Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt MP, has commended Australia’s leading climate scientists for their courage in warning that both Liberal and Labor’s climate policies are dangerously inadequate.
Three of Australia’s leading specialists on climate change – Professor Will Steffen, Professor Lesley Hughes, and Dr Pep Cannadell – have today warned that Australia needs to hit net-zero carbon emissions before 2050, including significant reductions in the next ten years, if we’re to keep global warming well below 2 degrees and honour the Paris Agreement.
Professor Will Steffen was the scientific expert advising Labor on the carbon price as part of the Multi-Party Climate Change Committee.
Leader of the Australian Greens, Adam Bandt MP said:
“The verdict is in. Australia’s top scientists have said that the Liberals’ climate targets won’t stop runaway global warming but nor will Labor’s ‘net zero by 2050’.
“The scientists back the Greens in demanding real action by 2030 and a plan for coal, because otherwise it will be too late.”
“We need critical action in the next decade if we’re to protect ourselves and the planet from the worst impacts of global warming.
“At current rates, we risk hitting 1.5 degrees of warming by 2030. That’s just ten years from now.
“Beyond that, we’ll start hitting tipping points that will make it harder, if not impossible, to keep climate change under control.
“By the end of this decade, scientists fear we could see the collapse of ice shelfs in Antarctica that would lead to 3-4 metres of sea level rise, all in my children’s lifetime.
“This disastrous summer of fires happened at just one degree of warming and things stand to get worse. This should be a wake-up call that we need action now, not in decades to come. We don’t have any time to waste.”
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