Page 1855 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
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(3) condemns the Federal Government for its continued failure to enact effective climate change policy, and requests the Federal Government provide additional funding for States and Territories to deal with worsening climate change risks and impacts, such as bushfires and extreme weather.
The world is in a climate emergency. The risks we face due to climate change are more extreme than ever. To quote the famed naturalist Sir David Attenborough:
Right now, we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale. Our greatest threat in thousands of years. Climate Change.
If we don’t take action the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.
The United Nations Secretary-General sounded the alarm in a similar fashion as he called for action from all nations, saying:
We face a direct existential threat.
Climate change is moving faster than we are …
Not only are we already suffering the impacts of climate change but also urgent and ongoing action is required to prevent impending disaster—environmental, social and economic disaster—globally, nationally and locally. Scientists are calling for urgent and significant action to both mitigate and adapt to climate change. They have produced increasingly detailed scientific evidence supporting their calls, and they predict devastating impacts if we shirk our duty to take action. In case anyone questions this science, the level of scientific consensus on human-caused climate change is equivalent to the level of agreement among scientists that smoking causes cancer.
There is not the time now to detail all of the devastating impacts that climate change will cause and is already causing. That could and does fill volumes. I have talked about many of these in this Assembly before. A brief overview is that the impacts will affect every part of our society. Unmitigated climate change will have terrible economic, social and environmental impacts. Hotter weather, more bushfires, more extreme weather events, species extinctions, sea level rise, population displacement, health impacts, including an increase in bloodborne diseases, billions and trillions of dollars in extra costs—the list is long and disturbingly grave.
Members may have seen the recent United Nations report warning that approximately a million animal species are now facing extinction, many within decades. The chairperson of the UN’s Intergovernmental Science Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services described this situation by saying:
What is at stake here is a liveable world.
The first extinction of 2019 occurred on 1 January. The final member of a species of tree snail died, and that signalled the end of that species on Earth. The following month, the Australian government declared a mouse-like species called the Bramble
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