We don’t yet know whether the Liberal Party will get behind the renewables and storage that Australians want, or keep pursuing a nuclear fantasy, but the National Party has indicated they will keep promoting nuclear. We’ll keep you up to date as each party’s policy is announced.

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Federal Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Liberal-National Coalition have said that, if they win the next Federal Election, they would attempt to build nuclear reactors in communities around Australia to produce electricity.

Here’s what you need to know about this risky energy scheme:

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Why nuclear reactors are too risky for Australia

1. Nuclear reactors risk our energy security – by failing to replace retiring coal

Coal-fired power stations still supply about half of the electricity in Australia’s main national grid – but they are outdated, unreliable, polluting and expected to close down by 2038 at the latest. That’s before a single watt of nuclear energy could enter our energy system, given nuclear reactors would take at least 15 years to get up and running in Australia, according to the CSIRO.

The majority of our coal capacity is over 40 years old, and the ability of our generators to reliably produce electricity has dropped off dramatically. Coal outages are already a primary driver of power outage warnings. We need to bring on new sources of energy right now – like solar and wind, backed by big batteries – before the lights go out and our kids’ future goes up in smoke.

How ageing coal is worsening the risk of blackouts, and pushing up power prices

2. Going nuclear means Aussies would pay more, for less 

Australia’s independent science agency, CSIRO, has found that building solar and wind power backed by storage is the lowest-cost way to meet our electricity needs. Unlike renewables, the cost of building and operating nuclear energy in Australia remains prohibitively high. In fact, independent analysis shows that building nuclear could increase electricity bills by $665 on average, and $972 for a family of four.

In December 2024, the Federal Coalition released its nuclear costings. Unfortunately, as expected, these costing contain a number of misleading assumptions and omissions. Their scheme doesn’t provide enough electricity to meet our needs, underestimates the cost of building and operating nuclear reactors compared to similar nations overseas, and ignores the eyewatering costs of more climate pollution and worsening unnatural disasters. Our analysis found that the Federal Coalition’s nuclear scheme would cost up to $490 billion more than they’ve estimated and add one billion tonnes more climate pollution from burning more coal and gas while waiting for nuclear reactors.

Why should Australians pay more for less?

Economic meltdown: Counting the real cost of Peter Dutton’s nuclear fantasy

3. Nuclear reactor projects often face big cost and timeline blowouts

Around the world, building nuclear reactors are notorious for running overtime and over-budget. For example, the UK’s Hinkley Point C nuclear energy facility is costing three times more than promised ($90 billion) and running 14 years late (2031 vs 2017). 

In the US, NuScale’s Small Modular Reactor in Idaho was expected to cost US$3.6 billion and produce 720 megawatts of electricity. Just three years later, the project cost had blown out to US$9.3 billion while capacity had reduced to 496 megawatts, and the project was ultimately cancelled in 2023.

Importantly, both of these projects were in nations with more than 60 years of experience building nuclear energy, whereas Australia has none.

4. Nuclear reactors pose significant community, environmental and health risks

Radiation from major nuclear disasters, such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011, have impacted hundreds of thousands of people and contaminated vast areas that take decades to clean up.

While rare, the risk of such disasters in Australia can’t be ruled out, and many of the proposed nuclear sites are already in disaster-prone regions experiencing escalating heatwaves, bushfires, storms and floods – which only exacerbates the risk. Even when a nuclear reactor operates as intended, it creates an expensive long-term legacy of site remediation, fuel processing and radioactive waste storage.

Why should Australians – especially those living in the regional communities which would host reactors – accept these risks when we don’t need to?

5. Nuclear reactors would require massive amounts of water in increasingly drought-prone regions

Nuclear reactors need a lot of water for cooling. For example, a typical 1600 MW nuclear facility uses about 2,000 litres of water per second, equivalent to the daily water use of four households. In a changing climate, with increased risk of droughts in Australia, the significant amounts of water used by nuclear reactors is a significant concern. 

At times when water supply is tight, it’s also unclear how the needs of nuclear reactors will be balanced against those of households and farmers. Other countries with nuclear reactors may soon be facing these challenges: 61% of the USA’s nuclear energy facility are expected to face water stress by 2030, potentially forcing them to reduce their generation or even shut down.

In Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth, nuclear’s water use is a big concern for many communities. 

6. Climate change threatens our kids’ safety, and we need to be cutting climate pollution now

Climate pollution from burning coal, oil and gas for electricity is overheating our planet and harming our communities right now. Every action taken today to tackle dangerous climate change helps secure a safer future for our kids.

But the Federal Coalition’s nuclear scheme won’t cut climate pollution.  In fact, the Coalition’s own modelling shows that the scheme would produce one billion tonnes more climate pollution by 2050. Incredibly, that’s equivalent to the climate pollution released by running the Eraring coal power station for another 85 years.

Why take that risk when we already have a plan to  keep rolling out clean, safe, and abundant renewable power?

Here’s the bottom line: nuclear energy risks our energy security, our economy, the safety of our communities and our kids’ future. It makes no sense for Australia. On the other hand, power from the sun and wind is cheap, abundant, safe and available now. So why risk nuclear – especially when there’s so much we still don’t know? More on that below.

subscribe to the climate council to get the facts on the latest climate and energy news

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What we still don’t know about the Federal Coalition’s nuclear scheme

The Federal Coalition’s energy scheme was first announced back in June 2024, but there are still more questions than answers, including:

• How would the Federal Government overturn State Government bans on nuclear activity? 
• How would our emergency services be equipped to deal with escalated nuclear risks? 
• How would the government acquire the privately owned land and infrastructure needed to build these reactors, and what would it cost Australian taxpayers?
• How would the safety of communities living and working near the facilities be protected, especially as climate change increases the frequency and severity of unnatural disasters?
• How would water be shared between nuclear reactors, farmers and communities during droughts?
• Where and how would nuclear waste be stored? How much would that cost, and who would pay?

how the federal coalition could cook the books on nuclear costings

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Renewables are safe, clean and successfully cutting climate pollution in our electricity grid right now

Already, about 40% of Australia’s electricity comes from solar, wind and hydropower. More than 4 million Australian households have put solar panels on their roof, and together they are saving $3 billion a year on electricity bills.

The Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) tells us that large-scale solar and wind, backed up by storage (massive batteries and pumped hydro), can provide power 24/7. We can keep accelerating this progress to build a clean grid that’s powered by renewables within the next 10 years.

So why risk going nuclear?

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Need more information?

read our Submission to: Inquiry into nuclear power generation in Australia

If you’re looking for another source of trusted information on nuclear energy, we recommend reading the latest explainer from Australia’s independent science-based information agency, CSIRO.

plus: read our guide on how to respond to climate myths

The post Why nuclear energy is not worth the risk for Australia appeared first on Climate Council.

Read the original article. Written by Climate Councillor, Professor David Karoly and Associate Professor Andrew King.

The year 2024 was the world’s warmest on record globally, and the first calendar year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial levels.

The official declaration was made on Friday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, the European Union’s Earth observation program. It comes as wildfires continue to tear through Los Angeles, California – a disaster scientists say was made worse by climate change.

This record-breaking global heat is primarily driven by humanity’s ongoing greenhouse gas emissions, caused by the burning of fossil fuels. The warming won’t stop until we reach net-zero emissions.

Clearly, the need for humanity to rapidly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions has never been more urgent.

An exceptional year

The Copernicus findings are consistent with other leading global temperature datasets indicating 2024 was the hottest year since records began in 1850.

The global average temperature in 2024 was about 1.6°C above the average temperatures in the late-19th century (which is used to represent pre-industrial levels).

On July 22 last year, the daily global average temperature reached 17.16°C. This was a new record high.

Copernicus also found that each year in the last decade was one of the ten warmest on record. According to Copernicus director Carlo Buontempo:

We are now teetering on the edge of passing the 1.5ºC level defined in the Paris Agreement and the average of the last two years is already above this level.

These high global temperatures, coupled with record global atmospheric water vapour levels in 2024, meant unprecedented heatwaves and heavy rainfall events, causing misery for millions of people.

How scientists take Earth’s temperature

Estimating the global average surface temperature is no mean feat. The methods vary between organisations, but the overall picture is the same: 2024 was the world’s hottest year on record.

The high global average temperature of 2024 wouldn’t have been possible without humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. The El Niño climate driver also played a role in the first part of the year. It warmed Earth’s surface – particularly over a large swathe of the central and eastern Pacific – and increased global average surface temperature by up to 0.2°C.

What about Australia?

Copernicus found 2024 was the warmest year for all continents except Antarctica and Australasia.

But Australia is feeling the shift into a hotter, less hospitable climate, too. Last year was Australia’s second-hottest year on record, according to a declaration last week by the Bureau of Meteorology.

The hottest was 2019, when a blisteringly hot and dry spring led to the widespread bushfires of the Black Summer. Unlike 2019, Australia had a wetter than normal year in 2024.

However, 2024 was the hottest year on record for the southwest of Australia and parts of the centre and east of the continent.

Apart from April, Australia saw unusual warmth through all of 2024. August was the standout month for record-breaking heat.

In general, temperature records are broken more easily at the global scale than in individual regions. That’s because weather is more variable at the local level than on a global average. A period of, say, very cold weather in one part of a continent can bring down annual average temperatures there, preventing records from being broken.

That’s why Australia’s annual average temperatures have reached record highs three times since 2000 – in 2005, 2013 and 2019 – whereas the global average temperature set six new records in that period.

Does this mean the Paris Agreement has failed?

The global Paris Agreement aims to limit global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. So, if 2024 was about 1.6°C above pre-industrial levels, you might think the world has failed to meet this goal. But it hasn’t, yet.

The success of the Paris Agreement will be measured against longer periods than temperatures over a year. That eliminates natural climate variability and factors such as El Niño and La Niña, to build a clearer picture of climate change.

However, the statistics for 2024 are certainly a bad sign. It shows humanity has its work cut out to keep global warming well below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C.

More heat guaranteed

There’s one very important thing to understand about climate change: the amount of greenhouse gases that humans emit over time is roughly proportional to the increase in global temperatures over that same period.

This near-linear relationship means every tonne of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity causes about the same amount of global warming. So, the faster we decarbonise the global economy, the sooner we can halt global warming and reduce its harms.

This year is unlikely to be quite as hot as 2024 because the El Niño has passed. But unfortunately, Earth will continue to experience record hot global temperatures for at least the next few decades.

This is all the more reason for humanity to move faster in decarbonising our society and economy. It’s not too late to shift the long-term trajectory of Earth’s climate.

The post As Los Angeles combusts, 2024 is declared Earth’s hottest on record appeared first on Climate Council.

Forests act as carbon sinks that draw carbon dioxide from our atmosphere and stabilise our climate. How does that work and what does it mean for our warming climate? Let’s find out. 

Deforestation and the carbon cycle

Forests store large amounts of carbon. Trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. This is converted into carbon and stored in the plant’s branches, leaves, trunks, roots and in the soil.

When forests are cleared or burnt, stored carbon is released into the atmosphere, mainly as carbon dioxide. The scale of this release of carbon is enormous. In 2023, global loss of tropical forests totalled 3.7 million hectares, equivalent to around ten soccer fields of forest lost every minute. This forest loss produced roughly six percent of estimated global carbon dioxide emissions in 2023.

Carbon stored in forests is part of an active, relatively quick cycle that sees carbon released back into the atmosphere when living things (including trees) die and decay.

On the other hand, carbon stored underground in the form of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, is much more stable and part of a much slower carbon cycle. Without the influence of humans burning these fossil fuels for energy, this carbon is unlikely to reach the atmosphere. However, when fossil fuels are burned, carbon from dead and decayed plants, animals and phytoplankton that lived hundreds of millions of years ago is released into the atmosphere in the form of heat-trapping carbon dioxide.

Deforestation and climate change

Burning fossil fuels, combined with the destruction of carbon sinks, has caused too much carbon dioxide to build up in the atmosphere – more than can be absorbed from existing carbon sinks such as forests. The build-up of carbon dioxide to the highest level in human history is driving global warming, as it traps heat in the lower atmosphere. 

Carbon offsets, including planting trees, aren’t the answer 

A carbon offset is a claimed reduction in climate pollution, usually achieved by planting trees and restoring land, to account for an equivalent amount of pollution that occurs elsewhere. Companies use carbon offsets to ‘even out’ their carbon pollution.

As climate change creates more frequent and intense fires, trees originally planted to offset carbon are more likely to get burnt. This means carbon offsets are fragile and unreliable in the face of a changing and unpredictable climate.

The good news is, we don’t need to rely on carbon offsets to cut climate pollution. Proven technologies like solar and wind can electrify our lives, slash climate pollution this decade and ensure a safer future for our kids.

Where do we go from here?

Protecting natural ecosystems and sustainably managing and re-establishing forests are important ways to cut climate pollution and slow down temperature rise in the short term by drawing down carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and avoiding its release. At the same time, we must slash climate pollution from coal, oil and gas further and faster . If we do only the former and not the latter, we risk transforming more and more of our carbon sinks into carbon sources as climate change progresses.

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The post Deforestation and Climate Change appeared first on Climate Council.

Read the original article. Written by Professor Lesley Hughes

One of the most significant achievements of the 26th United Nations climate conference in Glasgow (COP26) three years ago was the launch of the Global Methane Pledge. The goal is to reduce global methane emissions at least 30% by 2030.

Methane (CH₄) is the second most significant climate pollutant after carbon dioxide (CO₂). In the words of one of the architects of the pledge, then US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, “tackling methane is the fastest, most effective way to reduce near-term warming and keep 1.5°C within reach”.

Australia signed up to the methane pledge in October 2022. It was a good start, but a promise is not a plan. To date, Australia has no official methane reduction targets, nor an agreed strategy to deal with this dangerous pollutant.

The Climate Council’s report, released today, sets out actions Australia can take right now to cut methane emissions. We need to get on with it.

Why should we care about methane?

Methane in the atmosphere is rising at a record rate: up about 260% since preindustrial times to a high not seen for at least 800,000 years.

Research just released shows if we don’t act, the problem will only worsen. It suggests increases in atmospheric methane are outpacing projected growth rates – threatening the global goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

The gas is likely responsible for at least 25 to 30% of warming Earth has experienced since the Industrial Revolution.

Methane is a “live fast, die young” gas, persisting in the atmosphere for a relatively short amount of time. But while it’s there, it punches above its weight in warming. Over 20 years, methane is about 85 times more effective at trapping heat than the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

After 100 years, it’s still about 28 times more effective at trapping heat.

This means methane has an outsized impact on warming in the short term, turbocharging unnatural disasters such as floods, bushfires and heatwaves.

Where does methane come from?

Roughly half of global methane pollution comes from human activities. The rest comes from natural sources such as wetlands and soils.

Australia produces more than its fair share of methane because we have such large fossil fuel and agriculture industries. We are the world’s 12th largest methane polluter, producing four to five times as much methane as would be expected based on population alone.

In the year to December 2023, Australia produced nearly four million tonnes of methane. The main sources from human activity were agriculture (52%), fossil fuel mining (25%) and waste (11%). The good news is there are plenty of ways to reduce emissions in each sector that we can and should implement right now.

Agriculture and fossil fuels produce most of Australia’s methane pollution. The Climate Council, using data from the National Greenhouse Gas Inventory Quarterly Update: December 2023 (DCCEEW, 2024).

What can we do about it?

The largest source of methane emissions in agriculture is the burps of ruminant animals – mainly cows and sheep.

Promising research suggests each animal’s methane production can be cut by as much as 90% using daily feed supplements. These include supplements from the red seaweed Asparagopsis, and the chemical marketed as 3-NOP.

Other approaches to reducing methane emissions from animals also show promise. They include vaccines that target methane-producing microbes in their guts, methane-reducing pasture species, and selective breeding.

These solutions should be scaled up and farmers encouraged to use them – for instance, by being eligible for carbon credits under the Emissions Reduction Fund.

Providing consumers with point-of-sale information about the climate impacts of their food choices could also serve to reduce the nation’s methane emissions. And the market can be encouraged to develop clear regulatory pathways for securing approval of animal-free protein and other lower-impact foods.

More than 90% of our food waste ends up in landfill where it produces methane when it rots. Composting is much better for the environment. Investing in organic collection services for food and garden waste, and tightening regulations to capture gas at landfill sites, can address much methane pollution from the waste sector.

We can’t control what we don’t measure. Currently, methane emissions are largely reported to the Clean Energy Regulator using indirect and outdated methods. The International Energy Agency estimates Australia could be under-reporting methane emissions from the coal and gas sector by up to 60%.

Fortunately, new global satellite capacity and, in Australia, the Open Methane visualisation tool, mean we can measure methane at its source far more accurately than before.

The federal government should make all coal and gas corporations directly measure and report their methane emissions from existing mines, in line with international best practice.

Every coal mine and gas plant produces methane during mining and processing. While we work towards phasing out fossil fuel mining, a few practical actions can reduce methane pollution:

• require underground coal mines to capture and destroy the methane vented into the atmosphere
• ban all non-emergency flaring and venting of gas
• require all gas mining companies to address leaky infrastructure
• ensure mining companies seal inactive mines.

Time for action

Without concerted action, global methane pollution from human activities is expected to rise 15% this decade. On the other hand, meeting the commitments of the Global Methane Pledge can reduce warming in the next few decades.

If the goals of the pledge are met, we could shave about 0.25°C off the global average temperature by mid-century, and more than 0.5°C by 2100.

The federal government should establish a national methane reduction target and a dedicated action plan. This should be part of our updated national emissions reduction target, due to be set in 2025.

We can’t take our foot off the pedal in cutting carbon dioxide. But at the same time, in the words of United Nations head Antonio Guterres, we have to do “everything, everywhere, all at once”.

The post Methane is turbocharging unnatural disasters – Australia must get serious about reducing emissions appeared first on Climate Council.

Read the original article. Written by Professor David Karoly

From Kakadu and the Great Barrier Reef in the North, to the Snowy Mountains in the Southeast, and jarrah and marri forests in the Southwest, Australia is home to incredibly diverse ecosystems. Many of our plants, animals, birds and fish are found nowhere else in the world.

Our First Nations people protected these living wonders through their holistic approach to managing the land and caring for Country for more than 65,000 years. But the European settlers took a different approach and the land suffered.

Federal laws made in 1999 to better protect the environment are failing. Climate change is not explicitly mentioned in the legislation. These shortcomings have prompted a volunteer environment group to mount a legal challenge against federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek “to protect our living wonders from coal and gas”. The matter is currently before the courts.

This week’s new report from the Climate Council Australia (which I was an expert reviewer on) explains the problem with our environment law and charts a way forward.

The fundamental flaw in our national environmental law must be urgently addressed if we are to have any hope of protecting our wildlife and habitat into the future.

Australia’s national environmental law

The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) should be designed to keep our living wonders safe from harm.

The primary objective of the EPBC Act is to: “provide for the protection of the environment, especially those aspects of the environment that are matters of national environmental significance.”

But it’s clear the environment is deteriorating. The EPBC Act requires a comprehensive assessment of Australia’s environment every five years. The latest assessment, published in 2022, found the state of Australia’s environment is poor and getting worse.

Climate change was identified in that assessment as one of the greatest threats to all aspects of the Australian natural environment. Climate change is a compounding factor that increases the impacts of other pressures on our environment, such as land clearing, invasive species, pollution and resource extraction.

However, climate change is not considered directly in the EPBC Act as one of the factors affecting matters of national environmental significance

According to the Climate Council report, since 1999, 740 new projects to extract coal, oil and gas have been approved or passed, with 555 of them not having undergone detailed environmental assessment. Burning these fossil fuels increases greenhouse gas emissions and makes climate change worse.

In 2020, a scathing independent review of the EPBC Act led by former competition watchdog chair Graeme Samuel found the act is ineffective, outdated and needs comprehensive reform.

Climate risks to Australia

In 2022, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the most recent comprehensive global assessment of climate change risks.

The special fact sheet about climate impacts on natural and human systems in Australia and New Zealand provides a helpful summary of that assessment.

It lists nine key risks in Australia associated with climate change. Of these, the top five risks for our living wonders are:

• “loss and degradation of coral reefs and associated biodiversity and ecosystem service values [what they are worth] in Australia due to ocean warming and marine heatwaves
• loss of alpine biodiversity in Australia due to less snow
• loss of natural and human systems in low-lying coastal areas due to sea level rise
• increase in heat-related mortality and morbidity for people and wildlife in Australia due to heatwaves
• inability of institutions and governance systems to manage climate risk”.

That last one is particularly relevant to the EPBC Act.

A legal challenge is underway

To test the climate blindspot in the EPBC Act, the Environment Council of Central Queensland submitted 19 reconsideration requests to Plibersek in July 2022.

The minister was asked to reconsider the previous evaluation of 19 coal and fossil gas extraction projects under the former government, because they did not take into account potential harms on Australia’s living wonders.

The environment council provided the minister with thousands of state and federal government reports listing the impacts of climate change on several thousand matters of environmental significance.

In November 2022, the minister accepted 18 reconsideration requests as valid. However, in May 2023, the minister decided not to change the climate risk assessments by the previous government for three of the projects she was asked to reconsider. In Plibersek’s official responses she determined that based on the new information provided to her in the reconsideration requests, it wasn’t possible to say the proposals would be a “substantial cause of the stated physical effects of climate change” on a matter of national environmental significance.

The matter is now in the Federal Court. Last week, the environment council challenged Plibersek’s rejection to reconsider two of the three coal mine expansion projects, both in New South Wales. A decision from the judge on this case is pending and should be provided in the next few months. A spokesperson for the minister has advised the media they would not comment “as this is a legal matter”.

Protecting our living wonders means fixing Australia’s environment law

We need to fix Australia’s national environment law, making sure it contains an explicit objective to prevent actions that accelerate climate change. We need a national environment law that genuinely protects our environment by stopping highly polluting projects and enabling ones that can help us rapidly switch to a clean economy instead.

Every fraction of a degree of avoided warming matters for preserving our environment. Every decision made under our national environment law can either help or hinder the urgent task to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

The post We should use Australia’s environment laws to protect our ‘living wonders’ from new coal and gas projects appeared first on Climate Council.

Climate change is already affecting the island’s critically endangered forests, coral reefs, and the local economy that is reliant upon them.

The island’s Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest — a closed-canopy forest that’s up to 8 metres tall in some places — is a Critically Endangered Ecological Community under NSW law. It is also home to 86% of the endemic plant species on the island.¹ This forest is a globally unique ecosystem as it is found only on the two peaks of Lord Howe Island, at altitudes of over 750m.¹ This unique ecosystem is directly threatened by climate change as the average temperature rises and rainfall and cloud cover become more variable.¹

Temperatures have risen over the past century, and are expected to continue to increase in the future. The Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest is particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures because it is situated on the summit of two mountain peaks and so cannot move to a higher altitude to adjust.

There has also been a 31% decline in annual rainfall over the past 50 years on Lord Howe Island. Lord Howe experienced its lowest annual rainfall in 2018 (984.6 mm), according to data collected by the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM). Lord Howe also had its driest December on record in 2018, with just 8.2 mm of rainfall, and its driest January on record in 2019, with only 1 mm of rainfall during the month, less than 1% of what the island would usually see at that time of year. In the future, rainfall variability is projected to increase.

Since 1945, there has been a long-term decline in the proportion of days with cloud cover around the mountain peaks on Lord Howe Island.¹ The semi-permanent cloud layer is important in sustaining the Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest, as it provides the moisture and humidity needed to keep the unique plant communities alive.¹ This is particularly vital during periods of low rainfall. Cloud loss also increases the direct solar radiation exposure which heats and dries out the canopy, threatening the existence of this unique forest.  As sea surface temperatures continue to rise with climate change, scientists anticipate this will increase the altitude at which clouds form over tropical mountains, adding further pressure to the ecosystem.

A warming climate also drives more severe storm events, which threaten the survival of adult trees in the Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest due to storm damage¹. Stronger storms also threaten the island’s shoreline and shallow reefs that are vulnerable to wave erosion and sea level rise.  As the world’s most southern coral reef, the cold water corals are part of what make it so unique. However, scientists believe ocean warming and acidification will threaten cold water coral species more than their warm water counterparts.

Less than 500 people live full-time on the island, so the 15,000 annual tourists (limited to 400 at any one time for ecological reasons) are vital to the island’s economy. More than 50% of Lord Howe residents are employed in tourism-related industries. With climate change driving more severe extreme weather events, Lord Howe Island is at risk of losing the natural environments that make it globally unique, and the tourism industry that is dependent on it. 

To read more about climate change impacts on Australia’s $43 billion tourism industry, check our our full tourism report ‘Icons at Risk: Climate Change Threatening Australian Tourism’.  

1. Auld, T. D., & Leishman, M. R. (2015). Ecosystem risk assessment for Gnarled Mossy Cloud Forest, Lord Howe Island, Australia. Austral Ecology, 40(4), 364-372. https://doi.org/10.1111/aec.12202

The post Lord Howe Island: Under pressure from climate change appeared first on Climate Council.