At a recent Climate Change Institute event ANU academic Neil Gunningham commented that no government in the world has been genuinely honest with its population about the full challenge of climate change and its likely consequences. In Australia this is true to an almost extreme level, with politicians actively campaigning to support the coal industry and an extraordinary deliberate defunding of climate change research for both adaptation and mitigation.

Climate change is everywhere through human health. It resonates and affects every medical specialty and it demands our attention now

The widening gulf between the magnitude of the problems identified by climate change researchers and the current federal government response is huge. At the state level things are more variable, with the recent Victorian election won perhaps in part on the basis of a promise for meaningful action on climate change. And yet no state government has been completely honest about projections for economic and social loss and health consequences of climate change either.

Read the full article by Dr Arnagretta Hunter in The Canberra Times.