Business Communication For Economic And Environmental Impacts Of Climate Change In Australia

Climate Change Effects in Australia

Discuss about the Business Communication for Economic and Environmental.

Climate includes patterns of the temperature, rainfall, wind, humidity and seasons. The patterns play an important role in shaping the ecosystem. Climate is continuously changing with disturbing impacts, and the change is progressing faster than ever (Change 2013). The earth is getting warm day by day with the rising level of the carbon dioxide and heat trapping gases in the atmosphere. Climate changes have also affected the rising of the sea level, melting snow and ice, fires and dearth, rainfall and floods.

Australia faces great economic and environmental influences because of climate change. It impacts several sectors like agriculture, water security, coastal communities as well as the infrastructure (Rogelj 2013). The threats and effects are great and must be dealt with utmost care to minimize them. Predictions show that global warming negatively affects the diverse continent’s weather, climate and the whole ecosystem.

One of the significant changes can be noticed in Australia’s costal ecosystem and temperate zones. The important wetlands have degraded. Australia is highly affected because of the presence of arid and semi-arid areas, variability in the annual rainfall and the ever increasing pressure on water supply. This increases the chance of forest and bush fires. The savanna grasslands are affected highly because of the frequent bush fires. The habitats in the alpine system have shifted to high altitude (Head et al. 2014). The alpine area has also reduced in area coverage.

The Great Barrier Reef, which is one of greatest tourist attraction of the country, faces significant threat because the extreme climate changes. The tourism industry faces great set back because of this. More importantly most the population of Australia is concentrated on the coastal areas. The lives of the people require to be safeguarded too. The warmer climate is forcing the marine life to move and this in turn is degrading the ecosystem of the reef. This also leads to relocation of human settlement as well.

Bush fires are one of the biggest concerns of the firefighters. With the climate change the intensity and frequency have gone up. Australia is one of the three most fire-prone places in the whole world (Nyberg et al. 2013.). Southern Australia faces higher risk of such fire break outs and extended fire season.

Weather conditions have become extreme because of human interference. The whole continent faces heat waves, which pose threat to the human health. People suffer from heat stress, especially the young children and the elderly people. Many people lost their lives during the heat waves in 2009 (Burton 2014).

Those who are Responsible for Climate Change

The changing weather and climatic conditions have great impacts on the infrastructure of the country. Mostly the transportation and the electricity industry face great challenges. The demand for electricity rises with the rise in temperature during the extreme heat waves in the summer. Several trains and bus services are called off during the heat waves for issues like air conditioning failures. Infrastructures are at risk because of the rising sea levels and erosion of the coastal areas.

Global warming and climate change all over the world is the result of human interference. The excessive human activities are harming the environment from where it cannot repair itself. The regular work and daily routines of human beings have increased the greenhouse gas emission. These gasses are trapping more heat in the atmosphere leading to significant rise in the temperature. The icecaps of the poles are melting; as a result the sea level is gradually rising.

Carbon dioxide (CO2), one of the greenhouse gases is responsible for trapping the heat within the earth’s atmosphere. Enormous amount of CO2 is released into the atmosphere everyday as human beings exhale, plants and animals decay, emissions from the motor vehicles and so on. For hundreds of thousands of years the carbon cycle of the earth was steady and balanced. Since the industrial growth in the nineteenth century CO2 emissions spiked because of the CO2 released from the fossil fuel powered motor vehicles and machineries, cement manufacturing, deforestation and many more. The equilibrium was lost as humongous amount of CO2 was being released into the atmosphere faster than the hydrosphere and biosphere and land could take it up. Almost forty five percent of the emission remained and accumulated gradually in the atmosphere (Sinha et al. 2012). The changes in the earth’s carbon cycle can be known from the measurement on land, in the ocean and the atmosphere from various modeling studies. This accumulation of CO2 along with chlorofluorocarbons (CFC) further degraded the situation. Regular appliances like the refrigerator and the air conditioner give out huge amounts of CFCs.

The changing weather and climatic conditions will make Australia drier and will eventually lead to food shortage. The foliage will dry out during the extreme summer heat waves and the grasslands will be decreasing in number. Agriculture as well as cattle rearing will face setbacks. The problem of water supply will increase as wetlands will decrease in number because of the heat as well as low rainfall.

Prevention of Climate Change in Australia

Human lives will also suffer greatly. People have lost more lives because of the heat waves than the cold season. There is a change of flooding in the coastal areas as the sea level rises. There will be stronger winds and storms and extreme temperatures. The ecosystem will change so people as well as animals will migrate to other parts of the continent. Cost of living will go high with such reallocation and settlement.

The ways that the climate change can be prevented in Australia

First and foremost step towards reducing the effects of global warming is awareness. The citizens of Australia must be aware of the ways they should practice to bring down the CO2 emissions. This can be achieved by introducing the young children to present state of global warming and teaching them the ways to reduce greenhouse gasses (Fankhauser 2013). There should be awareness programs in the offices too. When people will be aware that their simple actions can save the earth they will be more careful with what they choose to do. They will think of the future when buying a car with low carbon emission. Children who learn about the problems of climate changes will be more sensitive to the issue and will become more capable adults.

Australia must implement a plan which includes the whole nation rid the country of pollution. Fossil fuels are major factors, which lead to emission of greenhouse gases. Switching over to renewable energy like wind, thermal and solar energy will reduce the use of fossil fuels. It will also help the country prepare for a phase out exports of fossil fuel. The renewable energy is cleaner and sustainable. Australia should aim to reduce the carbon pollution by thirty percent by the year 2020 (Warren et al. 2013).

The country should make greater improvement in the renewable energy and arrange a fair price on carbon. This will lead to further reduction in the carbon emission. By 2030 they should be able to retain as well as increase the target of renewable energy to 50%. Another step that the government can take for the electricity generators is to provide an emission performance standard. 

A supportive framework must be created to curtail the emission of the motor vehicles and transportations. Electrifying the transportation system will bring the carbon emission significantly. Australia is on its way to implement the best possible practices which will make them efficient in use of energy (Harvey 2015).They should implement new and innovative methods to manage the carbon in the atmosphere and the landscape. They should work to reduce the carbon footprint in the agriculture as well.

The whole world is interconnected and Australia too should start working with the other nations to save planet earth. They should come to terms with climate agreements which are reasonable and legal.

Conclusion

Due to many manmade disasters and use of fossil fuels, the atmosphere of the earth is filled with greenhouse gases, which are trapping the heat. It is necessary to take charge and change the habits to save the only planet that is capable of sustaining humankind. The whole world is facing severe threats because of the climate change. The countries need to come together to solve this problem. It is important to think about the future generation and build a sustainable future for them. Australia must take quick actions to save the nation from downing, food shortage and infrastructural failure. Simple ways of using pool to reach office, reducing use of fossil fuels and saving water will make the world a better place for the next generation.

The more time is lost in acting against this problem the more severe the threats will be for Australia. Australia is an educated, healthy and wealthy society. They are well prepared to adapt to the climate change. They have the capacity to address and influence the climatic changes that are taking place in other places of the world too.

References:

Burton, P.A., 2014. Policy responses to climate change in Australia: contestation, complexity and uncertainty.

Change, I.C., 2013. The physical science basis. Contribution of working group I to the fifth assessment report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change. K., Tignor, M., Allen, SK, Boschung, J., Nauels, A., Xia, Y., Bex, V., Midgley, PM, Eds, p.1535.

Fankhauser, S., 2013. Valuing climate change: the economics of the greenhouse. Routledge.

Harvey, L.D., 2015. Global warming. Routledge.

Head, L., Adams, M., McGregor, H.V. and Toole, S., 2014. Climate change and Australia. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change, 5(2), pp.175-197.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2015. Climate change 2014: mitigation of climate change (Vol. 3). Cambridge University Press.

Nyberg, D., Spicer, A. and Wright, C., 2013. Incorporating citizens: corporate political engagement with climate change in Australia. Organization, 20(3), pp.433-453.

Rogelj, J., 2013. Long-term climate change: projections, commitments and irreversibility.

Sinha, R., Pearson, L.A., Davis, T.W., Burford, M.A., Orr, P.T. and Neilan, B.A., 2012. Increased incidence of Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii in temperate zones–is climate change responsible?. Water Research, 46(5), pp.1408-1419.

Warren, R., VanDerWal, J., Price, J., Welbergen, J.A., Atkinson, I., Ramirez-Villegas, J., Osborn, T.J., Jarvis, A., Shoo, L.P., Williams, S.E. and Lowe, J., 2013. Quantifying the benefit of early climate change mitigation in avoiding biodiversity loss. Nature Climate Change, 3(7), pp.678-682.