OVER the past five years, climate change has
not only become the main priority for
environment policy, it is influencing most
spheres of public policy as understanding
increases of the ramifications of global warming.
Despite the importance of the issue, governments
have struggled to reduce their carbon
addiction because of the high dependencies of
economies and social systems (e.g., jobs) on this
one element. Industries aggressively protect
their interests and the public debate is often
debased by a media who, in the interests of so
called balance, often set the issue up as one of
disagreement among opposing scientific factions
on anthropogenic climate change. A recent
extensive analysis of 1 372 climate researchers
and their publications and citation data showed
that 97-98% supported the tenets of anthropogenic
climate change, while the 2-3% of
scientists that disagreed had a scientific status
well below the majority (Anderegg et al. 2010).
There is no balance here. Further, international
frameworks for decision-making remain
fractured with considerable inertia to reduce
global emissions. Uncertainty over predictions
of what the future will look like has become an
increasingly easy reason for not making the
necessary policy responses to deal with climate
change. Some argue in the rich nations of
Oceania (e.g., Australia) that local emissions
policy detrimentally affects carbon dependent
industries and makes little difference because
they emit so little of the world’s carbon. This
ignores the morale responsibility for leadership
among the world’s worst emitters of carbon, on
a per capita level. It also ignores the critical fact
that the environments in our region of Oceania
are increasingly the vanguard of those affected
by sea level rise and other impacts of anthropogenic
climate change and no action will lead to
great suffering of those who need our help the
most.
What hope for biodiversity in the face of anthropogenic climate change in Oceania?