The Threat of Famine !

Last week hundreds of thousands of school kids walked out of class and held noisy demonstrations across Australia, demanding action to counter climate change which is delivering weather changes to a rapidly warming planet.   They were virtually ignored by our politicians.  It will be quite a few years before most of those kids reach voting age.

Here in the eastern states we have just experienced a record drought.  We are a wheat exporting country and fortunately Western Australia missed the worst of this drought and our export quotas will be met, but we are in an El Nino phase and an eastern wheat crop is still not certain in the coming season.

Global warming deniers point out that droughts are not unusual in Australia.  We are a very dry continent and farming here has always been a risky venture, but what is happening in Asia because of global warming is a coming threat to our way of life.

The teeming hordes of Asia are served by several of the worlds great rivers and they have their headwaters in the Himalaya mountain range. For untold centuries their flow has been augmented by the snow melt in spring and maintained for the rest of the year by the slow melt of the great Himalayan glaciers.  Those glaciers are now failing and in less than twenty years they will be gone.

These are rivers that flow through various Asian countries and they are vital to the agriculture that feeds Asia.  The spectre of famine in Asia will be met by the mass movement of people seeking shelter where food is plentiful - and to many that destination will be Australia.

When we consider just how many people are reliant on rivers like the Ganges, the Mekong and the Brahmaputra for their food supply we have the picture of the famine that awaits the world.  It is quite clear that planet Earth is warming  and we have been warned that unless we take the measures to hold that increase to 1.5 percent a number of disasters are inevitable.

The failure of those Himalayan and other glaciers is now well under way and a world catastrophe is now inevitable.  Famine in Asia will result in desperate people taking to their feet and seeking sustenance in Europe, America and most certainly Australia.   We have just seen how war in the Middle East caused chaos across Europe.  The numbers on the move from famine in Asia will be unstoppable.

The demonstrations by school kids are pertinent.  Most of the politicians now in office will have taken their generous pensions and quit by the time Australia has to meet this assault on its borders.  That task will fall to the young men and women who are now sounding urgent warnings that our future is under threat.   They will have every right to be angry about this lost opportunity to save the planet.