Page 3814 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 22 November 2006
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the long, slow process of turning it around. Climate change in our region we have experienced, but we are told by the CSIRO that it will lead to higher temperatures and fewer cold days, longer and more frequent droughts and an increase in extreme winds—in fact, perfect fire weather.
There has been no study of the specific impact of climate change on the ACT; we are relying on work done for south-east New South Wales. I suggest that the government ask the Commissioner for the Environment to undertake a study of the environmental, social and economic impacts of climate change on the ACT, in collaboration with relevant government agencies, to develop a document which forms the basis of broad-ranging discussions and strategy setting with Canberra communities. These conversations should occur at the level of neighbourhoods, as well as across the city and region, in the style of the agenda 21 local government consultations that followed the 1992 UNCED conference in Rio.
We need to model the impact of various intensities of climate change on our water and agriculture, our housing, our workplaces and other built environment so that we can get a better picture of how to act to safeguard our region’s future. The national and international pictures have been presented graphically in many forms. I suggest that you study these reports, for this is one issue you cannot fail your constituents by being ignorant of.
Why Kyoto targets? Why us? The United States and Australia stand out for their refusal to join the rest of the developed world in signing or ratifying the Kyoto protocol. Labor federally has said that it will sign up if it gets elected. We have all Labor states and territories; which one will take leadership and bring along the rest in implementing the provisions of the protocol as if our federal government had ratified it? In the United States 330 mayors have signed up their municipalities to this challenge. They have done so because their president will not act but their people want them to.
By themselves, the adoption and enactment of the provisions of the protocol are not enough, but they are a good start to filling the vacuum of leadership left by the federal government’s denial of the problem and then a quick attempt to catch up after the Stern report rocked the world with the first economic analyses of the impact of climate change, which governments were forced to react and listen to.
How do we do it? Prior to 2004 the ACT did have a greenhouse strategy, which tied itself to the Kyoto targets. That very much involved the first Greens in the Assembly. The motion that I would have moved, if I had been given time and we had not spent our time talking about no regrets, suggests that the government ensure that we do not go backwards—
MR SPEAKER: Dr Foskey, you are supposed to be speaking to the amendment.
DR FOSKEY: I am speaking to the amendment, thank you. Mr Gentleman’s motion and the amendment made by Mr Mulcahy add nothing to what we already have. It is really important that we act. Mr Stanhope reacts to any requests that we go a little bit further by talking about the costs. I ask him to calculate the financial cost of not implementing a decent climate change strategy.
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