Page 1859 - Week 05 - Thursday, 16 May 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
expectations of our doing this. It is a duty that we have to both the current and, perhaps more poignantly, future generations. I commend my motion to the Assembly.
An incident having occurred in the gallery—
MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER: I remind members of the gallery that it is considered disorderly to participate in the debate by interjection, clapping and other activities.
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (4.15): I rise today in support of the call to declare a climate emergency. The first political protest I participated in was a rally in 1995. I went to stand up against French nuclear testing at Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia. I was in high school and I remember needing a note from my dad so that I did not get in trouble for wagging school. I went to that rally because, even as a 14-year-old, I could grasp the concept that human activity can have a devastating effect on our precious natural environment. Ultimately, we have a choice in how we behave.
Madam Deputy Speaker, the scientific evidence is conclusive: the world is undergoing unprecedented and rapid climate change. Since the industrial revolution in the mid-1700s, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased by 40 per cent and are now the highest they have been for 800,000 years.
Over the past century, the global air temperature has increased by about 0.8 degrees and from about 1970 the global air temperature trend has strongly increased. The oceans are absorbing around 90 per cent of the additional heat, with ocean heat content showing strong increases. On average, the temperature of the ocean layer from zero to 700 metres increased by 0.18 degrees Celsius between 1955 and 2010. These changes may seem minor, but they are much larger than any other climatic change seen in the last 100,000 years. The negative effect of that climate change is already being felt.
Across the globe, including here in Australia, we are seeing extreme heat more often and for longer; more bushfires more often and in extremes we have never experienced; increased frequency of extreme weather events, including heavy rainfall and devastating drought; and erosion and flooding from sea level rise. The changing climate is leading to more health impacts, including deaths from heat waves, a decrease in the productivity of food production, the destruction of infrastructure and stress on our native flora and fauna.
The most uncomfortable part of this reality is that humans are the cause of this destruction. Our way of life is putting more emissions into the atmosphere than at any other point in our history. The petrol we use in our cars, the coal we use to produce electricity, the gas we burn to heat our water—all these activities result in emissions that our atmosphere simply cannot absorb. If we continue along the path we are currently on and we do not change the norms in our everyday lives then the impacts of climate change are only going to get worse. The way we address this self-created catastrophe is to change the way we go about day-to-day activities.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video