A DAMNING report released by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change earlier this month has caught the attention of local councils in Victoria.
Frankston, Kingston, Mornington Peninsula, Bass Coast, Bayside, Cardinia, Casey, Greater Dandenong, and Port Phillip councils make up the South East Councils Climate Change Alliance. The group has called on the government to act quickly to quell the growing danger of climate change.
Cr Michael Whelan, chair of the SECCCA’s councillor advisory group, said “the IPCC’s recent sixth assessment report presents an absolutely frightening picture of what the future holds for us, for our children and grandchildren and generations to come. The impacts and costs are only going to worsen. With Australia’s land areas having increased in temperatures by 1.40 degrees, communities are already experiencing devastating impacts resulting from these temperature increases. Every municipality in the south east of Melbourne has a story to tell about how increasingly intense heat, bushfire, rainfall, storm surge and drought hurt their communities, particularly the vulnerable.”
The IPCC report outlines that global temperature is expected to reach or exceed 1.5 degrees of warming in the next 20 years. The opening summary of the report reads that “it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land”. It blames emissions of greenhouse gases from human activities for approximately 1.1 degrees of warming since 1850-1900.
Cr Whelan said that local councils want to address the issue, but needed help from higher levels of government. “Local government and the communities they represent are at the frontline of dealing with climate change impacts, but they are the least resourced to address the problems,” he said. “It is past time to get serious on this issue, our beaches are disappearing, the Brighton bathing boxes are being shored up with sandbags, beaches are being replaced by rock walls, valuable buildings are being damaged by storm surge events and bayside drainage is no longer coping with rainfall events.
“Science says that to have any hope of keeping global temperatures to 1.50 degrees above preindustrial temperatures, we must stop using fossil fuels and rapidly deploy renewable energy and energy efficiency. We need to invest in technologies that remove carbon from the atmosphere. We wait at our peril. Local government needs urgent financial assistance to enable them to invest in infrastructure that will protect communities from climate impacts.”
The impact of climate change is being felt in Frankston. The beach between Olivers Hill and Frankston Pier has been eroded by recent storms, with dune protection fencing now at risk of collapse. The beach was fully renourished by the state government ten years ago.
In neighbouring areas, recent storms have swamped Mordialloc Pier and raised water levels at the mouth of Mordialloc Creek to levels considered dangerous.