Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

Senator, you are asking a one plus one question when the answer is much more complex than that. You seem to be suggesting, if I have understood you—and I may not have understood you, because I am finding it a little difficult to follow the argument—that somehow the government’s figures are all wrong because we assume that the US will have a cap and trade scheme by 2011 on the dot. That is not how the modelling works. You are talking about action over decades. That is what it will take to start to reduce the growth in global emissions—to get them to peak and then decline—and that is what it will take to stabilise the atmosphere. We did not assume a specific outcome for Copenhagen. We did not assume particular action by the US. This is all in the documents which were released last year. For the purposes of that modelling, we did assume action by developed nations over a period of time. We did assume action over different periods by developing nations consistent with their emissions growing and then declining over time. I do not know how much more I can assist you, because you want a simple answer, a yes-no answer, to a question where there is none.