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

I was very interested in Senator Troeth’s remarks, and congratulate her on the comments that she just made. I would like to say that the comments that were made by Senator Fielding and Senator Troeth actually point to the problem that we have here in this Senate.

What we are debating is whether the science of climate change is real or not, and that debate is over. The debate we should have been having in this Senate is a recognition that climate change is real and urgent and what the most appropriate policy response is to that reality of climate change. That is what the carbon pollution reduction scheme was about: is this an appropriate response, and is this the correct policy response to climate change? But instead of that it has become a de facto debate between, on the one hand, the climate sceptics—and they are not sceptics but actually deniers, because scepticism has an honourable reputation whereas deniers deny the science—and on the other hand climate hypocrites. I think that climate hypocrites are worse in many ways because they say they accept the science but then do not adopt the appropriate policy response to that science. They actually mislead people into thinking that what they are saying and what they are doing are the same thing.

We have the rhetoric of climate change from the government, the Prime Minister especially, but we have not had the action that gives effect to the rhetoric. That is where the problem lies in this debate. I would like to come back to the fundamentals here and put on the record that we have a climate emergency. In every science report that comes out—about the level of melt in Antarctica, about the loss of the sea ice in the Arctic, about the loss of glaciers, about acidification; it does not matter which scientific report you look at—the situation is worse. It is worse than what was predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It exceeds even the worst scenarios. We have a very limited carbon budget for this century if we are to constrain global warming to a level that will give us a reasonable chance of continuing with a safe climate. This is about risk. The government says, ‘We could lose the Great Barrier Reef,’ but, as my colleague Senator Bob Brown said, the reef is on death row with the legislation that we have here because of the risk of exceeding two degrees. The Rudd government’s legislation locks in failure to 2020.

We are going to Copenhagen in a few days. Let us actually get on the record what this is about. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed as a global treaty to address climate change. The Kyoto protocol was a protocol under that treaty, and the bargain of Kyoto was that countries would reduce their emissions first and then developing countries would come on board. Bali was a road map to Copenhagen, and in Bali the world agreed that a reduction in emissions from developed countries of 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 was required in order to avoid two degrees. That situation has become worse, not better—in other words, more stringent rather than less stringent.

The second part of the Kyoto protocol understanding was that developed countries would assist the developing world through technology transfer and financing mechanisms. The government’s legislation, through its weak target of five to 25 per cent, thumbs its nose at the rest of the world in Copenhagen by saying Australia will not even do the minimum of what the world says is required from developed countries. If we had locked that in, we would be taking to Copenhagen a situation where we undermined the capacity for a global treaty capable of delivering us a chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change.

The second thing on the table in Copenhagen is the financing mechanism, and during the debate on this bill I moved an amendment to the objects clause that made it clear we had an obligation to deliver on a funding mechanism. The Prime Minister went to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, but it was Gordon Brown and President Sarkozy who put on the table the finance that the Commonwealth countries agreed to. Australia did not put a figure on the table and still has not, in spite of the developing world making it clear there will be no agreement in Copenhagen unless the developed word accepts an average cut of close to 40 degrees by 2020 and there is money on the table. That money has to be in the vicinity of at least $10 billion as start-up cash every year out to 2012 and $100 billion per year by 2020.

This legislation locked in failure because it locked Australia into adopting a target of five to 25 per cent—in fact it is four per cent below 1990—out to 2020. That is beyond what the IPCC said, which is that global emissions have to peak and then come down by 2015. Now scientists are saying we have missed that deadline; we will have to make 2020. But every time they take out a deadline it means we run a higher and higher risk.

The minister herself said that the legislation aims at giving us only a 50 per cent chance of avoiding catastrophic climate change. That is why Australia’s leading scientists—people like Graeme Pearman, Will Steffen; any number of them—say that 350 parts per million is what we should be aiming for as a long-term trajectory in order to give ourselves a greater than 50 per cent chance of avoiding going over that two degrees. Now scientists are recognising that two degrees is too much, which is why, at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, the developing countries tried to get 1.5 degrees on the table. Who blocked the move by the developing countries to get a safer climate on the table? I would like to hear from Prime Minister Rudd why, in the communique from the Commonwealth countries, it says, ‘Some of us say 1.5; others of us say two degrees.’

At the Pacific Islands Forum in Australia this year, Australia, at the leaders’ level—so at the Prime Minister’s level—blocked the Pacific Islands countries putting on the table cuts of 40 to 45 per cent under 1990 levels by 2020. They said: ‘We are drowning in our own backyards. Our people are dying. Who will take our people?’ Australia said, ‘No, we are not having that in the communique; take out the targets in the communique,’ and blocked consensus for those Pacific Islands countries.

We have a proposition from the government that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is action on climate change. It is a fake claim. It is a fraud for anyone who understands the climate science. That is why I say the government understands the science but it has not been prepared to take the systemic, whole-of-government approach that is required. On the second part of it, what is real action on climate change? It is whole of government and systemic. It is meant to transform the economy. That is what the Greens have been arguing for. That means a whole-of-government approach. It means, firstly, stopping the logging of the greatest carbon stores in the Southern Hemisphere. You could do that tomorrow. Land use is a significant component of action on climate change. You could do that tomorrow. Secondly, it means having a high enough target, a high enough carbon price and a system with auctioning of permits so that you drive transformation to renewable energy.

This Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme locks in coal fired power in Australia out to 2020 with massive compensation provisions for coal fired generators for loss of asset value. You will not find an economist anywhere who will say that this scheme is economically efficient. It is economically flawed in the extreme. As Professor Garnaut said, ‘Never have so many people been rewarded in such a way under this scheme and that provision.’ He pointed out the same thing in terms of the compensation on the energy-intensive trade-exposed, saying they should only be compensated for their trade exposure, not for their loss of profitability. The Greens agree. We moved amendments which are economically rational and which would have made an emissions trading scheme work. We would have put in a high target. It would have delivered a high carbon price. It would have delivered the transformation that we need to the new, green jobs economy.

We want to see the rollout of renewables. We want to see energy efficiency. We want to see carbon stores protected. We want to see a massive investment in public transport. We want Australians to be healthier and happier, with a greater prospect of a safe climate. This legislation does not do it. In the minister’s remarks—and as Senator Brown said a little while ago—she said: ‘Falling short. How far short has this Senate fallen?’ It has fallen short because we have ended up in this pseudo debate about the science instead of a debate about the shortcomings of a Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as a mechanism for reducing emissions to the extent necessary that avoids catastrophic climate change.

We have to look at where we need to be in the future. We have to recognise that we are talking about the future now, because this scheme which is not environmentally effective or economically efficient is gone. But the Greens remain totally committed to taking whole-of-government, systemic action to address climate change and to meet deep cuts by 2020. We will work with the government to do that and we have made that clear throughout. As Senator Brown read out in the letter, we made that very clear to the government. We are prepared to negotiate with the government. It was the Prime Minister and the minister who said, ‘We will not negotiate your amendments unless you agree that we are excluding our target. It is set in stone.’

The government decided that they would prefer to negotiate with the polluters and with the science deniers, because they thought they could get away with the hypocrisy. They thought they could actually appease the coalminers, keep the big emitters onside and, at the same time, fool the public into thinking they were taking climate action. That is the doublethink that George Orwell talked about in Nineteen Eighty-Four so many years ago. He wrote that back in the sixties. He said doublethink is when you hold two contradictory ideas in your head at the same time and believe them both to be true. What the government think you can have in your head at the same time are these: (1) take action on climate change and (2) expand coal exports, treble coal exports and keep coal fired power going in Australia out to 2020. They think you can believe both to be true at the same time. Well, they are not.

The fundamental philosophical difference in this House is the extent to which people believe coal is front, centre and essential to Australia’s future benefit and national interest. It is very clear that the government, the National Party and the Liberal Party, regardless of what you want to say about climate change, all believe: ‘We will expand that coal railway. We will get treble at the coal port. We will turn those coal ships around faster. We will get those coal exports out to the rest of the world. At the same time, we will keep those coal fired power stations pumping out carbon dioxide. We will kid ourselves, in an act of doublethink, that some time or other there will be carbon capture and storage, and somehow or other that will actually solve the problem.’ It will not. It is not going to.

The government’s own modelling says that we are not going to see a reduction in emissions from the energy sector until 2034, well beyond the tipping point. We will have lost the Arctic ice by then. We will have had ocean acidification. Once we go across those tipping points there is no coming back. That is something that does not seem to have penetrated the minds in here—that once you have gone past a tipping point there is no return. That is why it is essential to take fast, appropriate action to avoid the tipping points and not just say, ‘We had to take the politically pragmatic way of doing this and start slowly, and find some other way of doing this in the future.’ There is no time to do that. We are in an emergency. As Winston Churchill said at the beginning of the Second World War, ‘It is not good enough to just say we are doing our best, we are doing what is politically achievable.’ He said, ‘We have to do what is necessary to succeed.’ That is the difference.

The Greens are prepared to stand here and say, ‘We have to do what is necessary to succeed and make the hard decisions to make that happen.’ We have been ready all along and we continue to be ready to work with the government to make those hard decisions to ensure that we do succeed in stopping the global temperature rise and constraining it to as far below two degrees as we possibly can, because we know that reduces the risk of us hitting those tipping points and falling into catastrophic climate change. That is the issue that we all need to be thinking about. This is not about pragmatic politics. The science of physics and chemistry will not wait for the Labor Party to be ready to take on the coal industry or for the coalition to work out that climate change is real.

The earth will not wait. In 2015 global emissions must peak. A weak target like this undermines the prospect of a global treaty which would give us any hope of avoiding those tipping points. That is why we ought to be in emergency mode. When the global financial crisis occurred, there was no debate about whether Uncle Bill over the fence thought there was a global financial crisis There was no debate about someone from the university of EBC coming out with a new paper saying that the global financial crisis is not real. No, there was a consensus immediately from world leaders that there was a global financial crisis, and they acted immediately and within weeks. That gives me hope that if we end the hypocrisy of using climate rhetoric but not climate action, if we actually got the rhetoric and the action lined up, we could do this in a very short time, because we do have the technology and the capacity. And the community does have the will to do this. We could do it. The problem is: there is not the same consensus of political leaders, there is not the same panic about climate as there was about the global financial crisis. That is because they are much more comfortable in the old paradigm than they are in a paradigm which says that the earth’s climate is in crisis. That is the difference.

As the Greens see it, today is the beginning of a real coming together of people around Australia who want whole-of-government, fast, deep cuts in emissions, action on climate change and a global treaty. We stand ready to work with those people and we take this opportunity to congratulate all those climate action groups around Australia who are continuing to argue that it is better not to have a weak treaty that can unravel but to wait and get something that is appropriate to the crisis—and let’s get it quickly.