The Obama administration's recent Global climate change impacts in the United States provides a detailed picture to date of the impacts on the US in the worst case scenarios, when no action is taken to cut emissions. What it indicates is that even if the world is successful in cutting carbon emissions in the future, the various states in the US need to start preparing for rising sea levels, hotter weather and other effects of climate change.

Same for Australia. The states have to adapt, no matter what we do, because of the nature of the greenhouse gases means that they are still going to be in the atmosphere for the next 100 years. Cutting greenhouse gases in the future will take decades to have an effect while the planet continues to warm. States have only recently begun to consider what steps they must take to minimise the damage expected from sea level rise, storm surges, droughts and water shortages because of climate changes.

Climate changes means rising temperatures in south eastern Australia over the next few decades that will lead to more heatwaves, wildfires and droughts. Does that mean withering in the vineyards of South Australia?

Every low-lying community coastal in the country will in the coming decades face the real cost of increased erosion, storms and sea-level rises exacerbated by global warming. This presents local people and the government with a stark dilemma. Is it worth spending billions on defending homes and livelihoods? Or, faced with inexorable sea-level rise, should expensive coastal defences be abandoned, leading to the evacuation of land and houses?

The process of coastal erosion from rising sea levels with cause strong political resistance as farm land is lost, house prices fall and fresh water marshes become salt marshes.