David Leyonhjelm (NSW, Liberal Democratic Party) Share this | Hansard source

The proposition put forward in today's debate by the Greens is that Australia's coal exports are one of the most significant contributors to human induced climate change globally. To assist debate, I'm actually going to try to put a figure on this contribution. Human induced climate change, to the extent it occurs, is a function of cumulative anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide emissions, over at least the last 100 years. So, first we need to recognise that for the first half of the last 100 years Australia's coal production and exports were negligible. Moving to the present day, Australia now produces around seven per cent of the world's annual coal production, and we export around three-quarters of our production. Globally, coal accounts for around a third of annual total anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. So, in answer to the Greens proposition, Australia's coal exports make less than a one per cent contribution to climate change. This reflects the fact that Australia's coal exports made next to no contribution to cumulative anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions for the last 100 years, and are making a less than two per cent contribution to annual global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions now.

Let's talk about the two elephants in the room, China and India. China and India produce more than half of the world's annual coal production, and consume more than two-thirds of the world's annual coal consumption. Together, China and India account for more than a third of annual anthropogenic global greenhouse gas emissions. Given this enormous footprint, the cessation of Australia's coal exports would not contribute to mitigating human induced climate change to any realistic extent. The only way to mitigate human induced climate change would be to push for an agreement involving a commitment from China and India to not increase their annual emissions by many billions of tonnes over the coming decade.

To put their emission increases into context, remember that Australia's total annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are around half a billion tonnes. No-one is pretending it would be easy to strike an agreement involving a commitment from China and India to not increase their emissions by billions of tonnes; such an agreement would need to offer net benefits to each country that signs up, including China and India. This would mean either that at any reduction in business-as-usual emissions in China and India would need to be small, or that China and India would need to be paid off by the rest of the world to do more. Any irrational resistance to expanding nuclear power would need to be jettisoned. Only this sort of agreement would allow Chinese and Indian emissions to ease off, while allowing the people of China and India to continue their march out of poverty. Under such an agreement, demand for our coal could well fall, but the silver lining for us would be that demand for our uranium should skyrocket.

The issue of China and India's anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is a wicked problem, but it is absolutely fundamental to any practical action targeting human induced climate change. Those who purport to care about human induced climate change but who say and do nothing about China and India increasing their annual anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions by billions of tonnes are clearly not primarily concerned about climate change; they are more concerned about self-flagellation—or, more accurately, about everyone around them being flagellated. They are suffering a neurosis, and they shouldn't be in charge. Maybe they belong in an institution, but that institution shouldn't be the parliament.