This is not business as usual

This Friday 20/09/2019 Animal Happiness Vet in Manning will be closed. Please read on to understand why.

It’s not business as usual for the world’s children to skip school to get adults to pay attention to the climate crisis.

It’s not business as usual for those children to have to ask the adults to skip work.

It’s not business as usual for citizens to strike to get governments to make meaningful commitments to climate action.

So, on Friday 20 September, we’re not doing business as usual. 1

From 11am till 2pm, 20/09/2019, Animal Happiness Vet will be closed for business. Our staff will be attending the Global Strike 4 Climate in the Perth CBD. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and ask for your understanding. We have an unwavering focus on animal happiness. And it is entirely clear, from burning farm animals to the recent extinction of Australia’s Bramble cay melomys, that the happiness of the world’s animals is deteriorating.

As well we ask all of you – whether working, studying, or whatever – to consider coming along to join this protest. This time it really is important. At this point in 2019 we are really running out of time to avert the worst of the climate emergency that is coming. The changes we are currently seeing are in line with many of the worst-case scenarios suggested by climate scientists 20 and 30 years ago.

So we need to get out there this Friday 20th and tell our Government our concerns loudly. Please join us.

If you still doubt the accepted science, please read on.

It is no longer appropriate to allow our Government’s senior ministers to state on the record that they are not sure if the heating climate is the result of human influence. The science is almost universally accepted. The decreasing numbers of skeptics with a relevant education are easily identified by their ties to large fossil fuel organisations and lobby groups.

The scientific reality is that climate change affects health and wellbeing by increasing the situations in which infectious diseases can be transmitted, and through more extreme weather events, particularly heatwaves.

Climate change will decimate wildlife populations and drive even higher rates of extinction.

Climate change will cause higher mortality and morbidity from heat stress.

Climate change will cause injury and mortality from increasingly severe weather events.

Climate change will cause increases in the transmission of vector-borne diseases such as heartworm disease.

Climate change will cause food insecurity resulting from declines in agricultural outputs.

Climate change will cause a higher incidence of mental ill-health.

These effects are already being observed internationally and in Australia. There is no doubt that climate change is an animal and human health emergency. 2

Many of you reading this will know me personally and have taken my advice regarding the health of your animals in the past. If you have any trust in me please heed this. In 2008 I completed a veterinary masters in conservation medicine. I studied the effects of global warming and its mitigation extensively.

We need the Australian Government to take the problem vastly more seriously than they are. There is so much that can be done.

Crucially, it is totally wrong that being only 1% of global emissions means Australia can’t make a difference. Absolute bullshit. We lead by example and profit from ingenuity and providing solutions to the world.

And we stop digging up coal.

For goodness sake.

For happiness sake.

Dr Gary Beilby