Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I appreciate the minister’s remarks in that regard. The point is that when the United Kingdom made the decision to look at what they thought would be an unacceptable level of concentration they made it a 60 per cent reduction on 2050 levels to take into account emissions from developing countries. So they looked at the total global emissions and the total concentrations to see what the developed world would have to reduce their emissions by to take that into account. That is how they got to the 60 per cent by 2050. That is why I am asking about Australia’s position.

My greater concern here tonight is that we do not have a stated desired concentration level, because everything flows from that in terms of targets and how you get there. I particularly wanted to comment on it in relation to the adequacy of Australian government policy advice. I refer to this report, The Heat is on: the future of energy in Australia, by CSIRO and ABARE. I believe ABARE do the Australian people a complete and utter disservice when it comes to climate change. They do not believe that climate change is real. They do not factor it into any of their policy recommendations.

In fact, they are slowing down the capacity of the country to respond to climate change through their advice to government on issues like the differentiation between road and rail transport, their projections of oil prices and their suggestion that you can go to coal to liquids. They suggest that you can put climate change to one side. They actively say, ‘Put climate change to one side.’ They actively talk about carbon dioxide emissions as externalities. When the whole world is trying to come to terms with how you internalise the cost of carbon, ABARE are still fixed in some economic past and are giving the country bad advice.

So I would like to just put on record here that this report—this collaboration between CSIRO and ABARE—says:

A target for the stabilisation of atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO) of 570 parts per million (ppm) by 2100 is investigated based on the A1T scenario from the Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) (IPCC, 2000). In establishing this anchor point, the EFF does not endorse it or suggest that it would represent on acceptable level of emissions or consequent climate change. The choice represents a compromise between the desire to explore significant global emission reduction and the need to work within the constraints of ABARE’s economic models.

So this whole report is based on a base level scenario of 575 parts per million, which everybody accepts is dangerous for climate change and is unacceptable. So what is the point in a whole body of work simply made on a compromise because ABARE’s models are so constrained, out of date and unable to cope with the whole climate change scenarios that CSIRO has to allow for ABARE’s inadequacies and write a report based on a concentration which we all know is totally unacceptable?

I do not expect the minister to be critical of ABARE in the same way that I am but, frankly, I think they are holding back Treasury’s capacity to respond to climate change. The fact is that the Treasurer has never mentioned climate change as a risk to the Australian economy in all his years as Treasurer, including in this year’s budget speech, and he has never mentioned oil depletion as a significant risk to the Australian current account—because, apart from anything else, whether or not you believe in peak oil, the fact is Australia is losing its self-sufficiency in oil and the import bills are going to blow out the trade deficit substantially in years to come, and are already doing so. Yet ABARE blithely advises Treasury: ‘Put climate change to one side. No problem with oil prices—we’ll just go to coal to liquids as a transport fuel.’ Frankly, they are so out of date they are an embarrassment.

I am frustrated that the policy advice that comes out of the Australian Greenhouse Office is somehow sidelined by a group of economists who have absolutely no relevance in global changed circumstances. I do not expect the minister to comment particularly but I would like him to take it on notice that this report is doing the Australian people a disservice. I do not disagree with a lot of its conclusions. It is basically agreeing with Stern that the cost of action now is nothing compared with the cost of not acting by 2100. They go through the kinds of things that we have all been saying. But I am horrified by the fact that they go through an exercise talking about 575 parts per million and then have to have a disclaimer saying that the authors do not endorse or suggest that it would represent an acceptable level of emissions or consequent climate change.

I encourage the minister to actually get from the government sources of advice something of a consensus about what they have determined is an appropriate level of atmospheric concentrations of CO and tell the Australian people now what that is. We have the latest IPCC report coming out in May next year. Each year that this goes on assumes that we have time to deal with it. I accept what the minister says about the fact that, if the Greenland iceshelf just melts, you might have 100 years or you might have 50 years, but if it slides off you do not have very much time at all. Those of us who remember defrosting fridges in our youth, before they had those new fridges, remember that all you need to do is get a bit of a vacuum going under loads of ice and the lot comes off at once. That is the fear about rapid sea level rise—so-called ‘climate accidents’.

We already have ravines being formed in the Greenland iceshelf with the water going right down underneath and starting to form that kind of vacuum underneath. If that occurs, and it slides off, just like those of us who have defrosted fridges in the past where you open the door and the whole ice sheet comes off the box, you know that that is the scenario that could well occur. That is what we are talking about with severe climate accidents in the short term and huge sea level rises overnight, which would be a global catastrophe of unimaginable consequence. We are talking about 43 small island developing states disappearing, given their low level. If you look at Bangladesh you see the security ramifications as millions of refugees try to get out of the way. Manhattan would be gone.

The whole lot is an incredible scenario. It is not a scenario that should be discounted, especially when you look at the science, with what they are saying about the west Antarctic icesheet, with what they are seeing when they are looking at the Ross icesheet and the fact that it collapsed rapidly, within a decade, once before in geological time. That is why I think it is really important that we start to get to some sort of consensus in Australia about a level of concentration that we should aim for, taking into account the growing emissions from developing countries. I do not disagree that China, India and South Africa have to be taken into account, but that is why the British overestimated the extent of the cuts that would need to be made in developed economies.