Climate Change: Science and Solutions for Australia

  1. Overview
  2. Foreword
  3. Contents, List of authors, Acknowledgements
  4. Introduction
  5. Chapter 1: Observations of global and Australian climate
  6. Chapter 2: Climate and greenhouse gases
  7. Chapter 3: Future Australian climate scenarios
  8. Chapter 4: Climate change impacts
  9. Chapter 5: Adaptation: reducing risk, gaining opportunity
  10. Chapter 6: Adapting to heatwaves and coastal flooding
  11. Chapter 7: Adapting agriculture to climate change
  12. Chapter 8: Greenhouse gas mitigation: sources and sinks in agriculture and forestry
  13. Chapter 9: Mitigation strategies for energy and transport
  14. Chapter 10: Reducing energy demand: the imperative for behavioural change
  15. Chapter 11: Responding to a changing climate
  16. Endnotes, Index

Chapter 11: Responding to a changing climate

Page 15 of 16

By Dr Helen Cleugh, Dr Mark Stafford Smith, Dr Michael Battaglia, and Mr Paul Graham

The evidence amassed by CSIRO, the Australian Bureau of Meteorology, universities, and other scientific institutions around the world shows overwhelmingly that human activities are contributing to the Earth’s changing climate.

Overview

Evidence from many different sources shows human activities are contributing to the Earth’s changing climate.

The impacts of climate change on Australia, its industries, and people over the coming decades and centuries will be significant, with some of these impacts already apparent.

The Earth is committed to some degree of climate change as a result of past greenhouse gas emissions, so we will need to adapt to this change.

Adaptation on a scale far more extensive than is currently occurring will be essential in all walks of life if we are to limit the social, economic, and environmental impacts of climate change.

Action within the next decade to lower greenhouse gas emissions will reduce the probability and severity of climate change impacts.

Agriculture and forestry hold great potential for mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through afforestation, soil carbon management, and better management of livestock and cropping emissions.

Making the right energy choices for Australia’s future from among our abundant options will often be a matter of choosing the energy source, or combination of sources, for a particular context.

Practical and sometimes beneficial or low cost actions can make significant progress in tackling climate change.

Discover more about Responding to a changing climate:

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