More than 11,000 scientists, including over 350 from Australia, have marked the 40th anniversary of the first international climate conference in Geneva to sign on to a climate-emergency declaration, warning that the world faces “untold suffering” if it does not finally act to urgently reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. That declaration will increase pressure on the Morrison government to allow a conscience vote on a climate-emergency declaration, which independent member for Warringah Zali Steggall is pushing for. Last month, Steggall tabled the largest e-petition yet received by the Australian parliament, instigated by 23-year-old Sydney resident Noah Bell. In a recent interview in her electorate office, Steggall said that the climate crisis should be above partisan politics: “I do feel strongly that we need to get away from this idea that, once in, backbenchers are only ever there for the parties. There are certain issues that need to transcend that, and I believe this is one of them.”
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| Independent member for Warringah Zali Steggall and Noah Bell. |
In September, Bell was browsing Twitter on the bus to his home in the outer-suburban electorate of Berowra when he found himself on the federal parliament’s e-petitions page. Off the top of his head he wrote an 80-word call for a climate-emergency declaration, and clicked upload. A week later, some friends asked if the petition was his, and told him it had 10,000 signatures. Soon the parliament was in touch, and the petition closed with more than 405,000 signatures. Bell, who has never been a member of any political party, decided to ask Steggall to table it, rather than the chair of the petitions committee, the LNP’s Llew O’Brien. “The Liberal Party have proven themselves incapable of listening to, or acting on the science,” says Bell. He calls the whole experience “bizarre”.
Read the story from The Monthly by Paddy Manning - “Zali’s game plan: Backing a climate-emergency declaration is just the beginning.”
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