John Murphy (Lowe, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

In tonight’s debate on the appropriation bills, I am going to speak about two matters that I feel very strongly about, and which I have previously raised in this House. The first is global warming and the second is capital punishment. I believe that the government has a duty to spend more of its huge budget surplus to do everything to arrest global warming and to do everything to eliminate the death penalty throughout the world through education and even more vigorous diplomatic efforts with those countries that impose capital punishment.

I turn first to global warming. At this time, in this House, two weeks ago, the Treasurer had just handed down his 11th budget. Nowhere in the 2006 budget is there even a skerrick of recognition of the seriousness of the global warming crisis, which is growing, while at the same time the government continues to promote the growth of carbon dioxide emissions, all the while undermining the renewable energy industry. I want to mention a few of the most recent reports concerning the damaging effects of global warming and carbon dioxide pollution, and then go on to detail some of the consequences of the government’s more inept responses to this critical issue.

Most of us have heard of the Gulf Stream—that ocean current in the North Atlantic Ocean that flows from the Gulf of Mexico to the Norwegian Sea. In fact, the Gulf Stream and its continuation, the North Atlantic Drift, is part of a worldwide thermohaline circulation system of ocean currents that carry heat from the equatorial regions to the poles. The evaporation of water vapour from these warm currents in high latitudes produces an increase in salinity and density that causes the cool, salty water to sink to the ocean depths and it is this mechanism that largely drives the circulation of the oceans.

Recent measurements have suggested that the melting of the Greenland icecap and the Arctic Ocean icecap have diluted the waters of the North Atlantic to such an extent that the warm currents that carry heat from the Gulf Stream have been reduced by 30 per cent. The heat carried north by these currents raises the average temperature of Europe by five to 10 degrees. Were the circulation to collapse, the European nations could be plunged into a mini Ice Age.

The apparent slowdown in these currents, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give added impetus to the efforts of European nations to reduce global carbon dioxide emissions. I do not need to emphasise tonight the threat that this finding poses to Australian coal exports, let alone other measures such as trade sanctions that may be imposed by the Europeans on countries such as Australia that refuse to curtail carbon dioxide emissions.

Closer to home, the CSIRO’s Marine and Atmospheric Research division has reported that the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has risen sharply over the last four years. According to Dr Paul Fraser, the division’s chief research scientist, last year carbon dioxide levels grew by two parts per million, which is twice the rate of the early eighties. The CSIRO said:

2005 was a record for increases in greenhouse gas heating, the main driver of increasing surface temperatures.

So it now appears possible that we have reached a point where the earth’s environment can no longer easily absorb emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. We could be fast approaching a point of no return, and what does this government do about it? Nothing, except promote the consumption of fossil fuels while refusing to increase the mandatory renewable energy targets for electricity generation, and connive in schemes to block the construction of wind generating farms that threaten the fossil fuel industries. Dr Fraser warned:

We are in line for the carbon dioxide future that we hope to avoid, a one to three degree rise in [average earth] temperatures over the next century.

Dr Fraser said that the only solution was ‘emitting less carbon dioxide’. I suppose that after making these statements, Dr Fraser will discover that the government will make sure that his grant applications are rejected and that the CSIRO’s Marine and Atmospheric Research division will be closed down—such are the consequences for public servants who dare to speak out against this government’s policies.

In 1956, Roger Revelle and Hans Suess, geochemists at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California, pointed out the need to monitor the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the oceans and atmosphere. At that time, it was thought that carbon dioxide emissions would be benignly absorbed by the seas and taken up by growing plants. What the measurements taken by Dr Revelle soon showed was that not all of the carbon dioxide was being removed from the atmosphere by plants and that the carbon dioxide that was being absorbed by the oceans was changing the chemistry of sea water and making it more acidic. Fifty years have passed since Dr Revelle started taking measurements and it now seems that 40 per cent of the carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels remains in the atmosphere. It is this gas that has been dumped into the air that is driving global warming. The rest has been taken up in about equal proportions by vegetation on the land and by the oceans.

The acidification of the oceans by carbon dioxide may not have attracted the same level of attention that greenhouse heating of the atmosphere has received, but the consequences for marine life are severe. The increase in ocean acidity threatens organisms such as the molluscs that build hard parts out of calcium carbonate, because the more acid sea water attacks their shells. Corals are also among the creatures that are affected by more acid sea water, as are the tiny snails that form a key link in the marine food chain of the Southern Ocean that supports large populations of fish, whales and sea birds.

From an economic perspective alone, it is clear that the potential danger to the Great Barrier Reef and the Southern Ocean fisheries from carbon dioxide acidification of the oceans should be cause for alarm. Unless carbon dioxide emissions are rapidly reduced, the acidification of the oceans will increase to a level that poses severe threats to the biodiversity and productivity of the marine environment.

We now hear that the Prime Minister, while on a taxpayer-funded discovery tour, has suddenly found that nuclear power is the answer to all of these problems caused by carbon dioxide pollution.

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