“UNPRECEDENTED” is a word often used when describing the effects of climate change on this planet of ours.
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I’ve just heard someone use it way over here on the north west coast of Western Australia. I’m in Carnarvon, the remote red-dust town I grew up in.
Scrub here is low to the ground; people grow hardy geraniums and bougainvillea. Unless there’s a cyclone, rain is a fleeting thing. Except that last week, without a cyclone in sight, it rained all day. “It’s unprecedented,” said the pharmacist.
The rain ushered in a week’s worth of gloriously mild weather. So while the eastern states baked in a heat wave, Carnarvon enjoyed weather in the 20s
The town has been clothed in green grass. There is even grass on the golf course, normally an expanse of pinky soil on a salt flat.
With the “weather weirding” brought on by climate change, it could well be that this stretch of the north west could be a winner.
If this is not just a one-off but a gradual greening of this stretch of the continent, then this remote town might find itself a more sought-after place to live and work. Or the sun could come pelting back, drying out the grass and returning the town to its former dusty glory.
These are just the observations of one person in the midst of bittersweet nostalgia. What we know for sure, though, is that global average temperatures for 2016 are unprecedented.
According to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 2016 was the warmest year in the 137 years the agency has been taking records.
I’m writing this on my laptop on an outdoor café table in Carnarvon. Beside me is a long table of old blokes with big grizzled beards also delicately sipping their lattes.
All of these – the good coffee, the cool breeze, blokes like these adapting to café society – are unprecedented. I guess the only constant is change itself.
If you’d like to join the local response to the challenge of climate change, come over and say hello at the Bathurst Community Climate Action Network stall at the Sustainability Expo at the showground on Saturday, March 25 from 8am to noon.
We need lots of different people from all walks of life to respond to what remains the greatest moral challenge of our generation.