Australian drought is a climate change warning
South Australia as seen in Google Earth
Reuters, via in this case AlertNet are telling us Australia drought is climate change warning -UK.
Drought-hit Australia may offer a warning of how climate change threatens core human needs, as the continent’s food bowl faces the prospect of having irrigation cut off, Britain’s climate change ambassador said.
Canberra has said it will halt irrigation to an area that usually grows over a third of the country’s farm produce, if heavy rain does not fall in the next few weeks.
“If that happens, that is not just an economic blow to Australia, it will do significant damage beyond Australia because of its effect on world food prices,” John Ashton told Reuters during a visit to the Chinese capital.
“That is a current threat which almost certainly, or at least very probably, arises from human-induced climate change.”
Australia is in trouble, there is no denying it. Recent rain-storms aside, the country is suffering a terribly debilitation drought. It’s fragile topsoil simply can’t sustain a modern agri-business, and it’s suffered aeons of land-clearing and man-made deforestation to add to its woes. Reforestation projects such as those supported by Carbon Planet, combined with changes to agricultural practices such as No Till farming methods, are working slowly to rehabilitate Australia’s scorched soils, but it’s a huge country, and we can only do so much. Australia’s wheat export industry, cowering in shame by the activities of the Australian Wheat Board in the last few years, could very well collapse and, as the article linked above suggests, this will have implications reaching far beyond Australia’s sunburnt shores. — DS
Technorati Tags: Australia, climate change, drought, emissions reduction, global warming, politics
