1101 The looming Climate Change Panic
Alan Kohler writes twice a week for The New Daily and is finance presenter on ABC news. This article is outspoken about what climate change means to us ... in terms of having a chance of survival. Read the whole article in The New Daily.
For the record: Alan Kohler is a conservative commentator, mainly on financial matters. If he is worried about climate change, you can trust it's a big issue, not just for the obvious reasons - extreme natural events - but for the economy too.
Alan Kohler: The climate change
panic button is coming
Floods in Germany, 170 dead and terrible devastation. A few weeks ago people were dying from the heat in Canada, which reached about 49 degrees Celsius in Lytton, British Columbia. Wildfires are now breaking out across North America.
This is from the global warming that has already occurred, which is about 1.2 degrees above the pre-industrial age. The world is now trying to stop it going above 1.5 degrees by getting emissions down to net zero by 2050.
Even if we succeed in that, which is far from guaranteed, the extreme weather events will be significantly worse and more frequent than they are now. But at what point will governments hit the real panic button?
Because net zero by 2050 is not it.