The Global Warming

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AUSTRALIA should not expose itself by adopting an aggressive
greenhouse reduction target, but it should make a “proportionate”
adjustment as it waits to see how the rest of the developed world
reacts, the Federal Government’s top climate-change adviser will
recommend today.
Professor Ross Garnaut will provide the Government with the
results of econometric modelling.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said at the international
climate change conference in Bali in December that he would not set
emissions targets until he had Professor Garnaut’s work in
hand. His report will draw on the
modelling to estimate the cuts to carbon emissions needed to deal
with climate change. “The recommendations on the targets and
trajectories are drawn logically from these premises.
“I share the premise of people who see this as a large and
serious issue,” Professor Garnaut, an eminent economist, told the
Herald yesterday.” They should be based, he said, on “what’s
a reasonable distribution of the overall adjustment”.
“The costs of adjustment are proportionate to other countries,
and they are manageable.
Professor Garnaut is expected to report on four possible targets
for cutting greenhouse pollution according to a range of
scenarios.
He said he and the British Government’s economic adviser on
climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern, had conferred yesterday and Sir
Nicholas “agrees with the technical approach to the analysis of the
climate change problem” that he was pursuing. Such a range would still require
great effort, because it would mean the trend that Australia’s
emissions continued to grow would need to be reversed.
He would not comment on speculation he would recommend a 2020
reduction target in the range of zero to 15 per cent of carbon
emissions relative to 1990 levels. It is to estimate the cost of acting to
avert climate change as well as the cost of not acting.
Professor Garnaut’s report will be based on much anticipated
modelling done with the federal Treasury, the Queensland Treasury
and Monash University. The
report has looked at the cost of keeping carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases at particular levels.
Sources familiar with the Garnaut review process told the
Herald Professor Garnaut would not approve scenarios based
on a “business as usual” approach or taking no action at all. He is not believed to be in favour of
acting on emissions to keep carbon dioxide at a higher level in the
atmosphere – 550 parts a million. One level is 450 parts a
million, which will take considerable effort to maintain, but which
scientists say will give only a moderate chance of averting
dangerous climate change.
“Global climate change is real and measurable,” the president of
the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological
Societies, Ken Baldwin, said.
Yesterday the body representing 60,000 Australian scientists and
technologists urged the Government to stay focused on the
scientific case for averting climate change.”
. “Rather than being a free rider,
Australia must vigorously pursue opportunities to reduce greenhouse
gas emissions including those additional to an emissions trading
scheme, such as diversification of energy supply, improving energy
efficiencies and changing consumption behaviours