The Australian Green senator Christine Milne, the first female leader of a political party in Tasmania’s history, delivered this speech to the Australian National Press Club this past week.

Key quote from the speech:

“The truth is the climate nightmare is real and happening now. We are destroying the Great Barrier Reef, Kakadu and the snow caps. We are eroding our beaches, and our coastal cities will face managed retreat due to sea level rise. We are drying our food bowl, the Murray Darling, beyond repair, jeopardising rural communities and our food security.

Many of our Asia Pacific neighbours are struggling with rising seas and extreme weather which threatens a refugee crisis beyond anything we’ve ever seen.

The Himalayan glaciers, which feed all the major rivers of Asia  — the Ganges and Brahmaputra, the Mekong, the Yellow and Yangtze  — are melting away. Once they are gone, a third of the world’s people face a parched, hungry and, most likely, violent future.”

For what we have to do urgently – install renewables, return air CO2 to 300 ppm, return carbon as biochar to the soil, re-afforestation and cessation of carbon pollution and deforestation – see Climate Emergency Facts and Required Actions and 300.org – return atmosphere CO2 to 300 ppm.