Australians should be ready for “compounding” overlapping crises as they face more frequent, costly and severe climate-change-worsened disasters, an inquiry into the nation’s recent historic bushfires said yesterday.
Following devastating blazes over the past two years that killed 33 people and burned an area the size of the UK or Ghana, a Royal Commission told Australians “what was unprecedented is now our future.”
Predicting a future in which disasters “will regrettably be more frequent and more severe,” the commission said: “We can also expect more concurrent and consecutive hazard events.”
Photo: AFP
“In the last 12 months, there was drought, heatwaves and bushfires, followed by severe storms, flooding and a pandemic,” it added.
By the time that the bushfires had ended in March, they had killed or displaced nearly 3 billion animals and cost the economy an estimated US$7 billion.
However, the commission said that the annual cost of disasters is likely to rise to about US$27 billion by 2050, even before accounting for worsening global warming.
The report, which focused heavily on the effects of climate change in producing more extreme weather, said: “Further global warming over the next two decades is inevitable.”
“As a result, sea levels are projected to continue to rise,” it added. “Tropical cyclones are projected to decrease in number, but increase in intensity. Floods and bushfires are expected to become more frequent and intense.”
The report called for better data and more granular projections about what climate change means for specific areas.
However, it stopped short of calling on the conservative government — which has slow-pedaled countermeasures — to address the underlying causes.
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