Climate Report: Queensland Bears The Brunt Of Natural Disasters
Supercharged by fossil fuels
A new report reveals Queensland has suffered more economic damage from natural disasters than any other state or territory.
The Climate Council report states that Queensland has lost around $30 billion from extreme weather events since the 1970s, almost three times the amount of Victoria.
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Former QFES Commissioner Lee Johnson said, "It clearly shows how many rainfall and flooding records that have been broken across Australia already this year.
"Here in Queensland, particularly south-east Queensland, there were about $7.7 billion cost to the economy and our social fabric," he said.
In the wake of back-to-back events, Mr Johnson warns the state’s disaster management system is under pressure, with staff and volunteers overwhelmed.
"They live in communities. And they're impacted by what's happening in the disaster sense, just as much as anybody else."
The former QFES commissioner believes there's ample opportunity for governments to better coordinate disaster responses.
"We're into floods and cyclones while southern Australia is burning and we're able to share resources both ways, and we've done that over many years," he said.
"That's getting harder and harder, so some thought has to go into how can we cross-border support each other better? What mechanisms can be introduced that might make that easier?"
The Climate Council's report highlights that Australia’s weather disasters have been "supercharged by climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels".
It echoes the latest CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology's State of the Climate report, which attributed changes to weather and climate extremes as being driven by escalating levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused mostly by the burning of fossil fuels.
Excluding Western Australia, Queensland produces the most coal and more gas than any other state.
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