostly to urban heat in outer suburbs away from coastal areas,” he said.

“We have recently completed a much bigger study on global mortality due to climate impacts, which shows that even keeping to the Paris Agreement will cause over 50 million deaths per year due to starvation, epidemics and floods.

“Without action, the numbers rise to over 300 million deaths per year, which is catastrophic.”

The report was released days before the federal government was due to reveal its 2035 emissions target, and comes after the environment minister approved the extension of Woodside’s North West Shelf project until 2070, the conditions for which were made public on Friday.

Conservation Council of WA executive director Matt Roberts said the urgency of its own findings didn’t appear to have fully registered with the government.

“The report states: ‘Australians will be impacted by loss of important ecosystems and species by the middle of the century, without implementing direct intervention and adaptation actions’,” he said.

“The middle of this century is the period starting from the mid-2030s, not some far distant date a hundred years away.

“In fact, it’s much closer than the extended lifetime of the [North West Shelf], which will push out 4.3 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions until 2070.”

WA Greens climate change spokesman Brad Pettitt said “business as usual” wasn’t going to deliver the changes needed to reduce carbon emissions or adapt to inevitable change on its way.

“This should be a wake-up call for both state and federal governments to take the climate crisis more seriously,” he said.

The Greens pointed to a 3 degrees warming by 2090 scenario outlined in the report, which would bring with it 0.54 metres of sea level rise and could see the number of coastal flood days in Fremantle increase to 206 days a year.

In releasing the report, federal Climate Change and Energy Minister Chris Bowen said Australians were “already living with the consequences of climate change today”.

“After a decade of denial and delay, we are acting on climate change – and it’s working,” Bowen said.

“Emissions are coming down, there is record investment in clean energy and we’re working alongside communities to respond and adapt to the impacts.”

Earlier this month, the Business Council, which represents the nation’s largest businesses, warned that meeting a 70 per cent cut in emissions by 2035 would cost up to $530 billion in green projects and subsidies.

But Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Sky News that Australia’s first risk assessment – two years in the making – was another wake-up call for the cost of doing nothing to deal with climate change.

with Nick O’Malley, Shane Wright and Caitlin Fitzsimmons