Lyn Allison (Victoria, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate—

(a)

notes that:

(i)

150 industrialised countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol met in the week beginning 27 August 2007 in Vienna and agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 per cent by 2012 and reached a non-binding agreement to target new cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 in an extension of the treaty,

(ii)

the meeting also agreed on a position to take to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change annual meeting in Bali in December 2007 to make substantial progress towards a final post-2012 agreement to extend Kyoto into a second commitment period,

(iii)

the meeting agreed that the 25 to 40 per cent reduction was necessary if global warming was to be constrained to a temperature increase of between 2 and 2.4 degrees Celsius,

(iv)

the meeting officially recognised the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 2007 that global greenhouse emissions needed to be stabilised in the next 10 to 15 years and then substantially reduced by mid-century, and

(v)

Australia and the United States of America were the only two industrialised nations not involved in the talks; and

(b)

concurs with the agreement reached at the Vienna meeting and urges the Government to:

(i)

re-engage with the Kyoto Protocol process in time for the Bali meeting, and

(ii)

adopt a target for greenhouse cuts of at least 25 per cent by 2020.

Question put.