Australian scientists are hopeful that a dire new assessment of the country’s environment released today will prompt the recently elected government to act.report, done every 5 years by an independent expert panel, describes declining biodiversity, increasing heat waves and bushfires, growing impacts on human health and, above all, the existential threat of climate change.
Hughes notes that the Labor Party won this spring’s election campaigning on a pledge to cut carbon emissions by 43% by 2030, a dramatic increase over the previous target of 26% to 28%. But he thinks Australia should be even more ambitious “given the vulnerability of the country’s ecosystems as highlighted by this report.”
“Repeated polling puts the environment at or near the top of issues the public cares about,” says La Trobe University, Melbourne, ecologist Jim Radford. He hopes the report will convince the nation’s leaders to provide the needed policies and resources. Constantly rising sea surface temperatures are causing mass coral bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef so often that the corals cannot recover.
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