Page 4216 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 24 October 2018
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It is a wake-up call for all of us. The two degrees was an arbitrary concept; it is an uncontrolled experiment in our climate. The world is currently one degree warmer than it was in pre-industrial levels, and we all know that has made an impact. Right now New South Wales—which, effectively, from a climate, agricultural and geographical point of view is where we live—is 100 per cent in drought. Around the world there are hurricanes, record droughts in Cape Town, and forest fires in the Arctic, which is unbelievable to me.
The IPCC have said it is very clear. They reviewed 6,000 works and they said the change that could be caused by even half a degree more is a revelation. They can see there is a difference, and it is a substantial difference. At 1.5 degrees, rather than two degrees, the proportion of the global population subject to water stress could be 50 per cent lower. Food scarcity would be less of a problem, and hundreds of millions of people would have a lower risk of climate-related poverty.
Looking at the natural world, insects, vital for the pollination of crops, are almost twice as likely to lose their habitat at two degrees compared to 1.5 degrees. Sea level rises would affect 10 million people more by 2010 if there were an extra five-degree increase. To achieve this, the IPCC says carbon pollution would need to be cut by 45 degrees by 2030, compared with the 20-degree cut required for the two-degree pathway, and it would need to come down to zero by 2050.
The positive thing is that the ACT’s goals are currently consistent with this, but we need to work harder both for ourselves and to make sure the rest of Australia and the rest of the world do the same. We have a particularly hard task because on a per capita basis our emissions are well above average for the world and average for Australia. We also consume a lot of things where the emissions are looked at from the point of view of where they are produced.
One of the things we need to look at is agriculture. I have a CSIRO report that shows that globally 1.6 per cent of human-related greenhouse gases come from farm ruminants—that is, cattle, sheep and goats. This is a significant issue. Ruminants are well-known for their methane production, and that is about 30 times more harmful than CO2. If we are going to get our greenhouse emissions down to zero—and the IPCC makes it quite clear we need to do that as soon as possible, and definitely by 2045—we are going to have to reduce down to zero our emissions from agriculture and livestock production. The CSIRO makes clear that even at present rises we are reducing the wheat production in Australia, compared to what it would have been had we not had the existing impacts of climate change. (Time expired.)
Belconnen Community Service
MRS KIKKERT (Ginninderra) (5.12): I rise today to thank the good people at Belconnen Community Service for all they do to support Canberrans who live in the Belconnen district, most of whom also live within my electorate of Ginninderra. I am especially grateful for the Belconnen Community Service 10/10 project that has taken place each year in October since 2012. Early this past Friday morning, dozens of volunteers gathered at St James Anglican Church in Holt. We began the day with
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