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#StopAdani
Australia's coal future under threat as more changes hit fossil fuels globally
abc.net.au
Big international changes in policy and legislation are hitting the coal sector — but can Australia's industry survive them?#StopAdani
Endangered black-throated finch could derail Adani's Queensland coal mine: report | The New Daily
thenewdaily.com.au
An endangered bird could derail Adani's controversial new coal mine in Queensland after a review found its management plan for the species wasn't good#StopAdaniGermany is quitting coal for good. SOURCES: [i] LAtimes.com. Germany to close all 84 of its coal-fired power plants, will rely primarily on renewable energy....
#StopAdani
They are not doing the Australian people - and not even the Australian coal workers - any favours by protecting status quo of a dying coal industry.
Instead what they SHOULD be focusing on is creating new jobs in the areas Australia need to see growing fast now, and help re-skilling the workers from the old ones. That is what is happening in Europe, and it needs to happen here too.
"Status quo", Mr Bowen, in case you haven't noticed, is being disrupted by an unprecedented and existential threat called climate disaster, and the United Nations climate science panel, the IPCC, has warned us that in particular coal needs to be completely out of business in less than a decade if we are to have a 50% chance to ride the worst of the climate-calamity off.
You think your voters haven’t understood this, or noticed it? Wrong! Everyone observing what is going on agrees that the next federal election is going to be a "climate election": It will not be immigrants on top of the list of what voters are concerned about this time around. It will not be energy prices either. It will be the climate disasters and our safety.
It would have been nice and simple if in this coming federal election we could have praised Labor as the sensible alternative to the current climate-wrecking COALition government, because the way Australians usually tend to vote, it is kind of straight forward that Labor stands first in the line to win the next election.
But we can't recommend a party whose leaders ignore the science and pretend climate change isn't really something Australians should worry about, as long as they can get a job in a coal mine.
This time, we predict business as usual is over in Australian politics. We are in a climate crisis, and everyone but Labor and the Coalition knows it. Or rather, they know it too, but they choose to wilfully ignore that, because these two parties are taking huge sums from the fossil fuel industry - and have of course promised to do the industry a few favours in return.
It looks like the independent candidates and the Greens will be the only ones you can sensibly and with a climate-safe conscience be voting for in the next federal election.
#TellTheTruth: We are in a #ClimateEmergency
#StopAdani #NoCoal #NoNewCoal #CoalKills #NoMoreBadInvestments
CLIMATE FRUSTRATION
debated in ABC’s Q&A program on 4 February 2019
Tony Jones to Adam Bandt, the Greens:
“Adam, the Greens are proposing radical new legislation to actually ban the mining of coal, the export of coal, and the development of coalmines in Australia by 2030. Will you have any support at all for a measure like that?”
Kerryn Phelps, independent:
“I think this will be the climate change election.”
VIDEO: Starts at 48 min 19 sec on www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-04-02/10735038
The politicians were challenged by student Aisheeya Huq, who helped organise rallies late last year that saw tens of thousands of school children walk out of class to demand the government take action on climate change.
AISHEEYA HUQ asked: “Many people are frustrated with politicians in our major parties not representing them. I am one of thousands of young people who went on strike last year for climate for that very reason. With a group of other students I’ve also set up a campaign and organisation, Climate Leaders, to take the next step of finding people who WILL represent us. Oliver Yates, who is running in Kooyong is currently working with us and has been endorsed by Climate Leaders. So my question to all the panelists, is — what will you do, in parliament, for our climate? Will you join us, the young people of Australia, as our Climate Leaders?”
Ms Huq was praised for her sensibility, while the crossbenchers were quick to condemn climate change naysayers and a lack of leadership when weather events were becoming more extreme and frequent.
Dr Phelps said she met with Ms Huq when she was with the group of young people outside Parliament House.
"I went down to have a chat with you, and I was so impressed because you all had read the IPCC report, you knew its details, you could tell me what was in the executive summary, and I doubt that there are too many adults that I would meet that I could ask those questions of who could give me those answers," Dr Phelps said.
"So that awareness, that level of understanding is so important to how we go forward in the future. And I do believe that what we're going to be facing is an environmental disaster unless we pay attention and we pay attention now."
Andrew Wilkie pointed to the severe floods raging in Townsville and the direct effect on his own Tasmanian residents after 194,000 hectares of lands and several homes were destroyed by wildfires this week.
"In the news tonight I'm listening to a senior fire official from the Tasmanian Fire Service and he's not talking politics, he's talking facts," the Independent Member for Chisolm said.
"He said the fire season is longer. The fire incidents are lasting longer. The rain statistics coming out of North Queensland at the moment, I don't know if they're unprecedented, but must be near on unprecedented.
"There can be no doubt we're getting much more extreme weather events and much more often.
He said the nation should be headed toward setting targets for zero carbon emissions and 100 percent renewable energy.
"Surely we can mobilise the whole country and have a whole of country, whole of government, maybe a bit aspirational, but why don't we just go for it and show the rest of the world what we can do?” Mr Wilkie added.
Julia Banks said the moderate voice had been drowned out in the debate despite the Australian public showing concern, while Rebekah Sharkie said "politics is taking over science", particularly when it came to the Murray-Darling region, where fish were dying en masse.
Dr Phelps said this year needed to bring a "climate change election", echoing sentiments from Bandt, who spruiked radical new legislation to ban coal mining, the export of coal and development of coal mines by 2030.
This was followed by a debate about the MURRAY DARLING at 56m52sec where KATHERINE MINNS asked: It's well known that what's currently happening in the Murray Darling is an ecological and environmental catastrophe. Now, a South Australian Royal Commision has once more confirmed allegations of politics, corruption and mismanagement, yet the media and politicians, in particular the National Party, are still blaming this disaster on a lack of rain. My question is, why are people continuing to turn a blind eye to this, and allowing this gross mismanagement...
» 9 News - 5 February 2019:
Q&A: Voters urged to make climate change matter this election
"As fires burn in Tasmania, floods inundate Townsville and tens of thousands of people sweltered through the hottest month on record, crossbenchers in Australia's House of Representatives have demanded voters ensure this year is the election climate change matters."
www.9news.com.au/2019/02/05/00/22/q-and-a-climate-change-banking-royal-commission-refugee-policy
. . . .
TRANSCRIPT
AISHEEYA HUQ
Many people are frustrated with politicians in our major parties not representing them. I’m one of thousands of young people who went on strike last year for climate, for that very reason. With a group of other students, I’ve also set up a campaign and organisation, Climate Leaders, to take the next step of finding people who will represent us. Oliver Yates, who is running in Kooyong, is currently working with us and has been endorsed by Climate Leaders. So my question to all the panellists is, what will you do in parliament for our climate? Will you join us, the young people of Australia, as our climate leaders?
TONY JONES
Adam, I’ll start with you, and you probably don’t have to answer that last part of that question, I suspect.
ADAM BANDT
Yes. Yes. And thank you. Thank you. I went to some of the student strike and there was more sense in...and those people seemed to have learnt far more in their classrooms than our Prime Minister had. And I... Seeing those people there, those young people taking the time out to go and stand up, gave me a lot of hope.
But we have just had our hottest month on record ever – not our hottest January ever, our hottest month on record everywhere. They are digging now mass graves to bury fish. We have large parts of the eastern seaboard on fire. And meanwhile we’ve got a Liberal government that is having a debate about whether climate change exists, and saying maybe we can take some public money from schools and hospitals and put it into new coal-fired power stations. We’ve got a Labor Party that is likely to be the next government, that is happy to open up new coalmines. Opening up new coalmines, for goodness sake. It’s like the patient is presenting with signs of heatstroke and the Liberals are saying, “Well, let’s stick her in a taxpayer-funded sauna and see if it gets any better,” and Labor’s saying, “Oh, no, we don’t want the sauna to be taxpayer funded.” Like, it is time...
KERRYN PHELPS
(LAUGHS)
ADAM BANDT
It is time now to vote for climate change. This election has to be a climate change election. And I think it’s time for everyone… If you want to make sure that your kids and your grandkids aren’t going to every summer holidays wondering how many people are going to die from the next bushfire or in the next heatwave, it is time to, I would say, vote one Greens, vote...give your preferences to some good-minded independents, and to send a message to the next lot, whoever form governments... I hope people take the opportunity to kick out this rotten, climate-denying, inequality-turbo-charging government, but the next lot needs to be told. The scientists have told us not only that climate change is real, but if we’ve got any hope of winding it in, we need to replace one coal-fired power station with renewable energy every year between now and 2030.
TONY JONES
Adam, the Greens are...
ADAM BANDT
It’s only going to be the Greens and the crossbench who will stand up and do it.
TONY JONES
Adam, the Greens are proposing radical new legislation...
ADAM BANDT
Yes.
TONY JONES
...to actually ban the mining of coal, the export of coal, and the development of coalmines in Australia by 2030. Will you have any support at all for a measure like that?
ADAM BANDT
Well, we’ve been...
TONY JONES
Among the crossbench we’re sitting with now, or anywhere?
ADAM BANDT
We’ve been proposing things for some time that the initial response was for people to laugh at and oppose, like the banking royal commission, and then they came around to it. Look, we need to...you know, coal needs to have its Marie Kondo moment, where we say, “Thank you, you know, you’ve done us well, but you no longer spark joy – you just spark bushfires. We need to put you aside, and we’re moving on now to renewables.”
Like, it’s... I’m not saying that... There’s coal-fired power stations keeping the lights on here. There’s communities that I’ve gone and visited in Muswellbrook and Lithgow and the Latrobe Valley who’ve worked in coal-fired power stations. It’s not them that I’ve got the problem with. When we all sat around and decided to build a society that was coal-fired power, it’s not because people were evil – we just thought we could do it. We now know better. Just like we wouldn’t mine asbestos anymore, because we know that when you use this product in the manner it’s intended it has a harmful effect, we need a plan to phase out coal.
And if you think that what we’re proposing, Tony, is radical, I guess I would say the world’s scientists have just told us that we could hit 1.5 degrees of warming in 12 years. Right? By 2030. What we’re seeing now could become the new normal. We’ve got the technology, right? It’s cheap now to build new renewables. Let’s make the switch. The...Liberal and Labor are taking in about a million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry in donations – they’re not going to do it. You need us to stand up to it.
--
#StopAdani #AusPol #TheTimeHasCome #ClimateEmergency
debated in ABC’s Q&A program on 4 February 2019
Tony Jones to Adam Bandt, the Greens:
“Adam, the Greens are proposing radical new legislation to actually ban the mining of coal, the export of coal, and the development of coalmines in Australia by 2030. Will you have any support at all for a measure like that?”
Kerryn Phelps, independent:
“I think this will be the climate change election.”
VIDEO: Starts at 48 min 19 sec on www.abc.net.au/qanda/2019-04-02/10735038
The politicians were challenged by student Aisheeya Huq, who helped organise rallies late last year that saw tens of thousands of school children walk out of class to demand the government take action on climate change.
AISHEEYA HUQ asked: “Many people are frustrated with politicians in our major parties not representing them. I am one of thousands of young people who went on strike last year for climate for that very reason. With a group of other students I’ve also set up a campaign and organisation, Climate Leaders, to take the next step of finding people who WILL represent us. Oliver Yates, who is running in Kooyong is currently working with us and has been endorsed by Climate Leaders. So my question to all the panelists, is — what will you do, in parliament, for our climate? Will you join us, the young people of Australia, as our Climate Leaders?”
Ms Huq was praised for her sensibility, while the crossbenchers were quick to condemn climate change naysayers and a lack of leadership when weather events were becoming more extreme and frequent.
Dr Phelps said she met with Ms Huq when she was with the group of young people outside Parliament House.
"I went down to have a chat with you, and I was so impressed because you all had read the IPCC report, you knew its details, you could tell me what was in the executive summary, and I doubt that there are too many adults that I would meet that I could ask those questions of who could give me those answers," Dr Phelps said.
"So that awareness, that level of understanding is so important to how we go forward in the future. And I do believe that what we're going to be facing is an environmental disaster unless we pay attention and we pay attention now."
Andrew Wilkie pointed to the severe floods raging in Townsville and the direct effect on his own Tasmanian residents after 194,000 hectares of lands and several homes were destroyed by wildfires this week.
"In the news tonight I'm listening to a senior fire official from the Tasmanian Fire Service and he's not talking politics, he's talking facts," the Independent Member for Chisolm said.
"He said the fire season is longer. The fire incidents are lasting longer. The rain statistics coming out of North Queensland at the moment, I don't know if they're unprecedented, but must be near on unprecedented.
"There can be no doubt we're getting much more extreme weather events and much more often.
He said the nation should be headed toward setting targets for zero carbon emissions and 100 percent renewable energy.
"Surely we can mobilise the whole country and have a whole of country, whole of government, maybe a bit aspirational, but why don't we just go for it and show the rest of the world what we can do?” Mr Wilkie added.
Julia Banks said the moderate voice had been drowned out in the debate despite the Australian public showing concern, while Rebekah Sharkie said "politics is taking over science", particularly when it came to the Murray-Darling region, where fish were dying en masse.
Dr Phelps said this year needed to bring a "climate change election", echoing sentiments from Bandt, who spruiked radical new legislation to ban coal mining, the export of coal and development of coal mines by 2030.
This was followed by a debate about the MURRAY DARLING at 56m52sec where KATHERINE MINNS asked: It's well known that what's currently happening in the Murray Darling is an ecological and environmental catastrophe. Now, a South Australian Royal Commision has once more confirmed allegations of politics, corruption and mismanagement, yet the media and politicians, in particular the National Party, are still blaming this disaster on a lack of rain. My question is, why are people continuing to turn a blind eye to this, and allowing this gross mismanagement...
» 9 News - 5 February 2019:
Q&A: Voters urged to make climate change matter this election
"As fires burn in Tasmania, floods inundate Townsville and tens of thousands of people sweltered through the hottest month on record, crossbenchers in Australia's House of Representatives have demanded voters ensure this year is the election climate change matters."
www.9news.com.au/2019/02/05/00/22/q-and-a-climate-change-banking-royal-commission-refugee-policy
. . . .
TRANSCRIPT
AISHEEYA HUQ
Many people are frustrated with politicians in our major parties not representing them. I’m one of thousands of young people who went on strike last year for climate, for that very reason. With a group of other students, I’ve also set up a campaign and organisation, Climate Leaders, to take the next step of finding people who will represent us. Oliver Yates, who is running in Kooyong, is currently working with us and has been endorsed by Climate Leaders. So my question to all the panellists is, what will you do in parliament for our climate? Will you join us, the young people of Australia, as our climate leaders?
TONY JONES
Adam, I’ll start with you, and you probably don’t have to answer that last part of that question, I suspect.
ADAM BANDT
Yes. Yes. And thank you. Thank you. I went to some of the student strike and there was more sense in...and those people seemed to have learnt far more in their classrooms than our Prime Minister had. And I... Seeing those people there, those young people taking the time out to go and stand up, gave me a lot of hope.
But we have just had our hottest month on record ever – not our hottest January ever, our hottest month on record everywhere. They are digging now mass graves to bury fish. We have large parts of the eastern seaboard on fire. And meanwhile we’ve got a Liberal government that is having a debate about whether climate change exists, and saying maybe we can take some public money from schools and hospitals and put it into new coal-fired power stations. We’ve got a Labor Party that is likely to be the next government, that is happy to open up new coalmines. Opening up new coalmines, for goodness sake. It’s like the patient is presenting with signs of heatstroke and the Liberals are saying, “Well, let’s stick her in a taxpayer-funded sauna and see if it gets any better,” and Labor’s saying, “Oh, no, we don’t want the sauna to be taxpayer funded.” Like, it is time...
KERRYN PHELPS
(LAUGHS)
ADAM BANDT
It is time now to vote for climate change. This election has to be a climate change election. And I think it’s time for everyone… If you want to make sure that your kids and your grandkids aren’t going to every summer holidays wondering how many people are going to die from the next bushfire or in the next heatwave, it is time to, I would say, vote one Greens, vote...give your preferences to some good-minded independents, and to send a message to the next lot, whoever form governments... I hope people take the opportunity to kick out this rotten, climate-denying, inequality-turbo-charging government, but the next lot needs to be told. The scientists have told us not only that climate change is real, but if we’ve got any hope of winding it in, we need to replace one coal-fired power station with renewable energy every year between now and 2030.
TONY JONES
Adam, the Greens are...
ADAM BANDT
It’s only going to be the Greens and the crossbench who will stand up and do it.
TONY JONES
Adam, the Greens are proposing radical new legislation...
ADAM BANDT
Yes.
TONY JONES
...to actually ban the mining of coal, the export of coal, and the development of coalmines in Australia by 2030. Will you have any support at all for a measure like that?
ADAM BANDT
Well, we’ve been...
TONY JONES
Among the crossbench we’re sitting with now, or anywhere?
ADAM BANDT
We’ve been proposing things for some time that the initial response was for people to laugh at and oppose, like the banking royal commission, and then they came around to it. Look, we need to...you know, coal needs to have its Marie Kondo moment, where we say, “Thank you, you know, you’ve done us well, but you no longer spark joy – you just spark bushfires. We need to put you aside, and we’re moving on now to renewables.”
Like, it’s... I’m not saying that... There’s coal-fired power stations keeping the lights on here. There’s communities that I’ve gone and visited in Muswellbrook and Lithgow and the Latrobe Valley who’ve worked in coal-fired power stations. It’s not them that I’ve got the problem with. When we all sat around and decided to build a society that was coal-fired power, it’s not because people were evil – we just thought we could do it. We now know better. Just like we wouldn’t mine asbestos anymore, because we know that when you use this product in the manner it’s intended it has a harmful effect, we need a plan to phase out coal.
And if you think that what we’re proposing, Tony, is radical, I guess I would say the world’s scientists have just told us that we could hit 1.5 degrees of warming in 12 years. Right? By 2030. What we’re seeing now could become the new normal. We’ve got the technology, right? It’s cheap now to build new renewables. Let’s make the switch. The...Liberal and Labor are taking in about a million dollars a year from the fossil fuel industry in donations – they’re not going to do it. You need us to stand up to it.
TONY JONES
OK. Now, Julia just left the Liberal Party, so I’m going to ask you – how serious a blow was it when Josh Frydenberg’s attempt to actually have a National Energy Guarantee was knocked on the head by your own party, having already pushed it through once?
JULIA BANKS
Mm. It was very serious, and it was devastating. But first, may I say, Aisheeya, thank you for your leadership, because you are the future. And your leadership, and young people around Australia, and certainly in my electorate of Chisholm, and everyone I talk to in Flinders, are really, really frustrated that the major parties have been faffing about on climate change for so many years now. And I think... You know, the National Energy Guarantee, it should have gone through. It’s not perfect, it’s not perfect, but, you know, perfection is the enemy of good. I mean, it was a good platform to build on, and it was extremely frustrating.
TONY JONES
Do you accept Adam’s position, the Greens’ position, that, in fact, the Liberal Party is full of climate change deniers?
JULIA BANKS
Certainly the hard right wing are definitely climate deniers. I mean, you know, it’s a struggle for them to understand that climate change is real, let alone climate change is actually happening. And so, you know, the NEG had the overwhelming support of the party room but, nonetheless, the moderates’ voice was drowned out in relation to climate change. I’m not alone, I wasn’t alone, in the Liberal Party in terms of speaking out in support of the National Energy Guarantee. I spoke out many times, but...
TONY JONES
And strangely, the man who proposed it is now the...
JULIA BANKS
Strangely. (LAUGHS)
TONY JONES
...the Prime Minister, the Treasurer, and has pretty much abandoned that policy?
JULIA BANKS
That’s right. That’s right. And, you know, I just think... I also think we need to look at climate change through the... Sure, we have to look at it through the prism of economics, but fundamentally, we need to rely on Mother Nature as much as we can.
TONY JONES
OK, I’m going to take the opportunity to go to Andrew Wilkie. Mother Nature has been particularly cruel in Tasmania recently.
ANDREW WILKIE
Yeah. And look, we’d be...it would be unforgiveable to tonight not talk about the flooding in Far North Queensland and the shocking fires in Tasmania. You know, for a long time, we talked about climate change as a trend, and people had to be very cautious about talking about specific weather events or weather-related events. But, you know, on the news tonight, I’m listening to a senior fire official from the Tasmanian Fire Service, and he’s not talking politics, he’s just talking facts. He said the fire season is longer. The fire incidents are lasting longer. I mean, the rain statistics coming out of North Queensland at the moment, I don’t know if they’re unprecedented, but must be near-on unprecedented. There can be no doubt that we are getting much more extreme weather events and we’re getting them much more often. And it’s destroying property. It’s making sick. It’s resulting in some people dying. You know, surely, it’s just so far beyond time to be having a debate about, “Is climate change real?” Let’s have a proper conversation about, “What are we going to do about it?”
I mean, personally, I think we should be putting the country on a pathway to zero net carbon emissions and 100% renewable energy. Now some of you are there thinking, “Well, he’s a dreamer.” But you know what? The Americans put someone on the moon in less than a decade in the 1960s with the computing power of a pocket calculator. Surely, we can mobilise the whole country and have a whole-of-country, whole-of-government... Maybe it’s a bit aspirational, but why don’t we just go for it? Just go for it. And show the rest of the world what we can do. And in doing that, not only will we help our own country and clean it up, but we will also take a global leadership role and show other countries what can be done. You know, people say, “We’re only 2% or 3% of the world’s carbon pollution – what difference can we make?” Well, that’s the difference we can make – by being a global leader and a global exporter of renewable technology.
TONY JONES
I’m going to go to our last question now. We have time for one last question. It’s from... It’s on a similar subject. It’s from Katherine Minns. Katherine.
KATHERINE MINNS
It is well known that what’s currently happening in the Murray-Darling is an ecological and environmental catastrophe. Now a South Australian royal commission has once more confirmed allegations of politics, corruption, mismanagement, yet the media and politicians, in particular the National Party, are still blaming this disaster on a lack of rain. My question is, why are people continuing to turn a blind eye to this and allowing the gross mismanagement of water to continue, and how come the people responsible for this aren’t facing prosecution?
TONY JONES
Rebekha. I’ll start with you.
REBEKHA SHARKIE
(SIGHS) Well, Mayo has the most vulnerable part of the river. We have the end of the river. We have the mouth. And my communities along the mouth are still getting over the Millennium Drought. We have, now, politics taking over science, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s addressing the needs of the River Murray... And we had, just last year, 70 gigalitres taken from the environment and returned back to irrigators in the northern part of the basin, and that was agreed to by both the major parties. On both climate change and the River Murray, we actually need to change the parliament. We need to change the people who are in there, who are making those decisions, and now sadly...
TONY JONES
Who are you pointing the finger at specifically? Barnaby Joyce...
REBEKHA SHARKIE
Barnaby Joyce.
TONY JONES
...had a role. Is he...?
REBEKHA SHARKIE
Absolutely. It was unconscionable, what he has done to the River Murray. And it’s beyond just the federal parliament, though. You know, we have... The South Australian royal commission report came out, and the first thing the New South Wales Premier said was, she was going to fight it tooth and nail. We have one national river, and it’s the Murray-Darling. And we need to put the river’s needs first, beyond irrigators, beyond big corporate cotton, because that is what is killing the river.
ADAM BANDT
I think Barnaby Joyce needs to be investigated, personally. Like, I think...the Murray-Darling is another classic example of money and the big parties trumping the public interest. Because you had... You have a plan that had both of their agreement, $13 billion plan, we’re halfway through it, and what have we got? We’ve got fish dying, we’ve got the lower lakes and the Murray mouth salting up, we’ve got ecosystems under enormous stress. Why? Because big chunks of that money that were meant to go to put more water back into the river for so-called environmental flows are being given to big irrigators, to a couple of big companies – they’re getting the money. In fact, Barnaby Joyce went on... You know, this is a Labor plan, and Barnaby Joyce then went on television and boasted and said, “I’m taking the money and giving it to my corporate mates.”
This is where... We need government for the many, not the few, right? For the many, not the few. We need to put the public interest back being the deciding factor of everything that happens. I don’t think the act that governs the legislation is bad, per se. I think the plan is very bad. And it needs to be a science-driven plan that makes sure there’s enough water left so we have a healthy river.
TONY JONES
Kerryn – climate change, the environment. Where...? It seems people’s concern is rising due to...largely due to temperature rises and weather conditions, and extreme weather, in particular. But where do you think this now fits in the election that’s coming?
KERRYN PHELPS
I think this will be the climate change election. There’s no question that the Wentworth by-election was substantially about climate change action and a frustration by the people in Wentworth about a paralysis in policy for the last decade.
Now, Aisheeya, congratulations on the work you and other young people are doing, because you are inheriting the planet that the politics of today is going to create. And there was a group of young protesters outside Parliament House – you were there – and I went down to have a chat with you. And I was so impressed because you all had read the IPCC report. You knew its details. You could tell me what was in the executive summary. And I doubt that there are too many adults that I would meet who I could ask those questions of, who could give me those answers. So, that awareness, that level of understanding, is so important to how we go forward in the future. And I do believe that what we are going to be facing is an environmental disaster unless we pay attention and we pay attention now. And that’s what the IPCC report told us. And that is what young people who are aware of this situation are telling us.
The science is unequivocal. It’s no point denying it. It’s no point questioning it. We need to go forward with solutions. And the sorts of solutions are to ban donations from fossil fuel companies, to stop new coalmines, to stop putting taxpayers’ money into shoring up coal-fired power stations to quarantine them against future changes in government policy. We need to get serious about renewables. The business community is serious about renewables. They are investing, even in a climate of uncertainty in government policy, because it makes business sense and it makes sense for our environment. And unless we look after our environment, we’re not going to have much of a planet to leave our children and our grandchildren.
ADAM BANDT
And I don’t want to depress you – we’re all in the House of Representatives, but there’s a chance that One Nation and the climate deniers could control the Senate after the next election. So, when you’re thinking about... You know, re-elect all of us, but make sure the next government, that we can keep them on track by having a good climate-focused Senate as well.
TONY JONES
OK, I’m afraid that’s all we have time for tonight. Please thank our panel – Kerryn Phelps, Andrew Wilkie, Julia Banks, Rebekha Sharkie and Adam Bandt.
--
#StopAdani #AusPol #TheTimeHasCome #ClimateEmergency