Drought is soul-destroying for those on the front line and the sooner it breaks the better.

However this is also the time for real action on climate policy. It’s time to do whatever we can while we still have a chance. Climate change is making droughts worse. It’s not causing them – that’s due to natural weather patterns – but it is making them worse. It’s also creating the conditions for hotter and more deadly heatwaves and more dangerous and unseasonal bush fires.

Since Dorothea Mackellar wrote her poem My Country in 1908, human society has added 40 per cent more carbon pollution to the atmosphere by burning coal, oil and gas, developing heavy industries, and destroying forests and woodlands.

While invisible to human eyes, and proving no barrier to the sun’s rays, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, are very effective at trapping energy radiating off the land as infra red heat.

Humans are adding pollution to the sky above us at the rate of 30 billion tonnes each year and we must cut back. Since 1980 our planet has been absorbing the equivalent of four Hiroshima bombs’ worth of heat every second. Most of that extra heat has gone into the oceans, but some remains in the atmosphere, causing the world to warm.

Peter Mailler, a grain and beef farmer near Goondiwindi, says farmers feel abandoned when they hear politicians say that acting on climate change won’t help communities affected by drought. He says we can’t ignore climate change, and refers to a “complete break between reality and understanding”, with political opportunism and deliberate misinformation rife.

Droughts have wide-ranging impacts on our health, agriculture, ecosystems, economy and water supplies. It is estimated that the Millennium drought cost Australia $5 billion or one per cent% of GDP. Food lost to droughts world-wide is enough to feed 80 million people every year. If it goes on much longer we will all be on water restrictions and missing our favourite foods.

Now is the time to be urging greater action from all levels of government.

There are lots of things we can do but most need real leadership. Just as ordinary motorists have to pay fuel excise which goes to general revenue, so we should have a levy on the use of coal in electricity generation, with money going into a national disaster response and rebuilding fund.

There are opportunities to respond to this drought with long-term solutions.

These include increased resilience to climate impacts, more energy independence, and lower electricity costs from wind and solar. Clean energy attracts jobs to regional areas and more than 28,000 jobs will be created if Australia generates half our energy from renewables by 2030.

Farmers can add additional revenue streams from renewable energy. $30 million each year is already earned in lease payments to farmers and landholders hosting wind turbines and solar farms. Acting on climate change will attract jobs and investment to regional Australia.

- Harry Creamer, Climate Change Australia, Hastings branch

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