Conclusion

Miller, Julia

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-76141-1_10

Julia Miller²

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Abstract

Climate optimism has proven to be durable and tenacious and an invigoratingly active agent shaping an environmental mindset that has perpetuated management decisions based on an assumption of plenitude. In these times of human-induced climate change, how we perceive our climate and what we do to arrest our influence on it is of great consequence. If we can look back on the past and realise that our efforts to boost, mitigate or generally control climate have been the subject of many failures, misjudgements and environmental catastrophes, we might learn to be more cautious in the future. Our cultural adaptation to Australia’s soakers and scorchers rests, in no small part, with our ability to realise how ideas on climate can be coupled with the immediate experience of rain and also with its memory.

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Notes

1.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, Sydney, University of NSW Press, 2007, 6. J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia: The Restive Fringe, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
2.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 6. J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia.
3.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 6.
4.
J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia, 334.
5.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 1.
6.
J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia, 332.
7.
Graeme Davison, “Country Life: The Rise and Decline of an Australian Ideal”, in Graeme Davison and Marc Brodie, eds, Struggle Country: The Rural Ideal in Twentieth Century Australia, Melbourne, Monash University e-Press, 2005. Ian Tyrell, True Gardens of the Gods: Californian-Australian Environmental Reform, 1860–1930, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1999. J.M. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia, 322.
8.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 121.
9.
James Nason, “NQ Floods: Channel Country Flows a Rare Silver Lining”, Beef Central, February 13, 2019, https://www.beefcentral.com/news/nq-floods-channel-country-flows-a-rare-silver-lining/.
10.
Julia Horne, The Pursuit of Wonder: How Australia’s Landscape was Explored, Nature Discovered and Tourism Unleashed, Carlton, The Miegunyah Press, 2005, 11.
11.
Libby Robin, How a Continent Created a Nation, 2.
12.
H.H. Hendon, E. Lim, J.M. Arblaster, and D.L.T. Anderson, “Causes and Predictability of the Record Wet East Australian Spring 2010”, Climate Dynamics, 42, no. 5–6, 2014, 1155–1174. J.P. Evans and I. Boyer-Souchet, “Local Sea Surface Temperatures Add to Extreme Precipitation in Northeast Australia During la Niña”, Geophysical Research Letters, 39, no. 10, 2012, 12–14.
13.
N. Christidis, P.A. Stott, David Karoly, and A. Ciavarella, “An Attribution Study of the Heavy Rainfall Over Eastern Australia in March 2012”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 94, no. 9, 2013, S58–S61.
14.
Katharine Murphy, “Snowy 2.0: Malcolm Turnbull’s Pet Project Given Go-ahead by Board”, The Guardian, December 12, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/12/snowy-20-malcolm-turnbulls-pet-project-given-go-ahead-by-board. The Snowy Mountains power-irrigation scheme diverts the Murrumbidgee, Snowy and Tumut Rivers in south-western New South Wales into the headwaters of the Murray-Murrumbidgee system to provide irrigation water for the western side of the Great Dividing Range, and in the process generate hydro-electric power. Snowy 2.0 will add to its capacity to generate renewable energy through pump hydro.
15.
Judith Ireland and Daniel Hirst, “Tax Cuts, Economic Zone Part of Kevin Rudd’s Plans to Develop Northern Australia”, The Sydney Morning Herald, August 15, 2013, https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/tax-cuts-economic-zone-part-of-kevin-rudds-plans-to-develop-northern-australia-20130815-2rybz.html. The main construction phase of the Ord River project that spanned the north of Western Australia and the Northern Territory was completed in 1971. The project has been seen as a failure due to high costs for farmers and the main crop, cotton, heavily subsidised. Powell, An Historical Geography of Modern Australia, 330.
16.
Clive Hamilton, “The Social Psychology of Climate Change”, in A Change in the Weather: Climate and Culture in Australia, Canberra, National Museum of Australia Press, 2005, 191–192.
17.
Ben Jones interviewed by Deb Anderson, quote taken from Deb Anderson, Endurance: Australian Stories of Drought, CSIRO Publishing, 2014, 186.
18.
Christmas Day (25 December) 2018 was Australia’s overall warmest Christmas Day on record, with a mean temperature of 30.61 °C, surpassing the previous warmest Christmas Day from 1980 of 30.53 °C. Boxing Day (26 December) 2018 was the warmest Boxing Day on record, with a mean temperature of 31.48 °C, surpassing 1980 with 30.93 °C, and Australia’s third-warmest December day on record. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statement 68—Widespread Heatwaves During December 2018 and January 2019, March 2019, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs68.pdf.
19.
The start of 2019 saw very much below average rainfall over north-eastern New South Wales and south-eastern Queensland, with large areas of lowest on record rainfall for the January to February period. Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statement 70: Drought Conditions in Eastern Australia and Impact on Water Resources in the Murray–Darling Basin, April 2019, http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs70.pdf.
20.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statement 68.
21.
A.D. King, S.C. Lewis, S.E. Perkins, L.V. Alexander, M.G. Donat, D.J. Karoly, and M.T. Black, “Limited Evidence of Anthropogenic Influence on the 2011–12 Extreme Rainfall Over Southeast Australia”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 94, no. 9, 2013, S55–S58.
22.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, State of the Climate 2018, www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/ and www.csiro.au/state-of-the-climate.
23.
Australian Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO, State of the Climate 2018, www.bom.gov.au/state-of-the-climate/ and www.csiro.au/state-of-the-climate.
24.
Scott Power, François Delage, Christine Chung, Greg Kociuba, and Kevin Keay, “Robust Twenty-First Century Projections of El Niño and Related Precipitation Variability”, Nature, 502, no. 7472, 2013, 541–545.
25.
Albert Van Dijk and David Summers, Australia’s Environment Explorer, The Australian National University, 2018, http://www.ausenv.online.
26.
Albert Van Dijk, “Australia’s 2018 Environmental Scorecard: A Dreadful Year that Demands Action”, The Conversation, April 4, 2019, https://theconversation.com/australias-2018-environmental-scorecard-a-dreadful-year-that-demands-action-114760.

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Director Academic Affairs, CAPA The Global Education Network, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Julia Miller

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Miller, J. (2019). Conclusion. In: La Niña and the Making of Climate Optimism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76141-1_10

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76141-1_10
Published: 13 July 2019
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-76140-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-76141-1
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