Brooke fast forwards to the year 2100 to discover what adventuring in some of your favourite Aussie locations might look like if we don’t start taking serious and immediate climate action, now. 

It’s been a while since we’ve had a normal summer holiday, hey? Whether dampened by endless rain or scorched by flames, coordinating your retreat into nature is getting tricky. Well, soon it might not just be the day-to-day weather that’s raining on your parade, but the growing effects of climate change too. Here’s what could be in store for Australia in 2100.

Skiing in The High Country

Remember back in the day when people would laugh when you said you went skiing in Australia? And then you’d show them the epic slopes of High Country Victoria or Kosciuszko National Park just to see the stunned but impressed look in their eyes? 

Well, no one’s laughing now. And all those moments of shock are for the entirely wrong reasons. Almost all of the ski resorts in Australia have closed.

First, they shrunk their opening times – what used to be an average 112-day ski season shrunk to 30 days by 2050. Then, they closed completely. 

The only resort open now is Thredbo in NSW, which at 2,037m was always Australia’s highest. You know the chances of snow are pretty much slim-to-none, but you decide to head there and hope for the best. Maybe you’ll be lucky.

The winding Alpine Road is the first sign that things are not A-OK. Snow chains are no longer mandatory. You blast your car’s air-con as if it’s the height of summer. The road is empty of snow. And empty of people.

Thredbo’s snow-capped mountains may all melt away | Photo @mfoubister | Illustration @velevitart

Arriving at Thredbo, it soon becomes clear why. There’s no snow here — and there hasn’t been for years, according to the worn-out, ex-ski bum manning the desk at your hotel.

If you want to attempt to ski, he says, there’s a teeny, tiny chance of man-made snow at the top of the one remaining slope. But even snow cannons need it to be below freezing to make snow, and the chances of that halved way back in the 2040s. Mountain biking it is then.

A Coastal Walk in Sydney

It was 2020 when the prediction was made. 40% of Australia’s beaches would be lost to rising sea levels. Of course, no one listened. And I guess they were right not to because we didn’t lose 40% — we lost 60%. 

That’s over 20,000km of iconic Australian coastline, gone. There’s no such thing as a coastal walk in Sydney now — the city was one of the hardest-hit areas. Its once famous beaches were washed away and replaced with wild oceans that smash against deserted storefronts and long-abandoned homes.

So, when your family comes to visit, you trade them the coastal walk of yesteryear for a trip to Sydney Museum instead. There’s an exhibition called ‘Bygone Bondi’, depicting what life used to be like at Australia’s most famous beach.

The closest you get to a coastal walk is a virtual reality walkthrough of the famous Bondi to Coogee Coastal Walk. The real thing has been underwater for decades now. And those multi-million-dollar Bondi Beach houses everyone was fighting over? Well, let’s just say they wished they’d bought inland.

Coastal walks will be a thing of the past | Photo @tiborbkovacs | Illustration @velevitart

Is this really what’s in store for us?

The Paris Climate Agreement states ‘to avoid dangerous climate change we need to limit global warming to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5°C’. If we don’t, the impacts could be devastating. And a world that looks very, very different when it comes to adventure.

But it’s not just about the risk of long-forgotten flip flops and deserted beach towels. Scientists at Climate Central estimate that 275 million people worldwide live in areas that will be flooded if we reach 3 degrees of warming. That’s ten times the entire Australian population. 

Here’s a sneak peek into the future, if we don’t take some seriously drastic action soon:

  • Australia and New Zealand’s sea levels will rise at rates higher than the global average
  • There’ll be a 50% increase in bushfires – the Black Summer Bushfires were just the beginning
  • Floods follow fires, so those heavy rainfalls brought by La Niña will become the norm
  • We can expect more droughts (just what the farmers need, huh?), especially in Eastern Australia

Yet despite these dire predictions, we’re currently on track to rise 1.5 degrees by 2030. Yep, you read that right — in less than a decade’s time. 

 

Will our rainforests all dry up? | Photo by Caspar S | Illustration @velevitart

We’ve Still Got Time – Just

The good news is that there’s still time to change the future. Making minor lifestyle changes like ditching single-use plastics, buying second-hand, and cycling not driving is an excellent start in the fight against climate change. But we need to think bigger.

And one of the biggest impacts you can have is choosing an ethical bank. 

Why? Because money in your bank doesn’t just sit there. Your bank uses it to lend and to invest. Meaning your hard-earned cashola could be funding fossil fuels without you even realising it. 

By choosing an ethical bank like Bank Australia, which proactively avoids investment in fossil fuels (and other icky things), and focuses on clean energy instead, you can make a huge and ongoing difference.  

 

 

You’ll be actively removing money from the pockets of fossil fuel companies and putting it in the hands of organisations and companies doing our planet good. 

We’ve put together a handy guide on how to change to an ethical bank now, check it out!

Perhaps if we all choose where to spend and invest our money more wisely, the future of adventure won’t look too bleak after all.

 

Feature photo by Caspar S | Illustration @velevitart