The release of the IPCC’s latest report on September 27th has generated another wave of interest in climate change, especially the looming consequences of rising sea levels.

According to the report, sea levels have risen by 19 cm in the last century and will rise again between 26 cm to 82 cm by 2100. The worst-case global warming scenario will see rises of 98 cm. This will put many global cities at risk and some low-lying islands in the South Pacific will become uninhabitable due to rising seas and floods.

Research commissioned by Waverley Council has revealed that Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach will recede by 20 metres by 2050 and may disappear completely by the end of the 21st century unless measures to protect it are put into place. In NSW, the whole coastline is vulnerable to inundation and coastal erosion due to sea-level rise, increased high-intensity storm events and the possibility of several 1-in-100 year flood events every year. The Government’s own reports clearly acknowledge the risks of climate change to thousands of residential buildings, roads and railways that could amount to a damage of $40 billion just on the NSW coast.

Our decision-makers and political leaders are being given consistent advice by experts about the significant impacts of climate change. The science on climate change is settled, yet we are seeing ‘wilful blindness’ at all levels of government. In the case of Waverley Council, this has resulted in Council not responding to its own studies to protect Bondi Beach, and instead planning expensive beachside infrastructure projects. This is not surprising, given the NSW O’Farrell Government last year scrapped the requirement for local councils to consider projected sea level rises in their planning decisions. At the Federal level, new PM Tony Abbott’s views on climate change and his opposition to the carbon price are well known. One of his Government’s first acts after gaining power was to abolish the Climate Commission, and their direct action plan has been widely criticised as being unable to achieve even 5% reductions by 2020, let alone the 30% reductions required by 2020 for meaningful action on climate change.

So why are Australian decision-makers not willing to plan for the realities of predicted impacts of climate change?

Some particularly difficult challenges lie with the complex dimensions of climate change itself, namely, long time horizons, interconnections between issues, the need for integrative thinking, the influence of values and ideology, and our seeming inability to come to terms with these.

On the one hand, many of the irreversible impacts of climate change such as sea-level rise and loss of biodiversity will only become apparent over decades. On the other hand, the significant benefits of investing to avoid catastrophic climate change will also only be seen by future generations. Addressing climate change requires consistent and continuous efforts to achieve long term reform. However, our governmental systems are limited by short, 3 to 4-year, political cycles, creating a challenge for making decisions when costs or benefits of these may not become apparent within these cycles. Political leaders are particularly attracted to policies that have quick pay-offs so they can demonstrate effective outcomes to their electorates within one cycle. And even though Ecological Sustainable Development requires a responsibility to future generations, there is no way in our current system to make governments accountable to this principle.

But the challenges we face are not just the difficulties of overcoming complexities of long-term thinking, they also stem from the different values we hold. Our worldviews shape the way we perceive problems and devise solutions. Defining climate change as being caused not by humans but natural climate variability frames it as a narrow bio-physical phenomenon resolved by traditional technocratic solutions focussed on fixing symptoms. Abbott’s direct action plan has the hallmarks of this simplistic way of thinking. The alternative view of climate change is a human-induced problem arising from interactions between humans and nature based primarily on extracting resources to maximise profit while ignoring social and environmental justice, creating uncertainty, risk and irreversible consequences. Accepting this view forces us to consider new ways of thinking and exploring a variety of solutions - regulatory, systemic, behavioural, and technological, which actually address the underlying causes. Moreover, we need to proactively prepare for consequences of sea-level rises not just in NSW and Australia but in neighbouring islands, to support climate migration.

Although we have much rigorous scientific evidence to support anthropogenic climate change and its inherent complexities, it seems we are unwilling to accept this reality or make much needed changes to our economic and societal systems. Admittedly, changing dominant mindsets and worldviews is never easy. We are creatures of habit and change jeopardises the way of life we are familiar with, or at least the way of life the corporate and political elite are familiar with. What is more disturbing however is that we are unwilling to even have a mature discussion to unpack the complexities, uncertainties and ideological differences. Until we can confront these challenges and find a way to clarify differences, much needed transformational change will remain elusive, leaving our future generations to contend with sea-level rises, widespread destruction of our natural capital and loss of human lives.

Dr Mehreen Faruqi is a Greens MP in NSW Parliament and the party's state environment spokesperson.