Rising Tide Australia

Climate action group Rising Tide Newcastle have released a stark appraisal of the latest science on greenhouse pollution, calculating the emissions reductions required for the world to avoiding slipping in to dangerous climate change.

Their report finds that all State and Federal Australian governments need to commit to reducing greenhouse pollution by 95% by 2030. Since Australia's coal exports eclipse the climate impacts of domestic greenhouse emissions, the report also recommends that coal exports be reduced by 95% by 2030. Rising Tide has called for public and government action on the scale of the war effort of the 1940s to meet these targets.

The report, called The War Effort: What Australia must do to stop catastrophic climate change , has been released to coincide with the launch of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Steve Phillips, from Rising Tide, said: “The release of the first IPCC assessment in 6 years is refocusing the the world's attention on the dangers that face us if we fail to face up to climate change.”

“We have found that the scale of action required large, but is not unprecedented. To play our part in the urgent global fight against dangerous climate change, Australia must commit to reductions in both domestic greenhouse emissions, and exported coal, of 95% by 2030, with the majority of these reductions taking place in the first part of the period. This amounts to only 4% average reductions annually, accompanied by strong actions to curb rising energy demand in Australia and a veto on new coal-fired power stations and coal-exporting infrastructure.”

“This will require brave leadership. John Howard must dump his vision of a “relaxed and comfortable” Australia, and take inspiration from his mentor Robert Menzies, who called for a replacement of 'business-as-usual' with an 'unlimited war effort'. Menzies said that 'We have in fact reached a point where your alleged rights and mine don't matter.'”

“Not since the 1940s war effort have governments and the public at large united on the scale that is needed now. It has happened before, and it must happen again. All other concerns must be made secondary to the cause of defeating dangerous climate change. To respond in any other way would place unacceptable risks on the future of our species and others.”