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

The issue here, Senator McGauran, is that you are not going to have creatures like polar bears living in the wild by 2025. You will have a few sad creatures in zoos and breeding programs, but they will not be in the wild.

More particularly, if you think you have a concern now about refugees, you had better think again about climate refugees. There are 100 million people in the Coral Triangle alone who are vulnerable to displacement because of sea level rise if we do not make it. When I say ‘if we do not make it’ I mean if we cross the tipping points. We have to stay within a safe climate. That is why I talk about this being about the laws of physics and chemistry. It is not about what we think we can do in terms of the economy or in terms of politics, or what they are doing to us in the coal electorates, or what we think we can get away with, or how much people will accept and so on. It is exactly as Winston Churchill said at the beginning of the Second World War: ‘It is not enough to say we are doing our best.’ We have to do what it takes to achieve the outcome. It is no use saying, ‘We’ll turn up on a Wednesday and do this much and go home.’ You have to do what is necessary. That is the whole issue here.

You cannot just say we will start something and gradually increase it. That is like saying to a cancer patient: ‘We’ll give you aspirin for the next six months and then after that we’ll consider how we might ratchet up the treatment.’ By that time the person will be dead. Equally, if you give them the wrong treatment they will die. We must recognise that we need to go onto the same footing we would be on if we were fighting a war. That is how serious the global emergency is and why this amendment is so critical. To those people who say, ‘You’ve got to start somewhere,’ I say, ‘We’ve been trying to start somewhere for years.’ Let’s save the forests, let’s get the renewable energy target, let’s get the energy efficiency target, let’s pass a feed-in tariff, let’s have vehicle fuel efficiency standards, let’s get our public transport rolled out—let’s do all those things. We have been trying to do all of those things for years and continue to do all of those things, but let’s face facts about what is necessary.

What I am so despondent about, standing here tonight, is that President Obama has now come out with the same level of effort as Australia. He has said that the US will make a three to four per cent cut below 1990 levels. The Prime Minister says Australia will go to five per cent below 2000 levels, which is the equivalent of four per cent below 1990. They are the only unequivocal ambitions on the table, with a very conditional 25 per cent. I have never believed that Australia will agree to 25 per cent, because it is so conditional that the rest of the world will not agree to it, but also because compensation to the coal-fired generators is $6 billion to $7 billion, and that was calculated on a five per cent cut. We have not been told what the figures would be for a 15 per cent cut or a 25 per cent cut. We will get to that later in the bill, and I give the minister notice that I want to know how high the compensation to the generators will go if we go from a five per cent cut to a 15 per cent cut. I think it is in the interests of everyone to know that.

You glibly turn around and say, ‘You’ve got to start somewhere.’ The Greens have been trying to start somewhere on climate change for more than 20 years. I acknowledge that Senator Faulkner, who was in here earlier making a response, as the environment minister took a proposition to the Labor cabinet to address climate change and put a price on carbon. I acknowledge that foresight. History will show that he was right and that his colleagues let Australia down. I heard the minister also say, ‘You’ve got to realise that this effort is equivalent to that of other countries because of our Kyoto target.’ I remind the Senate that the Greens did not support the ridiculous celebration in Australia when the former minister, Robert Hill, came home, having exhausted the rest of the world into agreeing to give Australia an eight per cent increase on its 1990 levels when everybody else had accepted a cut. As a result it is even harder for us now than it was then because we failed to be ambitious at the time. There is a message in that: if we fail to be ambitious now, in 2020 the cost of acting will be so much greater.

As Sir Nicholas Stern said in his report, and as we have seen from the McKinsey report and any number of analyses, the earlier you act, the deeper the cuts and the faster the change, the cheaper it is. The lower the ambition, the greater the cost over time. So I want to inject some reality here as to the seriousness of the debate we are having. The worst-case scenario is to lock in failure, to lock in a level of ambition that cannot be changed. The legal advice we have is that the government’s targets of somewhere between five and 25 per cent set the national goal, the gateways and the annual caps. If Australia increased its ambition in the future—let us say there were some enlightened government down the track that decided to increase the national target to 40 per cent, where it should be—then under the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme there would be no additional effort required from the energy producers and large emitters. They are insulated from further effort. The effort would have to come from elsewhere in the economy.

That is why the coal industry are so happy with this outcome—because in the future they cannot be put under greater pressure than now. This is the best that they could hope for. And why do I say that? Surely no parliament can stop a future parliament from acting. Well, yes, they can, by locking in compensation provisions that are so great that they would allow those companies to sue. If a government tried to change the gateways and the annual cap beyond that which was consistent with a five to 25 per cent cut, those companies would sue, because they would have made forward contracts, they would have hedged prices, they would have done all sorts of things and they would have made investments in the wrong industries—investments in new coal-fired power stations waiting to go in New South Wales and Queensland once they get the certainty of these weak targets and the lock-in on the compensation provisions. That is why going slowly with low ambition first sends all the wrong signals. It is not right on the science and it is not right on the economics.

On the science, it is absolutely critical that we go with the targets that give us a chance of avoiding those tipping points. Already, as I indicated, there are parts of the Great Barrier Reef that are dying. We are going to lose that reef unless we act in a way that is consistent with the possibility of saving it. It is no use giving it an Aspro; we need to actually give it the treatment that is required—and that is deep cuts and deep cuts fast. That is why the Greens take the action we do. That is why we are arguing for the 25 per cent to 40 per cent, which everybody recognised was necessary for annex 1 countries like Australia. It was recognised in 2007, and it is recognised now that it needs to be at the 40 per cent end of that range as an average for annex 1 countries.

I put this to the Australian government: if we say we will not do more than 25 per cent regardless of what the average of annex 1 countries might decide, which other countries should do more so that we can do less? I am really interested to know where we should point the finger. Which other countries should do more so that Australia can do less? If we want an average level of low ambition for annex 1 countries, we had better be honest with the developing world and tell them that we do not believe they have a right to get out of poverty and to develop. They are the big picture questions that fall out of the science. I would like the government to tell me which scientists tell them—can they name any?—that a five per cent to 25 per cent target adopted by annex 1 countries by 2020 is enough to avoid even a 50 per cent chance in relation to exceeding two degrees.