Dr Verelle Roocke

INTRODUCTION.

IN 2006 there was a great leap forward in awareness of climate change and most people have now made the link between it and events that are occurring in their local communities such as water shortages. Many consumers and businesses now have an understanding of the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. There is an awareness of the urgency of tackling the problem.  Governments, businesses and individuals alike are demanding and creating a market for carbon. This is happening globally and is evolving in Australia at a rapid rate.

This must be the silly season but I wish I could laugh about it. Addressing a business luncheon at the Brisbane Club on Tuesday, September 4th, Mr Beattie said Australia’s current ageing population of 21 million was too small to meet future needs. The credentials of the Queensland government to make any statement on this issue are surely very poor. It has failed to plan for the large numbers of Australians attracted to SE Queensland when climate change data suggested that they could not be sustained. In South Australia there are “aspirational” targets for a large increase in population in the face of continuing water shortage. The pressure comes from commerce, the building and real estate interests. Governments worry about the increasing numbers of elderly Australians and reason that we need more young people to pay for them. How naive, population growth in perpetuity!

Initiative on public transport and climate change
During August we have been involved in an initiative to publicise the importance of public transport as a health and climate change issue.

In Australia the largest contributor to transport greenhouse emissions is the private car in cities and government can help ease this growth with better public transport. At the same time the use of the private car carries significant responsibility for the epidemic of obesity and other life-style diseases, while its pollutants increase the burden of heart and respiratory disease in the 70% of the Australian public who live in urban communities. The article “Public Transport, Health and Climate Change—a DEA initiative” on the web site develops this topic.

Doctors for the Environment Australia is involved in a national initiative to promote public transport. We have written to all  Members, Senators and Ministers in federal parliament seeking their recognition that public transport is a climate change and a health issue.  Greenhouse gases from transport are expected to grow (according to the Federal Government’s own Bureau of Transport and Resource Economics) by 68% between 2000 and 2020. This means it is the area of greenhouse emissions least under control in Australia.

We point out that in Australia the largest contributor to transport greenhouse emissions is the private car in Australian cities and government can help ease this growth with better public transport. At the same time the use of the private car carries significant responsibility for the epidemic of obesity and other life style diseases, and its pollutants increase the burden of heart and respiratory disease in the 70 per cent of the Australian public who live in urban communities.

There are two exciting developments involving Tony McMichael, member of DEA's Scientific Advisory Committee. We offer our congratulations.

Australia Fellowship

An Australia Fellowship of $4 million has been awarded to Professor Tony McMichael, a world leader in environmental epidemiology from the Australian National University, who will use his fellowship to further his pioneering research on the health risks of global climate change and environmental influences on infectious and parasitic diseases and autoimmune disease.

MEDIA RELEASE from Research Australia

by Pan Yue, deputy director of China's State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA). Part of a new generation of outspoken Chinese senior officials, Pan has given rise to a tide of environmental debate, attracting enormous attention and controversy.

Editorial comment
There are huge floods in China with millions displaced. The government attributes these to climate change. Beijing knows the costs of inaction: a recent major official study on climate change predicts up to a 37 percent decline in China's wheat, rice and corn yields in the second half of the century. Rain fall may decline by as much as 30 percent in three of China's seven major river regions: the Huai, Liao and Hai. The Yellow and Yangtze rivers, which support the richest agricultural regions of the country and derive much of their water from Tibetan glaciers, will initially experience floods and then drought as the glaciers melt which they are doing rapidly. A one-meter rise in sea level will submerge an area the size of Portugal along China's eastern seaboard ­home to more than half the country's population and 60 percent of its economic output. Already climate change-related extreme weather is taking its toll: in 2006 such disasters cost China more than $25 billion in damage.