A farmer harvests a wheat field stunted by drought near Warracknabeal, about 186 miles (300 kilometers) northwest of Melbourne, Australia, on November 14, 2006.
In a normal year in Australia, wheat farmers should be wading through fields of green. But seven years into the worst drought in modern history, farmers of every variety across the country are attempting to salvage what they can of their failed crops.
About 65 percent of Australia's agricultural land is in drought—and in crisis, experts say.
A lot of the farmers are having a significant loss of income, said Jock Laurie, president of New South Wales Farmers Association.
A lot of people are considering leaving the land.
Sheep graze the stubble of a drought-affected wheat crop near West Wyalong, 310 miles (500 kilometers) west of Sydney, Australia, on October 17, 2007.
Poor grain crops have led to soaring prices for livestock feed, forcing many farmers to sell their animals at a loss. Despite of billions in aid from the government, the drought has become a financial disaster for farmers.
The catastrophe has also taken a hit on farmers' mental well-being. Suicide rates in rural Australia are on the upswing. Experts point to isolation, financial distress and lack of psychological services as contributing factors.
Rod Chalmers, a farmer in Wakool, in the state of New South Wales, said idle time contributes to the stress.
We have no irrigation water this year, so there is nothing to do, he said. These are active workers who want to be productive. That makes a lot of people really unhappy.
Farmer Marshall Rodda (left) and farmhand Gilbert Fryatt (right) stand on the parched earth of an empty dam northwest of Melbourne on November 14, 2006.
La Niña conditions in the Pacific, often associated with heavy rain in Australia, failed to fill water catchments in the Murray-Darling River Basin this year.
Though some hope several consecutive La Niña seasons can break the drought, the prospect of long-term climate change is spawning other ideas.
For instance, the government has created a task force to help move farmers from the dry south to the wet and tropical north.
Hume Weir, the largest dam on the River Murray, about 289 miles (465 kilometers) southwest of Sydney, is at 2 percent capacity, as shown in this February 23, 2007, photo.
As a result, trees once submerged are again visible. Many of the 50,000 farms that depend on River Murray to irrigate crops have no water allocation this year.
In November 2006, a United Nations panel on climate change predicted the annual flow into the Murray-Darling basin is likely to fall 10 to 25 percent by 2050.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization has also forecast that on the east coast, rainfall could drop 40 percent by 2070, and that temperatures will rise about seven degrees.
A rainbow fills the sky after heavy rains hit Cobar, Australia, 442 miles (712 kilometers) northwest of Sydney on May 17, 2007.
Rainstorms in parts of the Australian state of New South Wales in April and May gave hope to farmers that the drought was breaking. But the optimism was short-lived as farmers struggled through a hot and dry winter.
No one knows what will break the drought cycle. La Niña conditions that usually promote rainfall are dissipating, and climatologists say it is too soon to know what will follow. Another El Niño pattern associated with drought may settle in, or La Niña could return.
We probably need two years, back to back, of classic La Niña to make a real difference, said Roger Stone, professor of climatology and water resources at the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba.
Insert: previous .. The Opposition parties want to support the 20 per cent renewable energy target, but say they can not because the Government linked the legislation to the contentious emissions trading scheme. ... to ...
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard told Channel Nine they had been brought forward together in the first place because of their "integrated compensation package".
"But we are in a world of Liberal obstruction because of their divisions, so we are safeguarding our renewable energy target legislation so it can come into effect even if the Liberal Party continues to block the carbon pollution reduction scheme," she said.
The Herald's Environment Editor, Marian Wilkinson, explains the Emissions Trading Scheme. This video will automatically play after a 5 second delay .. inside if you get there .. lol ..
The Senate has defeated legislation to establish an emissions trading scheme, forcing the Government to negotiate with the Opposition or persist with its bill with the threat of an early election.
Just after 11am, the Opposition, Greens, and the independents, Nick Xenophon and Steve Fielding, voted to defeat the package of 11 bills that sought to establish a scheme from 2011 onwards.
The Greens say the Government's 2020 emissions reduction targets - between an unconditional 5 per cent and a highly-conditional 25 per cent - are too timid.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull speaks to fronchbencher Tony Abbott in Parliament today. Photo: Glen McCurtayne
The Coalition and independent senator Nick Xenophon want the Government to consider an alternative scheme, based on a model they commissioned from Frontier Economics.
Family First's Steve Fielding is yet to be convinced human activity is causing global warming.
In the end the Senate voted 42 to 30 to reject the bills.
The Government must now wait three months before reintroducing the same legislation.
If the bills are rejected a second time, Labor will have a trigger to dissolve both houses of Parliament and call an early election.
Insert: I'd guess forget that. Rudd has said he will go full term and too many ifs, 'butts' and cintroversy re scheme.
Before the vote, Climate Change Minister Penny Wong called it a "day of reckoning" on climate change.
"This is a reform that is long overdue, that is in the national interest, that both major political parties said they would implement when they went to the last election," she said.
In summing up the Government's case before the vote, Senator Wong said: 'This bill may be going down today but this is not the end. We will press forward, we will press on with this reform for as long as we have to.
'We will bring this bill back before the end of the year."
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull said he was willing to negotiate amendments to pass a scheme in the event the Government reintroduces the bills.
But his party room is divided and he faces a tough test ahead, even though he has majority support to negotiate.
Phillip Coorey is the Herald's Chief Political Correspondent.
F6 .. Sydney spring dust-up ..officially highest pollution recorded
Sydney Cloaked In Red Dust: Worst Pollution Levels Ever Vanessa Wilson .. Sep 23, 2009
Red dust filled the Sydney skies.
Photo by Felix Francis. (License: Creative Commons Attribution)
The Sydney Harbour Bridge, cloaked in red dust.
Sydney-siders woke to a red dawn and crimson skies this morning as the worst dust storm on record pushed pollution levels to a record high - at more than 1500 times their normal levels.
NSW Department of Climate Change and Water, told The Sydney Morning Herald .. fuagf: please open .. imagine the sunrise we were so lucky to see .. http://www.smh.com.au/multimedia/national/dust-storm-swallows-sydney/20090923-g19h.html .. initial estimates showed the dust plume stretched 600 kilometres along the NSW coast from Sydney to the Queensland border this morning, dumping up to 75,000 tonnes of dust per hour into the Tasman Sea.
"It's travelled about 1500 kilometres to get to Sydney," Dr Leys said.
Chris Eiser, manager of atmospheric science at the department, said measurements taken in Sydney today showed the highest level of particle concentration on record.
A normal day would see around 10 micrograms of particles per cubic metre of air and a bushfire might generate 500 micrograms.
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