A catastrophic future without broccoli? Bring it on, I say

The problem with providing persistent glimpses into a contrived climate horror show at some vague point in the future is that over time, people become inured to them. And switch off. Call it the broccoli effect.

Simon Stiel warned at a Smart Energy Council-hosted event that 'mega-droughts could make fresh fruit and veg a once-a-year treat'. Pictures: iStock, News Corp

Earlier this week, Simon Stiell got to his feet at an event hosted by the Smart Energy Council to issue what he thought would be a dire warning.

“Mega-droughts (will make) fresh fruit and veg a once-a-year treat,” Stiell said, instantly bringing a gleam to the eye of vegetable-averse children everywhere. In terms of my dietary habits, I consider gnawing on a stub of broccoli a ­triennial event. Ratcheting up consumption to veggies once a year could cause some sort of tumultuous toxic gastrointestinal event. Better keep those white trousers hanging in the closet.

As an aside, I think there is a space in the crowded and agreeably lucrative nutritional book publishing market for my personal dietary recommendations to feature in a glossy book with the catchy title, “The hell with it. Let’s get some dirty bird on DoorDash again.” Follow me on Instagram for updates.

Stiell, who is executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, went on, declaring Australia could “in total face a $6.8 trillion GDP loss by 2050”. Australia’s GDP currently stands at $2.65 trillion. PwC is just one of many economic forecasters who put Australia’s GDP in 2050 somewhere around $4 trillion. So Stiell’s projections assume our GDP will more than double in the next 25 years, before the ­climate hammer comes down. ­According to Stiell, it’s boom time until eastern Australia glows ­orange and bursts into flame.

Stiell is a Grenadian, hailing from an island nation at the southernmost point of the Windward Islands. It is home to 115,000 people, 98.5 per cent of whom are Christians. There is a relatively stable political environment of which he is an elected member. He’s an engineer by background, turned politician and property ­developer.

In Grenada, a kilogram of chicken bits and pieces costs $11. A one kilo bag of spuds cost less than $6, while a stubby of Red Stripe is a lipsmacking bargain at $3.65 and a pack of Marlboros will set you back a mere $8.50. Talk about your island paradises. Get me my travel agent on the phone right now.

I had the great pleasure of visiting Grenada many years ago as a tourist watching an Australian cricket tour of the West Indies in 1991. At the time, the smaller islands had endured deep economic turmoil almost two decades after Britain had signed onto Europe’s Common Market.

The European Economic Community rules required Britain to source its sugar crops from elsewhere, leaving sugar-reliant economies in Grenada, Barbados and St Kitts and Nevis without their big annual harvest paydays.

UN climate chief Simon Stiell speaks during a Smart Energy Council event in Sydney. Picture: AFP

It took some time and great hardship to steer these tiny economies around from sugar to tourism and other more ingenious revenue-generating methods, such as economic citizenship and the establishment of some very liberal banking and corporate laws to fill their coffers.

It was a troubling time in the Caribbean, arguably a catastrophe, but one from which islands like Grenada have emerged with their British-styled political and legal systems intact and the depth and reach of grinding poverty experienced in the 1970s and ’80s much improved. The point to make is that human intervention and ingenuity saved the day.

The term alarmist is often thrown around when it comes to climate change but Stiell’s babble veers further into the fringes and on to downright catastrophism. It is unhelpful for those who accept the science of climate change at least to a point where it needs to be risk-managed.

For those who remain cynical, Stiell’s words were yet another dull exercise in promoting fear of a looming climate apocalypse. Yawn.

Professor Tim Flannery

Alas, we have seen this movie before. We might recall that more than a decade ago, palaeontologist and mammalogist Tim Flannery uttered words paraphrased as “It might never rain again in eastern Australia”. To be fair to the former chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council, his exact words were: “Since 1998 particularly, we’ve seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment – if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since ’98, the water has been in virtual free fall, and they’ve got about two years of supply left, but something will need to change in order to see the catchment start accumulating water again.”

That was then and this now. As I look out from my office window, it is raining and the Warragamba Dam is at 97 per cent capacity. Less than a month ago with heavy rains in Sydney and flooding in the Upper Hunter, the dam overflowed. So frequent are these events that a project was put to government that would raise the dam’s wall by 14m, allowing Warragamba to hold an extra trillion ­litres of water and reduce flood damage in outer Sydney. The project was quietly shelved due to ­environmental concerns.

Since Flannery uttered those words 18 years ago, there have been four significant flooding events on the Northern Rivers leading to loss of life and cataclysmic property loss. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Meteorology’s July drought statement revealed below average rainfalls in large parts of Western Australia, western NSW, most of western and southern Queensland, southern Northern Territory, northern and parts of eastern South Australia, much of western Tasmania, and parts of west Gippsland in Victoria.

Droughts and flooding plains. Who’d have thought climate was so damned complicated?

Surely, the argument for climate change advocates to make is not one that seeks to instil fear. The problem with providing persistent glimpses into a contrived horror show at some vague point in the future is that over time, people become inured to them and simply switch off. On this occasion, the prospect of a dystopian broccoli-less future doesn’t add to a sense of dread. It’s something I look forward to.