Adam Bandt says every MP ‘capable of supporting this motion’ since it does not condemn the government

The Greens have intensified efforts ahead of the return of federal parliament next week to lobby moderate Liberals to break ranks and vote for a motion declaring a climate emergency.

With parliament set to resume on Monday, the lower house Greens MP Adam Bandt has written to all parliamentarians in the House urging them to support the climate emergency motion, which would be seconded by independent Zali Steggall, and has the support of most of the crossbench.

“Every member of parliament is capable of supporting this motion,” Bandt says in the letter. “It does not condemn the government … nor does it express support for any particular policy position.

“It simply acknowledges the science and calls on the government to take urgent action. This motion is a statement that individual members of parliament recognise the seriousness of the challenge we face.

“Once the declaration has been made, having recognised across the political spectrum that this is a challenge we all face together, the debate can begin in earnest about the best way to deal with the emergency.

“Given that members of the Coalition have a free vote, I expect that government MPs will feel free to vote for the motion. On this issue, every individual parliamentarian has a duty to act.”

Labor has discussed the proposal with the Greens but is yet to decide whether or not to back the motion, and the opposition has been publicly at odds over future emission reduction targets in the past week.

During the last parliamentary sitting in September, the shadow climate change minister, Mark Butler, told Guardian Australia it was abundantly clear there is a climate emergency. “I’ve said so in the parliament on a number of occasions.”

But Butler said there was also little to no prospect of the Greens-led motion getting up in the current parliament, because Liberals would not break ranks. Liberals would need to vote in favour of the motion for it to have any prospect of success. In that context, Butler said he was “not sure it is realistic to have a debate”.

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At the time the proposed motion was unveiled, the former Liberal leader John Hewson urged Scott Morrison to give his MPs a conscience vote. Hewson argued if it had been acceptable for Tony Abbott to declare a budget emergency in the run-up to the 2013 election, Liberals in 2019 should have no issue with adopting the language in the Greens motion, because declaring a climate emergency in Australia “almost goes without saying”.

An e-petition circulating calling on the House to immediately act and declare a climate emergency in Australia, and introduce legislation that will with immediacy and haste reduce the causes of anthropogenic climate change, has now reached 312,779 signatures – which is a record for Australian parliamentary petitions.

The British parliament declared a climate emergency in May, endorsing a parliamentary motion moved by the Labour party. Conservative MPs in the UK were told to not oppose the Labour motion. A number of Australian councils have also declared a climate emergency.

The Australian Medical Association has formally declared climate change a health emergency, pointing to “clear scientific evidence indicating severe impacts for our patients and communities now and into the future”.

Several Liberal MPs have signed on to a crossbench-led climate action committee, as the parliament’s independents attempt to take partisan politics out of the nation’s climate policies.

Tim Wilson, Dave Sharma, Jason Falinski, Katie Allen, Angie Bell and Trent Zimmerman are among the Liberal MPs to sign up to the Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action group, along with Labor’s Ged Kearney and Josh Burns as well as Adam Bandt from the Greens and Andrew Wilkie.