Highway to Hell Review
Highway To Hell vividly depicts how climate change will affect Australia given various likely rises in temperature above preindustrial levels. In particular, the 90% likely increase of 2.4°C scenario is put under the microscope.
Author, Joëlle Gergis, is well-suited to describe this future. She has been a climate scientist and lecturer. Despite loving this work she changed careers to warn the public about climate change. She shows how, in Australia, we have all the resources and technology to greatly reduce the impact of climate change, and yet we squander our chances by voting for parties who subsidise millions to the fuel industries, and promise non-existing carbon-capture and nuclear technologies will save us.
I was fascinated to hear Australia will be one of the worst hit countries by climate change. Below are elements we have to buckle up for, from now until 2100 - a time most of our children should be able to live through and many of us adults too:
Heat level rises in Sydney to regular days above 50°C
Heat and storm seasons will likely lead to Darwin being uninhabitable
Less than 1% of coral reefs will remain due to heat rises
Cyclones will travel lower down the Queensland eastern coast and intensify
Sea level rises due to Antarctic melting may make Noosa in Queensland, and parts of both Sydney and Melbourne CBD permanently underwater
More of these horror stories are explained in the essay. We can already see some of these scenarios taking affect:
2% of Australia’s eucalyptus forests usually burnt in fire seasons, however in Black Summer in 2019-2020 alone 25% of the temperate forests burnt in a single season.
This is not business as usual. Doesn’t it also remind you of recent Californian fires?
Gergis never says who to vote for, but does explain why liberal policies will only do damage, and how labour is not much better. I can only gauge that her personal stance is to vote Greens as they have policies that match her advice.
The Coalition promise carbon capture will save us, which is simply untrue as adequate advances in the technology aren’t here yet. Nuclear is not beneficial either as there is no more time left to waste building plants, and why bother regardless when wind and solar has already advanced enough to be more efficient, cheaper, and fully effective.
If subsidies to fossil fuel industries are cut (as the Greens party plan), then we have far more than enough to make and live on renewable energy resources.
Additionally, other countries are moving away from fossil fuel technologies, thereby decreasing demands for them so why would we subsidise digging up more? Given the information presented, I plan to vote Greens. I don’t believe we have a chance as Australians in contributing to beating this worldly existential threat otherwise.
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