Branches OverviewClimate Change Australia started in 2005 with the first branches in Taree in the Manning Valley and then, later, in Grafton in the Clarence Valley. A branch in Port Macquarie in the Hastings was established in 2006. These rural towns, situated on the NSW north coast, are not major industrial centres teeming with people. They are also not hotbeds of radical action. Small towns, with often small concerns and little capacity to make major change. But, with climate change, the tranquility of these towns is set to be change. It is predicted that the weather will become more extreme. There will be longer periods of drought, fuelling larger bushfires and threatening farmers incomes. There will be more intense storm events and larger floods - not good news for towns situated on floodplains. The incidence of insect-borne diseases such as Ross River and Barmah Forest viruses is also likely to increase. A combination of sea level rise and storm surges will wreak havoc as coastal settlements are inundated. The year 2005 marked the start of the surge in concern about climate change. Suddenly global warming and the associated changes in climate were topics in the mainstream media, and not just on the environment page. At the one extreme we had schlock movies (e.g. The Day After Tomorrow); at the other, Tim Flannery’s The Weather Makers. The growth of awareness of climate change is one of the factors contributing to the change of government at the 2007 federal election - the Howard Government, by refusing to ratify Kyoto or to increase the Mandatory Renewable Energy Target, seemed as much of a fossil as the fossil fuel industries it continued to blindly support.But concern about climate change has not yet turned into the actual deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions that we need to avoid catastrophic climate change. Action at all levels - from individuals to governments - is needed. And it is needed soon.
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