John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In last night's adjournment debate, I was speaking about the Climate Commission's recent report on extreme weather in Australia. Tonight I thought I might look at some of the international experience in relation to the issue of climate change. Late last year, the World Bank released a report entitled Turn down the heat: why a 4ºwarmer world must be avoided. The World Bank is not an organisation renowned for melodrama; instead, it has a reputation for conservative, sober analysis. It is remarkable, then, that World Bank President Dr Jim Yong Kim opens the report with these words:

It is my hope that this report shocks us into action. Even for those of us already committed to fighting climate change, I hope it causes us to work with much more urgency.

Many of the findings of this report are shocking and reflect the national findings of the Climate Commission on a global scale. For instance, the five hottest summers in Europe since 1500 all occurred after 2002. In 2010, Russia experienced its own week-long heatwave. In July 2010, Moscow temperatures reached 38.2degrees centigrade at its principal weather station. The daily maximum in that month is usually 24.1 degrees. According to the World Bank, the Russian heatwave of 2010 cost 55,000 lives and resulted in estimated economic losses of some US$15 billion. The 2012 drought in the United States of America reportedly affected 80 per cent of that country's agricultural land. As this report by the World Bank states, it is 'unequivocal that humans are the cause of global warming'. A recent study concluded that more than 97 per cent of all peer reviewed scientific literature endorsed this position.