Late last year he gave a talk to the prestigious Royal Society in London where he said, “Few seem to realise that the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] IPCC models predict almost unanimously that by 2040 the average summer in Europe will be as hot as the summer of 2003 when over 30,000 died from heat. By then we may cool ourselves with air conditioning, but without extensive irrigation the plants will die and both farming and natural ecosystems will be replaced by scrub and desert. What will there be to eat? The same dire changes will affect the rest of the world and I can envisage Americans migrating into Canada and the Chinese into Siberia, but there may be little food for any of them.”

And recently it was reported that the average summer temperature in Sydney, Australia could be close to 50 degrees C. Average?? So we all ’solve’ that by getting air conditioning. But what runs that but electricity, and in this country that means coal. Being the creatures we are, we arrange to keep cool by using just what is required to make us even hotter.

The fact that we can even consider this idiotic idea to save us in the future, without dealing with our lifestyle now so it does not happen, is the reason for this article.

On the way I am going to explore two other tracks. This is the second: In the past fifty years the rich countries have used more resources than every human who ever lived before. We are the throw-away culture – and that is only because we are producing so much we can afford to throw things away.

I lived in Bali for a while in the 70s. There was no plastic, little metal, and just enough food. Nothing was ever thrown away as everything, no mater how small, could be put to good use. Wrapping was a banana leaf, and when finished was eaten by the pigs.

By comparison our waste (the waste that reflects how much we make and consume) is beyond belief. Though I have only US figures, ours are comparable. One example will do: every year Americans throw away enough aluminum cans to make six thousand DC-10 airplanes.

It makes an interesting quiz question: the total US yearly waste would fill a convoy of ten-ton garbage trucks long enough to:

a. reach half-way to the moon
b. wrap around the Earth six times
c. connect the North and South Poles
d. build a bridge between North America and China

The answer is b. Even though Americans comprise only five percent of the world’s population, they use nearly a third of its resources and produce almost half of its hazardous waste. And in Australia we could not find the gumption to phase out plastic bags.

So, here is the third track: In a recent survey of people who voluntarily cut back their consumption, eighty-six percent said that they were happier as a result. Only nine percent said they were less happy.

Three tracks. They tell us that high consumption is threatening the planet, burying us under unbelievable amounts of waste, and is not making us happier. Something is definitely wrong.

Why are we doing this?

We are in fact quite clever in deceiving ourselves. We have exported the more obvious toxic wastes of the industries that satisfy our consumption to other countries, to China and India where carbon emissions rose by 8 percent last year, and will rise even more this year.

The CSIRO, Australia’s federal research centre, reported the global outcome: “There has been a four-fold increase in the rate of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions since 2000.” Four-fold (!!) and the world is supposed to becoming conscious of global warming, serious about mitigating it and holding endless and apparently futile conferences in Kyoto, Nairobi and Bali to address it.

In spite of all the rhetoric, the situation is getting worse by the day.

This four-fold increase has come because we are consuming more and more. Now why is this? Knowing the state of the planet surely we would rein ourselves in – but do we? There has been enough information shoved in front of us, but what are we doing with that?

Little, and for good reason.

Remember I am a therapist and have worked with clients for twenty years. In my experience most of us take whatever frightens us or makes us uncomfortable and push it out of sight. This puts it into the unconscious. It does not disappear, but just lies in waiting like a faithful hound until let out.

Meanwhile the conscious part can go on living as if nothing had happened. But as Carl Jung pointed out so perspicaciously, the hound keeps howling from the depth and thereby influences all that we do. So we cant go on as before. We may try to carry on as always, but in truth everything we do is influenced by the unseen and suppressed feelings from the hound in the kennel.

There being no escape, we act out this unconscious material, but pretend we are still being normal. This seems to be the reason we have all become so much busier during the past ten years, and why we are buying more and more as if there is no tomorrow. The greedy men on Wall Street invented ways of making money that could not be sustained, especially over the past 6 or 7 years. The hierarchy in China started building coal-fired power stations at the rate of six or seven every month, and India is planning not to be left behind.

Wherever we look there is madness. Fishermen, knowing that 90 percent of the big fish have gone, resort to bottom trawling that eradicates all in its path; loggers destroy the ‘lungs of the planet’ in an unscrupulous grab for profits; the Balinese build over their paddy fields to make room for tourist hotels; etc etc. The whole world is in a mad grab for the last bit before it is all gets burnt up.

This is the influence of the hound in the unconscious. We don’t understand what is really motivating us, but remain caught in the excitement of having shiny new things, and to hell with the consequences.

Why? Isn’t it better to be honest? In fact, no – its more dangerous by a long shot.

In my experience, once we begin to open Pandora’s Box we cannot be sure what will come creeping out. Most of my clients quite quickly recognise that they don’t really love themselves. When they look inside it feels empty. I have only rarely met a client who does not feel there is an vacant hole within that is black and full of grief.

It is an essential aspect of growing up that we suppress who we really are in order to be accepted and loved by mum and dad. This means we actually push our real needs away in order to cope with their demands. It is as if we have sacrificed our original selves to get their love, and it leaves a trail of sorrow.

We call it Existential Grief because its about our very existence. It is about us being ’socialised’ by the family and school so that we forget who we truly are. This leaves an enormous grief that is too difficult to confront, and we hide it in the kennel of the unconscious, leaving the howls from the kennel to undermine our self-confidence.

In our society we use material goods and social roles to cover up the black hole of grief. By surrounding ourselves with pretty and expensive things we tell everyone else that we are really OK. This is, so I learn from my clients, the major cause of going shopping, going on buying sprees and being consumers. We have come to believe that bright new things will fill the empty spaces inside.

This seems to be why we cannot really confront the devil of global warming that is being fed by every dollar we spend. For our own safety as a species we should all be consuming less and sharing more and striving to make life simple, whereas we are literally hell-bent on getting the most while we still can.

The hound sitting in the kennel of our emptiness makes it too hard for us to look at the truth and change our ways. We cannot alter the terminal path we are on, because to do so would expose our deepest fears that underneath all the tinsel and stuff we really are not worth much at all. Not even the protection we should be giving to our beautiful children is enough to move us to confront this terrifying personal fear.

A four-year analysis of the world’s ecosystems sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute found that over-consumption has pushed 15 out of 24 ecosystems essential to human life “beyond their sustainable limits.” Our insatiable desire for more is moving the planet toward a state of collapse that may be “abrupt and potentially irreversible.”

Since we all know that, can we not go beyond the fear to follow David Attenborough, who said in a recent interview, “How could I look my grandchildren in the eye and say I knew and did nothing?“

I ask you, dear reader, to stay with me a little longer and follow the key information with me, for we are all going to feel the consequences quite soon, and only the actions you do right now are going to make the outcome any better.

The sad truth is that the dissolution of the atmosphere is moving faster than anticipated. The key indicators are exceeding most of the computer projections. Nowhere have the remedial actions already taken made things better.

This is because 80 percent of global warming comes from burning fossil fuels, and none of the wind farms or hybrid cars has made the slightest dent in its use.

As more people and nations acquire more wealth, consumption rises and emissions increase — all exacerbated by the growing world population. This combination is increasing world temperatures, especially in the northern hemisphere where the ice in the Arctic sea is fast disappearing.

In Footprints (December 2006) I reported the US Navy calculation that there would be no summer sea-ice in the Arctic by 2012, whereas the international IPCC study had earlier calculated this would not happen until the end of the century.

Last year it was reported that ice-melt was exceeding expectations by 30 percent. At the Canberra Conference a number of speakers said they “would not be surprised if all sea-ice will be gone within a year or two.”

The great glaciers of Greenland are supporting the sea-ice nearby, but these too are melting. Speaker after speaker produced evidence that the Greenland ice sheets were “unstable”, seriously melting around the edges and being undermined by melt-water rushing through crevasses and literally putting the skids under the glaciers, so they slide faster towards the sea.

One large glacier on the west coast, 3 miles wide and a mile deep, is now slipping into the sea at 2 meters an hour, when the normal rate was around 90 meters per year.

We know that were all the ice on Greenland to melt, sea levels would rise over 7 meters. The question is how long may this take? The IPCC estimate of hundreds of years is being contradicted by studies of past glaciations. Andrew Glickson and Bradley Opdyke showed that at the end of earlier ice ages the glaciers collapsed suddenly.

Suddenly does not mean over a century or two, but within a decade.

We all saw the speed at which this can happen in 2002 when 2,600 square kilometres on the Larsen B ice shelf in the Antarctic disintegrated and disappeared in less than five weeks.

This could happen with Greenland.

We are already feeling the consequences in Australia. The day before the conference it was reported that low-lying coastal areas like Cairns and Narrabeen will be at serious risk.

The Sydney Morning Herald had earlier reported the IPCC study that showed that 700,000 houses lie within 3 kilometres of the coast and less than 6 meters above sea level, most of them in NSW and Queensland (July 19, 2006).

It looks like the government is beginning to recognize what a monumental problem this is going to be. We are a coastal civilization. Most of us live within either sight of the sea or just a short drive away. Our beaches and our beach culture help to define us.

In August the Federal Department of Climate Change warned that a one metre increase in sea levels would push the waterline inwards by an average of 100 metres. Combined with storm surges and king tides the consequent coastal flooding could affect double this area.

Experts working for the Victorian State Government have warned that suburbs such as Elwood, St Kilda and South Melbourne are at risk, while towns like Lakes Entrance and Cottesloe will probably need to be moved to higher ground. The situation is similar in other states.

Will Steffen of the ANU told the Coast to Coast conference in August that “we (meaning scientists) have underestimated. We see change happening much faster than we thought,” and went on to warn that devastating rise in sea levels is now inevitable. It means that close to a billion people will be displaced around the world — this is not just a local problem.

These warnings do not address the most important ethical issues: If your house was on the beach, or just a street or two away, how would you feel being forced to move? Where would you go? Who would take you in? It could not be sold, so how would you repay your mortgage?

These warnings are based on a sea level rise of just one metre.

Britain is a step ahead of us, for their Environment Agency is planning to evacuate parts of the coast. The Daily Mail (19 August) reported, with astonishing photographs, that houses and farming land are already being washed away.

Early in the year the UK government promised that no seaside villages would be abandoned. Since then it has faced reality and now proposes to let the sea breach part of the Norfolk coast.

Understandably the reactions have been swift. Especially in Norfolk where much of the land is only a few meters above the North Sea.

The locals were horrified. In just this one area six villages, 300 properties, thousands of acres of farmland and a section of the Norfolk Broads would be wiped off the map, while much of the Suffolk coast would be inundated shortly afterward.

We have not faced this issue in a public way in Australia, not yet, though there is an indication in a recent ruling by Victoria’s Civil and Administrative Tribunal that vetoed the approval for six buildings in Gippsland because of threats from rising sea levels.

Here is the most potent political problem. How will we who live on or near the sea react? What is the political fall-out? Will we demand sea-walls and expensive protective measures? This has already been demanded by some wealthy Byron Bay and Cottesloe residents. If not built, or not affordable, and if our houses do get washed away, who will recompense us for our mortgages? Let alone our loss of wealth?

Dr Jo Mummery of the Department of Climate Change has estimated that 270,000 houses in NSW alone are currently under risk, many very expensive. If their mortgages were only average, the unrecoverable loss would be close to 100 billion dollars.

It is unlikely that insurance will cover it. It is also unlikely that the Federal Government will either. When asked by the Victorian Premier whether Canberra would pay to hold the sea back, Senator Wong pointed out that “matters of land ownership and land development reside with state and territory governments”.

The buck will be passed, and a million Australians will be at imminent risk of being swamped or undermined by the sea. What will happen to the value of their properties over the next decade or so? There is no compensation available for that.

This scenario assumes that only insignificant portions of Greenland and the Western Antarctic will melt. But we know this is unrealistic. The one metre rise being considered in most public discussions will be exceeded.

How do we know?

It was agreed at the Conference that two degree rise in global temperatures is now inevitable from the pollution we have already put into the atmosphere, though it may take us until 2025 to get there. We also know that in the historical past every degree rise in temperature has quite rapidly produced a minimum 4 metres rise in sea levels.

So, the past tells us that 8 meters is on the way, though none know when. This is not the one meter assumed in our government’s discussions.

Also, there are the international implications: The mere 2 percent of the world’s land that is less than 10 metres above sea level is home to more than 10 per cent of the world’s population — 680 million and counting — and much valuable property and vital farmland.

Without mega-engineering protection, many cities would be inundated — including New York, London, Sydney, Vancouver, Melbourne and Tokyo — and leave surrounding areas vulnerable to storm surges. In Florida, Louisiana, the Netherlands, Bangladesh and elsewhere, whole regions and cities would vanish. China’s economic powerhouse, Shanghai, has an average elevation of just 4 metres.

We need to address the full enormity of this issue before it is foisted on us. No government will face the unpalatable unless we push them into it. So, this is what you can do:

Personally visit your local members, state and federal, and your local councillor, and tell them what you want them to do. It is confronting, even for a politician, to be faced with your strong opinions, your real worries for the future and your determination to have them act in our interests.

Do it! And do it today, please.