How will Australians be affected by climate change?
TF: James Hansen – who is the world’s leading thinker in this area with the Goddard Institute of NASA – believes we’re on the brink of triggering a 25m rise in sea level. So anyone with a coastal view from their bedroom window or kitchen window is likely to lose their house as a result of that change. So any coastal cities, coastal areas are in grave danger. We’ve already seen with changing rainfall patterns, the emerging danger to primary producers in eastern and southern Australia as the winter rainfalls are in declines. I paid $15 a kilo for bananas recently because Cyclone Larry destroyed Australia’s banana crop. Just one extreme weather event of several we had last year. So lots and lots of people are going to be losers. I don’t think there are going to be terribly many winners unless they’re the people who back the new energy infrastructure that is just inevitable. We have to move to that because the costs are growing by the day of the old energy infrastructure and we need to rec
