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

Minister, you are trying to claim that this bill is somehow disconnected from expansion of fossil fuel production. You are trying to claim that this bill is consistent with serious action to address the climate crisis. No-one is buying it, absolutely no-one, other than your own cohorts, who are stuck in their own little world where, basically, this is economic development. You are being captured by the fossil fuel industry—the mates, the donations, the need for jobs—and saying, even if they were jobs doing the equivalent of destroying the pyramids, 'Oh well, they are jobs, so that's okay.'

Everyone is so clear that this bill is about facilitating the expansion of fossil fuel developments. It is about facilitating the expansion of coal and gas, gas in particular. It is about allowing carbon bombs like the Barossa development to go ahead, developments that are completely inconsistent with serious action to tackle the climate crisis. And this, on the week where it has just been announced that not only was October the hottest October on record, following the hottest June, July, August, September on record, and not only were the last 12 months the hottest 12 months, the hottest year, on record that has ever been recorded, but this last year was the hottest year in the last 125,000 years that the planet has experienced.

We know what needs to happen. We do not need legislation that is facilitating new fossil fuel development. We need to be rapidly getting out of coal and gas and oil and, yes, Minister, we need to be transitioning to renewables both in our domestic use and in our exports. We have the potential to export renewable energy in a variety of ways. That is what any reasonable, sensible government that was really concerned about Australia's future and the future of the world would be doing, not standing here and trying to pretend that this legislation is consistent with serious action on climate.

It is not just us Greens, not just the climate activists, who are saying it; it is the climate scientists around the world who have been calling the alarm on climate change for the last 40 years. They are desperate for governments to take action that is consistent with the reality of climate change. I know, Minister, you know a lot of those climate scientists. I know you respect their work, so all I can ask is that you listen to them. One of our leading climate scientists in Australia is Dr Joelle Gergis, who is an IPCC lead author in the last IPCC report. I do not know if you have read her book. I suggest if you haven't that you should. It is a wonderful summary of both the science and the political action that are needed, and the fact that we need to have hope that our governments will listen to us.

As I've said in my previous contributions, I do not have any hope anymore in the Labor Party and the Liberal Party because of their connections with the fossil fuel industry, because of their willingness to just go ahead with massive carbon-bomb developments.

I actually don't have any hope that you're listening, and I believe that we're just going to have to elect more Greens and more Independents who are committed to climate change work in order to get governments that listen.

But other people still have hope that, maybe, this government might listen. I want to read some of Joelle's book, Humanity's Moment: a climate scientist's case for hope. I was ready to have a lot of considered contributions to this debate, but I actually think that reading and putting on record some of the things that Dr Joelle Gergis, an Australian leading climate scientist is saying, is more valuable:

Young people have every right to feel white-hot fury about the mess we are in. Their future is being sabotaged by the very people who should be protecting them. As the UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, told the World Leaders Summit at COP26 in November 2021:

Our addiction to fossil fuels is pushing humanity to the brink. We face a stark choice: either we stop it or it stops us. It's time to say: enough. Enough of brutalizing biodiversity. Enough of killing ourselves with carbon. Enough of treating nature like a toilet. Enough of burning and drilling and mining our way deeper. We are digging our own graves … Young people know it. Every country sees it. Small Island Developing States - and other vulnerable ones - live it. For them, failure is not an option. Failure is a death sentence … On behalf of this and future generations, I urge you: choose ambition. Choose solidarity. Choose to safeguard our future and save humanity.

She is quoting Antonio Guterres, but she then goes on to say:

We know exactly what we need to do, but we still aren't prepared to do it. Instead, we watch extreme weather increasingly ravage every corner of the world with every passing season. Right now, even following the United Nations' 26th Conference of Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, emission pledges are still not on track to achieve the Paris Agreement target of limiting global warming to 1.5⁰C above pre-industrial levels. Considered by many as humanity's "last chance" to stabilize the climate, instead current net-zero emissions pledges have us hurtling towards global warming of 1.4-2.8⁰C. And that's a best-case scenario, only if all commitments - which are not legally binding, or in the case of developing nations, not yet adequately financed - are honoured completely.

She goes on:

While I desperately hoped that COP26 would be the political tipping point that changed everything, my rational mind knew that some governments – like my own here in Australia – are still in the strangle-hold of the fossil fuel industry. There are corporate interests that are willing to sacrifice our planetary life-support system to keep the fossil fuel industry alive for as long as humanly possible, using unproven technology.

Carbon capture and storage, known as CCS, is based on the idea that you can extract carbon dioxide from the smokestacks of coal plants or steel factories, compress it, transport it and then inject it back underground, where, in theory, it will remain forever. And that's assuming you can find the right geologic conditions that are stable enough over millennia so that carbon doesn't leak out and back into the atmosphere.

She then goes on to talk about the unproven and expensive nature of carbon capture and storage:

Aside from the trillion-dollar price tag, it's critical to realise that CCS projects take around ten years to progress through concept, feasibility, design and construction phases before becoming operational – time we simply don't have.

Relying on technology that is not ready to be deployed on the scale needed to immediately and drastically address the emergency we face is at best reckless, and at worst an inter-generational crime. It also delays facing the reality that we must stop burning fossil fuels – we need to take serious action and not rely on unproven technology to save the day. As people in climate justice circles like to say, "delay is the new denial". We need to turn the tap off new carbon emissions and start mopping up the damage.

Minister, this legislation, that we Greens are doing our best to stop being passed through this place this week, is facilitating new gas development that the world cannot afford to allow to go ahead. It is so clear—the science is so clear—what we need to do to address the climate crisis that the world finds itself in, and that is to stop any new coal, gas or oil developments.

Yes, fossil fuels are going to be around for a while. We need to work out how to rapidly transition away from them. But we do not need new projects. We do not need to be pouring petrol on the fire, because that is what this legislation would be facilitating. It is imperative and essential that Australia plays its part, along with the rest of the world, to get out of coal, gas and oil and to make that rapid transition so that people can be hopeful that the world will actually pay attention and take the action that's needed. At the moment, in this place, people are looking on and despairing. We have a government that they hoped, 18 months ago, would be doing something about the climate crisis, and yet we have legislation like this being put forward that is making people feel totally despairing. We need to give people hope. We need to get out of coal and gas and oil, and this legislation should not be allowed to pass.