Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Those opposite constantly seek to ridicule global efforts to bring about an outcome on climate change. Given that they have decided as a party to work together with the government on climate change, I would have thought that that would not stop at the continental shelf but would actually go offshore as well. Therefore, when it comes to America, which is the world’s single largest polluter, together with China, and with the developing countries which will be gathered together in Trinidad and Tobago, I would have thought this would be welcomed as a good thing.

The honourable member also asked a question about recent reports on climate change. I know the member for Sturt will be particularly interested in this, given the relevance of climate change to the good people of Sturt, who may in the future have him or someone else as their elected member. In the last couple of days a new report, the Copenhagen Diagnosis, was released. This was co-authored by 26 researchers, many of whom are authors of published reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The conclusions of the report are as follows, and they are disturbing. First of all, every year since 2000 has been among the top 10 warmest years since instrumental records began.

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