More disaster --- a category 5 cyclone struck the coast of north Queensland this week. With extensive preparation, effective emergency management and a degree of good luck the consequences were less disastrous than might have been expected. Nevertheless there has been immense damage to infrastructure and agriculture and many people lost homes and possessions from the terrifying winds that stripped all the foliage from all the trees leaving them standing like matchsticks among the desolation and ruin.
There has been much media cover of the destruction and of the emergency responses. There has been little consideration of the causes of these repeated exceptional natural disasters. Ross Garnaut is reported in a recent article as saying that climate change is happening more quickly than he suggested in his first report, while Clive Hamilton goes so far as to say Queensland is being sacrificed to Australia’s and the world’s unwillingness to take global warming seriously.
There has been much media cover of the destruction and of the emergency responses. There has been little consideration of the causes of these repeated exceptional natural disasters. Ross Garnaut is reported in a recent article as saying that climate change is happening more quickly than he suggested in his first report, while Clive Hamilton goes so far as to say Queensland is being sacrificed to Australia’s and the world’s unwillingness to take global warming seriously.
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