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

I move:

That the Senate—

(a) notes that, on 20 March 2024, the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year on record by a clear margin, projecting a potential breach of the critical 1.5 degrees Celsius warming threshold and that:

(i) at 2 degrees Celsius warming 99% of the world's coral reefs will die,

(ii) the Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing the fifth mass coral bleaching event in 8 years, and

(iii) 64,000 jobs and a $6 billion tourism industry are reliant on a living, healthy and protected Great Barrier Reef;

(b) condemns the Albanese Labor Government's continued approvals for new coal, oil and gas mines, which do not align with settled climate science on what is required to keep warming within the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold needed to protect the future of the Great Barrier Reef; and

(c) calls on the Minister for Environment and Water to stop approving new coal and gas mines and urgently visit the Great Barrier Reef to witness the mass bleaching and mortality of corals firsthand.

I look forward to contributions in the chamber from fellow senators. I just wanted to start by framing up where we are in history by reading some details today from the World Meteorological Organization's State of the global climate report, which has confirmed that 2023 has broken every single climate indicator that the meteorological organisation monitors and publishes. The report was named literally 'off the charts'.

Looking back at 2023, the UN agency's annual State of the global climate report confirmed 2023 was the hottest year on record since records have begun. Ocean heat, which is directly related to our discussion here today about the Great Barrier Reef, has reached its highest level since records began. Global mean sea level rise reached a record high. Antarctic sea ice retreated to a record low. The report found that, on an average day in 2023, nearly one-third of the global ocean was gripped by a marine heatwave, harming vital ecosystems and food systems. This was well above the previous record of 23 per cent, set in the previous warmest ocean year of 2016. It noted that heating is expected to continue, with reports stating it could be irreversible on scales of hundreds to thousands of years.

Senators, consider that. Consider the marine heatwaves we are seeing around the planet. The World Meteorological Organization is saying these changes could be irreversible for hundreds and thousands of years. In other words, some of the marine ecosystems we have been lucky enough to grow up with, like the Great Barrier Reef, could be seeing irreversible harm.

Glaciers in North America and the European Alps have suffered massive losses after experiencing what's called 'extreme melt', according to the World Meteorological Organization. In Switzerland, glaciers lost around 10 per cent of their remaining volume in the last two years. Concentrations of the three main greenhouse gases—carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide—all reached record-high observed levels. The report stated:

The long-term increase in global temperature is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

It goes on, for anyone who wants to read it. But it says at the end that climate change is currently being hampered by a lack of capacity to deliver and use climate services to inform national mitigation and adaption plans. Of course, mitigation means reducing emissions, tackling global warming and climate change at its root cause—reducing emissions especially in developing countries.

So Australia, a nation girt by sea, boasts one of the world's great treasures, the Great Barrier Reef, an ecosystem so big, it can be seen from space, a global treasure declared a UNESCO World Heritage site because of its outstanding universal values. These are the same values which are directly in danger from these marine heatwaves, which are spreading not just along the Great Barrier Reef but along coral reefs all around the world and ecosystems all around the south of our beautiful island home. Where I live in Tasmania we're still seeing record heat and loss of habitat. All our oceans are groaning under the strain of marine heatwaves.

In reading this report today, I reflect on when I came into this place in 2012. I had a pretty good idea about marine conservation, climate change and why I wanted to go into the Senate, but, if you had told me 12 years ago that I would be standing here today, on a Thursday afternoon in 2024, reading out this list of catastrophic impacts on our oceans from our warming planet, I wouldn't have believed you. The step changes we are seeing are very alarming.

You might find that amusing, Senator Urquhart, but I don't.