‘Climate change to blame’ for natural disasters

Greens blame government inaction on climate change for a spate of natural disasters which have ravaged the nation.

Greens Leader Senator Richard Di Natale. Picture Kym Smith

The Greens have blamed the federal government’s failure to address climate change for a cyclone and bushfires which have ravaged communities across Australia over the past 48 hours.

Cyclone Marcus has swept across the Northern Territory, bringing down power lines and hundreds of trees in what Chief Minister Michael Gunner described as the biggest storm to hit the Top End in 30 years.

In Tathra on the NSW South Coast, at least 70 properties have been destroyed, while thousands of hectares of farmland, livestock and 18 homes have been lost in four blazes which were started by lightning strikes across South West Victoria.

In an anti-coal speech in the Senate today, Greens leader Richard Di Natale said the government had been doing “everything it can to slow this country’s transition to renewable energy”.

“Australians are bearing the brunt of their failure,” Senator Di Natale said.

“In the last few days we’ve seen bushfires savage Tathra, Bega and South West Victoria. We’ve seen a cyclone hit Darwin. In Tathra we heard this morning that 70 homes and other buildings have been destroyed. In my home region of South West Victoria, 18 homes have been destroyed around the towns of Terang, Garvoc, Camperdown and Gazette. 40,000 hectares have been burnt.

“We are seeing climate change in our everyday lives have an impact on the risk of bushfires to our communities. And we can’t any longer be complacent about bushfires once the end of summer comes around.

“Right now we would normally be talking about the end of the bushfire season, and yet, here we are with bushfires ravaging my home state and indeed my community.”

South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson Young said bushfires were getting more severe and frequent, “as a result of climate change”.

“I arrived in Canberra last night and I was watching the weather on the news saying that some of those coastal areas were 39 degrees yesterday, at the end of March,” Senator Hanson-Young told Sky News.

“There is extraordinary changes going on in our climate, and yes, bushfires, we know the science has been telling us this for a long time, more and more extreme weather events, more severe and more frequent, is a result of climate change, and it’s one of the key reasons why we can’t take our foot off the pedal when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, reducing pollution, and that means, here in Australia, getting out of exporting more and more coal to the rest of the world, which is only going to make climate change worse.”

Former prime minister Tony Abbott earlier called for the government to build new, “highly efficient” coal-fired power stations.

“If it’s good enough to export our coal, surely it’s good enough to use it here,” Mr Abbott told 2GB.

“I’m all in favour of doing the right thing by the planet. We’ve only got one. We’ve got to give it to our kids in good shape,” he said.

“But we’ve got to face the fact that nothing Australia does in terms of our emissions reduction is going to make a substantial global difference.

“America has pulled out of the Paris accords, Paris imposed very little if any restriction on the emissions growth of countries like China and India, so my point all along has been yes, let’s try to get emissions down, but let’s not do it in ways which cost jobs and damage industries, and if we don’t have affordable, reliable power, and our power in this country is much less affordable and much less reliable than it’s been for decades, if we don’t have affordable and reliable power in this country, it’s very hard for manufacturing industry to survive, let alone to flourish.”