Today in Parliament, Abigail gave a speech highlighting that global efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C are failing, fossil fuel use remains at record highs and climate impacts are disproportionately harming vulnerable communities while calling for urgent action to achieve net zero emissions well before 2050 and prevent catastrophic environmental, social and economic consequences.
Abigail said:
In 2015 international politicians, indigenous leaders and climate campaigners gathered together in Paris to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees. That was meant to be a call to action, a safety limit for climate change, a threshold to be avoided, because beyond that point the climate risks begin to spiral out of control. That target of 1.5 degrees was based on the best available science and agreed to by the world's governments. There has been a change in behaviour and awareness about the dangers posed by a rapidly heating planet. Investment in clean technologies has accelerated, and renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy available on the market—not just now, but the cheapest form of energy humanity has ever known. But despite those moves, the simple truth is that it is not enough. It is not ambitious enough; it is not fast enough. The cuts to emissions are not deep enough. While green technologies are increasingly in use, the use of fossil fuels is at record highs. The Earth is spiralling towards a doom loop of disastrous negative feedback loops and ecological breakdown.
The year 2024 was the first full year in which the global temperature began breaching 1½ degrees. The climate is changing faster than the models predicted. The effects are more intense and unpredictable and destructive. We are beginning to overshoot the 1½-degree safety limit, and we are entering into a storm of intense climate change. It is a world in which uncertainty and risk rules the day, and where the stakes have never been higher. It is a world where sea levels rise, and drought, fire and storms become an existential threat felt everywhere around the world but most acutely by certain countries and by certain communities. The impacts are not fairly distributed. The heaviest and most devastating impacts are borne most heavily by those who did little to cause them and by those with the fewest resources and least capacity to respond and cope. Those losses will be real; they will be profound. They will not just be buildings knocked over that can be rebuilt. The world will feel permanent losses to ecosystems, culture and communities, and the changes in many cases will be irreversible, at least in any reasonable estimation of future generations.
The moral, social and economic case for action and for urgency is devastatingly clear. We are looking down the barrel of an existential threat. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports tell us there is a very real and material difference between 1½ degrees of warming and two degrees, because every bit of extra warming makes a difference. Every action taken or not taken sends us on a slightly different path. Do we bend the curve or topple over the edge? It is a ratcheting series of loss. There are millions and billions of moments for opportunity or tragedy and the potential for ecosystems, communities and lives to be lost. Every increment of warming matters. Every tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere is grinding us towards the coming storm.
It is in that context that the other target used in climate conversations emerges. If 1½ degrees was the threshold to be avoided, then net zero was the mechanism by which it would be preserved. Net zero emissions is the point where we stop making it worse. We were accelerating towards disaster. We are now curbing our emissions, with a greater and greater share of our energy coming from renewable sources. But, by definition, when we are short of net zero, it means we are increasing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. A net zero target by 2050 means we are going to continue making the problem worse for another 25 years. In 25 years, it will be at its worst. From there, maybe we can begin the process of drawdown and repair. But in 25 years' time, will the conditions even be suitable for adaptation and repair? Will the climate systems be able to support the hard work of recovery and resilience?
It remains unclear whether we will be able to skirt just below the threshold or whether we will overshoot and have to navigate the uncertain world that that entails. On our current trajectory, it is all but certain we are in the territory of overshoot. That will be the new climate reality. We are already there in many respects. Today was the hottest October day ever. We are staring down the barrel of a disastrous bushfire season. It is not getting better. It is going to keep getting worse, so we need to work harder, work better together and demand more. We need to overcome vested interests and those who profit from delay, put their head in the sand, resist climate justice and drag us closer towards disaster. The coming years and decades are going to be hard. We do not need to make it harder. We can still turn this ship around. But on our current course, with our current governments and with the current economic ideology and entanglements, with those who are doing the most damage, with donations and promises of post-politics careers dictating their decisions, we will fall tragically short and suffer the consequences. A more democratic, just and safe world is possible, but it will not emerge without a struggle. I believe it is a struggle worth having.
Read the transcript in Hansard here.
22 October 2025