In July 2011, Malcolm Turnbull addressed the Virginia Chadwick Foundation. The following is an excerpt from his speech:

“….the most significant but least tractable threat to long-term preservation of the Great Barrier Reef is not from illegal fishing or polluted runoff from agriculture or bulk carriers that run aground and leak bunker fuel, but from a much broader collision between human economic activity and the natural environment – global warming, caused in large part by our burning of fossil fuels and the clearing of land and the felling of forests.

The Great Barrier Reef is brutally confronted, it is indeed in the front line of the climate change battle, by two aspects of global warming. Most of the warming which is the consequence of human carbon dioxide emissions increasing the greenhouse effect has been absorbed in the ocean. That’s no surprise. As ocean temperatures rise, coral bleaching, which is another way of saying coral dying, events have increased. Indeed since 1979 there have been eight mass bleaching events on the Reef with no known bleaching events prior to that date.

Furthermore as more carbon dioxide is absorbed into the ocean it increase the acidity of the ocean – the last time the ocean’s acidity was this high was 25 million years ago. This is reducing the capacity of hard shelled sea creatures to form their calciferous shells – whether they are krill in the Antarctic or coral in the tropics.

…let me say straight up that the question of whether or to what extent human activity is causing global warming is not a matter of ideology or of belief. The matter is simply one of risk management.

Nonetheless, there is no doubt that many people are grounding their opposition to the Gillard Government’s carbon tax on the basis that climate change is not real and that the scientific consensus which supports it is not soundly based.

It is important to remember however that the rejection of the consensus scientific position on global warming, rejection of the CSIRO’s position on global warming, is not Liberal Party policy.

Quite the contrary. The Liberal Party’s policy is to accept the scientific consensus that the globe is warming and that human greenhouse gas emissions are substantially the cause of it. It is also the Liberal Party’s policy to take action to cut Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions such that by 2020 they will be at a level equal to 95% of their level in 2000. This is the same unconditional target adopted by the Rudd Government and the Gillard Government and pledged at Copenhagen.

That 5 per cent cut is not expected to single-handedly stop global warming but is a measured and prudent contribution to what needs to be a global effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so as to prevent, it is hoped, temperature rises beyond 2 degrees Celsius in the course of this century.

Having said that, it is undoubtedly correct that there has been a very effective campaign against the science of climate change by those opposed to taking action to cut emissions – many because it is not in their own financial interests – and that this has played into the carbon tax debate.

Normally, in our consideration of scientific issues we rely on expert advice. Agencies like the CSIRO or the Australian Academy of Science are listened to with respect.

Yet on this issue there appears to be a licence to reject our best scientists, both here and abroad, and rely instead on much less reliable views.

…this war on science and on scientists which is being conducted is much worse than the case of a person who ignores his doctor’s advice and follows the advice of his friend down the pub.

Because the consequences of getting our response to climate change wrong will not likely be felt too severely by us, or at least not most of us, but will be felt painfully and cruelly by the generations ahead of us. And the people in the world who will suffer the most cruelly will be the poorest and the people who have contributed the least to the problem. There is an enormous injustice here. When people try and suggest to you that climate change is not a moral issue, they are wrong. It is an intensely moral issue raising grave moral issues.

Those of us who do not believe the CSIRO is part of an international Green conspiracy to undermine Western civilisation or do not believe that leading scientists like Will Steffen are subversives should not be afraid to speak out, and loudly, on behalf of our scientists and our science. We must not allow ourselves to be deluded on this issue.

As Liberals, we have to stake our environmental case and our position on the right way to deal with climate change on the basis that we are supporting the science. That is our policy and we should not allow ourselves to allow people to imagine that it is not. In my view, we cannot afford to allow the science to become a partisan issue as it is in the United States where it appears that it is apparently no longer politically acceptable for any would-be Republican Presidential candidate to say that he or she believes that global warming is occurring and is caused by human activities.

Now not so long ago I was with a friend, a very long serving and distinguished Environment Minister from our region and we discussed the progress of the climate change issue globally. And he said that he thought that human selfishness and greed was so great that there would no effective action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that by the end of the century our planet would be uninhabitable for billions for people. And as he said that, I felt a chill going down my spine. I feared that he was right but my natural optimism reasserted itself and I thought to myself, ‘we are better than that’. We are better than that but you could not fault him in terms of his objectivity or realism.

Now let me just say this to you: The idea that our country, this great country of ours, can sail through a 3, 4 or 5 or more degrees rise in temperature this century with our prosperity and freedom, let alone the Great Barrier Reef, intact is very naïve. So this is a big issue. So in the storm of this debate about carbon tax and direct action and what the right approach to climate change should be, do not fall into the trap of abandoning the science. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that what Lord Monckton says or what some website says is superior to what our leading scientists or leading universities would say.

We also need to be very clear-eyed about what an effective global response to climate change requires. There are many calculations on the scale of emissions reductions required. But it is quite clear that to achieve the necessary cuts by mid century all or almost all of our stationary energy – and when I say our, I mean the world’s – will need to be generated from zero or near zero emission sources.

This could be renewables like hydro, biomass, wind, solar or tidal power. It could be geothermal power, it could indeed be nuclear power. But it will not be burning coal unless the emissions from that coal are captured in some form or other.

Australia generates most of its electricity from burning coal – much of it very emissions intensive brown coal in Victoria or South Australia. That is why our carbon dioxide emissions are among the highest in the world on a per capita basis – a reason why the Chinese (whose emissions are about one-fifth of ours) and the Indians (whose are less than one-tenth of ours) find our regular references to their emissions – and why should we do anything until the Chinese or Indians do something – why they find those references incredibly galling. Those of us who have represented Australia at international conferences on this, know how incredibly embarrassing statements like that are when you actually confront the representatives of those countries.

Some people would say, I trust that most would not, that as we have a vested interest in coal being burned we should oppose action on climate change and rather like the tobacco companies who sought to discredit the connection between smoking and lung cancer muddy the waters on climate science in order to prolong the export billions from coal mining.

Others might say that we should not be troubled by the long term prospects for coal because we have abundant resources of the alternatives – gas, the least emissions intensive fossil fuel, uranium, geothermal power and, of course, plenty of sunshine.

A more responsible approach would be to encourage the development of those alternatives at the same time as we promote and develop technologies to capture CO2 emissions from coal burning – whether that is by pumping it into the ground or by turning it into other useful products.

And yet I regret to say to you that neither the Labor government led by Julia Gillard – who is a woman fond of a hard hat, I must say – nor the coal industry itself have shown much enthusiasm for investing in Research and Development or trials for Carbon Capture and Storage. In fact funding has been cut again as part of the recent carbon tax package.

Now one of the most dispiriting parts of Professor Garnaut’s updates was his analysis in volume seven on carbon capture and storage. Essentially he said work had come to a halt in 2008 and no technical progress or commercial pilots of significance were apparent. The estimate of coal capture and storage adding 40-plus per cent to the cost of coal-fired electricity was about the freshest fact on the page.

One need only look at the vast expansion of new investment in coal-fired generation underway in China, India and elsewhere to understand the importance of this issue. Carbon Capture and Storage isn’t just about saving Australia coal exports or generation capacity. It is about addressing the reality which the MIT study on the future of coal baldly stated as long ago in 2007: “We believe that coal use will increase under any foreseeable scenario because it is cheap and abundant.” Now if it increases and emissions increase and the science is right, the Reef is finished. And that is a very small part of it. So this is a very serious issue and it is remarkable that with all the rhetoric about the need for action from the Gillard Government, the single most important area of research and development, the one that is arguably the most important in terms of the world’s future and most certainly most important from the point of view from our own economy, is being neglected.

So the commercial feasibility and large-scale deployment for Carbon Capture and Storage is the only way – in the absence of some great technological shift, and you won’t find me discounting that, I’m a great believer in the disruptive power of technology – the world has any chance whatsoever of achieving the cuts needed to get to the 60 per cent or 80 per cent 2050 targets that leaders have committed to.

The thermal coal industry and the Gillard government both know this. So how should Australians interpret their disinterest in this technology? As an acknowledgement that Carbon Capture and Storage doesn’t work and is too expensive and hence thermal coal is finished? Or a sign they don’t ever expect to be answerable for those 2050 targets? I fear that is probably the answer.

Now it is up to us, as friends of Virginia Chadwick and as Liberals, to be prepared to look beyond the horizon and recognise that we must act responsibly as custodians for the future of this country and this planet. For our children and our grandchildren and the many generations beyond them. We must treat the science with respect and rely on the best science which is the only responsible and prudent thing to do. And above all, we should commit ourselves to ensuring that the Great Barrier Reef, which Virginia did so much to protect, and so many other wonderful but fragile environmental assets are not destroyed. We must ensure all of the good work from Virginia and all of the other people who worked with her are not utterly undone by all of the consequences of global warming, of ocean acidification and these great existential threats to the planet that we enjoy, that we revel in and that our children and grandchildren will be able to enjoy just as we have done.”

Update: In November last year the government published a review on CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE FLAGSHIP SOUTH WEST HUB PROJECT

“CCS currently has no developed method to qualify it for consideration under the Direct Action for the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) under the replacement Federal Government climate change policy regime. The Business Case in the SW Hub Flagship application was premised on an assumption that “carbon is adequately priced”, so the commercial incentive for local industry to undertake CCS no longer exists. Support from industry stakeholders is judged to be mediocre because there is clearly no business case now for geosequestration.”