Professor Flannery, the chief councillor on Australia’s Climate Council, will deliver the free Allan Sefton Memorial Lecture.

He told the Mercury his lecture would investigate why we have made so little progress tackling climate change so far.

And he said it is regions like the Illawarra which could hold the key.

“Probably a big part of it is that we haven’t really brought the community along with us,” Professor Flannery said.

“The old industries are very regionally concentrated, so there are very big impacts as the world shifts from one model to another. We’re seeing that already in places like Whyalla; arguably the Illawarra as well.

“I think the reason we’re getting some of these kind of crazy people in politics is that’s really emblematic of the kind of frustration, and exclusion, that people in some of these regions that depend on the fading old economy.”

Instead, those in towns dominated by high-polluting industries had feared for their jobs – and often had resisted moves to slow or reverse climate change.

Professor Flannery said opportunities for investment and jobs in renewable energies were necessary.

“I think we’ve got to really make a social compact as Australians with those people, that we’ll bring them along with this transition, which is now inevitable,” he said. “It’s not particularly to do with anything we’re doing in Australia; it’s an inevitable global shift.”

Allan Sefton was a former employee of the (then) BHP steelworks who was posthumously awarded an honorary doctorate by UoW for his contribution to environmental science.

“Climate change is having an impact on biodiversity,” Professor Flannery said.

“The Illawarra’s been a bit sheltered so far but if you go a north you can see some pretty significant impacts.”