Global Warming Alarm: Doomsday for Australia?

How are Australians responding?

I think the biggest problem we've got in Australia is the one that we have all around the world. We are very poor responders to SLOW change. If someone takes a swing at you. You know what to do -- DUCK. But if somebody tells you over the next 50 years your world is going to profoundly change, you think, "Eh! Am I gonna be alive or not? … Do I really worry about it?"

We've always been a little bit, "Ah, she'll be right, mate! Ya know, it's not too much of a panic." But just now, they seem to be worrying up. I think the message is coming in from all over the globe from this latest report. Suddenly people are saying, "Okay, maybe MY life won't change personally that much, but what about my KIDS?"

The people of Sydney certainly did not need a report to know that something was terribly wrong. This part of Australia is in its seventh year of drought.

Absolutely! Everybody who's been affected by this drought says they don't have any living memory of anything as bad as this. We know that geologically, there have been far worse droughts in the past. So we think, "Okay, this is a taste of what's to come."

If we have climate change, what we do know is southern Australia is going to go powder dry, northern Australia is going to be afflicted with violent weather patterns. We don't know what's going to happen in eastern Australia. My guess is mangrove forests are going to invade the beaches, Bondi Beach (where we're standing now) is gone, so there are changes coming down the line.

Yes, the drought has been a wake-up call.

Could what's happening in Australia be the "canary in the coal mine" for the rest of the world?

Yes, in more ways than one. We've got about 95, maybe 98 percent of our population living along the coastline. [With the ice sheets at the poles and Greenland melting] the sea levels will be 100 meters (330 feet) higher than they are today. Forget Venice. I mean we're talking about sharks in the middle of (downtown) Sydney.