Climate change is truly a matter of law
May 15 2024, Written by Jann Gilbert
In 2019 climate change arrived at my front door - with a bang, not a whimper - when mine was one of 126 homes destroyed by bushfire in the remote wilderness town of Mallacoota. Encircled by Croajingolong National Park, it's one of the last remaining totally wild areas in the country, supporting high terrestrial and marine biodiversity. Or at least, it did.
The horror of that summer will never leave me. I was so angry - and I'm still furious - that successive governments had allowed fossil fuel companies to profit while adding to the climate pollution that is making extreme weather more frequent, more serious and more destructive. Losing my home was tragic but it was the devastation to wildlife and the environment that truly broke my heart. We now know that more than three billion animals died in the Black Summer fires that raged across the country in 2019-20.
On top of the sudden and catastrophic impact of those fires on the environment, I've spent over a decade watching the increasing impacts of climate change in my work as a marine biologist on seabirds - sentinel species for the health and productivity of our oceans.
I have seen firsthand the impact that climate change is having on our homes, communities, natural places and unique wildlife.
Both in my personal and work life, it has become impossible to ignore the fact that the piece of legislation meant to protect our environment and its rich biodiversity (the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation [EPBC] Act) is so woefully inadequate that it has fostered further environmental degradation and species declines. This is primarily because it fails to deal directly with the most clear and present threat to nature and to all species, including humans, which is climate change.
While I welcome the Albanese government's recent announcement of an independent national Environment Protection Agency, further delays to the government's promised EPBC reform are extremely frustrating to those of us who fully and personally appreciate the urgency with which we need to act. It's also putting the cart before the horse. Without the new national standards and stronger environmental legislation the EPA will be as impotent as the laws it is supposed to enforce.
National environmental law reform was promised before the last election. While this reform languishes on the government's to-do list, new climate-polluting projects are going ahead because the current law doesn't have to assess the climate change impacts of projects. And that's simply not good enough. Not for you, your children or the environment we all depend on.
It's imperative that our "premier" piece of environmental legislation actually achieves the aim of protecting the environment and biodiversity, and accounts for climate impacts of projects no matter the size, rather than paving the way for more extinctions and environmental destruction. Otherwise, it's no better than the "1500 pages of gobbledegook" that we already have.
If the past five years of climate-fuelled disasters and the total devastation they've wreaked is not enough of a wake-up call for governments then I'm not sure what will be.
Australia is on the frontline of climate change impacts. Climate change mitigation and adaptation is the challenge of our lifetime. We've reaped the benefits, now we have to pay the bill. Unfortunately, it's in Mallacoota and so many other regional and remote places across the country where the lack of environmental protection and accounting for climate change impacts are most deeply and disproportionately felt.
Protecting biodiversity and leaving a habitable environment for the generations of humans and all other species that come after us should be the primary purpose of our national environmental law. That includes putting a safe and liveable climate at the heart of the legislation.
— Jann Gilbert is a marine biologist and bushfire survivor from Mallacoota, Victoria.
Jann’s House in Mallacoota, VIC