Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Speaker, I move -
That the House take note of the following matter: climate change.
Mr Speaker, It is hard to believe it at this time of night, sitting inside a cave in the parliament, but the climate is heating. It is heating fast and what our scientist are seeing is disturbing.
Before I start, I will note the words of Antonio Guterres, the United Nations Secretary General, who warned us just a few months ago that the era of global warming has ended and the era of global boiling, has arrived.
Climate change is here. It is terrifying and it is just the beginning.
That was in July, and July this year was confirmed as the hottest month on record globally. Since then we have seen across northern Europe this summer and the northern hemisphere this summer, some frightening extreme events with deadly heatwaves in large parts of Asia, Europe and Northern America, with temperatures exceeding 40 degrees in Greece, France, Italy and Spain, with communities there clearly unable to cope with their housing and those temperature. Large numbers of people are reported to have died from heatwave mortalities.
There were wildfires on the Greek Islands, including Rhodes and Corfu. There were fires in Canada, and some of Australia's and Tasmania's firefighters contributed to fighting them. It burnt through at least 32 million acres of forest.
The extreme heat in the United States that they experienced there, particularly in Arizona, where they had 27 days above 43 degrees in July. Those are not conditions that humans have adapted to survive within.
With the storms in Japan and Beijing, we saw the heaviest rainfall in those regions that there has been in 140 years of recorded rain.
And the firestorm. Who can forget the firestorm in Maui, Hawaii, with mass evacuations there of communities that literally combusted around the residents? Many people did not survive.
What we saw recently from our Tasmanian scientists, particularly from the Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies, their reports, particularly the report I have here called, On Thin Ice: A science briefing about changes in the Antarctic sea ice. They are a very important global research effort pointing to the thinning of the sea ice. They spoke out about what they described as a shocking decline in the extent of sea ice around the frozen continent, saying they have been watching the temperature spikes and the melting with mouths open.
This year, the sea ice has been growing so much slower than normal there are millions of square kilometres of missing sea ice compared to the average at this time of year. Just in case people wonder what the context of that is, they say that there is usually very little variation from year to year, which means that one year compared to the next is usually the same, but what we have seen is this dramatic loss of sea ice. If we lose the sea ice, then it stops protecting all the rest of the ice shelf that sits on Antarctica. It means that the ice sheets and the ice shelves get battered by winds and waves and breakup and slide apart faster.
Obviously this situation impacts everyone globally, and anyone who lives near the ocean, which of course, everyone in Tasmania lives near the ocean in some form or another. The sea ice is a staple part of forming the diet of krill, it is part of the functioning ecosystem of the planet, it is part of the annual cycle of the freezing and melting, which is like a heartbeat. It has been described as the heartbeat of the planet. Just as a change in the heartbeat affects our whole body, a change to sea ice around Antarctica affects the whole world.
Their report says this crucial life support system for Earth, they fear may be faltering. The response to that, of course, is that we have to do everything we can to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That is the difference between where we are now on the brink of a terrible existential threat to our societies and all the beautiful, natural world we know and love, the diversity, and a future which is really impossible to comprehend what might happen if indeed we are, if we slip off this shelf.
Instead of slipping off the shelf, all we can do to prevent that is to do everything we can to reduce our emissions. Here we are today in Tasmania and the Liberal Government will not do the things that will make a difference. Even today, they are considering approving a new licence to mine coal in Fingal Valley. Thermal coal in Fingal Valley, at a time when we have to do everything to reduce, to end fossil fuel use, including coal, gas and oil.
The Secretary-General and the United Nations and the IPCC have been very clear: we have to end fossil fuel use and deforestation. That means in Tasmania, we have to end native forest logging and burning. We have to end the mining of coal or the subsidising of exploration to mine coal. These are the actions we can take today. I acknowledge the Government tabled a climate action plan but that means absolutely nothing if we do not cut our emissions.
What we can do is take a stand against fossil fuel interest and take a stand against vested interests which support the Labor and the Liberal Party and make them incapable of acting on this at the federal level. In Tasmania, it is the same inaction in relation to native forest logging: that means the carbon stores, the biodiversity forests. The intact forests, which we know are so much better at protecting us from extreme fire events, as well as retaining the biodiversity and the moist life. The moist forest which give life for us all into the future.
