Page 5247 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 18 November 2009
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some binding targets out of this meeting. It is hard to imagine that so many people want to see change but that our political leaders could ignore this call for change on such a scale.
Make no mistake: the political debate at Copenhagen is in many ways out of touch with the scientific reality. As I have just detailed, the science is increasingly clear as the models and the research develop almost by the week. What they underline is that developed countries need to make reductions in CO2 of at least 40 per cent by 2020, and developing countries need to set a clear pathway to peaking their emissions and then rapidly transitioning to a low carbon economy.
It is in many ways a little depressing to consider the scale of the challenge that is upon us, particularly when we hear political language that dilutes the urgency, immerses us in bureaucracy and entrenches slow progress, political language that prevaricates and makes excuses as to why now is not the right time, political language that puts the problem onto others and abdicates responsibility.
Personally, I have had enough of that kind of language. I am encouraged to hear in this place that we may well be moving towards a consensus about the kind of action that needs to be taken, that at least the established political parties are interpreting the science, listening to the experts and feeling compelled at last to act. I welcome this.
I acknowledge that it is easier for someone like myself who has been working on this issue for over 10 years to see the urgency and also to feel as if the world has just started to catch up on what scientists have been telling us for around 20 years, perhaps more. It has been frustrating, make no mistake, to see the political inertia that has existed over the past decade. But it is indeed heartening to see that maybe we are starting to understand what is meant by “urgent” and, sadly, what may well be meant by “catastrophic”.
The time for political excuses is well and truly over and there is no bigger reason to put those excuses to one side now. We are talking about the future of our ongoing existence on this planet, the capacity of our children and our grandchildren to make a viable life for themselves and to have access to food, water and shelter. We are talking about the preservation of our natural systems so that those natural systems can, in fact, preserve us.
There is a lot at stake in Copenhagen. But if Copenhagen does not deliver, let us make no excuses here in the ACT not to do all that we can to reduce our impact on this corner of the planet for which we are the custodians. That is a really important thought about the future generations and ourselves as custodians because, as one of the worst emitters, I believe we have a moral responsibility to act.
I would like to preface these next comments by saying that I understand that life in the ACT is not good for everyone. There are many people who struggle to make ends meet, many who are not living the good life. But in general, and certainly by comparison to many other places around the planet, we are lucky here in the ACT. We are a genuinely wealthy city. We have good public facilities and we have the money to invest in good quality public infrastructure. We have, through both our direct
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