Media Statement - 18th November 2007
The findings of today’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report confirm that Australia must act now if we are to avoid truly devastating impacts of climate change.
And if Federal Labor forms government next weekend, it will ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
The Nobel Prize-winning IPCC has found that the world is on “the verge of a catastrophe”.
Today’s report backs Federal Labor’s approach to climate change.
In its first year, a Rudd Labor Government will:
- Ratify the Kyoto Protocol, joining the international negotiating table;
- Finish the most comprehensive review of the costs for Australia of climate change (the Garnaut Review);
- Establish a 20 per cent renewable energy target to be achieved by 2020;
- Finalise the design of a national emissions trading scheme;
- Establish a $500 million fund to boost Renewable Energy; and
- Establish a $500 million fund for the development of Clean Coal technology.
For 11 years, the Howard Government has denied climate change.
There are only three countries which have signed Kyoto, but failed to ratify it. They are Australia, the United States and Kazakhstan.
A Government full of climate change sceptics can’t deliver climate change solutions. Only Kevin Rudd and Labor can and the time for action is now.
Without immediate government leadership, Australia will see significant damage to the Great Barrier Reef and Wet Tropics and by 2030 water security problems will intensify across our most populous states.