Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Melbourne from moving the following motion immediately—That the House:

(1) declares an environment and climate emergency;

(2) recognises that:

(a) as signatories to the Paris Agreement, Australia must ensure a safe and stable climate system, which requires limiting global temperature rises to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius;

(b) the Bureau of Meteorology has advised this Parliament that under current targets, the world is on track for a temperature rise of 3.4 degrees, and that means up to 4.4 degrees of warming in Australia, making much of the country uninhabitable within our children's lifetimes; and

(c) today New Zealand will move to declare a climate emergency joining other countries including England, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Canada and Japan; and

(3) acknowledges that no aspect of Australia's economy, society and environment will be left untouched by a breakdown of the climate system and that the Government and the Parliament must take urgent action before 2030.

We are running out of time to stop the climate emergency, and every day counts. That is why this motion is so urgent and standing orders must be suspended. We are heading towards a cliff—at 200 kilometres an hour—and the government has no plan to stop us going over the edge. When the Australian population is at threat, when there is a threat to the safety and the livelihoods of our people and our country, parliament should drop everything to deal with it. That is why it is so urgent that we deal with this today.

The first duty of the government, as it often says, is to protect the Australian people. But we are failing to protect the Australian people against the imminent threats of the climate emergency, threats that are costing lives and livelihoods now and will do so much more in the future unless we take action very quickly. To explain why this is so urgent and why what is being done at the moment is not enough, we must understand what Australia has promised to do as part of the Paris Agreement and how that is failing.

The Paris Agreement, which is the global agreement that is meant to address the climate threat, says we've got to keep global warming at well below two degrees. The planet's already warmed by over a degree. Why is it important to keep global warming at less than two degrees? It's a bit like the human body. If the human body gets too hot, once it gets over a certain point, past a tipping point, you might not be able to predict exactly which organ is going to shut down, you might not be able to predict exactly how much damage there's going to be to the patient, but you know that after a certain point the effects may become uncontrollable and the patient may die, so you want to keep the human body well below a certain temperature and not let things get too hot. It's the same with the planet. The scientists have told us, 'Don't let the planet get hotter by more than two degrees or we might not be able to stop it and it may become an unstoppable chain reaction.' We are already at one degree.

What this parliament has been told by our own Bureau of Meteorology as well as by the world's scientists is that we are currently on track for the world to heat by over three degrees—3.4 degrees. We are going to miss the edge of the cliff and go over it, and we are going to do that during the lifetime of today's primary school students. Even worse—and this is why it is so urgent—is that the Bureau of Meteorology has told this parliament that the effects will be worse in Australia. They've said to us that we could hit 4.4 degrees of warming in Australia by the end of this century. That is what the government's targets are consistent with. They are consistent with a wipe-out of agriculture in the Murray-Darling Basin. They are consistent with a planet where, during the lifetime of today's primary school students in Australia, Australia will only be inhabitable for a couple of million people. That is what we face if we go over the cliff edge.

To date, the government has refused to accept the truth. This motion calls on the government to tell the truth, to tell the truth that our current targets and the world's current targets are not enough. We may well meet and beat them but that won't be enough to stop us going over the edge. We must also suspend standing orders, because things are going to happen in the next few days that could help us pull back and not go over the edge of the climate cliff as the government is planning for us to do.

There is going to be a global summit, within the next 10 or so days, put together by countries including the UK, headed by a conservative government but where they understand we are all facing the climate fight of our lives, and we've got to act. At this summit of global climate ambition countries are being asked to come with pledges to do more in the next 10 or so years so that we avoid going over the climate cliff. If Australia declares a climate emergency today and joins the New Zealand parliament, which is also moving to declare a climate emergency today, we may well get a spot at that summit for global climate ambition and serve as a signal to the rest of the world that they need to act as well and that Australia has understood the significance of the fight that we are in. Then, of course, following that will be the summit that the new President of the United States, Joe Biden, is convening, where leaders of the world are being pulled together to say what they're going to do over the next 10 years. And then after that there is the global climate summit in Glasgow. But what we do over the next 10 days could help shape what the world does and whether we stay on this side of the climate cliff or whether we go over it, and that's why standing orders must be suspended and suspended today. Australia should join New Zealand and countries like England, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden, Canada and Japan in recognising the seriousness of the climate emergency, and that would help shift global momentum.

It is urgent because we are passing climate tipping points now. As we speak, scientists are extremely worried about a part of Antarctica melting at the rate now that they thought they might see in 20 years time, and, if that part of Antarctica goes, we are locking in multi-metre sea level rises during the lifetime of today's primary school students—just from that one thing alone. We cannot pass that tipping point, because then climate change will become an unstoppable chain reaction. So what happens now, on the watch of this government and this parliament, will determine whether my daughters and the kids of people in this parliament go into every summer holiday worried about how many people are going to die from bushfires and heatwaves and worried about how powerful the next cyclone that hits is going to be or whether they enjoy a safe climate—a safer climate than the one that we're determined give to them at the moment.

The government may well say, and I expect they will: 'Oh, look, this is just a statement. Why have a declaration of something?' Well, the first step to fixing a problem is admitting that you've got a problem, and at the moment the government doesn't admit we've got a problem. The government says: 'It's okay. We've made our contributions. We're meeting our Kyoto targets. It's all fine.' What they don't tell you when they beat their chests and say, 'We've met our Kyoto 2020 targets,' is that the 2020 targets allowed Australia to increase its pollution, the only country in the world that could increase its pollution. What a way to pat ourselves on the back! We were allowed to increase our pollution. The point is: even if we meet the targets that are set at the moment, that won't be enough to stop us going over the edge.

At the moment there seems to be no sense from the government that we are facing an emergency, so the parliament needs to tell the government that it is an emergency. In the past the government have declared a budget emergency; they told us that we had a budget emergency. We even had a strawberry emergency, and this whole parliament had to suspend its operations for a day to deal with that. If we can have a budget emergency and a strawberry emergency, we should be able to declare a climate emergency and declare it today. There's a simple statement of fact in this motion: it doesn't condemn the government; it just declares that we are in a climate emergency. You either accept that we are in a climate emergency and you accept the science or you don't. I urge the government to follow the lead, if they don't want to follow us, of Boris Johnson. Follow the conservatives in the United Kingdom, who declared a climate emergency in their parliament. Follow the rest of the world. Tell the truth so that we can then start to act on this crisis that we are facing.

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