Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Anderson, 2012). But the controls introduced by many countries on exports of
food through the food price spikes of 2008 and 2011 suggests that free trade in
food is unlikely to survive the pressures from extreme global warming (Garnaut
2011a; 2011c; Tolero, 2011; Martin and Anderson, 2012).
The provision of the best possible information on the impacts of climate
change to households, businesses and decision-makers in government is the
second element of a sound foundation for effective adaptation to climate change.
Sound information allows people and enterprises and governments at all levels
to see problems in advance and to develop low-cost responses to them. In the
absence of forward-looking information on climate change impacts, decisions
will be made in response to crisis without the benefit of long reflection, consid-
eration of alternatives and opportunities to adopt responses that require long
preparation.
Here one can draw attention to a cost of denial of climate change science
beyond its interference with the development of sound mitigation policies.
If many Australians are persuaded that the mainstream science is wrong or
unreliable then they are denied information that is essential to the exercise of
sound judgements about decisions that affect the quality and cost of adaptation.
As the average rainfall declines sharply with each passing decade in the south
west of Australia (Garnaut, 2008: 106-10; Howden et al., 2013; Karoly et al.,
2013, this volume), a farmer who shares the scientific knowledge that is the
common heritage of humanity will make different decisions about land use than
one who thinks that a series of dry winters is a passing phase. The regulators of
power transmission in a state that has just been devastated by a bushfire during
what would once have been described as once-in-a-century conditions will make
different decisions if they know from science that once-in-a-century events will
now occur every few years (Braganza et al., 2013,
Chapter 3
in this volume).
Improvement of applied climate science and dissemination of the outcomes
will not assist adaptation decisions by those who have closed their minds
to uncomfortable reality. Regrettably, resistance to uncomfortable realities
identified by science is a common human response to unpleasant scientific
knowledge (Doherty, 2009). As with immunization against communicable
diseases, community responses to slow infection with HIV/AIDS and other
applications of scientific knowledge to collective action against some threat
to human wellbeing, some citizens' rejection of scientific reality about climate
change can damage the adaptive response for others in the community.
Beyond the foundations of a flexible and productive economy and well-
informed community, the government as owner of some types of infrastructure,
as regulator of others and with responsibility for land-use planning, is necessarily
Sound regulatory decisions - for example in relation to zoning of residential
land - can avoid much waste of resources. Intervention of this kind generates
strong community resistance, as it affects individual lifestyle choices and
property values. Mandatory exclusion of some activities because of likely climate
change is unlikely to be successful in the absence of widely shared perspectives
