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

I rise to speak to the amendment which I moved earlier. To remind the Senate, this is the Australian Greens amendment relating to national emission reduction targets. This would delete the government’s targets and put in, instead:

to take action directed towards meeting Australia’s target of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions to at least 25% to 40% below 1990 levels by 2020.

The reason that this is so critical to the Greens is that it goes to the absolute heart of the environmental integrity of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme and the government’s effort.

It has been known for a long time that there are two issues to be looked at. One is the overall global reduction target that has to be achieved to deliver a safe climate and the second is the burden-sharing arrangement between countries which would allow for that target to be met. It was an accepted reality in Bali in 2007, and in fact for years before that but it was clearly in the Bali road map, that, if the world was to avoid a temperature rise of more than two degrees, then developed countries like Australia had to reduce their emissions by between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020. That was so that developing countries could develop without our blowing the global carbon budget. So it was based on equity, saying developed countries had to make a bigger effort to reduce their emissions.

This was consistent with the Kyoto protocol, in which it was clearly set out as a matter of principle that developed countries reduce their emissions first and then developing countries would come on board later with legally binding commitments once the developed world had demonstrated that they had achieved theirs. It has been a source of contention with, and frustration for, developing countries that the developed world has failed to do what it said it would do when the Kyoto protocol was first signed and later ratified.

I would like to start by asking the minister about the government’s targets. I know that they are political targets, but they are not scientific targets. This is where the government and the Greens are in complete disagreement—over trying to sell a five to 25 per cent reduction by 2020, for a developed country like Australia, as scientifically credible in the context of developed countries having to make a greater effort so that developing countries have some headroom.

I would like to ask the minister: what is your understanding about what a global stabilisation of 450 parts per million CO2e would do in terms of the two degrees? What is the level of risk, if the world did agree to 450 parts per million CO2e, that we would exceed two degrees? I will come to whether two degrees is safe or not in a minute. What is the level of risk involved in exceeding two degrees at 450 parts per million CO2e stabilisation?