What are the threats of inaction on climate change ?
When is the world ending if we don't do something ?
Have we not been doing anything, what are all these turbines and solar panels everywhere ?
I'm happy that the science is settled, why are we still throwing money at organisations to prove it ?
We have been doing things. Even China has been doing things. But not enough.
The main threat of climate change is to our food production. As it is the world does not produce enough food (though it could, it is poor management on a world basis that means we have a lot of people starving). Since we already can't manage our arable land and distribution networks well enough to feed everyone (due to poor political processes throughout the world), rapid change in where and how much food we can grow is likely to result in catastrophic food shortages in many regions.
Another big threat to people is an increase in catastrophic weather events. Of course, these are even worse in areas where there are already food shortages.
Economic threats outside of increased food prices and direct costs of weather events include the collapse of the insurance industries (due to the collapse of the reinsurance industry), the costs of managing millions of climate refugees, and ironically, increased energy costs required to cope with living in extreme temperatures.
There are undoubtedly opportunity costs and threats from mass extinction events as ecosystems are destroyed, but we will likely never know their true extent.
Obviously, the collapse of robust, technologically advanced civilisations like our own requires more than a few shocks. It may be that our Australian grandchildren merely have to live with terrible weather, a poorer economy and less reliable food sources, and the larger threats to countries with less capacity stay overseas.
But the biggest threat to western civilisation will be war over scarce resources. War has been, and will always be a threat, but it increases in likelihood when other systems are under stress.
I'm not sure who is trying to still prove climate change (though many people are still unconvinced. This will always be the way, some people genuinely believe in a flat Earth and still more (including a recently retired education minister) don't believe in evolution). Surely study of climate change is now directed at answering just these questions you have asked.
Asking when is the world ending if we don't take action on climate change is disingenuous. When do we all die if we don't have hospitals? When does the country burn if we don't have fire fighters?
I believe Shorten should have made a better effort to qualify (if not quantify) the effects of climate change, as should anyone hoping to change perceptions on the need for action. There are organisations who are trying to quantify these things (I guess one might mistake that for "still trying to prove it"), but the disadvantage of taking a scientific approach is that one's language should be bounded by probabilities, and possibilities, and nuances. As the world is nuanced.
And the simplified black and white view is an easy sell.
