On Tuesday, the government of Australia said that a warming planet endangered future crop yields, while federal spending on storm, flood, and fire disasters was already surging.
In a prepared speech, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that the latest government modeling revealed that global warming and disasters had “big, economy-wide effects.”
If further step was not taken, Crop yields could be four percent lower by 2063, Chalmers told a national drought forum in Rockhampton, Queensland, costing Aus$1.8 billion (US$1.2 billion) annually in today’s dollars.
The fatal “Black Summer” bushfires of 2019-2020 and the October 2022 east coast floods had each cost the economy around Aus$1.5 billion, Chalmers said, and the federal government had sharply expanded spending to assist states and regions recover from natural disasters.
He added that the Federal spending on disaster recovery in the 2022-2023 financial year amounted to about Aus$2.5 billion, which is more than seven times the Aus$335 million spent in 2017-2018.
Funding for such federal government aid had folded five times in three years, the minister said.
Chalmers said, “The pressure of a changing climate and more frequent natural disasters is constant, cascading, and cumulative.”
Last week, Australia’s weather bureau confirmed an El Nino weather pattern was underway, getting hot and dry conditions that threatened a harsh wildfire season and drought.
