Greg Combet (Charlton, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Hansard source

I think the best way I can tackle this is to go back to what the scientific evidence is telling us, firstly, and possibly the most convenient way to do that is to refer again to the most recent report that the government has received and that has been published, and that is the report by the Climate Commission titled The critical decade. I made some remarks in brief about the findings of that report in updating and overviewing the scientific evidence. Of course this is an international problem that needs to be tackled internationally but Australia needs to play its part.

In part, the member for Tangney's question is essentially asking what is the point of Australia doing anything. The point of Australia doing something is that we are a contributor to the carbon pollution that the scientists are indicating is contributing to the warming being experienced and the increasing threat that climate change represents. We are the highest per capita emitter of carbon pollution amongst the developed economies, we are one of the top 20 emitters of carbon pollution of all countries internationally, and we share the responsibility, as other countries do, of mitigating the risk of climate change. The reason we need to be mitigating that risk is based on what the scientists are telling us. Again, the Climate Commission's report finds that there is no doubt that the climate is changing and that that evidence is overwhelming and clear. It finds that the atmosphere is warming, the ocean is warming, ice is being lost from glaciers and icecaps and sea levels are rising. It finds that the biological world is changing in response to the warming. It finds that global surface temperature is rising fast, and that the last decade was the hottest on record.

Furthermore, the Climate Commission findings go on to indicate that we are already seeing the social, economic and environmental impacts of a changing climate and that, with less than one degree of warming globally, the impacts are already being felt in Australia. These are the findings of the Climate Commission, and they have relied on eminent scientists within the Australian scientific community. It also finds that in the last 50 years the number of record hot days in Australia has more than doubled and that this has increased the risk of heatwaves and associated deaths as well as extreme bushfire events. The Climate Commission has found on the evidence—

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