The Liberal Party under John Howard has gone backwards on climate change rather than building on a commitment made in 1990 to cut greenhouse emissions by 20 per cent, a packed Melbourne Town Hall heard last night from Liberal Party member and former Howard Government Ministerial adviser Dr Guy Pearse.
„In 1990, the Liberal Party lead by Andrew Peacock had a policy to reduce Australia’s greenhouse emissions by at least 20 per cent by the year 2000,” Dr Pearse told 250 people in the Town Hall.
„It was promising bigger cuts sooner than the Labor Party and was proud of the fact that it embraced national emission reduction targets first.”
Dr Pearse said his work as speechwriter to then Federal Environment Minister Robert Hill and as a PhD researcher and industry lobbyist opened his eyes to the influence that the country’s worst polluting industries have had on government policy since the late 1990s.
„The pennies slowly dropped that my party’s response to climate change was shifting thanks to the influence of our worst polluting industries and we were deceiving the public about the consequences.”
Dr Pearse is touring NSW and Victoria with Greenpeace and will visit Queensland next week in the lead up to the federal election to inform the community about how a few industries have shaped John Howard’s
response to climate change at the expense of ordinary Australians and the environment.
Dr Pearse said that after more than a decade of inaction on climate change Australia has to finally face its two main responsibilities: cutting its own emissions in line with what it expects from the rest of the world; and making the measures required for Australia to adapt to the huge impacts of climate change – some of which are now unavoidable.
„Incredibly, Australia has yet to conduct its own assessment of what it will cost the country to adapt to climate change. This is the great unmentionable in the current debate about what to do.”
Some of the costs of the damage caused by climate change can be avoided by cutting greenhouse emissions quickly, Dr Pearse said.
„If Australia does its fair share in contributing towards a global cut in emissions of 70 per cent by mid-century, we will be able to roughly halve many of the impacts of climate change.”
Dr Pearse urged both political parties to commit to policies that will cut Australia’s greenhouse pollution at least 60% by 2050.
