CLIMATE CHANGE IN AUSTRALIA FASTER THAN FEARED...
This is an edited version of an article in an Australian newspaper by climate activist David Spratt.
June 23, 2025
How bad can climate damage get? Worse than you imagine, if Australians’ recent experience of more extreme weather and natural disasters — driven by a hotter climate — are an indication ... because the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future.
Extreme floods and rain events are often described as a “one-in-a-hundred-year” or a “one-in-five-hundred-year” event, suggesting they are unlikely to recur. But then they happen again, within a few years. This shows the assessments of future climate risks are too conservative...
Victoria’s Black Saturday bushfires were of an intensity not projected to occur until towards the end of the century. (Large fires around Victoria, Australia in 2009 killed more than 170 people and destroyed more than 2,000 homes plus businesses, schools, etc.)
Parts of inland Australia are experiencing heat extremes several decades ahead of expectations. On 18 December 2019, Australia’s hottest day on record with an average maximum of 41.9°C, the heat in some areas aligned with worst-case 2040–2060 projections.
One foundation for understanding future climate impacts is how quickly temperatures will rise. And that is now a big issue, because the government’s assumption was that warming would be in the range of 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius (°C) by 2050. And it is still the basis of most international climate policy formulation. But that warming level has now been reached...
Both 2023 and 2024 reached 1.5°C, and the running average for the last 24 months has been close to 1.6°C. For all practical purposes, the warming trend has reached 1.5°C. (A new World Meteorological Organization report says that Earth will cross this point in just two years, with a “70% chance that the 2025–2029 five-year mean will exceed 1.5°C above the 1850–1900 average.”)
What does that practically mean? At the 2015 Paris climate policymaking conference, the goal of holding warming to 1.5–2°C was agreed to, together with actions (in theory) to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050... Most policymakers, including the Australian Government, seem not to have recognized ... that we are already at 1.5°C...
Scientists have been shocked at the pace of change. The rate of warming has accelerated from less than 0.2°C per decade to 0.3°C or more per decade. And tipping points are occurring now, including at both poles. Permafrost, boreal forests and the Amazon are becoming net carbon emitters... There is a significant risk of large Amazon forest dieback if global warming overshoots 1.5°C, yet we are there right now. And there is a new scientific warning that “1.5°C is too high for polar ice sheets.” The evidence grows that the 1.5°C target was never a safe target for humanity.
All of this leads to one conclusion: we are on the edge of a precipice and humanity now needs to throw everything at the climate threat, literally “all hands on deck.” The late Prof. Will Steffen’s call to make climate the primary target of policy and economics is now a survival imperative. The business-as-usual delusion embraced by policymakers — that climate is just another issue — is laid bare by the 1.5°C time-bomb.
