Kate Chaney (Curtin, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If anyone is still in denial about the impact of climate change and the need for action, this past summer in WA should lay that to rest. Last week it started to rain in Perth. This is the first significant rain on record since September 2023. That's more than eight months without rain. The rain last week was far too late for the forests, scarp, heathlands and shrublands that have turned brown and died north and south of Perth, from Shark Bay to Albany. This mass death of vegetation we're witnessing in WA is known as a forest collapse. Forest collapses change the structure of our forests, which results in a higher risk of bushfire. Animals and plants are stressed and experiencing accumulative decline. This is the land equivalent of a mass coral bleaching event.

Over generations, our unique WA flora and fauna has evolved and adapted impressive ecosystems. WA plants know how to cope with a hot summer, but this summer was off the charts. In so many places in my electorate of Curtin you now see dead trees and plants: walking around Lake Claremont or Lake Monger, the dunes in front of Scarborough Beach, along Nedlands foreshore or through Bold Park, Point Resolution Reserve and along Minim Cove in Mosman Park. It's heartbreaking, and it should be the wake-up call we need. A forest collapse sounds dystopian, but it's happening right now.

The 2022 State of the environment report painted a particularly dire picture for Western Australia; a catastrophic combination of climate change, habitat loss, invasive species and resource extraction. Climate change models have long highlighted the south-west of Western Australia as a warming and drying hotspot. The heatwaves in February were a tipping point and habitats are now at risk. In a briefing from climate scientists and IPCC author Joelle Gergis on Monday, I heard that 2023 was the earth's warmest year in at least 125,000 years, and we may now be seeing the signs of the start of abrupt climate change, where feedback loops are triggered.

Last year, an area the size of Western Australia was found to be missing from Antarctic sea ice. Today, the Secretary-General of the UN announced that new data from the World Meteorological Organization shows that we've breached the 1.5-degree target in the year to May 2024. We know what is causing this change in our climate. CO2 accounts for most of the damage, but natural gas or methane is 80 times as damaging over a 20-year period. About half of the CO2 accumulated in the atmosphere has been emitted since 1990, when the first IPCC report was released warning the world about the impact of fossil fuels. We know we have to reduce our carbon emissions, but you wouldn't know about it in Western Australia.

WA's carbon emissions levels this year are going to be 20 per cent higher than 2005, which would make our 2050 net zero target pretty much impossible to reach. The WA parliament is currently debating the WA Climate Change Bill. It was introduced in November last year but still hasn't passed the lower house. This legislation should be an opportunity for the WA government to be ambitious and decisive and show how serious it is about climate change and our rising greenhouse gas emissions. But, as drafted, it falls well short. The WA legislation includes no targets for 2030, or any other year before 2050, and no plans for how we will get to net zero.

At the same time the WA parliament debates the introduction of its climate change act, the federal government has introduced its policy platform called the Future Gas Strategy. The government describes this strategy as its 'plan for how gas will support our economy's transition to a net zero partnership with the world'. But it reads like a plan to maintain and expand gas beyond 2050. We cannot expand fossil fuels to get to net zero. The science just doesn't work like that. Neither the gas strategy nor the WA Climate Change Bill reflects a commitment to address the urgent climate change imperatives we're facing and the work we need to do to transition to net zero. Neither strategy nor bill will halt the devastating impact of climate change on our environment like forest collapse, and set us up for a liveable and prosperous future. We need to speed up our transition away from fossil fuels and we need to do it now.