Senate debates

Thursday, 26 November 2009

Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Australian Climate Change Regulatory Authority Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Customs) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — Excise) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (Charges — General) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS Fuel Credits) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Excise Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Customs Tariff Amendment (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme) Bill 2009 [No. 2]; Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Amendment (Household Assistance) Bill 2009 [No. 2]

In Committee

8:20 pm

Photo of Christine MilneChristine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

What the minister has just said is about the politics of what she thinks is achievable. The fact is that the atmosphere does not really care. We are not talking here about what is politically achievable but about what the science—the chemistry and physics—deliver for us: what the earth can bear. I could not agree more than that what we are doing out to 2020 is so lax that after that it will be such a radical change that there will be massive dislocation if you are to get to net carbon zero—or, on a more conservative estimate, 95 per cent—by 2050, which is way beyond what the government wants.

The differences we have are with the assumption that we have time to do that and the failure to recognise that there are scientific tipping points. Those scientific tipping points are not going to adjust themselves to the fact that Australia—or the US—is not prepared to go any further. The reality is we have a carbon budget, and this is where the targets actually start to kick in and to have some real explanation. Only yesterday The Copenhagen diagnosis was released, in which 26 leading scientists tell us that, on the science, virtually every one of the IPCC’s worst-case scenarios had either been achieved or actually gone beyond. That is pretty terrifying. I saw a tiny piece in the news today saying that a whole lot of icebergs have carved off the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and are now about 250 miles south of New Zealand. They are a hazard to shipping, not to mention anybody in a smaller craft who might be in those waters.

The facts are there, whether you look at temperature, at the accelerated melting of icesheets, glaciers and icecaps or at the rapid Arctic sea-ice decline. Scientists are now saying the likelihood of an ice-free Arctic summer is very real—some people say as early as 2013 and others say 2025 or 2030. Either way, it is years ahead of what people anticipated previously. The sea-level predictions were revised only this week. Where the IPCC had made quite conservative predictions, The Copenhagen diagnosis says the sea-level rise is more likely to be in the vicinity of half a metre to two metres by 2100.

The point that they are making quite clearly is that, if global warming is to be limited to a maximum of two degrees above pre-industrial levels, global emissions need to peak between 2015 and 2020 and then decline rapidly. The IPCC had said they needed to peak by 2015 and then come down; that has now been revised to 2015 to 2020. When you say to the scientists: ‘Why have you revised that? You said a few years ago global emissions had to peak by 2015 and then come down—why are you now changing that to 2020?’ they say: ‘Because we’ve already passed that deadline. We’ve already passed that tipping point.’ I say, ‘How can we have already passed it?’ They have made a political judgement. Everybody here is in the business of making political judgements.

What is very clear is that 450 parts per million CO2e was thought to keep global temperature below two degrees, which was thought to be a safe level for the climate. I ask the minister: do you now concede that, on all the science out there, everything that has come in since the IPCC, 450 parts per million gives us an even less than 50 per cent chance of avoiding exceeding two degrees? I actually think two degrees is way too generous, and I will get to that in a minute. Minister, do you accept that 450 parts per million gives us a less than 50 per cent chance of avoiding a higher than two-degree global temperature and therefore catastrophic climate change?

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