Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's sixth assessment report predicts a grim outlook for the future if the current emissions trajectory continues. Climate change is already causing untold destruction around the world. The 2019-20 summer fires here in Australia are now being replicated in the Northern Hemisphere where, in some places, temperatures are rising to record levels and nearing 50 degrees centigrade. In other places, floods, tornadoes and hurricanes are decimating whole regions, as Hurricane Ida is doing right now in Louisiana. Extreme weather events are not new, but the scale and ferocity of them is. Even with modern response equipment, know-how and resources, lives are being lost, ecosystems are being destroyed and species are becoming extinct. Every loss of the world's natural environment has a serious consequence, and whilst the environment has an extraordinary capacity to repair itself it cannot do so when climate changes permanently or when complete extinction occurs.

The report is the work of hundreds of scientists from around the world over the eight years since 2013. It has undergone a rigorous process of review by government agencies across the world, and the report's assessment is more likely to be conservative than overstated. The report finds that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide are higher than at any time in the last 10 million years and that global surface temperatures over the past decade—that is, from 2011 to 2020—were one degree centigrade higher than average temperatures a hundred years earlier, with larger increases of 1.59 degrees centigrade over land.

Human influence has changed the climate at an unprecedented rate over the past 2,000 years. The rate of sea-level rise between 2006 and 2018 was around twice the rate between 1971 and 2006. Similarly, the rate of ice sheet loss increased by a factor of four between 1992 and 1999, and between 2010 and 2019. In Australia over recent decades, sea levels have been rising at a faster rate than the global average. According to the report, on current projections a global average temperature increase of 1.5 degrees centigrade will be reached in the near term. A temperature increase greater than 1.5 degrees centigrade will be catastrophic, and every fraction of a degree makes a difference.

However, it is possible, with total commitment, to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees centigrade by the end of the century. To do that, immediate action must be taken. We must also immediately prepare for the inevitable consequences of rising temperatures, including coastal sea-level rises; weather pattern and rainfall changes; and more frequent and more severe weather events. Based on the latest science, the Climate Council has concluded that Australia must reduce its emissions by 75 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2035.

To do that requires federal government leadership—leadership which is sadly lacking by the Morrison government and which to date has been shown by state governments, industry leaders and by Australian communities. The lack of Morrison government leadership has been exposed by other world leaders and has caused major rifts within the coalition. We have a coalition government that is dictated to by the fossil fuel companies, who are in turn driven by profits and who do whatever they can to discredit the science. As with COVID-19, no country will be spared the costs and devastating effects of climate change. The costs of climate change and extreme weather events will dwarf the costs of the action that is needed.

As with COVID, climate change is also a race against time. Industry and civic leaders know that, and are calling for political leadership and policy certainty. The Morrison government claims that Australia has exceeded its Kyoto commitments and is well on the way to meet and beat its Paris commitments. But those claims are based on questionable emission-accounting methodology. A more realistic assessment is that emissions have actually increased by around seven per cent since 2005. Currently, 131 countries, covering 73 per cent of global emissions, have adopted, or are considering adopting, net zero targets—but not Australia. Australia's emissions per capita are double those of China and almost three times those of the UK. The IPCC report indicates that Australia needs to reduce emissions by 43 per cent from 2020 to 2030—that's in less than a decade.

The Prime Minister will very likely not be leading the nation in a decade's time, but future generations will pay dearly for his government's climate change failures.

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