With Scott Morrison’s fraudulent plan setting us up for climate failure, Greens Leader Adam Bandt has outlined the essential components of a Net Zero strategy that will reduce emissions, protect regional communities, and meet an emissions reduction strategy consistent with the science, following a UN Emissions Gap Report showing that the gap between submitted emissions reduction targets and the required action is on track for a catastrophic 2.7 degrees of warming.
Under such a rise Australia, the driest inhabited continent, will suffer extreme heat waves, bushfires, floods and more than twice as many droughts.
Even though many countries have stepped up to the Paris goal, weak targets like those Scott Morrison is taking to Glasgow are responsible for the ‘gap’.
Greens Leader Adam Bandt MP said:
“We needed a plan based on science but instead we got science fiction, a story where someone rides in on a unicorn in 2049 with technology that doesn’t yet exist and somehow saves us,” Mr Bandt said.
“The United Nations has today rung the alarm bells, warning that with the current lack of political leadership, the world is on track for 2.7 degrees of warming.
“Scott Morrison’s fraudulent plan will cost 64,000 people dependent on a healthy Great Barrier Reef their jobs, see thousands die from heatwaves and dry up Australia’s agricultural food bowls.
“If we keep mining and burning coal and gas, we won’t stop the climate crisis.
“The government’s non-binding projections count for nothing and anything less than a full NDC pledge for 75% reduction by 2030 is giving up on the Paris goal of 1.5 degrees of warming.
“Coal and gas are the major causes of the climate crisis, but both Liberal and Labor want more, with plans to dig up coal beyond 2050.
“The only way to get climate action is by kicking the climate-denying Liberals out and putting the Greens into balance of power, so we can push the next government to take the climate action the science requires.”
Essential components of a plan for Net Zero:
- No new coal and gas
- End fossil fuel subsidies
- Significant public investment to hit 100% renewable electricity by 2030
- 100% of new light vehicle sales to be electric by 2030, including consumer subsidies and a national buildout of the fast charging network
- Phase out of thermal coal exports by 2030 with a plan to transition workers into new mining and manufacturing jobs
- Restore the price on carbon, which was successfully reducing emissions until its destruction by the Liberals
- Home electrification and subsidies for domestic and community batteries to supplement utility scale development
- $12bn to transform Australia into a green hydrogen and green manufacturing export powerhouse
- Immediate end to native forest logging and broadscale land clearing to keep our existing carbon sinks intact
- Net-zero by 2035 with net-negative in the years beyond until we return the world to a safe climate