Page 295 - Week 01 - Thursday, 15 December 2016
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Two degrees of warming is not actually a good or safe amount; far from it. It is still very dangerous. It still risks, for example, the complete disappearance of some atoll nations due to sea level rise. The two degrees target reflects the damage that has already been done, the warming that is already locked into the system through rampant polluting and the lack of action, and the difficulties in getting recalcitrant nations to cooperate.
Two degrees is the upper limit. But in fact we need to strive to keep global warming well below two degrees. The Paris climate change agreement is a global agreement that commits nations to take action to keep global warming well below two degrees, preferably to 1.5 degrees. Again, 1.5 degrees is by no means a good outcome for the planet. It still comes with significant problems and dangers. But we have progressed so far along the path of dangerous climate change already that these are the types of targets we must accept.
The science can tell us quite accurately what kinds of actions are compatible with meeting these targets. It can tell us how many tonnes—or gigatonnes—of greenhouse gases we can emit before we are likely to cause certain levels of global warming. What this calculation tells us is that any expansion of fossil fuel production—for example, by building a new coal mine—is incompatible with our goal of preventing catastrophic global warming.
Author and environmentalist Bill McKibben summed it up in his recent article on the stark mathematics of climate change. He said:
We’re done expanding the fossil fuel frontier. Our only hope is a swift, managed decline in the production of all carbon-based energy from the fields we’ve already put in production.
The massive, long-lived, extremely high-polluting Carmichael coal mine is the absolute opposite of this approach. In fact, burning the coal from the Carmichael coal mine alone will use 0.5 per cent of the entire global carbon budget that can be emitted for warming to stay under two degrees Celsius. A single mine in Australia, with the endorsement of the Australian government, will use 0.5 per cent of the entire world’s pollution budget to prevent that rise in temperature.
This single mine in Australia, with the endorsement of the Australian government, will produce more annual emissions than Sri Lanka or Bangladesh with their population of 160 million people and more annual emissions than all of New York City. It will produce double the emissions of Tokyo, six times the emissions of Amsterdam and four times the emissions of New Zealand.
The Carmichael coal mine is a massive, overt slap in the face to climate science and a total rejection of the Australian government’s apparent commitment to the Paris climate change targets. If we believe in taking action on climate change, we simply cannot support the Carmichael mine project. The two things are simply incompatible.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video