Is This Drought Permanent ?

Conventional wisdom tells us that droughts are an inescapable component of the Australian climate - and that they always come to an end.  Such is the knowledge gained from our two hundred and thirty one years occupation of this continent and this is supported by the tales of the Indigenous people who were here thousands of years before white settlement.

This present drought is fast reaching crisis point in many country areas where the taps are running dry and even water supplies for the city of Sydney have a definable limit, but city residents have the backstop of a massive desalination plant that can ensure that at least bottled drinking water will still be available.

Global warming is changing the weather pattern of the world and science is warning us that we are reaching the dangerous tipping point where recovery becomes impossible.  What if this drought persists for another hundred years with just the occasional rain flurries barely wetting the ground  ?
We are entering the unknown with climate change and the fact that the great ice sheets are melting in both the polar regions means the water circulation in the oceans is slowing.

Our farmers are barely hanging on.  Many have not had a crop in the ground for several years and both sheep and cattle herds have diminished as a nucleus is kept alive by hand feeding.  If the rains do not arrive soon most of those farmers will have to permanently leave the land and inland Australia will simply cease to exist.

The pessimists claim that what we do in Australia will have no effect on world weather - and they are right.  If we ceased mining coal and stopped using oil our small population of twenty-five million people would not register even a blip on the activities of the seven billion who populate this planet. The necessary action is not taking place because to do so would so convulse individual economies that governments fear the public backlash.  The average Joe is very self centred.  He demands that his job is secure and that there is food to be bought in the supermarket - and if that does not happen he votes the offending government out of office.

World governments cling onto power because of the rewards that power brings.  They agree  change is necessary, but they delay implementation because to do so will lose them public support, but attitudes are starting to change.  The fires burning in eastern Australia are heralding an advanced fire season and children are challenging the apathy of their parents.

The Australia a hundred years into the future will be a very different country to the one we know today.  Rising sea levels will have inundated the coastal cities where we cling to life today and inland Australia will have become a salty sea where evaporation may have renewed the rain pattern.  In a hotter world we may have become a tropical country with a different lifestyle.

Whether we like it - or not - we are experiencing change.  How we adapt to that change will decide the type of country that will emerge and how that will fit in the pattern of world countries that will have to earn a living on planet Earth.   And it will all depend on whether an end to this drought eventuates  !