Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
Date: 05/12/2013
Event: Chris Field: "it's really important that we view climate change as a problem in managing risk"
Credit: Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)
People:
Fran Kelly: Superstorm Sandy, in the US last year, and more recently Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, have put the spotlight on extreme weather events, and it's the impacts of climate change and our ability to adapt that's the focus of the next major report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, which is due for release in March. Chris Field is the co-author of Working Group II of the IPCC, which will produce the report. He's also the founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the Carnegie Institution for Science. He joins me in the Breakfast studios now - Chris Field, welcome to Breakfast.
Chris Field: Thank you very much, a pleasure to be here.
Fran Kelly: Chris, how do these recent big storms - Sandy and Haiyan - change our understanding of extreme weather?
Chris Field: What we're seeing is increasing evidence that climate change causes the frequency, intensity and distribution of a wide range of extreme events. The picture is still very cloudy, and there are many things about the relationship between climate change and particular hurricanes or typhoons that we don't yet understand. But I think people's attention is now focussed on the link, and on the possibility that we can do better, making smart, informed decisions about managing the risks of these kinds of extremes.
Fran Kelly: And I want to talk about managing the risks, that's what we're here to talk about today, but just to go to this link, um, you say climate change causes this, in frequency and intensity. If a storm is unprecedented, it is an extreme weather event but can we say it's an extreme weather event driven by climate change? That is open debate - to debate - isn't it?
Chris Field: We've made a lot of progress in an area that is called "single-event attribution". With single-event attribution, we never know for sure whether climate change caused a particular event, but we can ask, in quantitative terms, whether the odds of that kind of event have changed, as a consequence of the changes that humans have caused in the climate system. For example, we know, based on recent studies, that the kind of flooding that we encountered after Hurricane Sandy was about four times more likely with the raised sea level than it was without the raised sea level.
Fran Kelly: Can we make the same kind of single-event attribution in terms of bushfires, generally? We've been having this debate in Australia, recently, because of some fairly intense bushfires we had, relatively early in the season.
Chris Field: There are a number of studies that very clearly show the sensitivity of wildfires to climate change. Now in the US, for example, in the western part, we know that there's, in many areas, a 100-500% increase in the area burned on an annual basis, for each one degree of warming.
Fran Kelly: Okay, let's go to how we deal with this, because the death toll was far higher in the Philippines from Haiyan than it was in the US from Sandy. Is that telling us quite clearly, in the worst possible way, that developing and poorer countries are going to bear the brunt of extreme climate in the future, because they are less able to adapt?
Chris Field: When you look at the impacts of severe weather, what you see is that there are vulnerabilities all around the world. With Hurricane Sandy, there were massive economic losses, and that tends to be the pattern - developed countries translate the impacts into economic losses, developing countries often have tragic losses of human life.
Fran Kelly: And this goes to, um, one thing you're going to point to, in the latest IPCC report, explaining the key challenge of climate change as one of managing risks - "Managing Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters" is the title of your lecture. How do we manage risks of an unknown event from the future?
Chris Field: There are a lot of ways we can be smart. Many of these are common-sense approaches, and oftentimes the best approaches are ones that address a wide range of hazards at a single time - things like improving infrastructure for communications, for transportation, early warning systems and disaster response can all pay big dividends, whether or not the climate changes.
Fran Kelly: So, in terms of that, you're arguing - as I was just reading your paper earlier - you're arguing less on whether governments should take action to reduce climate change and more on the fact that they should invest in adapting to decrease the impact of climate change.
Chris Field: The way I see it is that we need to do both. There are a lot of things we can do in the domain of adaptation, coping effectively with the climate changes that can't be avoided. But we encounter limits if the climate changes too much, and in order to deal effectively with those, we are going to need to invest in mitigation, reducing the amount of climate change that occurs.
Fran Kelly: How does Australia go, in your view? You've looked at this in depth, and you've looked at what countries are doing. How does Australia rate, when it comes to mitigation and adaptation?
Chris Field: Er...
Fran Kelly: I think you said we lag behind in certain areas.
Chris Field: Australia has a good history of being aware of climate-related risks, and has really been a leader in research, especially on adaptation. All countries have opportunities that are not yet capitalised on, to do better in both adaptation and mitigation, and I think at this point, honestly, there's a leadership gap around the world in making climate the kind of issue that it should be, where it demands smart, forward-looking ambition.
Fran Kelly: But you - as I say, you say in your speech that Australia lags behind. We're at the forefront of some climate change adaptation measures - and the Murray-Darling is an example of that - but lagging behind in others. So, how are we - where are we lagging behind? What should we be doing, if you look at Australia and the likely impacts that a changing climate will have?
Chris Field: You know, when I look at the opportunities for especially investing in mitigation, what I see is a wide range of things that line up very well with an action-oriented, conservative economic philosophy, a philosophy that's based on encouraging innovation, on removing economic subsidies, on unleashing market forces and on distributing taxes to a reduced production of environmental harms and societal harms. And all of those provide opportunities for countries around the world, including Australia.
Fran Kelly: It's a risk assessment, really, that you're talking about.
Chris Field: You know -
Fran Kelly: The Conservative government will be looking at managing a risk.
Chris Field: Well, businesses, governments always are required to manage risks - it's something that all aspects of society do, and they're good at it, and I think it's really important that we view climate change as a problem in managing risk and not as a political issue or an environmental issue. It's a risk issue.
Fran Kelly: You're listening to RN Breakfast, it's 4 minutes to 7. We're joined by Professor Chris Field, who's the founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the US-based Carnegie Institution for Science, and he's also chairing one of the Working Groups - Working Group II - of the IPCC, which will deliver their report in March. The political issue - you say the scientific evidence is clear but the political dialogue has been sidetracked. And if we look at the most recent UN climate talks, the political dialogue there, some would say, went completely off the rails. What should be done, then?
Chris Field: The science is really clear on climate change, and there are real opportunities to be forward-looking in the area of adaptation and the area of mitigation. My sense is that what we really lack on the international scene is an appreciation of where the opportunities are to be smart and effective and ambitious. In some ways it's a gap in leadership, and in other ways, I think it's really just people not getting their arms around the essence of the problem and the opportunities for making progress.
Fran Kelly: But why is it taking so long, in your view, to get our arms around the problem, and wrestle with it?
Chris Field: I mean, it's a complicated problem, and it's one where we have seen a number of false turns, in what I would call the public dialogue and the march toward public understanding.
Fran Kelly: Where are we at the moment, in terms of false terms - turns?
Chris Field: Well, let's say there are lots of opportunities that have not yet been capitalised on. My hope is that as the world moves toward considering new kinds of international agreements in 2015, we'll open doors to a wide range of local-scale, national-scale and international dialogues that can make a difference.
Fran Kelly: And, in that case, your view is: why wouldn't you do that? Why wouldn't you try and manage the risk? Chris Field, thank you very much for joining us.
Chris Field: It's been a real pleasure, thank you.
Fran Kelly: Professor Chris Field is a founding director of the Department of Global Ecology at the US-based Carnegie Institution for Science, and today he's going to be delivering the Sidney Law School Distinguished Speakers Lecture "Climate Change: Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters".