“Where will we go from here if our islands are underwater?” asked Uncle Kabai outside the Federal Court in Melbourne on Wednesday,before the hearing started. “This is why it is important for us to keep knocking on the government’s door.”
These two Gudamalulgal traditional owners from the remote,low-lying islands of Boigu and Saibai in the Torres Strait say the federal government’s failure to reduce emissions will force their communities to become Australia’s first climate-change refugees.
They allege the climate crisis is causing sea levels to rise,their cultural sites to be washed away and the islands’ soil to be ruined by salt and become unsuitable for growing crops.
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In court before Justice Michael Wigney,lawyers for the pair called Emeritus Professor David Karoly from the University of Melbourne to give expert evidence about how the Earth’s temperature and atmosphere interact,and the role of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.
Karoly said that data collected from the Cape Grim weather station,in Tasmania,had shown continuous increases in carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.
“For the last 2000 years,until major burning of fossil fuels and industrial activity and land clearing,carbon dioxide concentrations remained below 290 parts per million,” he said. That reading is now more than 400 parts per million.