Can we successfully adapt to four degrees of global warming? - Four Degrees of Global Warming - page 213

' Terroir Australia ' is structurally more resilient to climate change than the
' Terror Australia' . In particular, it has a greater capacity to feed itself, and agricul-
tural productivity is less prone to boom and bust. As such, it is less dependent on
food imports. Nevertheless, there will be years when Terroir Australia will have
to go to the international market for imports. The threats of food and water
insecurity are not fully addressed by this storyline.
Adaptation policy is subservient to economic policy, and is approached through
a series of adjustments to maintain regional growth over short time scales.
Research, awareness raising and community engagement are central elements of
the national adaptation strategy, but responses are unimaginative, largely deter-
mined by government, incremental in nature and poorly co-ordinated. Social
policy is also central to adaptation policy, for in the absence of a more strategic
approach impacts on some sectors of the population - delineated by sector
or location - cannot be avoided, and reactive and remedial measures such as
compensation, income support, skills training and housing assistances are used.
Cities are characterized by what Gleeson (2008) calls 'a social sensibility',
where the suburbs are no less well served than inner urban areas. Nevertheless,
as the climate continues to deteriorate, conditions in urban areas are at best
unpleasant and in summer may be life threatening. Options to improve the urban
environment are explored, with strong investment in public transport. Efforts
to 'green' the city falter due to lack of water. Faced with unsustainable urban
lifestyles, there is a move to higher-density housing with strong reliance on air
conditioning and shading to create livable environments. City living is bearable,
and only the most severe heatwaves lead to exceptional mortality - strategies
such as door-knocking the vulnerable and opening air conditioned malls as
refuges are, together with successful public awareness campaigns, generally
effective.
In rural and regional areas , Fordism 2 dominates rural production, with large and
highly mechanized farms operated by fly-in fly-out labour. There are various policy
instruments to keep food prices low, rather than to sustain rural communities. As
a result, many inland market towns have rapidly dwindling populations. Some,
which lie in flood-prone areas, have either been relocated or, more commonly,
their inhabitants merged with larger more viable neighbours. As with Terror
Australia , unpleasant urban living conditions mean that those who can afford to,
and whose job permits, move to high-amenity rural/seaside locations.
The magnitude of changes along the coastal zone cannot be forestalled by
social policy: for example, salt water intrudes into Kakadu, and low-lying islands
in the Torres Strait are abandoned due to erosion and inundation. Indigenous
owners are compensated with new homes, jobs and communities, but sites of
significance are lost, as are the aspects of culture they sustained. For small settle-
ments along the coast adaptation is largely a reactive process: movements in
response to sea-level rise are after the event, but social policy helps to minimize
the psycho-social costs associated with such responses.
Regarding utilities and water , with the public acceptance of nuclear power, the
large energy consumption implied by a high cooling requirement and possibly the