Call for a Climate Coalition for Change

On Saturday, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron (Conservative), the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), agreed to work together to combat climate change, whatever the outcome of May’s UK general election. 2011 Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia to follow Britain’s example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change. He would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia. Read More

Oliver Milman in The Guardian (16 February 2015):

Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics and is a councillor at the Australian Academy of Science, said he would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia.

Brian Schmidt calls on Australia’s political parties to emulate Britain’s joint pledge, signed by main political leaders, to urgently tackle climate change

Prof Brian Schmidt has called on the Coalition, the Greens and Labor to agree on a joint pledge to act on climate change

Nobel laureate Brian Schmidt has called on Australia’s political parties to follow Britain’s example by striking a joint pledge to urgently tackle climate change.

On Saturday, the British prime minister, David Cameron (Conservative), the opposition leader, Ed Miliband (Labour), and the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrats), agreed to work together to combat climate change, whatever the outcome of May’s general election.

Schmidt, who won the 2011 Nobel prize for physics and is a councillor at the Australian Academy of Science, said he would be keen to help broker a similar deal between the Coalition, Labor and the Greens in Australia.

“We should be inspired by what the three major parties in the UK have done, so soon before an election,” he told Guardian Australia. “I’d like to see the major parties do this in Australia, to come out with an accord to provide certainty.

“I’d be keen for someone to step up to help the process and if political parties think I’m right, I’d be happy to do so, as it’s such an important issue. All the major parties say they believe climate change is occurring, but the average Australian voter thinks they don’t agree on anything in this space.

“I’d say they don’t have to agree on everything, but let’s push Australia along as a global deal on climate change is inevitable and Australia should act, if only for its own economic self-interest. Its economy will be in ruins if it continues to be carbon-based.”

The joint statement in Britain cited climate change as one of the most serious threats facing the world.

“Acting on climate change is an opportunity for the UK to grow a stronger economy, more efficient and more resilient to risks ahead,” it said.

The parties pledged to seek a “fair, strong, legally binding” global climate deal in Paris later this year that would ensure temperatures did not rise more than 2C above pre-industrial times. The statement promised an accelerated transition to a “low-carbon economy” and to end the use of coal plants that don’t use technology to capture their carbon emissions.

Schmidt said Australia’s parties were “probably not ready yet” to commit to ending unabated coal use – about 75% of Australia’s energy comes from coal compared with about a third in the UK – but that a general statement of intent was critical.

“I don’t know what they hold in common, so I’d be looking for them to put a line in the sand as to what they’d like to say,” he said.

“I don’t think there’s any clarity in the political sphere, no party has articulated a strategy of what Australia should do and why it’s important for a big global effort. No one has said ‘we are cutting emissions because of these reasons’, which makes it look to the public like we’re cutting for no reason at all. There needs to be a more sophisticated debate around this.”

Greg Hunt, the environment minister, said: “We believe clearly and categorically in the science and are committed to and will achieve our targets.

“We’re investing $2.55bn to reduce Australia’s emissions. This is in stark contrast with Labor which gave Australia the worst of both worlds with higher electricity prices and an utterly failed emissions policy.”

Mark Butler, Labor’s environment spokesman, said: “Labor would welcome a bipartisan approach to climate action in Australia, particularly around renewable energy and restoring a legal cap on carbon pollution, but the Abbott government is simply not interested in taking meaningful action to address climate change.”

The chief executive of the Climate Institute, John Connor, said the British agreement was a “historic move” that would improve the country’s investment environment.

“It’s a stark contrast to the situation in Australia, where political divisions have caused severe damage to the investment environment for climate and clean energy, leaving us sliding backward as the rest of the world charges ahead,” he said.

The Coalition, Labor and the Greens have all officially stated that they support the mainstream scientific position that human activity is influencing the climate. The Coalition and Labor both support a minimum 5% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, based on 2000 levels.

However, prominent media commentators, Coalition MPs and the prime minister’s top business adviser, Maurice Newman, have repeatedly questioned the validity of climate science. Newman has, in stark contrast to the world’s major scientific bodies, warned that the world is in danger of cooling, rather than warming.

On Monday, the Australian Academy of Science released its latest update on the state of climate science. The publication aims to “counter confusion and misinformation” on the topic.

The guide, compiled by a panel of nine experts, poses questions such as “What is climate change?” and “Are human activities causing climate change?”

Schmidt said: “The purpose of this is to emphasise to citizens and policymakers that it’s time to stop talking about the science. To my mind, people who are non-experts should be called into question if they go against the entire academy on this. How can they be taken seriously if they do that?

“The media has a propensity to give airtime to people who are not experts, people like Maurice Newman. He’s entitled to his own opinion but I don’t understand why it should be given air. I could talk about the finances of Australia, but I wouldn’t expect those views to be aired.”

Prof Andrew Holmes, the president of the Australian Academy of Science, said: “The evidence is clear: climate change, caused by human activities, is real. The vast majority of scientists and scientific organisations in this field are in agreement on this. And yet there continues to be a gap between public understanding and the science of climate change.

“Climate change is not something happening in the far off future, it’s happening now – 2014 was the hottest year on record, and 14 of the 15 warmest years on record have occurred during the first 15 years of this century.”

While 2014 was the warmest year on record globally, it was the third warmest on record in Australia. Recent analysis by the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology stressed that Australia was on track for a temperature rise of up to 5.1C by the end of the century if emissions were not drastically cut.

Even a more moderate amount of warming is likely to have serious ramifications for Australia’s agriculture, public health and coastal infrastructure. The Great Barrier Reef faces the threat of being hugely diminished due to rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/16/nobel-laureate-asks-australia-to-follow-uk-example-on-bipartisan-climate-deal