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

I want to conclude this debate by returning to the core issue of the topic at hand: the need for science based targets. 'Political reality must be grounded in physical reality, or it's completely useless'. That statement, by climate scientist Professor Hans Schellnhuber, was the starting point for a presentation a fortnight ago by climate policy researcher David Spratt at a public forum organised by the National Climate Emergency Summit.

The Greens' target for 2030 is at least 75 per cent reductions in carbon pollution by 2030 and zero carbon no later than 2035, because that is what the science tells us will give us any hope of stabilising our climate below 1½ degrees of heating above pre-industrial temperatures. David Spratt argues we need to go even faster—that we need zero emissions at emergency speed by 2030. Last year, 2020, was the equal hottest year on record, and the planet is now 1.2 degrees hotter than it was 200 years ago. Frighteningly, regardless of what we do in the next nine years, we are likely to be at 1½ degrees hotter in 2030 because that heating is already baked in. Yet 1½ degrees hotter is not safe. Already, at 1.2 degrees hotter, climate tipping points have almost certainly already been passed for coral reefs, Arctic sea ice and the West Antarctic glaciers. The Amazon rainforest may have passed its tipping point. There's strong evidence that, at or around 1½ degrees hotter, the Greenland ice sheet will reach its tipping point. As for two degrees hotter, that's very unsafe, because 'hothouse Earth' tipping points may be reached at that point, where feedback loops mean the Earth just keeps on getting hotter, regardless of what we do to try and pull it back. Yet, the targets of the government and the Labor Party are consistent with a catastrophic three to five degrees of warming by 2100—within the lifetime of children alive today. David Spratt quoted from a seminal paper on climate tipping points:

The evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute … If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilisation.

He went on to outline how, in addition to slashing our carbon pollution, we're going to need large-scale drawdown of carbon and a safe means of immediate cooling to protect people and nature from the catastrophic impacts of that climate crisis.

In light of this, the least that the Senate can do today is to support this motion to adopt science based 2030 targets.

Question agreed to.