Page 5245 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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It is important that they do not ignore what is going on nationally, but it is important that we acknowledge where we have come from. We acknowledge that there has been leadership shown by the previous government. We acknowledge that that has stagnated under this government. Their refusal to show that kind of leadership has seen this stagnate. Any attempt to try and rewrite history should be seen in that context and seen in the context of those very clear facts.
We commend the amendment to the Assembly.
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.39): Whenever we get up to debate climate change I am often frustrated by, in a political context, the failure to remember the urgency around this issue. I think it is something the community very clearly understands.
In preparing for today’s debate we sat down in my office and pulled out some of the latest science that has been reported just in recent weeks on climate change. For the Assembly’s benefit, I would like to touch on a few of those articles. The first one is from New Scientist magazine. Under the headline “No rainforest, no monsoon: get ready for a warmer world”, it looks at a study from the UK meteorology office which reports:
By 2055, climate change is likely to have warmed the world by a dangerous 4 ºC unless we stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere the way we do now.
It goes on to state:
Why so soon? Because temperature rises caused by greenhouse gas emissions are expected to trigger dangerous feedback loops, which will release ever increasing amounts of greenhouse gases.
This is why it is happening so fast. It goes on to say:
Even if we are lucky, we are still likely to hit 4 ºC by 2070.
The report goes on to detail a few of the impacts that are likely to occur under these scenarios. It states that in a four-degree world, we will see over 83 per cent of the Amazon rainforest destroyed. The article goes on to talk about water, particularly in the tropical regions:
… simulations suggests that in a 4 ºC world there will be a mix of extremely wet monsoon seasons and extremely dry ones, making it hard for farmers to plan what to grow.
That is what was stated in just one article. The next article is from the Guardian. The headline is “Arctic seas turn to acid, putting vital food chain at risk”. The article states:
The carbon-dioxide emissions are turning the waters of the Arctic Oean into acid at an unprecedented rate …
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