The latest international report on threatened species shows that life on earth is under serious threat from increased extinction rates.

"The report Wildlife in a Changing World gives an extremely sobering prognosis for our planet's wellbeing," said Australian Greens Senator Rachel Siewert today.

The release today of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, which is published every four years, comes just before the deadline world governments set themselves to evaluate how successful they were in achieving the 2010 target to reduce biodiversity loss.

The States should use today's COAG meeting to urge the Federal Government to both lift its carbon pollution reduction targets and compensate the States ahead of polluters, otherwise front-line jobs in health, education and essential services are at risk, according to the Australian Greens.

Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown said new research from the Australia Institute showed that State Governments had been ignored by Canberra in drawing up the CPRS in favour of big polluters.

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Thank you for your warm welcome. I begin by acknowledging the Ngunnawal people, the traditional owners of the land.

Gandhi once said, "The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems."

We have reached a point in human history where 'what we do' on this planet imperils our survival. Now is the moment to re-imagine and reconsider 'what we are capable of doing'.

As Kofi Annan said recently, "The world is at a crossroads. [The Copenhagen] negotiators [must] come to the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated or continue to accept mass starvation, mass sickness and mass migration on an ever growing scale. Weak leadership," he said, "is failing humanity."

So what is stopping us from achieving what we are capable of, of reaching 'the most ambitious agreement ever negotiated'?

Australia needs real domestic action on climate change. Unfortunately, the Rudd government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme is deeply flawed.

The Government has announced that it will delay the scheme by one year and deliver another $2.2 billion in compensation to Australia’s biggest polluters—in addition to $7.4 billion the polluters are already getting.

The Greens are prepared to support a minimum unconditional 25% target – the bare minimum required by science and the global community – to end 12 years of climate inaction. And Treasury modelling shows it is affordable; by 2020 Australia’s GDP will be roughly three times the size it is today whether we have a ‘worse than useless’ 5% target or the minimum effective 25% target.

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