We've had an environmental health scare of major proportions - but now, at least, we can be real, says Adrian Glamorgan

The world got a health scare last month. Two thousand climate scientists, supported by officials from governments the world over, confirmed the world is getting hotter - and hotter. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced that it was 90-99 per cent likely that the unprecedented melting of the Greenland permanent ice cap, the trend to more intense cyclones since 1970, the extending of drought in many countries, the change in rainfall in the tropics, the incidence of rain coming less often but harder when it does, heat waves and extreme high tides, are all symptoms of global warming, human caused.

Two hundred mega-gigatons of carbon have glutted into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, trapping in heat from the sun like glass in a greenhouse. Eleven out of the warmest 12 years on record occurred in the last 12 years.

Global concentrations of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide now far exceed pre-industrial levels over the last 650,000 years. The price for our mere 200 year old travel and consumption spree could be the loss of half of all species on earth, all the coral reefs, 100 million people without homes or country, desertified farms and rainforests turned barren. Some, like NASA scientist Dr James Hansen, are suggesting that if we reach a tipping point for climate runaway, humans could quickly find themselves living on effectively a different planet. Hansen is also deeply concerned that the White House has been editing US federal press releases to make climate change seem less threatening.

That's what makes this United Nations report so important. It's objective, peer-reviewed (several times over), and timely. The IPCC warns us to expect hotter temperatures and rises in sea level to continue for centuries. From now to 2100, we can expect a rise in world temperature in the range of 1.1 and 6.4 degrees Celsius. Sea levels will probably rise by 18 to 59cm, a real threat to some coastlines with surges and king tides. (A leaked CSIRO report last month notes that Tasmania and Victoria's east coast will face the equivalent of "100 year" storms.)

This is just the first instalment: the Working Group 1 IPCC simply establishing the scientific basis. Next month, look out for a second report, which will examine the impacts, adaptation and vulnerabilities of climate change and then, in early May, Working Group III will outline how the world can mitigate - but not yet eliminate - the problem. By the end of the year, the world will be given a synthesised assessment. Climate change will stay in the news for some time yet.

The world has responded quickly to the global warning. There was near universal acceptance of the reality of climate change and recognition of the need for action. Within a week, for example, the European Union announced it would mandate car manufacturers to cut their emissions by 20 per cent. Then the Earth Challenge was announced by former US Vice President Al Gore and billionaire entrepreneur Richard Branson: find a way to remove a billion tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere, and $32 million is yours. (Australian of the Year climate scientist Tim Flannery will be a judge on the panel.)

Australians have suddenly become quite concerned about global warming. After all, we have the highest emissions per capita of any country in the developed world, six times higher than Chinese per capita emissions. As a nation we emit more greenhouse gases than Indonesia, which has 200 million people. We want to see action, yet Australia's greenhouse gas emissions from electricity have gone up 40 per cent since 1990. No one thinks that climate change will be easy. But something, many things, need to be done.

So let's imagine: One dream is that our governments and we as a community will start taking the whole issue seriously. We'll shift to renewables, and preventative work like better building codes and better emission standards. We'll encourage carbon trading, with a cap to make the trading real. Our economy will make the change. Some point along, our hearts will grasp how much is enough, and ask no more.

The second option is that the community will be coaxed out of concern by politicians and mining companies. In America, there was a suggestion that a huge solar sail might be floated up into space to keep the sun off us. Bizarre. In Australia, we had the study that told us that nuclear power is the painless greenhouse answer - despite it taking 18 years of coal burning to refine the uranium, and no accounting for the handing over of tens of thousands of years of nuclear waste-keeping to later generations, Renewables weren't even investigated. Our planet deserves better.

In 1991, I worked for a key environmental organisation that lobbied the then Hawke government about climate change. We reasoned then that if Australia switched to clean technologies and changed building and waste management codes we could save ourselves from dirty coal power stations and establish renewable energy as a major exporter. At the time, the mainstream press was more interested in what Phillip Toyne thought of Ros Kelly, the environment minister. The country missed the opportunity, in part because what such media news often marks not what is important, but what titillates. Environmentalists have been now outlining the trend for almost two decades.

I suggested the IPCC Report was the equivalent of a health scare. No one likes bad news, but if it comes at least you know where you stand, you can be real, and it's an excellent focuser of one's energies. The IPCC Report is plain, simple, direct, compelling. We are in trouble. We need to do something, many things. Starting now. It gives us a jolt, but let's not bother about denial, anger or bargaining. Acceptance brings better gifts. It allows us to get on with the new life of our changing world, where there is so much to be done.