Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

[by video link] Earlier this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, released the first part of its sixth assessment report. The report makes for very stark and sobering reading and should be a wake-up call for all of us. As the report makes clear with a level of certainty and confidence not seen previously, climate change is already underway. The planet has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius since 1850. Extreme weather events are already becoming more common, as we've seen all around us this past year. The report is unequivocal that human activity and growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, especially carbon dioxide and methane, are the cause of this. Human influence is now warming the climate at rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.

As the report makes clear, rapid and large-scale emissions reductions are needed, and needed right now. If the world can substantially reduce emissions in the 2020s and can get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050, temperature rises can still be limited. But, as the IPCC report makes clear, the clock is ticking and the urgency here is growing. Climate policy cannot be set and forget. When the facts change, we need to update our approach. As the IPCC report lays out so starkly, the targets the world agreed at Paris are clearly insufficient now for the scale of the challenge we face. Higher ambition is needed from all of us, Australia included. Let us work together towards that.