Climate change will kill millions: Time for a general strike? #auspol #qldpol #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion #COP24 #TakeYourSeat #TheDrum #QandA @QandA #GreenNewDeal now!

Let’s start with some hard truths.

With a few notable exceptions, the Australian movement for action on climate change has struggled to achieve big tangible wins in recent years.

We’ve had a few isolated victories, but even if Labor wins the next federal election and the Liberal Party’s position reverts closer to where it was under John Howard, the likely policy shifts aren’t going to come close to what’s needed unless there’s a strong push from civil society.

Here in Queensland, a Labor state government (where Labor’s left faction already controls more votes than the right faction) is still allowing the Adani coal mine to proceed, potentially opening the door to further new coal mines in the Galilee basin.

If these mines go ahead, the burning of the coal they produce will lead to the flooding of coastal cities around the world, the desertification of thousands of hectares of farmland and forest, and more intense bushfires and cyclones.

In defiance of public opinion and basic common sense, the Queensland Labor government is prioritising the financial interests of the mining industry ahead of the safety and security of literally billions of people around the globe. The various forms of pressure that environmentalists have been applying to Labor (both through internal and external channels) don’t appear to have had much impact.

So for those of us who don’t want our grandchildren growing up in some kind of dystopian combination of Water World and Mad Max: Fury Road, what effective courses of action are left available to us?

Here in Queensland, anti-coal campaigners have used a variety of tactics to apply pressure on the political establishment, from peaceful public rallies to locking on to mining equipment. But even a rally of several thousand people isn’t enough to counteract the undemocratic influence that mining lobbyists are exerting over senior Labor ministers. While non-disruptive rallies and marches can help energise and inspire campaigners and draw attention to an issue, they do not directly challenge the underlying logic of capitalism, and are too easy for politicians to ignore. Even the protests against the Iraq War, which saw around six hundred thousand Australians take to the streets, didn’t change John Howard’s mind (if the following Monday, all those people had refused to show up for work, it might have been another matter).

Lock-ons and other arrestable actions do directly hurt the profits of the target companies, but when only a very small proportion of the community are willing to risk arrest, such tactics can’t easily be scaled up to have a big enough impact on political decision-makers, and the costs of fines and legal fees start to take their toll on a movement over time.

The Leard State Forest Blockade against the Maules Creek mine down in NSW was one of the largest civil disobedience actions in Australian history, involving thousands of protesters and hundreds of arrests. The campaign had a range of positive outcomes and flow-on effects, but sadly, the mine eventually went ahead.

So we need to recognise that while both protest marches and lock-ons have their uses, it’s well past time we started exploring other methods of expressing dissent and pressuring the government. We need tactics that large numbers of people can realistically participate in at minimal personal cost, which also directly challenge the power of the state and the profits of the corporate sector.

Organised labour strikes have become more difficult in recent decades. Legislative changes first initiated by Prime Minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s have largely neutered traditional trade unions and made most kinds of strike action illegal. Automation and overseas outsourcing threaten many industries, while more and more of us are casual workers with little to no job security.

But that doesn’t mean striking is no longer a viable tactic. We may not all work together in large factories or worksites anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t coordinate our actions across different industries and workplaces. And the fact that large strikes are somewhat rarer than they used to be actually means that if enough of us did get our act together to organise one, the impact upon our political leaders would be more significant.

So what might a general strike against the Adani coal mine look like in practice? I don’t pretend to have detailed answers to this, but basically it would mean as many people as possible taking a day off work. Some workers would simply call in sick. Others would take a day of paid holiday leave, or perhaps just unpaid leave. Some of us might not be able to skip work for one reason or another, but could perhaps still donate a portion of our day’s wages to support the strike. Those of us who are stuck in work for the dole programs should definitely call in sick.

If you do have a job, think about your workplace, and how it can throw a spanner in the works when just one or two people call in sick unexpectedly. Now imagine if as many as 1 in 5 or even 1 in 4 staff members all stayed home at the same time… from every workplace in the city. The ripples throughout society would be significant. Some businesses would simply have to shut their doors and give everyone a day off.

I’m confident that if even half the people who care about climate change all stayed home from work on the same day, our politicians would have no choice but to sit up and take notice. The recent school student strikes got a lot of attention, so why shouldn’t the adults join in?

What I’m now starting to wonder is whether we might have an even bigger impact if we all agreed that on the day of the climate strike, we also refused to engage in any kind of for-profit commercial transaction? Don’t go to the shops. Don’t buy anything online. Don’t even fill up your petrol tank. If your rent’s due that date, pause the automatic transfer and pay it a day later (fun fact: late rent payment doesn’t even technically count as a breach of your lease conditions).

Instead, take a day off and spend it with family and friends.

Sleep in.

Go to the park.

Go for a swim.

Read a book.

Cook a proper meal.

Major party politicians have spent a long time arguing (wrongly) that supporting the coal industry is good for the economy. Maybe it’s time to force them to recognise that the opposite is true. A general strike might seem a drastic step to some, but it’s an entirely proportionate response to the danger and devastation of runaway climate change.

I know other activists around Australia are also starting to talk about climate change-related strikes in the lead-up to the next federal election. I think the sooner we pick dates and organise such actions, the better. Waiting until March or April to start putting this kind of pressure on Labor and the Liberals will probably be too late for them to change their policy positions prior to election day. But if we start a little sooner, we could help make this into the key election issue that it ought to be.

And if they don’t change their policies, we can keep striking on a monthly basis until they have no choice, or they’re voted out of office. Heck, maybe this would be a good way to finally achieve a four-day work week.

I don’t pretend to have this all worked out, or that such a tactic would definitely succeed. But it’s clear that climate activists need to start trialling and experimenting with a more diverse range of actions. Although they’re fun and energising, climate change rallies and marches are little more than empty rituals if they don’t lead to other kinds of action. And convincing people to take a day off work might actually be a lot easier than convincing people to give up their Saturday morning marching in the hot sun.

15 February anyone?

I wouldn’t mind a long weekend at the beach.

Press link for more: Jonathan Sri

Extinction Rebellion in or out? #Auspol #Qldpol #ClimateStrike #StopAdani #COP24 #ClimateCrisis #TheDrum #Insiders #QandA we need a #GreenNewDeal to avoid catastrophic #ClimateChange

Climate change activists Extinction Rebellion plant trees and hold sit in and party on newly turfed Parliament Square. Earlier in the day activists had blocked five of London’s Bridges, Waterloo, Southwark, Blackfriars, Lambeth and Westminster. The group are calling on followers to rebel against the government’s inaction to curb climate change and a potential ecological collapse. Featuring: Atmosphere, View Where: London, United Kingdom When: 17 Nov 2018 Credit: Wheatley/WENN  

In October 2018, Extinction Rebellion (XR) launched a series of protests that mobilized thousands of (many first-time) activists and caught the attention of the media.

The rebels had three key demands: that the UK government tell the truth about the climate devastation by declaring an emergency, the establishment of a citizen’s assembly to overview a repeal of climate-negligent laws and the enactment of new policies in line with climate science.

They injected a new sense of energy and urgency into the climate movement. Thousands joined non-violent actions; London bridges were blocked, hundreds arrested. But the group has also come under fire for neglecting more political questions of justice, power and racism.

One month since XR burst on to the UK climate scene, five climate-concerned campaigners – from both in and outside the movement – give their views:

It’s time for a peaceful revolution

I chose to take part in the XR demonstrations in parliament square due to my mounting frustration with our collective legal response to climate change. Over the last 25 years, countries have agreed three international treaties to tackle it: the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement which commits countries to keep the increase in global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius and to strive for the considerably safer limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius.

But a closer examination of the legal implementation of these treaties shows the Rebels are right to take to the streets.

Of the 185 countries that are parties to the Paris Agreement, around 157 actually have national greenhouse gas reduction goals. Only 58 of these 157 countries have greenhouse gas reduction policies enshrined into law and few have legally binding policies in place that would fully achieve their own reduction goals.

We are running out of time. Climate scientists have concluded that global emissions must peak by 2020 and be net zero by 2050 if the world it is to have a chance of staying within the temperature thresholds set out in Paris. But we are very far from that happening. Only a handful of countries have set themselves this ambition let alone got legislation and public financing right to back up implementation. In the G20 countries – which accounts for 75 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions – after three decades of scientific warnings, about 82 per cent of the energy supply is still sourced from fossil fuels and CO2 emissions need to decline to net zero by 2050. But we are very far from that happening.

All the above demonstrates is that we’re rapidly making our way to climate devastation. Our fiscal policies and laws are tilted too heavily in favour of fossil fuels incumbents who fund lobbyists to kill climate legislation and buy off politicians.

These facts lie at the heart of Extinction Rebellion’s calls for public education about the truths of climate (in)action. That’s why I will be taking non-violent direct action – and supporting all those taking their governments to court – to demand a peaceful revolution to end the era of fossil fuels.

Farhana Yamin is an independent climate change lawyer and Founder of Track 0.

The demands for a citizen-led response to climate breakdown are without precedent. Extinction Rebellion has tapped into and facilitated a huge reservoir of latent energy

Apocalyptic movements don’t end well 

I’ve been involved on the fringes of Extinction Rebellion and the emergence of the movement is remarkable, fascinating, exhilarating and troubling – all at the same time.

I’m always encouraged to see people motivated to organize, take action and just discuss climate change – the world’s biggest threat that people simply don’t talk about.

Despite this, I have concerns. I fear for the movement’s longevity and wider appeal. Most obviously, at a time when elites need to be challenged and systemic change enacted, they suggest we shouldn’t blame any one individual and just demand government do more.

A more troubling aspect though are the Millennialist tendencies of the group, whenever I see their  doom-laden imagery and ‘end of the world’ slogans I’m reminded of the Fishes from the 2006 film ‘Children of Men’ – increasingly radicalized religious zealots, bent on reminding the population of their imminent mortality.

XR say this is the end and the choice we face is not whether it happens but how bad it will be. Influenced by the Dark Mountain literary movement, a recent action saw the burial of a coffin representing ‘Mother Earth’ and a series of public readings and poems centred on loss and mourning.

I worry because most Millennialist movements, from 16th-century Anabaptist Munster to present day ISIS, do not end well, unleashing strong emotions and tending towards extreme actions and Messianic leaders.

Class, race and geography all have an impact on a community’s resilience to climatic perturbations. It’s a privilege for well-off, relatively unaffected British citizens to mourn at a time when climate impacts are becoming more acute for the Global South as well as the UK working class.

If I possess it, I should use my privilege for practical purposes, to change our society for the better. Speaking of XR, a friend asked me, ‘Would they put their bodies on the line for the residents at Grenfell, for people sleeping rough, for refugees facing deportation?’

People shouldn’t be sad, they should be angry and they should direct their anger at those responsible for getting us into this mess and keeping us there.

Jonathan Atkinson is an environmental campaigner and co-founder of energy system company Carbon Co-op

Climate protest in Melbourne on Saturday

The situation demands nothing less

I joined my local Extinction Rebellion group in November because it was a tactical way to organize against climate negligence and the movement felt unashamedly led by love. And with deep love comes grief. These are the raw feelings that define Extinction Rebellion meetings, more than any abstract sense of ‘morality’. This truth has bred trust and connections, and attention to well-being, support and aftercare during protests.

Civil disobedience may be new to many XRebels (as we call ourselves), but awareness of the interdependent crises facing our planet is not. Extinction Rebellion has tapped into and facilitated a huge reservoir of latent energy across the UK. Lives that have long been dedicated to personal, cultural, spiritual, ecological and economic regeneration are finding joint purpose, now strengthened by younger people who have come of age under the shadow of ecological extinction.

The demands for a citizen-led response to climate breakdown are without precedent. We are out of time for endless dissection and critique. Spearheaded by Extinction Rebellion, we can begin to inter-weave many spheres of activism within a broader and more purposeful platform. With this awareness – which must start with acknowledging the truth of the danger we are in – an abundant future, co-created with the earth just about still feels possible. Together with the transformative potential of renewables and regenerative agriculture, we can harness immense energy to support a cultural shift from ego- to eco-centric.

None of this ignores colonial, corporate and consumer culpability, nor the immediate challenges facing disenfranchised, indigenous and Global South communities. As a white and comparatively well-resourced UK citizen, I’m using the privilege of my relative safety to disrupt business-as-usual. The situation feels like it demands nothing less.

Charlotte Dean is a writer and permaculture consultant living in the South West UK.

Climate protest in Australian parliament

It’s time to move from protest to politics

Throughout my entire life, many wonderful activists have worked to force governments to act on climate change. From climate camps to the anti-fracking fight, the energy of the environmental movement has been an inspiration to campaigners everywhere. Yet, from today’s perspective these efforts were in vain.

This year alone has seen the green-lighting of fracking, and the confirmation that Heathrow will expand- despite the fact that it is clearer than ever that man-made climate change is hurtling the planet towards disaster. The situation is urgent. Extinction Rebellion have correctly recognized this, but their strategy will not work. Blocking bridges, gaining headlines and mass arrests, while useful in terms of maintaining a spotlight on climate change, will not ultimately bring about the radical shift in economic policy that is necessary.

In its place, the climate movement must engage strategically with the labour movement, the only political force with the power and capacity to deliver the transformation needed to avert catastrophic climate change. Green energy, infrastructure and industry must sit at the heart of all of Labour’s economic policy; and the argument – that fighting climate change need not lead to the loss of jobs – has to be won within the trade unions.

In the US this is already happening. The strategy of the Sunrise Movement in engaging with Left Democrats has produced Ocasio-Cortez’s ‘Green New Deal’, a development that Naomi Klein has called ‘game-changing’. Here in the UK we need the same. The climate movement will find many allies willing to work with them to achieve this, and their energy will be much needed to help build a social majority behind the transformative economic policy necessary to prevent catastrophic global warming. It’s time for the move from protest to politics.

Isaac Rose is chair of the Manchester branch of Momentum, a group within Labour formed to support Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and push for socialist policies and the democratization of the party.

The climate movement must engage strategically with the labour movement, the only political force with the power and capacity to deliver the transformation needed to avert catastrophic climate change.

XR must call out capitalism and neo-colonialism 

Over the last few months, we have been working as part of, and in solidarity with, Extinction Rebellion. Cameron was voluntarily arrested on 17 November during Rebellion Day, while Boden was acting as a Legal Observer.

We believe Extinction Rebellion has certain serious issues that need addressing if it wants to effectively and responsibly fight for climate justice.

Anti-capitalism, decolonization and anti-oppression work cannot be an afterthought – shoved into a five-minute window between speeches or tucked away at the end of an action. Communities on the frontline of climate change fight the causes and manifestations of climate breakdown daily. Supporting and platforming their struggles by targeting the systems of exploitation and extraction that they resist, must be at the centre of Extinction Rebellion.

A good place to start would be rethinking messaging and tactics. So far, the movement hasn’t focused on neo-colonialism and capitalism as the engines of climate breakdown, and it has actively chosen to disassociate from Leftist thought. The current messaging puts equal weight on the extinction of animal species as on the daily loss of human lives in the Global South. In doing so, it alienates frontline communities already leading fights for racial, environmental, gender, class and indigenous justice – neglecting the struggles of the real victims of climate breakdown in order to attract Centrists and Conservatives.

The use of arrests to crowd out police stations and gain media coverage is innovative. However, the narrow focus on this form of protest inevitably elevates white middle-class British voices, for whom arrest isn’t as big of a deal, and excludes people of colour, trans folk, anyone with a precarious visa status, and working-class people, for whom arrest is a potentially lethal and life-ruining prospect. Extinction Rebellion lis not fighting for climate justice if its movement excludes those people most disproportionately affected by climate breakdown.

Instead of exclusively focusing on arrests, it should target banks, fossil fuel corporations and extractive industries, creating more platforms for frontline community leadership and connecting with other justice-oriented campaigns. This would be a lot more effective and popular than bluntly grid-locking London streets. We need to remember that being part of an integrated ecology of movements is much more threatening to entrenched power than acting in isolation. This was true for the civil rights and anti-colonial movements that Extinction Rebellion gains inspiration from, and it is true now.

Cameron Joshi is a member of the London Renters Union and London activist group Our Future Now. He co-writes a blog on activism with two other activists called “Army of Three”

Boden Franklin is a climate activist focusing on divestment, climate justice, and anti-fracking campaigning in the UK.

Majority of Aussies support school children’s new protest #StopAdani #ClimateStrike #auspol #qldpol #ExtinctionRebellion #COP24 We urgently need a #GreenNewDeal #ClimateChange is catastrophic

Climate protest in Melbourne

By Charis Chang

Another mass student-led march was held across Australia yesterday following news Adani would self-fund its controversial coal mine in Queensland.

It comes after thousands of students copped criticism from politicians including Prime Minister Scott Morrison for skipping school last week to attend climate change rallies instead.

But it seems many Australians don’t agree with Mr Morrison’s comments that there should be “more learning in schools and less activism”.

New national ReachTel polling conducted after the Student Strike for Climate Action revealed widespread support for the students.

The Australian Youth Climate Coalition released results from the survey of 2345 people, which found 62.7 per cent thought school students had a right to demand action from the Government on climate change. Among Labor voters, this rose to 86.4 per cent.

A majority of 58.1 per cent also thought the Labor Party should show leadership on climate change and oppose Adani’s coal mine, including 80.7 per cent of Labor voters.

Students invited adults to join them at March for Our Future rallies in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Cairns after Adani announced it would self-fund its mine and start work before Christmas.

Climate Angels Cairns

“This new poll shows Australians support the students’ actions and that the Prime Minister’s attacks on the kids are mean-spirited and out-of-step with public opinion,” Australian Youth Climate Coalition national director Gemma Borgo-Caratti said.

“The poll also puts Bill Shorten on notice that a clear majority of Australians, and the vast majority of Labor voters, want him to act to stop the Adani mine.

“Labor voters want strong leadership on climate change, not a would-be prime minister who says the Adani coal mine would make no difference to carbon emissions.”

Jean Hinchliffe, 14, said students would continue to push governments to act on climate change.

“We’re not going to stop until change is made,” she told news.com.au.

She said young people around Australia were working on big plans for the school holidays and for 2019.

Melbourne Climate Strike

The rallies on Saturday protested against the Adani coal mine and Jean said they were opposed to the use of coal for electricity and were also against the development because of the potential impact on the Great Barrier Reef.

“It will drive Australia and the rest of the world away from a sustainable future and that’s something we don’t agree with,” she said.

“Young people will not stand by and let Adani dig its mine, or let politicians get away with waving through a project which will destroy our future.

“Climate change is breathing down our necks. We’re fired up and ready to do whatever it takes to stop Adani.”

This weekend’s protests follow a nationwide student strike last week followed by a “sit-in” inside the lobby of Parliament House this week. High school students staged the protest after their requests to speak with the Prime Minister about climate change were ignored – and it earnt them a three-month ban from the premises.

Earlier in the day, Mr Morrison said he would sit down with the school students, a week after he criticised them for skipping school to stage the national strikes.

“I’m always happy to listen. I respect everybody’s views,” he told reporters on Wednesday morning.

“We don’t always have to agree on everything, you know, but we do have to respect each other and we do have to take each other’s views seriously.”

Despite the PM’s words, he’s yet to meet with the 100-strong student group, whose protest was moved to the lawns outside Parliament House by security

Crossbench MP Kerryn Phelps and Greens senator Jordon Steele-John both took time to meet with the students.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale praised the group.

“The reason we had young people in parliament today protesting is because the Liberal and Labor Party are not listening to them,” he told reporters.

It was a sentiment echoed by the students gathered outside, including 14-year-old Tully Bowtell-Young who travelled solo from Townsville to be there – using her own pocket money to help cover costs.

“I think it’s worthwhile because nothing I have now is going to mean anything if I don’t have a future in this world,” she told AAP.

EMISSIONS ARE RISING

The world has already warmed by 1C and global emissions are projected to rise by more than 2 per cent this year due to an increase in the amount of coal being burned and the sustained use of oil and natural gas.

In Australia, the latest government data shows greenhouse emissions are at their highest level since 2011.

The National Greenhouse Gas Inventory figures for the June quarter show total emissions were the equivalent of 533.7 million tonnes, up 5.1 per cent since the carbon price was abolished in June 2014.

Australia had the highest per capita greenhouse gas energy in the world

A leading climate scientist suggests Australia will now have to reduce electricity sector emissions by 60 to 70 per cent in order to meet its Paris Agreement target of reducing carbon emissions by 26 to 28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.

“It’s clear that nations around the world aren’t doing enough to slow down climate change,” Griffith University emeritus professor Ian Lowe told ABC radio on Thursday.

Even Australia’s now-dumped National Energy Guarantee aimed to cut emissions by 26 per cent.

Some argue that Australia only contributes to about 1.8 per cent of global emissions but Prof Lowe said every nation except the US and China was in the same position – and together these emissions contribute to the majority of emissions.

“It’s all of the one and two per cents from all of the little countries that add up to the other 60 per cent outside the US and China,” he said.

Recently a special report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) revealed carbon emissions would need to be cut by 45 per cent from 2010 levels by 2030 in order to keep global warming to 1.5C. To achieve this, the use of coal for electricity generation would have to be slashed to practically zero by 2050.

If warming is allowed to reach 2C almost all the world’s coral reefs would die including the Great Barrier Reef. Even if warming reached 1.5C, most would still die. To even save half the world’s reefs, warming should be limited to 1.2C.

Treasurer Scott Morrison with a lump of coal during Question Time in the House of Representatives Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: Kym Smith

GOVERNMENT FAILS TO GET AGREEMENT

Representatives from nearly 200 countries will hold talks at a UN Climate Change Conference in Katowice, Poland focusing on the rules for implementing the Paris climate accord.

But federal Environment Minister Melissa Price was unable to get a joint statement on climate change signed off by state environment ministers to take with her to Poland on Saturday.

Ms Price met with her state counterparts in Canberra on Friday and asked them to endorse a statement but they refused because the government has no plan to tackle the problem.

“What I had suggested was that we had an agreed statement that we would all work together to determine an action plan with respect to climate, with respect to things that we can do individually and collectively,” Ms Price told reporters on Friday.

“Sadly that was not agreed. There was not an agreement on the words that I proposed, and no one proposed alternative words.”

The Labor governments of Queensland, Victoria, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and the ACT released a joint statement condemning the lack of action.

“The science is frightening, unequivocal and clear – we are running out of time,” the statement said. “Yet the response of successive Liberal prime ministers has been one of delusion and deliberate inaction.

“It is unacceptable that any action on climate change has again been left off the agenda at today’s meeting.”

Press link for more: Tweed Daily News

#COP24 fails to adopt key #ClimateChange report. #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani #ClimateStrike We’re in desperate need of political leadership a #GreenNewDeal #TheDrum #Insiders #QandA

By Matt McGrath Environment correspondent, Katowice

Attempts to incorporate a key scientific study into global climate talks in Poland have failed. 

The IPCC report on the impacts of a temperature rise of 1.5C, had a significant impact when it was launched last October.

Scientists and many delegates in Poland were shocked and disappointed as the US, Saudi Arabia and Russia objected to this meeting “welcoming” the report.

It was the 2015 climate conference that had commissioned the landmark study.

The report said that the world is now completely off track, heading more towards 3C this century rather than 1.5C.

Keeping to the preferred target would need “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”. If warming was to be kept to 1.5C this century, then emissions of carbon dioxide would have to be reduced by 45% by 2030.

The report, launched in Incheon in South Korea, had an immediate impact winning praise from politicians all over the world.

But negotiators here ran into serious trouble when Saudi Arabia, the US and Russia objected to the conference “welcoming” the document. 

Instead they wanted to support a much more lukewarm phrase, that the conference would “take note” of the report.

Saudi Arabia had fought until the last minute in Korea to limit the conclusions of the document. Eventually they gave in. But it now seems that they have brought their objections to Poland.

The dispute dragged on as huddles of negotiators met in corners of the plenary session here, trying to agree a compromise wording.

None was forthcoming.

With no consensus, under UN rules the passage of text had to be dropped.

Many countries expressed frustration and disappointment at the outcome.

Thousands protest in Melbourne Sydney and Cairns

“It’s not about one word or another, it is us being in a position to welcome a report we commissioned in the first place,” said Ruenna Haynes from St Kitts and Nevis.

“If there is anything ludicrous about the discussion its that we can’t welcome the report,” she said to spontaneous applause.

Scientists and campaigners were also extremely disappointed by the outcome.

“We are really angry and find it atrocious that some countries dismiss the messages and the consequences that we are facing, by not accepting what is unequivocal and not acting upon it,” said Yamide Dagnet from the World Resources Institute, and a former climate negotiator for the UK.

Others noted that Saudi Arabia and the US had supported the report when it was launched in October. It appears that the Saudis and the US baulked at the political implications of the UN body putting the IPCC report at its heart. 

“Climate science is not a political football,” said Camilla Born, from climate think tank E3G.

“All the worlds governments – Saudi included – agreed the 1.5C report and we deserve the truth. Saudi can’t argue with physics, the climate will keep on changing.”

Many delegates are now hoping that ministers, who arrive on Monday, will try and revive efforts to put this key report at the heart of the conference. 

“We hope that the rest of the world will rally and we get a decisive response to the report,” said Yamide Dagnet. 

“I sincerely hope that all countries will fight that we don’t leave COP24 having missed a moment of history.”

Press link for more: BBC

15,000 people March in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney & Cairns: Demand #StopAdani coal mine #ClimateAction #auspol #qldpol #COP24 #ExtinctionRebellion

Responding to Adani’s announcement that it would start work by Christmas, and led by school students and first nations people, over 15,000 people joined Snap Marches in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and Cairns to demand that Federal Labor urgently commit to stop the Adani coal mine.

Meanwhile, a new national ReachTel poll released today reveals:

• more than eight out of 10 Labor voters want Bill Shorten to #StopAdani

• Nine out of 10 Labor voters support students’ right to demand climate action.

HIGH QUALITY PHOTOS UPLOADED HERE.

HIGH QUALITY VISION UPLOADED HERE.

Press Link For More: School Strike

Mean while in Cairns several hundred gathered to demand climate action.

The ‘great dying’: rapid warming caused largest extinction event ever. #auspol #qldpol #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion #TheDrum We urgently need a global #GreenNewDeal Catastrophic #ClimateChange

Up to 96% of all marine species and more than two-thirds of terrestrial species perished 252m years ago

Oliver Milman

Rapid global warming caused the largest extinction event in the Earth’s history, which wiped out the vast majority of marine and terrestrial animals on the planet, scientists have found.

The mass extinction, known as the “great dying”, occurred around 252m years ago and marked the end of the Permian geologic period.

The study of sediments and fossilized creatures show the event was the single greatest calamity ever to befall life on Earth, eclipsing even the extinction of the dinosaurs 65m years ago.

10,000 fruit bats (Flying Fox) die from heat stress during record heatwave in Cairns last week.

Up to 96% of all marine species perished while more than two-thirds of terrestrial species disappeared.

The cataclysm was so severe it wiped out most of the planet’s trees, insects, plants, lizards and even microbes.

Scientists have theorized causes for the extinction, such as a giant asteroid impact. But US researchers now say they have pinpointed the demise of marine life to a spike in Earth’s temperatures, warning that present-day global warming will also have severe ramifications for life on the planet.

“It was a huge event. In the last half a billion years of life on the planet, it was the worst extinction,” said Curtis Deutsch, an oceanography expert who co-authored the research, published on Thursday, with his University of Washington colleague Justin Penn along with Stanford University scientists Jonathan Payne and Erik Sperling.

The researchers used paleoceanographic records and built a model to analyse changes in animal metabolism, ocean and climate conditions. When they used the model to mimic conditions at the end of the Permian period, they found it matched the extinction records.

According to the study, this suggests that marine animals essentially suffocated as warming waters lacked the oxygen required for survival. “For the first time, we’ve got a whole lot of confidence that this is what happened,” said Deutsch. “It’s a very strong argument that rising temperatures and oxygen depletion were to blame.”

The great dying event, which occurred over an uncertain timeframe of possibly hundreds of years, saw Earth’s temperatures increase by around 10C (18F). Oceans lost around 80% of their oxygen, with parts of the seafloor becoming completely oxygen-free. Scientists believe this warming was caused by a huge spike in greenhouse gas emissions, potentially caused by volcanic activity.

The new research, published in Science, found that the drop in oxygen levels was particularly deadly for marine animals living closer to the poles. Experiments that varied oxygen and temperature levels for modern marine species, including shellfish, corals and sharks, helped “bridge the gap” to what the model found, Payne said.

“This really would be a terrible, terrible time to be around on the planet,” he added. “It shows us that when the climate and ocean chemistry changes quickly, you can reach a point where species don’t survive. It took millions of years to recover from the Permian event, which is essentially permanent from the perspective of human timescales.”

Over the past century, the modern world has warmed by around 1C due to the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, rather than from volcanic eruptions.

This warming is already causing punishing heatwaves, flooding and wildfires around the world, with scientists warning that the temperature rise could reach 3C or more by the end of the century unless there are immediate, radical reductions in emissions.

At the same time, Earth’s species are undergoing what some experts have termed the “sixth great extinction” due to habitat loss, poaching, pollution and climate change.

“It does terrify me to think we are on a trajectory similar to the Permian because we really don’t want to be on that trajectory,” Payne said. “It doesn’t look like we will warm by around 10C and we haven’t lost that amount of biodiversity yet. But even getting halfway there would be something to be very concerned about. The magnitude of change we are currently experiencing is fairly large.”

Deutsch said: “We are about a 10th of the way to the Permian. Once you get to 3-4C of warming, that’s a significant fraction and life in the ocean is in big trouble, to put it bluntly. There are big implications for humans’ domination of the Earth and its ecosystems.”

Deutsch added that the only way to avoid a mass aquatic die-off in the oceans was to reduce carbon emissions, given there is no viable way to ameliorate the impact of climate change in the oceans using other measures.

The research group “provide convincing evidence that warmer temperatures and associated lower oxygen levels in the ocean are sufficient to explain the observed extinctions we see in the fossil record”, said Pamela Grothe, a paleoclimate scientist at the University of Mary Washington.

“The past holds the key to the future,” she added. “Our current rates of carbon dioxide emissions is instantaneous geologically speaking and we are already seeing warming ocean temperatures and lower oxygen in many regions, currently affecting marine ecosystems.

“If we continue in the trajectory we are on with current emission rates, this study highlights the potential that we may see similar rates of extinction in marine species as in the end of the Permian.”

Press link for more: The Guardian

Global warming will happen faster than we think! #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani #ClimateStrike We urgently need a global #GreenNewDeal #TheDrum

Three trends will combine to hasten it, warn Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor.

Devastating wildfires ravaged California last month. Credit: Gene Blevins/Reuters

Prepare for the “new abnormal”. That was what California Governor Jerry Brown told reporters last month, commenting on the deadly wildfires that have plagued the state this year.

He’s right. California’s latest crisis builds on years of record-breaking droughts and heatwaves.

The rest of the world, too, has had more than its fair share of extreme weather in 2018. The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change announced last week that 157 million more people were exposed to heatwave events in 2017, compared with 2000.

Such environmental disasters will only intensify. Governments, rightly, want to know what to do. Yet the climate-science community is struggling to offer useful answers.

In October, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a report setting out why we must stop global warming at 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, and how to do so¹. It is grim reading. If the planet warms by 2 °C — the widely touted temperature limit in the 2015 Paris climate agreement — twice as many people will face water scarcity than if warming is limited to 1.5 °C. That extra warming will also expose more than 1.5 billion people to deadly heat extremes, and hundreds of millions of individuals to vector-borne diseases such as malaria, among other harms. 

But the latest IPCC special report underplays another alarming fact: global warming is accelerating. Three trends — rising emissions, declining air pollution and natural climate cycles — will combine over the next 20 years to make climate change faster and more furious than anticipated. In our view, there’s a good chance that we could breach the 1.5 °C level by 2030, not by 2040 as projected in the special report (see ‘Accelerated warming’). The climate-modelling community has not grappled enough with the rapid changes that policymakers care most about, preferring to focus on longer-term trends and equilibria.

Sources: Ref. 1/GISTEMP/IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014)

Policymakers have less time to respond than they thought. Governments need to invest even more urgently in schemes that protect homes from floods and fires and help people to manage heat stress (especially older individuals and those living in poverty). Nations need to make their forests and farms more resilient to droughts, and prepare coasts for inundation. Rapid warming will create a greater need for emissions policies that yield the quickest changes in climate, such as controls on soot, methane and hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) gases. There might even be a case for solar geoengineering — cooling the planet by, for instance, seeding reflective particles in the stratosphere to act as a sunshade. 

Climate scientists must supply the evidence policymakers will need and provide assessments for the next 25 years. They should advise policymakers on which climate-warming pollutants to limit first to gain the most climate benefit. They should assess which policies can be enacted most swiftly and successfully in the real world, where political, administrative and economic constraints often make abstract, ‘ideal’ policies impractical.

Speeding freight train

Three lines of evidence suggest that global warming will be faster than projected in the recent IPCC special report. 

First, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising.

In 2017, industrial carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to have reached about 37 gigatonnes.

This puts them on track with the highest emissions trajectory the IPCC has modelled so far.

This dark news means that the next 25 years are poised to warm at a rate of 0.25–0.32 °C per decade. That is faster than the 0.2 °C per decade that we have experienced since the 2000s, and which the IPCC used in its special report. 

Second, governments are cleaning up air pollution faster than the IPCC and most climate modellers have assumed.

For example, China reduced sulfur dioxide emissions from its power plants by 7–14% between 2014 and 2016 (ref. ).

Mainstream climate models had expected them to rise. Lower pollution is better for crops and public health. But aerosols, including sulfates, nitrates and organic compounds, reflect sunlight. This shield of aerosols has kept the planet cooler, possibly by as much as 0.7 °C globally. 

Third, there are signs that the planet might be entering a natural warm phase that could last for a couple of decades. The Pacific Ocean seems to be warming up, in accord with a slow climate cycle known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation. This cycle modulates temperatures over the equatorial Pacific and over North America. Similarly, the mixing of deep and surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean (the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) looks to have weakened since 2004, on the basis of data from drifting floats that probe the deep ocean. Without this mixing, more heat will stay in the atmosphere rather than going into the deep oceans, as it has in the past. 

These three forces reinforce each other. We estimate that rising greenhouse-gas emissions, along with declines in air pollution, bring forward the estimated date of 1.5 °C of warming to around 2030, with the 2 °C boundary reached by 2045. These could happen sooner with quicker shedding of air pollutants. Adding in natural decadal fluctuations raises the odds of blasting through 1.5 °C by 2025 to at least 10% (ref. ). By comparison, the IPCC assigned probabilities of 17% and 83% for crossing the 1.5 °C mark by 2030 and 2052, respectively.

Four fronts

Scientists and policymakers must rethink their roles, objectives and approaches on four fronts. 

Assess science in the near term. Policymakers should ask the IPCC for another special report, this time on the rates of climate change over the next 25 years. The panel should also look beyond the physical science itself and assess the speed at which political systems can respond, taking into account pressures to maintain the status quo from interest groups and bureaucrats. Researchers should improve climate models to describe the next 25 years in more detail, including the latest data on the state of the oceans and atmosphere, as well as natural cycles. They should do more to quantify the odds and impacts of extreme events. The evidence will be hard to muster, but it will be more useful in assessing real climate dangers and responses. 

Rethink policy goals. Warming limits, such as the 1.5 °C goal, should be recognized as broad planning tools. Too often they are misconstrued as physical thresholds around which to design policies. The excessive reliance on ‘negative emissions technologies’ (that take up CO₂) in the IPCC special report shows that it becomes harder to envision realistic policies the closer the world gets to such limits. It’s easy to bend models on paper, but much harder to implement real policies that work. 

Realistic goals should be set based on political and social trade-offs, not just on geophysical parameters. They should come out of analyses of costs, benefits and feasibility. Assessments of these trade-offs must be embedded in the Paris climate process, which needs a stronger compass to guide its evaluations of how realistic policies affect emissions. Better assessment can motivate action but will also be politically controversial: it will highlight gaps between what countries say they will do to control emissions, and what needs to be achieved collectively to limit warming. Information about trade-offs must therefore come from outside the formal intergovernmental process — from national academies of sciences, subnational partnerships and non-governmental organizations. 

Design strategies for adaptation. The time for rapid adaptation has arrived. Policymakers need two types of information from scientists to guide their responses. First, they need to know what the potential local impacts will be at the scales of counties to cities. Some of this information could be gleaned by combining fine-resolution climate impact assessments with artificial intelligence for ‘big data’ analyses of weather extremes, health, property damage and other variables. Second, policymakers need to understand uncertainties in the ranges of probable climate impacts and responses. Even regions that are proactive in setting adaptation policies, such as California, lack information about the ever-changing risks of extreme warming, fires and rising seas. Research must be integrated across fields and stakeholders — urban planners, public-health management, agriculture and ecosystem services. Adaptation strategies should be adjustable if impacts unfold differently. More planning and costing is needed around the worst-case outcomes. 

Understand options for rapid response. Climate assessments must evaluate quick ways of lessening climate impacts, such as through reducing emissions of methane, soot (or black carbon) and HFCs. Per tonne, these three ‘super pollutants’ have 25 to thousands of times the impact of CO2. Their atmospheric lifetimes are short — in the range of weeks (for soot) to about a decade (for methane and HFCs). Slashing these pollutants would potentially halve the warming trend over the next 25 years.

There has been progress on this front. At the Global Climate Action summit held in September in San Francisco, California, the United States Climate Alliance — a coalition of state governors representing 40% of the US population — issued a road map to reduce emissions of methane, HFCs and soot by 40–50% by 2030. The 2016 Kigali amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which will go into force by January 2019, is set to slash HFC emissions by 80% over the next 30 years.

Various climate engineering options should be on the table as an emergency response. If global conditions really deteriorate, we might be forced to extract large volumes of excess CO2 directly from the atmosphere. An even faster emergency response could be to inject aerosols into the atmosphere to lower the amount of solar radiation heating the planet, as air pollution does. This option is hugely controversial, and might have unintended consequences, such as altering rainfall patterns that lead to drying of the tropics. So research and planning are crucial, in case this option is needed. Until there is investment in testing and technical preparedness — today, there is almost none — the chances are high that the wrong kinds of climate-engineering scheme will be deployed by irresponsible parties who are uninformed by research. 

For decades, scientists and policymakers have framed the climate-policy debate in a simple way: scientists analyse long-term goals, and policymakers pretend to honour them.

Those days are over.

Serious climate policy must focus more on the near-term and on feasibility.

It must consider the full range of options, even though some are uncomfortable and freighted with risk. 

Nature 564, 30-32 (2018)

Press link for more: Nature.com

Sir David Attenborough issues warning at UN Climate Conference #COP24 #StopAdani #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion #auspol #qldpol Listen to the scientists. #TheDrum #QandA Collapse of civilisation

Sir David Attenborough addressed world leaders at the UN Climate Change Conference claiming if we don’t take action: “the collapse of our civilisations … is on the horizon.”

How many warnings will it take before we demand climate action?

Not enough is being done in fact our emissions are growing.

A man made disaster of global scale is the mess we are leaving for our children and future generations.

We must demand climate action now.

Time to join the scientists and the students demanding climate action.

This Saturday we can stand with our children and demand a better future.

The Australian Academy of Science released this Video of Sir David Attenborough at COP24

If want to look at solutions for the climate crisis we face watch Bernie Sanders Town Hall with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Solving the Climate Crisis

We urgently need a Global Green New Deal It’s Humanity’s Greatest Moral Challenge.

Let’s hope we can do this.

Stand with the children demanding change.

Coal, coal, coal & soaring emissions – as a Liberal, I have had enough | Oliver Yates #auspol #qldpol #StopAdani Demand #ClimateAction a #GreenNewDeal #ClimateStrike #ExtinctionRebellion

By Oliver Yates

Time is up. The Liberal party won’t reform, so it is time to stop fighting, split and take the opportunity to compete for the support of the public.

The Liberal partyis now broken, brand-damaged and unable to attract new members that would enable it to represent a “broad church”.

The failure of the existing Liberal party to address climate change or to support an integrity commission is unacceptable.

Nowhere is this failure more obvious than in its continued support for the Adani coalmine and new coal-fired power stations.

I expected more from Scott Morrison after the Victorian walloping. Instead we get the very same. Slippery answers to everything. Coal, coal, coal and soaring greenhouse gas emissions.

Scott Morrison Australia’s new Prime Minister loves coal

Refusing to reduce emissions as cheaply as possible is irrational, immoral and economically reckless. Achieving emission reductions of just 2% a year as proposed by the Labor party in the electricity sector costs very little and won’t risk system stability or security.

We should be aiming for a 2% reduction in emissions every year to ensure Australia does its fair share to tackle climate change. Instead, emissions are increasing and are at a seven year high.

Something must lie behind the failure of the Liberal party to accept policies that are economically rational and environmentally sound, so some sunlight from an integrity commission should be welcomed by all Australians.

Wherever you look, something is wrong.

The pursuit by ministers of baseload coal power when we need dispatchable renewable energy and storage.

Claims by ministers that we need more fossil fuels and that they are cheaper than renewables or that clean coal is the answer.

Claims by ministers that as Australia only emits 1.3% of global pollution we have no role to play, ignoring the fact that we are only 0.3% of the population and that we will be heavily damaged by the impacts of climate change.

Students protest against the Adani Coal Mine in Parliament House

And the final insult – allowing the Adani coalmine to proceed when it lacks a social licence, is completely inconsistent with the need to tackle climate change and frankly smells with donations, overseas trips and wedding parties.

Scott Morrison brings a chunk of coal into parliament

We desperately need an integrity commission to investigate potential conflicts of interest that see a revolving door between the coal industry and minister’s offices. It is hard to believe donors don’t have influence on the selection of ministers to some degree.

Adani donations to the Liberal National Party

Members of parliament that are selected to be ministers stand to receive additional pay of more than $150,000, boosting their remuneration towards $500,000. It seems obvious that such ministers would be more likely to promote the views of the large donors that influenced their appointment in the first place.

We need a parliament that accepts science.

We need a parliament that respects our geography and rationally accepts that our neighbours and their views have special relevance and their concerns deserve special attention, just as my neighbours on my street deserve my special consideration.

We need a root and branch review of the political remuneration system that ensures that it provides the right incentives for all politicians to work for the benefit of our country rather than fight against each other to secure the “spoils of government”.

As a Liberal, I have had enough and, as evidenced by the swing in safe Liberal seats in Victoria, I am not alone.

Students in their thousands protesting for climate action

We must provide alternatives for Liberals to vote for at the next federal election, and I hope to see independent Liberals provide electors in safe Liberal seats with that choice. We need to return to the day where politicians know that their job is not to retain their job but rather to represent their electorate, who, if they are lucky, reward them with their job.

The Liberal party brand has been so damaged and trust so completely destroyed that no amount of “shuffling the deck chairs” will change the outcome of the next federal election.

It is simply impossible for many Liberal voters to vote for a party that:

• works to prevent any action on climate change

• has the potential to be controlled by the mining industry or whichever new industry is willing to pay for favours (clubs, internet gambling, pokies, firearms and many more)

• rejects the establishment of an integrity commission

• rejects donation reform and transparency and promotes members for their fundraising skills rather than policy and communication skills

• backs the Adani coalmine, which has no social licence and is inconsistent with our need to tackle climate change; and

• regardless of the election result seems to be heading towards installing Tony Abbott or Peter Dutton as the next party leader

Liberal voters will align with independent Liberals who have real world experience, who will put the interests of their electorates first and who support: 

• tight fiscal responsibility so the country operates within its means

• strong border controls, backed by a compassionate approach to the treatment of refugees

• free enterprise and small business, balanced with appropriate regulation to ensure competition is fair

• transparency, integrity and trust; and

• real action on climate change that is consistent with what the science is demanding

While I am sure many “shock jocks” who are doing daily damage to the Liberal party will yet again venture to their usual corner of scare tactics about the arrival of independent Liberals, there is no justification for that.

Independent Liberals will move with transparency and integrity, and will clearly state their principals and beliefs so electors know what they are voting for. Just imagine how refreshing that would be in the current world of dark party politics where trading principles for position and power is considered a positive skill.

Once the Liberal party reforms and rebalances, Liberal independents might elect to join again.

• Oliver Yates is a member of the Liberal party and former chief executive of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation

Press link for more: The Guardian

Labor understands the need for urgent #ClimateAction #auspol #qldpol #ClimateStrike but will they #StopAdani ? #COP24 #ExtinctionRebellion #TheDrum #QandA #GreenNewDeal now.

Mr BUTLER

This morning, perhaps the most famous naturalist in the world, David Attenborough, addressed that conference and said: ‘It is a man-made disaster on a global scale and our greatest threat in thousands of years of human existence.’

Sir David Attenborough’s Address to COP24

This very grave statement by the most legendary naturalist on the face of the planet follows the recent publication of a confronting report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, which laid out the impacts of climate change at a level of two degrees Celsius of global warming on the one hand and 1.5 degrees Celsius following the Paris climate agreement of 2015.

That report shows that two degrees of global warming will have a devastating impact on our natural environment and human society as we understand it.

Just as one example, the IPCC has said that, at two degrees of global warming, more than 99 per cent of the world’s coral reefs will be destroyed—almost all of our world’s coral reefs will be destroyed.

Our own coral reef, the Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven natural wonders of the world, has already been subject to two major bleaching events in the last three years. And the Bureau of Meteorology only recently advised that there is a 70 per cent chance of an El Nino building in the Pacific over the course of the coming summer, which would place the reef under threat of a third major bleaching event in just four years. Before these last three years there has been only one major bleaching event in the recorded history of the Great Barrier Reef.

It’s not just the IPCC report that has underlined the gravity of even two degrees of global warming. The World Bank only a couple of years ago indicated that two degrees of global warming would wipe out as much as 20 per cent of global cereal production, including fully 50 per cent of cereal production on the continent of Africa, which, as we know, is already struggling to feed its people and will be the area where most of the world’s population increase over coming decades occurs. The grave thing about these reports is that we are not even close to tracking to keeping global warming below two degrees. At the moment we’re advised that we’re currently tracking to somewhere between three and four degrees of global warming, whose impacts are barely able to be imagined.

The world is now facing a climate emergency. This emergency won’t unfold over the course of the coming year or even few years; this emergency will unfold over coming decades, but we are starting to see the impacts of climate change now. Much earlier than 20 or 25 years ago we were advised that we’d see those impacts. We’re starting to see them now and they are frightening. Barack Obama said when he was President of the United States:

We are the first generation to feel the impact of climate change and the last generation that can do something about it.

Last week here in Australia literally thousands of students, overwhelmingly with the permission of their parents, decided to take a day off school and march in the streets to protest at the lack of reasonable action by this parliament and this government. We all want kids to go to school, but I think on this side of the parliament we also understand the deep frustration that young Australians at school and beyond school age feel at the lack of action by our generation on climate change, particularly in this building. I talk to young Australians, as I know members of this House across the aisle talk to young Australians, all the time. I hear them saying just how let down they feel by our generation in dealing with something that they feel is going to be such a substantial issue over the course of what we hope will be their very long lives. They feel let down in an unforgiveable way.

None of us should fall for the rubbish that is often spouted by commentators—and unfortunately some on the other side of the House—that what Australia does doesn’t matter in this debate.

Yes, we are a small nation.

We don’t even rate in the top 50 of the world’s nations in population, but we rate in the top 15 in the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted from this economy.

We are a wealthy nation that has, along with other members of the OECD, grown wealthy on the back of long-term industrialisation.

We are the highest per capita producer of greenhouse gases.

If Australia won’t act and take responsible strong action on climate change, which nation on the face of the planet should be expected to act?

We have a deep responsibility in this area, as a good global citizen, a friend and a neighbour to communities in our region for whom climate change poses a threat.

As parents, grandparents, uncles and aunties we have a generational responsibility to do everything we reasonably can to ensure our children and grandchildren enjoy a natural environment at least as good as the one that we enjoy.

We are a wealthy nation, but it is in our own self-interest to act on climate change, because our continent is deeply vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

This continent already pushes us up right against the limits of human tolerance to heat.

This continent has agricultural regions that are deeply vulnerable to very clear structural trends, already identified by the Bureau of Meteorology and the CSIRO, in rainfall, particularly the Murray-Darling Basin region in eastern Australia and the Wheatbelt in the South West of Western Australia.

We largely live on coasts, with coastal communities that are deeply vulnerable to very quickly accelerating sea level rise, which over time will pose risks to literally billions and billions of dollars of assets. And we know that already the increase in heat events and other extreme weather events is posing a substantial risk to the health of Australians.

In this area, government action and government policy matter. When we were in government, carbon pollution levels came down by more than 10 per cent in those six years. We were the fourth most attractive investment destination in renewable energy. We had state governments in New South Wales and Queensland finally acting on an end to broadscale land clearing of remnant vegetation.

This government’s record could not be different. Carbon pollution has been rising since this government came to office and is projected to continue to rise all the way to 2030, which is as far as the government’s projections go.

The new climate change minister can’t even pinpoint a day on which she thinks carbon pollution might eventually peak.

We are now pretty much the only major advanced economy where carbon pollution and greenhouse gases are going up rather than coming down.

In spite of the Prime Minister and all of his ministers getting up at the despatch box and doing media conferences to say that we’ll meet our targets in a canter, no-one believes them.

Their own data doesn’t show it and the United Nations Emissions gap report 2018 from a couple of weeks ago doesn’t show it, because it simply is not happening. As Malcolm Turnbull said again today, as Rob Stokes said on the front page of The Sydney Morning Herald, this federal coalition is simply genetically incapable of taking climate change action. It is so deeply divided that it is incapable of taking action in this policy area.

It doesn’t have to be that way. The UK Conservatives understood that this was in the national interest. They’re tracking to a budget at around 2030 of not a five per cent reduction in carbon pollution, which is this government’s track record, but a 61 per cent reduction in carbon pollution. At the same time, they’re producing about three times as much steel as Australia and have 800,000 workers still working in the automotive industry—an industry that this government shut down in Australia—which demonstrates that decarbonisation and the maintenance of a strong industrial base are possible and are consistent with a strong, growing economy.

As Malcolm Turnbull has said, this coalition is just incapable. Its division, its ideological obsessions, are holding this nation hostage on a critically important policy area. The division in the coalition party room is holding future generations hostage. That’s why they were marching in the streets last week. Labor isn’t just ready. We’re not just ready to take action here; we are impatient to take action, because we know that this is in the national interest, that this is in our children’s interest, and that this is in our grandchildren’s interest. But to look after those interests, we need a change of government.

Press link for more: Mark Butler