The Kimberley $67.5 million resilience package announced yesterday by the WA Premier Roger Cook fails to get to grips with the ruinously expensive costs of climate change, according to Broome-based conservation group Environs Kimberley.
The WA State Government's mid-term performance review in December revealed that the January 2023 floods in the Kimberley, worsened by climate change, will cost taxpayers over $869 million. This extra $67.5 million brings the costs of climate change close to a billion dollars in just over a year.
Environs Kimberley Director of Strategy Martin Pritchard said:
"The Cook Government has described the Fitzroy Crossing floods as the worst in WA's history but has yet to acknowledge that this is exactly what's been predicted for the Kimberley with climate change. The amount of taxpayer funds going into climate change disasters is only going to increase — and we're already looking at a billion dollars from 2023/4 alone."
"Even as the impacts of climate change get worse, the Cook Government is sleepwalking into one of the biggest polluting industries in the world – oil and gas fracking – right here in the Kimberley."
Climate change scientists have estimated that if the oil-and-gas fracking industry in the Kimberley takes off, it could unleash three times Australia's emissions of climate-changing CO2 into the atmosphere than our estimated emissions budget under the Paris Agreement.
"The Premier Roger Cook is playing around the edges, while the Kimberley heads to becoming unlivable according to the climate modelling the WA Government itself uses."
"The Premier is pouring taxpayer money to fix up climate-change disasters, while at the same time allowing an oil-and-gas fracking industry to operate, which would produce globally significant climate-changing carbon pollution. This is wrong. If we want a resilient future, then these types of industries must be banned."
