The kinds the effects we are looking at include increased
rainfall in some areas, decreased rainfall in others, stronger storms or
cyclones, rising sea levels, increased temperatures, and so on.
From a practical point of view this means that we will do
things like:
- Improve storm water drainage systems
- Put in sea walls where a lot of property could be affected by sea rise and tidal surges due to cyclones.
- Put in more dams to catch rain.
- Install seawater treatment plants to create freshwater for our cities and farms.
- Put in cheap air conditioning so people don’t get too distressed from the heat and can work productively. This is especially important for the elderly and the very young who can’t regulate their body temperature very well.
- Upgrade the electricity network to deal with the increased electrification of our lives (e.g. electric cars) as well as running the extra air conditioning.
- Move sewerage treatment sites to higher ground where sea level rises will be an issue.
- Move critical infrastructure to higher ground or build bunding where sea level rises will be an issue.
- And so on.
The thing all these actions have in common is that they
involve a lot of energy usage. E.g. Cement, steel, fuel for equipment, etc. All
these items are energy intensive and will be increasingly more expensive due to
carbon taxes.
So, here is my question to you all – given that we have introduced a carbon tax to reduce carbon emissions, how can we sensibly adapt
to climate change given that the carbon tax is increasing the costs to the
inputs of adapting to climate change?
This is especially serious for Australia as we already have
some of the most expensive construction costs in the world and we are
deliberately going through a process of putting prices up. Shouldn’t we consider affordability too?
This
is, after all, the other side of the equation.
Note: I work as a project and energy economist with companies and governments on geosequestration,wind, geothermal, hydro, wave, transmission networks, coal seam gas, coal,and more. The views expressed in this blog are solely my own and do not represent the views of any organisation that I do work for.
