Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I attended the Melbourne climate rally yesterday, and it was an inspiring place to be—30,000 people out there in force: old people and young people across the whole sectors of society.

I was particularly inspired by the number of young people who were there and inspired by the fact that the Melbourne rally was the beginning of a worldwide wave of rallies for climate action. All of those young people were there, because they know it is their future that is at stake. They are wanting political leadership. They are wanting community leadership for real action, not words, on climate change.

One of the things that inspired me the most at the rally yesterday was when the rally organisers announced that the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was going to be attending and marching with the 300,000 to 400,000 people who were rallying in New York.

This places Prime Minister Abbott's refusal to go to the UN Climate Summit in stark relief. It is important that our Prime Minister goes. It is symbolic that our head of government goes, because it states that this is an important action.

Being inspired by those young people at the rally yesterday reminded me of my experience as a young person politicised by climate change. When I learned about climate change as a 20-year-old at university, I decided that I had to take action, because the world needed to be doing something about it. That was over 30 years ago. Lots of things have changed in the 30 years since then. Then the science was in its infancy. The first Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change report was not released until 1990. Then most political and community leaders did not know the science. Renewable technology was in its infancy too, so it really seemed like a wicked problem that we were dealing with. How were we going do overcome this?

What has not changed in the 30 years since then was the realisation that acting on climate change was going to impact on the world and Australia's use of coal, gas and oil. As the years went by, the debate focused on whether we were going to have economic impacts versus environmental impacts; and did we have to choose between keeping our economic development, our jobs and our way of life versus damage to the environment?

Sadly, I think that this is where the government are still at. They are stuck in the past and have not been paying attention to what has changed and the 21st century perspective that it is no longer an issue of the environment versus the economy. If the Prime Minister was up with the times, he would know that we are on track for four degrees of warming, which will be an ongoing global disaster not just environmentally but also economically.

The impacts of four degrees of warming, hotter than humans have ever known before, means: more extreme floods; storms; cyclones; bushfires; melting polar icecaps; hotter and drier farmlands around the world—meaning that billions of people will not be able to grow enough food or have enough water to stay healthy—and lack of food and water causing wars and millions of refugees. This is going to be economically and socially disastrous. All of these impacts are going to have massive economic impacts, which are unacceptable to the Australian and global community, and will be disastrous to the Australian and world economy.

If Prime Minister Tony Abbott would attend the summit, he would learn that every global agency knows that this is so—and that has changed since I have been involved in the climate change debate. Before we felt that agencies like the World Bank, the World Economic Forum and the International Monetary Fund had very different attitudes to climate change than I did as a climate activist. But now, every one of those agencies knows that it is in the world's economic as well as environmental and social interests to be getting deep and meaningful, and urgent action on climate change.

The World Bank released a report in June that said:

Fighting climate change would help grow the world economy, according to the World Bank, adding up to $2.6 trillion a year to global GDP in the coming decades.

It is a sharp contrast to the government's claims that fighting climate change would 'clobber' the economy. If the Prime Minister was there at the Climate Summit these are the perspectives that he would get.

The World Bank report also said that, 'the pro climate regulations and tax incentives would on their own deliver nearly one-third of the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions needed to keep warming below the two degree threshold for dangerous climate change'. It seems that is why the Prime Minister is not going; because he has his eyes and ears closed. He does not want to know; he does not want to hear.

In Australia the government needs to realise the impact of acting on climate change; it means tackling the fossil fuel lobby. That is what our government is not willing to do, because that means tackling the coal industry. It means doing more than the fig leaf of Direct Action. Australia has over one-quarter of the world's coal reserves. We are a huge player in the coal industry.

New research out today about coal identified major financial risks for investors and coal producers around the world, highlighting that there is '$112 billion of future coalmine expansion and development that is excess to requirements' over lower demand forecasts, due to slowing demand growth in China. In particular this research shows that new high-cost mines are 'not economic at today's prices' and are 'unlikely to generate returns for investors in the future'. Companies most exposed to low coal demand are those developing new projects, focussed on the export market. They are the projects—the Galilee Basin and the other coal export projects—that our government should be saying no to if they are serious about action on climate change.

The other thing that has changed—that the Prime Minister would be learning about if he attended the summit, and that we on this side know about acting on climate change—is that renewables are now the most cost-effective way of dealing with our energy issues. We know that the cost of renewables is coming down and we know that not investing in renewables means that we are losing potential for jobs—over 1,000 jobs potentially being lost just in my state of Victoria if, for example, we get rid of the renewable energy target.

It is clear: we need to be taking action on climate change. Australia needs to be a leader in taking action on climate change. We need to be there in New York, putting our case as part of the global community rather than living in the past. The science is clear, we need zero carbon as soon as possible, no later than 2050. The Climate Change Authority's reduction targets of 40 per cent to 60 per cent by 2020 are achievable and reachable, and that is what we need to be aiming for. Our five per cent target, in contrast, is inadequate. Not only is it inadequate for 2020, but there is no potential for it to be expanded beyond then.

In my first speech I laid out six steps that we need to be taking if we want real action on climate change—if Australia is going to join the world community. The first step is to set pollution reduction targets, based on the science; that is what we need to be doing. We need to stop subsidising fossil fuels. Clearly, that is going to be a really big driver, all around the world, in shifting to renewables and away from fossil fuels. We need to be creating more jobs, by boosting clean energy production and energy conservation. We need to start closing coal fired power stations. We have an excess of power; we can afford to be doing it. We should be taking action to close the dirtiest coal fired power stations. Hazelwood and the Alcoa power stations in Victoria are the two key ones from a Victorian perspective. We need to be saying no to new coal and gas exports, coal seam gas and unconventional gas. And we need to be making the big polluters pay. We had a price on carbon; it was working.

I am sure that people at the UN Climate Summit will be learning about the benefits a price on carbon will be having all around the world. Our price on carbon reduced our carbon emissions by two per cent in just a year. Australia used to be a global leader because of these sorts of measures. When I came into this Senate I was proud to be joining a party and a parliament that was going to be tackling climate change with strong action. We are no longer that parliament. We need to be there on the world stage, putting our case for urgent and serious action, and acting on climate change.