I hope we are ready for the smaller consequences of climate change. For no matter what they do in Copenhagen, there will be big changes and smaller changes and the world will have to cope. For some the changes will be drastic. Several Pacific Island nations will disappear and their populations will be forced to migrate to nations like Australia.
Land which is no productive agricultural land will become desert and the farmers of that land will be forced from properties which they have invested time and love for, in some cases, generations.
Here in Sydney we can expect sea levels to inundate areas like Sylvania Waters which will finally be truthfully named and the house built there on reclaimed land are swamped (or more properly return to being a swamp).
The people now living in Dover Heights in Sydney may find themselves living on an island and need to rely on a ferry to get to the city. Perhaps there will be a causeway built along Old South Head Road as sea surges will have washed away parts of Bondi and the Golf course to link Rose Bay directly with the sea.
In Manly the sea levels will be such that, from time the time, king tides will wash over The Corso and join Manly Cove with the Pacific Ocean creating North Head Island.
At places like Terrigal in New South Wales houses built on the foreshore dunes will become a memory. This is not speculation but fact. It may be that the rise in sea levels will take fifty years or it may be ten years. It will be exciting for some to wait and see but for others it will be devastating.
It parts of the world like Bangladesh, property damage will be the least of worries as tidal inundation will threaten the lives of many millions. These people will have to go somewhere. I am afraid the "border protection" policies of today will be swept aside by a Tsunami of people.
James Pope
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