Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

If Australians want to read some shocking numbers in relation to this debate today, I suggest they go and google 'renew economy'. Ketan Joshi has tweeted a thread on this today because he wrote an article on this today—on just how many millions of tonnes of emissions will come from the approval of new fossil fuel projects. They are going to dwarf this government's 43 per cent emissions reduction commitment.

According to the numbers that he published today, and this is based on an Australia Institute report from last year, the government's emissions reduction pledge, based on their 43 per cent ambition, is going to avoid 366 million tonnes of CO2 between 2023 and 2030—that is, if we sign up and agree to reduce emissions by 43 per cent, that's how much carbon will be avoided under this scheme. But, if all new coal and gas mines are approved and start running, domestically they'll cause 1,030 million tonnes of fugitive emissions—that's nearly three times the amount we're going to reduce—as well as all the CO2 burnt in mining and extracting this. That's domestically. Overseas, if these are exported and burnt, 11,176 million tonnes of CO2 will be burnt into the atmosphere. In other words, hundreds of times more CO2 is going to be emitted than reduced under Labor's target if this government continues to approve fossil fuel projects. Adam Bandt, the Leader of the Greens, said you don't tackle a climate crisis by pouring more fuel onto the fire. This is exactly what the Greens campaigned on going into the last election—that there's no point in having these targets for 2030 or 2050 if you're going to continue to approve new fossil fuel projects.

Now, we got just a short and brief insight today from Senator Wong at question time as to how Labor is going to spin this, and we are deep in an era of greenwashing, and we're going to see a lot more of it, so it's really important that people understand this. Senator Wong basically said: 'This is not Australia's problem. These are scope 1 emissions. We're talking about reducing domestic emissions on our targets, but, if other countries buy Australia's coal and buy our gas and burn them, well, that's not our problem. That's their problem.' And, of course, Mr Albanese, our new Prime Minister, has also repeated the lines that Sussan Ley and other previous environment ministers and previous Prime Ministers have repeated—that somehow our coal is cleaner and more beneficial to these countries than other sources. It's the old drug dealer's defence, and you heard it here in the Senate today! That's what it is—'If they don't buy my drugs, these people down the road are going to get drugs from someone else, and that's going to be worse for them.' What a ridiculous argument!

If we commit to climate action, if we commit to protecting future generations, if we commit to protecting our natural environment, if we commit to protecting our farming sector, if we commit to protecting our communities from extreme weather events like floods and fires, if we commit to ending species extinction, then we must commit to no new fossil fuel projects in this country. And it is not just the Greens saying this; our 75 per cent target is based on the Paris Agreement and the science, and it is the United Nations and all the experts who are saying we must end the era of fossil fuels by absolutely 100 per cent stamping out new fossil fuel projects. That's it. That's what the science tells us is necessary.

We're still talking here, with a 43 per cent emission reduction target by Labor, of a two degree warming. All of the impacts we've seen have come from one degree of warming. Even the Paris target of 1.5 degrees of warming still assumes a 50 per cent increase in the latent heat on this planet based on what we've already seen, which is still potentially catastrophic.

We are going to be debating doubling the amount of heat on this planet and getting to net zero by 2050. But what's the point of getting to net zero by 2050 if there is no Great Barrier Reef left and we have irrevocably changed the way we live on this planet? We need to act now, and the only way we can act is to end all new fossil fuel projects—full stop; period!