Some facts that I acquired through the net on the severity of global warming affecting Australia :-
1. One farmer takes his life every four days, according to the national mental health body Beyond Blue.
2. With the drought now in its sixth year, Australia’s big dry is the worst in over a century. Farmers have been hardest hit, forced to make a living sometimes in dustbowl conditions, raising emaciated cattle. With no prospect of significant rainfall before the New Year, the situation has reached crisis point and hope is as scarce as rainfall.
3. Many farmers are being forced to sell up, leaving land which often their families have worked on for generations.
4. It also estimates that more than 300,000 rural Australians experience depression each year, but only a small number seek help.
5. In New South Wales alone, 92 per cent of the state is officially in drought, and farmers have begun offloading stock before the hot, dry summer sets in, forcing them to buy feed and water. Sheep sales in the state are 70 per cent higher than last year, and at one saleyard last week, a record 67,000 sheep were sold in one day.
6. Agricultural economists, meanwhile, have slashed their winter crop forecasts by more than a third, and wheat exports have been suspended to meet domestic demand.
7. With the vegetation tinder-dry after one of the driest winters on record, hundreds of fires were burning across four states, fanned by high temperatures and strong winds. Much of the south-east was on an extreme fire danger alert. In Tasmania, scores of homes were threatened by fires advancing on the suburbs of Hobart, the state capital, this week.
8. Scientists warned the bushfire threat would increase over coming decades, as climate change brought more frequent hot weather, accompanied by less rainfall.
They point to the increased frequency and severity of drought-causing El Niño weather patterns, attributed to global warming, and to Australia’s leading role in poisoning the Earth’s atmosphere with greenhouse gases. Australians are among the world’s biggest energy consumers, and the country is one of the top per capita producers of carbon dioxide emissions. Nonetheless, it is one of only two industrialised nations, along with the United States, that has refused to sign the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, arguing that it would harm the economy.
