Speech from Mel Barnes at the Walk Against Warming
I’m a candidate in Denison and I’m also a climate activist.
The starting point for action on climate change has to be the science. The vast majority of climate scientists around the world say that unless we reduce the amount of carbon already in the atmosphere, we are headed for a climate catastrophe. We need to cut our emissions by 5% a year and move as rapidly as possible to a zero carbon economy.
Delay is denial. 12 new coal fired power stations are in the pipeline to be built over the next few years.
- The NSW state government is planning to construct two new coal-fired power stations, which will increase the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by up to 15%.
- There are plans to open a new coal mine next to the town of Margaret River in Western Australia. Margaret River is famous for its wineries, and relies on the aquifers that will be threatened by the mine. This is part of a bigger plan by the Liberal state government to build 3 new coal-fired power stations in Western Australia, all which have been approved this year.
- Four of the proposed coal-fired plants are in Queensland.
- In South Australia, two new coal-fired stations have been proposed
This is denial.
While the Labor government says that climate change is the greatest moral issue of our time, at the same time they are delaying any real action and hope that we will be fooled. If we complain that their policies aren’t good enough, they say ‘well, the Liberals will be worse’. Which is true, but since both parties are heading us down the path of climate catastrophe, it doesn’t matter that Labor are slightly better. The point is, their policies are not good enough. The starting point has to be the science, and we can’t negotiate with science.
Good climate policy would start with a massive investment in renewable energy. A report just released by Melbourne group Beyond Zero Emissions shows that it is possible to move Australia to 100% renewable energy by 2020. This is a detailed report that shows exactly how we could do this, with technology that is proven and commercially available now, and how much it would cost.
This switch to a clean economy would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. But we would need to ensure a just transition for workers in the old industries to make the switch. Socialist Alliance has a policy of establishing new sustainable industries in the same areas as the old industries and retraining workers on full pay.
The Socialist Alliance would welcome a carbon price because it could raise some money that will be well spent on building renewable energy infrastructure. But a carbon price alone is not enough, it will not get the job done in the timeframe we need it to. So we’re calling for public investment in renewables and for other things like a massive expansion of public transport. In times gone by it was the government that built the railways, the hydro dams, the electricity grid. If we want a new hospital or school we don’t implement a pricing mechanism to make business more interested in investing in these things, so why are we leaving this important transition up to the market? The government has to take on this task. This would cost about 3% of annual GDP for the next ten years, which could be funded by restoring the corporate tax rate to the 1980s level, and by diverting military spending and the $9 billion dollars a year handed out to the fossil fuel industries, for example.
With all the climate-linked disasters happening in the world right now, the floods in Pakistan, the fires in Russia; it is easy to slip into despair.
Mass action is the antidote to despair!
We have the beginnings of a strong climate movement in Australia, and we have to build and strengthen this so that we can force the government to act.
Climate campaigners in Victoria have already won a government commitment to close down part of Hazelwood, the dirtiest coal power station in Australia, and they won’t give up until it is fully shut down and replaced with renewables. Grassroots climate groups like Climate Action Hobart are waging similar campaigns across the country.
In what may amount to a historic moment in the quest to save the world's rainforests and mitigate climate change, Ecuador and the United Nations Development Fund (UNDF) have created a trust fund to protect one of the world's most biodiverse rainforests from oil exploration and development. The fund will allow the international community to pay Ecuador to leave an estimated 850 million barrels of oil in Yasuni National Park in the ground instead of extracting it. This will allow the rainforest protected area to remain pristine: preserving one of the most species-rich places on Earth, safeguarding the lives of indigenous people, and keeping an estimated 410 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.
This would not have been possible if not for the leadership of socialist President Rafael Correa and the Ecuadorian government and shows what is possible when you have a government committed towards putting the environment before private profit.
What would it take to save our forests here? We’re a rich country, we don’t need the UN to step in, we could stop logging tomorrow if the government halted the chainsaws and put in place a transition package for workers.
I’d encourage you to grab a copy of our Climate Charter, our policy which was rated the best on the voteclimate.org website, and read more about what we stand for, and consider joining us. I am also standing as a Socialist Alliance candidate in Denison to call for a fundamentally different system, where instead of corporations having control, ordinary people can have collective decision-making power so that people’s needs and the environment can be put before profits.
