Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin - Leader of the Greens) - Mr Speaker, I move -
That the House -
(1) Declares a climate emergency.
(2) Accepts the dangerous effects of climate change are already being experienced in Tasmania.
(3) Further accepts the pace and intensity of global heating is leading the world towards unliveable temperatures within the lifetime of young Tasmanians unless ambitious climate action is taken immediately.
(4) Recognises that Tasmania, along with all jurisdictions, has a significant role in responding to the climate emergency by directly reducing emissions.
(5) Agrees that concrete emissions targets for each sector of the economy and rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels are critical components of climate action widely supported by scientists, other experts, and the wider community.
(6) Calls on the Government to -
(a) adopt sectoral emissions targets;
(b) release no new mineral exploration areas for fossil fuels; and
(c) approve no new mining leases for fossil fuels.
You are all very aware of the changes that are happening in the climate, especially with the summer that is predicted and the conversations that are happening in our communities preparing for what is expected to be a high-risk bushfire season. We have all had a too-recent experience with the 2020 bushfires in Tasmania - one that we would all like to forget. People on the frontline preparing for this summer are well aware that the conditions that exist at the moment are at least as bad, if not worse, than they were in that year. We all look to the future with a degree of anxiety.
Many Tasmanians, especially young Tasmanians, are aware of what they read in social media. They can see the situation of the northern European summer and read the stories of people trying to evacuate Maui during fire storms that were the result of extreme hot winds circulating. They can see the changing face of summer for people all around the planet. European cities were not designed to experience heat build-up for this length of time. The heat island effect that occurs in cities has killed so many people. That is just a small taste of the future scientists keep telling us about.
I did not want to spend time today talking about the changes that are happening around us. All members here, everyone in Tasmania, to some degree, accepts and understands that the climate is changing and recognises that the projections are increasingly of a hostile and unfriendly climate system for humans and other species to live within. The temperature records in this last year are the most extreme ever recorded. We have seen the impact on people's live. We have seen the fires in Canada and in California. Tasmanian firefighters went to Canada to help to protect communities there from the fires.
Scientists are warning us that we might be reaching tipping points. The latest assessment from the IPCC of the total loss of summer sea ice in the Arctic tells us that it might be gone completely by 2030. Dark waters would contribute to increased heating that could then lead to more extreme weather events.
When we see bizarre and unusual things happening with large numbers of animals and birds migrating; fish appearing in places where they have not been before; or large numbers dying because of changed climate conditions, it affects all of us. Some of us experience a high degree of anxiety. Young people feel both depression and anxiety as they cycle between the feelings of what they are seeing. They do not have a context to put that in.
That is why we are here today, because this is the role of parliament, it is the role of government. It is also the role for us as elected representatives to work together to find opportunities to make positive change.
There are so many things that we do not agree on, but in the crafting of this motion today we were mindful of those things, recognising that there are areas of disagreement across the Chamber, across the parties about the way forward. We also recognise there is a desire from elected members for there to be a future in Tasmania for our children which his liveable, flourishing and safe.
We brought on this motion today in the hope that we have found a space which clearly represents the place of science and the positive changes that can be done by the Government, by members if they were in a future government that I hope you can all agree on.
With the rapid changes happening to the planet's life support system, we need to step up what we are doing much more rapidly. The stored heat in the deep waters in particular are going to be with us for a long time.
The predictions following the heating which we will see play out, and the impact of ice melting, even by the early 2030s, on increased sea levels, means we will all need to confront big changes in how we live our lives, how we do business, how we cultivate food, where we go and how we travel for recreation, how we play sports, how we work, whether we work outside for months of the year in hot temperatures.
It is hard to believe for Tasmanians that there would be too much heat. In my previous career I did research on the heat effects on the human body, particularly on effects at work, and it is clear that humans adjust to the environment we live in. Although we might think the temperature increases of a couple of degrees will not mean much, we have only had increases of 1.2 degrees Celsius average global temperature so far and it is having an incredible impact on the variability of temperature. We are seeing big spikes.
In Tasmania we are not acclimatised to live in the temperatures we are sometimes seeing in summer. Our houses are not designed for that. People do not have the air conditioning systems or are unable to afford to turn them on to look after themselves. We live in some places with a lot of built up heat in the environment.
These are the challenges that face us in the future. That is the future that many young Tasmanians are quite freaked out about. Many people are taking positive actions for change in Tasmania and I want to commend them for doing quiet work in the community. They are working to educate people about the impact of fossil fuel use, about the impact that we are having on the planet's eco system, they are working at the grassroots level, literally, doing restoration across landscapes, working with Landcare Tasmania, working with farmers on projects to restore farmland and to make farmland more resilient in an increasingly drying climate.
They are working as general practitioners with people and in groups to respond to the heatwave conditions that they are seeing affecting their patients, to look at responses for people with respiratory conditions - and they are working as a collective.
The Tasmanian Climate Collective has about 17 member organisations, I understand. They work at the community and the business level to promote climate action in lutruwita/ Tasmania. They use cooperation and influence and they share knowledge. They do that work across a very wide range of groups, sharing ideas, working together, looking for positive change.
I will list some of them, because they are important groups. They have been around for a long time. They persist because they do effective work educating people and helping people find opportunities for positive action. That is something that gives us all hope, when we are working collectively together making positive change.
There are Grandparents for Climate Action Now, The Tree Projects, the Australian Religious Response to Climate Change, the South East Climate Action group, the Clarence Climate Action group, Grassroots Action Network Tasmania, Climate Action Hobart, Standing Up for the Young group, Australian Parents for Climate Action, the Circular Economy in the Huon Valley, and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. There are Vets for Climate Action, Forests for Climate, Doctors for the Environment, Doctors for Forests, the nipaluna Climate Collective, the Wilderness Society, and of course Sustainable Living Tasmania. I am sure I have left some of them off the list, but they are groups of people.
We can see the increasingly erratic and volatile conditions, and the drying of the east coast and the Coles Bay fire that happened a few weeks ago - I think it was late September, early October. We have these expanded fire seasons which makes it really difficult to share resources with people from other parts of Australia - or from another hemisphere, which is what we have done historically, where we have swapped resources with California in both people and equipment, and they have come and looked after us when we have needed them.
There are fewer opportunities for that kind of sharing and resourcing across areas. We are left with a carbon budget that is going down every year. We have until 2030, according to the great scientific evidence, before we get over that 1.5 degrees. We have already seen what 1.2 degrees is doing for us as a society and how hard it is to respond. Farmers are struggling to keep up with the battering of hail storms, really extreme wind events, massive dumps of rain, hard pellets damaging crops and making them unsaleable and unplantable.
These are just the basics of life, let alone the food and goods supply issues that we have with countries on the other side of the world that are affected by extreme climate events knocking out their whole crops.
We are a very connected global community. We are very dependent on people from outside of Tasmania - but we are also a resilient island, and we have an ability to do things here for ourselves in a connected and supportive way.
We can and must do more. We can increase our ambition on climate action. That is what we are looking for in this motion. A declaration, after the experiences we have seen in the summer in Europe and the northern hemisphere.
The evidence from Antarctic scientists, many of whom are Tasmanians - incredible researchers such as Greta Petchell and Jess Malvin Thomas and many others from IMAS - tell us what is happening in the Antarctic.
They are very clear there is a runaway train of change, and the only thing we can do, the most effective thing we can do at this point is to stop emitting fossil fuels.
I cannot forget the firefighters in 2019 - the 33 ex-firefighting chiefs - imploring Scott Morrison to call a national emergency, recognising the summer that was coming up. He refused to meet with them but they were right. They did not want to right, but they were. There were the scientists. They were right, because of the summer fire storm that happened in 2020 in Australia. Those bushfires were the largest we have ever seen in this country - but they are not the largest that are predicted for the future. We have the same equivalent with our climate scientists here in Tasmania. They are calling for us to do more, because we can do more. It is about finding the opportunities to do more.
This motion today is about recognising that we are in a climate emergency and calling it for what it is - declaring it as a climate emergency, but not stopping there. We cannot have a motion of symbolism on its own. It is an important statement. It says to Tasmanians that we understand and accept what is happening. We recognise the gravity of the situation. It is not something that is just happening in the northern hemisphere. It is happening here. It is something that we take really seriously as a parliament. Something that we collectively, as members of different parties, can agree on, because it is not a belief. It is simply a statement of fact.
The United Nations' Antonio Guterres has used many amazing metaphors to describe the gravity of the situation we are in. Many people have spoken about the clock ticking very close to midnight, but it is absolutely true that every day that goes by, and every gram of carbon dioxide that we put into the atmosphere stays there and builds to the base that we have already there. It does not go away. It is there.
It is fossil fuels that are emitted and they will remain. Trees fall over and they compost and they die. Bushfires come and a huge amount of carbon is emitted as well. It is not locked up. There is no such thing as locked-up carbon. The only locked-up carbon is in fossil fuels that are in the ground. That is where they should stay, and it is the only safe way to have them.
Clearly, we have to transition. We are not going to be able to stop what we are doing now, quickly. However, we can stop adding to it, and that is what this motion is about today. It is about finding the mechanisms, through adopting central emissions targets, to work with industries and separate sectors to do more and go further, to get extra government support, and to have the commitment across parties and Independent members of the parliament, that regardless of who is in government, we collectively agree to doing what we can to help and work with industry.
We have had a process across Tasmania, and Australia, and the world, of just talking about things and hoping people will come along. I think there is a collective understanding from looking at the temperature spike in the marine environment across the globe this last few months that is off the dial and has never been recorded before in the history of data for the marine environment, that it is pretty clear that the process we have been using so far is not enough. Because we have such a short amount of time, we need to go harder and we can only do that if we work together collectively and that means agreeing to start the process by working with industry to develop sectoral emissions targets.
I want to recognise the minister for Climate Change, Minister Jaensch, who is here. I know that there is a climate action plan and there are good things in that, there is no doubt about that, but they are not enough at the moment. On their own they will not be enough for us to look at our children in the eyes in 10 or 15 years' time and say we did everything we could, we tried as hard as we could.
Personally, as a member of the Greens, it is my job to represent people who want us as a parliament and a government to take that level of action. They want strong action. That means doing the work to adopt sectoral emissions targets.
The Climate Change (State Action) Act review report was done by the Jacobs company in June 2021 for DPAC. That was an independent review of the act and what actions should be taken and changes should be made to that act. In that review, they said:
Climate action pursued by neighbouring, comparable and leading jurisdictions to Tasmania has featured focused decarbonisation planning and actions in sectors and communities and the setting of ambitious emissions targets. Tasmania has progressed to a varying extent on some actions, but the review considers this overall progress to be not as comparable to that of a leading jurisdiction on climate change.
National and international development on climate change has included the adoption of approaches that have potential for effective climate action in Tasmania, including setting of ambitious economy-wide, interim and sectoral emissions targets; the use of legislation to enact the process of climate risk assessment and adaption planning across the whole jurisdiction; and the development of economy-wide and sector-based emissions reduction plans.
They also said:
Decarbonising the energy, agriculture, waste and industrial sectors is critical to maintaining net zero emissions in Tasmania. Reducing the gross emissions from these sectors will lessen the reliance for Tasmania on the land use change and forestry sector, upon which Tasmania relies entirely for its net zero status at the moment.
They also said that during the consultation phase for their review, stakeholders indicated there was broad overall support for the introduction of sectoral emissions targets. They said:
This approach allows the setting of achievable and realistic long-term and rolling interim targets to facilitate the monitoring and reporting of progress and incorporate accountability to act in pursuit of meeting them.
The University of Tasmania did a blueprint for a climate-positive Tasmania as part of their submission to the review of the Climate Change (State Action) Act and plan in April 2021. In that they said:
Tasmania's carbon dioxide-equivalent greenhouse gas emissions are overwhelmingly produced by four sectors of economy - energy, transport, agriculture and industrial processes. To credibly claim national climate leadership, the Tasmanian Government will need to make a clear commitment to reduce emissions from these sectors. The advantage of such an approach includes the availability of a ready framework for reporting on progress, an existing shared methodology for calculating emissions and a platform for comparing Tasmania against other states and territories.
It is a question of whether we want to maintain the status we have had so far. I suppose you would have to say it was an accident that we ended up with net zero. The circumstances that caused it were not accidental but they were not driven by a desire to have a low-carbon economy; that was a consequence of the fact. Having Hydro Tasmania renewable power and especially the Tasmanian Forest Agreement and what that did to the regrowing of a large amount of eucalypt forest across Tasmania, especially the TFA process, has meant that we have a huge draw-down of carbon and a large amount of carbon stores in our island state, but we cannot rely on that. It is vulnerable to drying. Just as the Amazon is now with concern raised about whether it is able to maintain its moist rainforest status, so there are concerns about all forests on the planet - their drying, their flammability and their consequent release of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. Nothing is stable and that means we have to do what we can to keep those forests moist and make sure they are as intact as possible.
There are other countries that have sectoral emissions targets and Germany is one of them. The European Union has set some really strong standards and targets for 2030 that they require all countries to meet and there are financial penalties for not meeting them. According to the German government, they have significant consequences for Germany because they have been lagging in being able to draw down their emissions in a number of key industries.
Germany has set an economy-wide emissions reduction target of at least 65 per cent by 2030. We have to recognise that compared to Tasmania that is an extremely ambitious target for a country like Germany, which is highly industrialised. In order to meet that they have decided that they must advance emissions reductions across all sectors. The country has set up annual carbon dioxide emission budgets for six separate sectors until 2030 combined with a monitoring and policy mechanism so that they can specifically make sure there are not increasing emissions in those industrial sectors.
We have the same situation in Tasmania, where we have a number of sectors which have been reducing emissions and a number of other sectors which, since 1990, have been growing emissions. At the moment, without sectoral targets we will not have the opportunity to work intensively and require the monitoring and the public information to be made available about the progress of emissions reductions across industries to make sure we can get the reductions we need.
Our motion declares a climate emergency, accepts that the dangerous effects of climate change are already being experienced in Tasmania, further accepts that the pace and intensity of global heating is leading the world towards unliveable temperatures within the lifetime of young Tasmanians unless ambitious climate action is taken immediately, recognises that Tasmania, along with all jurisdictions, has a significant role in responding to the climate emergency by directly reducing emissions, agrees that concrete emissions targets for each sector of the economy and rapidly phasing out the use of fossil fuels are critical components of climate action that are widely supported by scientists, other experts and the wider community. It calls on the Government to adopt sectoral emissions targets, to release no new mineral exploration areas for fossil fuels, and to approve no new mining leases for fossil fuels.
In relation to mineral exploration and mining leases for fossil fuels, members will note the word 'new'. We have some things baked into our societies which we are working to shift as fast as we can.
There is disagreement about how we might phase out existing fossil fuel uses across industries. It is hard but it must be done. We can decide now not to go in for more. We can make the decision not to provide any new exploration licences for fossil fuels. That would be thermal coal, gas, seismic testing in and around Tasmanian waters. We cannot constrain what is in commonwealth waters but we can play our part in the conversation with the commonwealth government. We can advocate to not allow in our waters, seismic testing for fossil fuels.
It is a ludicrous prospect to continue to hand out licences for fossil fuel use when we understand the need to act urgently on reducing emissions and the importance of climate action. That is what minister Jaensch's portfolio is all about.
We have a state plan which is based on clean, green, environmental, niche products. It is also based on renewable energy. It is based on a healthy lifestyle. It encourages tourists to come to this beautiful island because we are different, we are beautiful, we are pristine in many places in the real meaning of the term. That needs authenticity. Fossil fuel extraction and handing out fossil fuel licences is the antithesis of that.
It is also the antithesis of having a genuine conversation with young people to say that we are doing everything we can to prevent runaway climate change and runaway climate change heating. The Greens believe that parliament needs to send a signal to the community that we are going to do everything we can to make sure we do not contribute to global heating in ways that are entirely avoidable. Saying no to new licences for fossil fuel extraction or mining is incredibly important in making a genuine statement.
It is an opportunity for us today to send a message to the community, especially to young people who are so concerned about their future, but also to industry and to the agricultural sector, to tourism, to exporters, to tourists coming to Tasmania and to all of future Tasmanians who are going to be dependent on this island to provide us with a safe place to live, with food that we can cultivate, that we will do what we can to make a decision to avoid and prevent unnecessary extraction and exploration on fossil fuel and take action on sectional targets.
That will help industry and help us collectively to drive down our emissions and recognise and support our scientist by declaring a climate emergency and showing them and the community that we understand the situation that we are all facing and are prepared to work together and do what we can.
Dr BROAD (Braddon) - Mr Deputy Speaker, I will not take up the whole time, but just imagine what the world would be like if other countries, other jurisdictions, had the same emissions profile as Tasmania. We would not have a climate emergency because we punch well above our weight in terms of what we are doing as part of a global issue. Half of Tasmania is in reservation. We are net zero carbon emitters. We are for the vast majority of the time powered by renewable energy.
Dr Woodruff talked about other countries and their performance. Places like Germany with their sectional targets are a long way from being net zero carbon emitters. If they were anywhere near Tasmania's performance on carbon emissions, then we would not be seeing global heating like we are seeing. We need to put things in context.
I did not hear all of Dr Woodruff's speech, but one thing that comes up all the time is about ending native forestry in Tasmania We have heard evidence in this place that the emissions profile of our native forest sector is carbon negative and has been since records started.
There are things that Tasmania could be doing to further reduce our emissions, but Tasmania really deserves credit for what we are doing right now. If Tasmania was recognised as being a net zero carbon emissions jurisdiction and that meant that there was more investment here, if that was promoted by environmental groups, it can drive investment and turn this jurisdiction into a tiger economy, into a place where investment comes streaming in, then that is an economic benefit. That is not what we hear from the environmental movement and the Greens. We hear that Tasmania is not doing enough and needs to do more.
We can do more to reduce our carbon emissions. One of the biggest carbon emissions project that we could do in the state right now is getting rid of the coal-fired boiler at Norske Skog. Norske Skog has to import coal from Newcastle. That creates enormous amounts of carbon emissions. We could stop that if there was more power in the state. All that Norske really needs is 50 megawatts of power and it could convert its coal-fired boiler to an electrified boiler. The reason why that is not happening is because we have an energy crisis in Tasmania under the management of the Liberal Government.
What we need is more generator capacity in Tasmania because our needs are increasing. Everything is electrifying. Demand is going up by about five per cent per annum. That does not include all the businesses around the state that are calling out for more power so that they can create jobs, not to mention exciting projects such as e fuels, which could displace carbon-based fuels, if there was enough renewable energy in Tasmania could displace carbon-based fuels that are extracted from the ground and increase our carbon emissions. What we need in Tasmania is more generation, so if the Government got their act together and helped deliver projects like wind farms instead of putting up barriers and red tape, Tasmania would be in a position to offset more emissions from around the globe.
We could have a massive excess of energy in this state really easily. If the zinc, aluminium and manganese industries in Tasmania were forced out we would have a massive surplus, but what would that actually mean? That would mean that the zinc, aluminium, and manganese that is required to help the transition to net zero globally would have to come from another jurisdiction which is not a net zero carbon emitter.
The same can be said for cement production at Railton, and I will get to why that is important in just a second. Cement production is quite a heavy carbon emitter in the scheme of things and Railton is heavily reliant on their coal from the Fingal Valley. The reason Norske Skog cannot get their coal anymore from the Fingal Valley is because Cement Australia, which owns the Fingal coalmining operations, has prioritised their own business in Railton rather than selling coal to Norske Skog.
We have a situation where the cement that is produced in a net zero emitting jurisdiction like Tasmania is based on coal dug up in the Fingal Valley and produces cement, which gets exported to the mainland, predominantly, to help construct. If that was driven out of business the cement would come from a jurisdiction that was a higher carbon emitter than Tasmania, so the emissions would not be offset within the state, like it is in Tasmania. That important because what the Greens are calling for here in paragraph 6 (b) and (c) is to release no new mineral exploration areas for fossil fuels and approve no new mining leases for fossil fuels. That could directly impact the future of the cement works at Railton because they require coal.
We know that the coal seams in the Fingal Valley are not huge. They are having to explore and rework and re-explore old mining leases which they currently do not control, so this clause that the Greens are promoting here could end up shutting down Cement Australia at Railton. If Cement Australia could not get their coal anymore from the Fingal Valley because they could not get any new exploration licenses, where would they get their coal from to keep going? Unless they shut down, where would they get their coal from? They would have to get their coal from Newcastle, put it on a ship, sail it to Tasmania and then stick it on a train to their works. That would ironically increase carbon emissions and would be of net-negative benefit because, believe it or not, we still need to construct and we still need cement for concrete.
It is not only about buildings but we know that even wind farms themselves require a huge concrete pad, so ironically, the Greens call on the Government to release no new mining exploration areas for fossil fuels could have the perverse outcome of increasing emissions if somewhere like Railton was relying on coal coming in from Newcastle.
Tasmania is producing the minerals that are required globally to help the transition to renewable energies, and I am talking specifically about minerals such as copper, magnetite - which is an iron that is far more efficient and of higher quality than the iron ore you see in Western Australia, for example - zinc, which is very important for galvanising and other industrial processes, and of course tin. Tin is very important because there is lots of tin and lots of copper in electric cars and electric motors, and we are seeing the shift away from lead-based solder to tin-based solder because lead has a big impact when it is put into landfill.
We need more tin, we need more zinc, we need more magnetite, we need more copper in the world. Where should that come from? Should it come from Tasmania, where half our state is in reservation and we are a net zero jurisdiction powered by renewable energy? Would it better to have a tin mine in Tasmania or perhaps dredge the sea bed in Indonesia? That would be the choice.
We need to recognise the good stuff that Tasmania is doing. For example, where would you have the biggest reduction in carbon emissions? We need to electrify our transport network. It would be a magnificent thing to electrify our transport network, and to electrify our trucks would be a place to start, because the haulage distances in Tasmania are more than likely short enough for battery trucks to work, if not this year then in the near future, but if we wanted to electrify our transport network for trucks, where would we get the power from? The Government has not created any extra renewable energy projects. There are none that are really going to be delivered in the next couple of years at least and we have seen the red tape that has been thrown up in front of projects like Whaleback Ridge, for example, which means that the projects are delayed for a long time.
This is about choices as well. In Tasmania we are a net zero carbon-emitting jurisdiction. We are leading the world. We should get credit for that. It should be able to drive investment to the state and that would create a precedent for the rest of the world. Also, being a net zero carbon emitter, the zinc, aluminium and manganese we produce in Tasmania, the food we produce in Tasmania and the technology we produce in Tasmania is also in a net zero carbon-emitting jurisdiction. We should get credit for that. It should not be talked down, it should be talked up.
Obviously the world needs to act, but places like Tasmania that have taken action in the past should get the credit for it, otherwise why would anyone else do it? Out of the goodness of their hearts? Absolutely they should, but it is even easier to drive change if there is an economic incentive. Wouldn't it be great if Tasmania could prove that the economic incentive was in place and then everybody would move very quickly?
Electrification of our transport network could also be our passenger vehicles and that change is actually happening as we speak. We know that energy efficiency is a big issue. We have a lot of businesses, especially the international players that are in Tasmania, and one of the things they are driving is their ESG, their environmental, social and governance. They are actively seeking to reduce their carbon emissions. You only have to look at a company like Skretting, for example, which make fish food. They are an international company, a global company, and one
