Hot topics                    

Tuesday 30 September 2008 at 2.10pm AEST (UPDATED AT 12 noon AEST, 1 October)

RAPID ROUNDUP: Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report - experts react

The Garnaut Climate Change Review has released its Final Report. It follows the release of the Draft and Supplementary Draft Reports in June and September 2008, and provides recommendations on the policy options for Australia to most effectively respond to climate change.

Copies of the final report are available to download here.

For a hard copy of The Garnaut Climate Change Review click here.

Feel free to use these quotes in your stories. Any further comments will be posted here. If you would like to speak to an expert, please don’t hesitate to contact us on (08) 8207 7415 or by email.

Read comments from:

Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Dr Mark Diesendorf is Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales

Kevin Goss is CEO of the Future Farm Industries CRC

Professor Jim Falk is Director of the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society (ACSIS)

Professor Nathan Bindoff is a physical oceanographer and Director of the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC). Partners include the University of Tasmania, CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC.

Professor Barry Brook is Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.

Dr Matthew Clarke is Senior Lecturer and Course Director of the International and Community Development program at the School of International and Political Studies, Deakin University in Victoria.

David Pearce is Executive Director at The Centre for International Economics

Professor Kevin Parton is Strategic Research Professor at the Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, NSW

Dr Andrew Glikson is an Earth and paleo-climate scientist at the Australian National University in Canberra.

"There is little evidence in the Final Report as to what a world of 550 parts per million (ppm) CO2 with temperatures of 2 to 3 degrees C higher than pre-industrial levels would be like to live in.

The Report appears to assume that, once 550 ppm CO2 concentration is reached, by manipulating some magic levers global temperature dials can be reversed down to 450 ppm or any other level. This is not the case. Unless CO2 draw-down technology is developed, as required by Hansen et al.(2008), It would take time scales in the order of centuries to millennia for natural CO2 sequestration to reduce the greenhouse effect to acceptable levels.

Garnaut’s Final Report states, among others: 'Achievement of a comprehensive agreement around a 550 ppm objective would be a step forward of historic dimension' and 'It would bring the next step to 450 closer to reach.' However, the Report also states 'The difference in environmental outcome between successful achievement of a 550 ppm objective and of a 450 ppm objective is substantial for Australia, as demonstrated in chapters 6 and 11 in particular. But it is small compared with the difference between 550 ppm and the complete failure of mitigation' (p. 595-6).

But the Garnaut Report acknowledges: 'Large positive climate–carbon feedbacks could result from the release of carbon from long-term sinks such as methane stored deep in ocean sediments and in frozen soils as temperatures increase (IPCC 2007a: 642). There is a high level of uncertainty about how the carbon cycle will respond to climate change'(Section 2 page 37).

The report admits feedbacks are difficult to quantify, stating: 'This causal chain does not explicitly include the feedbacks and non-linearities in the climate system that are important in its response to human forcings' (page 30). However, a major conclusion arising from the study of the recent history of the atmosphere is that carbon cycle feedbacks coupled with ice melt/water feedbacks constitute major amplifying mechanisms of initial relatively minor solar and greenhouse triggers (forcings). This observation is central to the view of the acceptability, or otherwise, of a 550 ppm CO2 atmosphere, for the following reasons:

(1) Based on a climate sensitivity of 3 degrees for a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels, at 550 ppm CO2 which is twice the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm CO2, mean global temperatures will rise by about 3 degrees Celsius;
(2) A rise of global temperature of 3 degrees Celsius implies sea level rise of about 25 metres +/- 12 metres, as recorded from the mid-Pliocene (3 million years ago) and consistent with sea level rise/temperature relations during glacial terminations;
(3) Temperature rises to 3 degrees Celsius imply widespread desertification of mid-latitudes – the agricultural centres of the world;
(4) Natural sequestration of greenhouse gases occurs over time frames of centuries to millennia and no atmospheric mechanism is known which will 'stabilise' CO2 levels over shorter periods;
(5) In terms of the longevity of civilization, allowing CO2 levels to rise further than they already are (387 ppm) would prove to be a unidirectional process.

A target of 450 ppm is dangerous, being the atmospheric greenhouse gas level at which the ice sheets began to form in the late Eocene some 34 million years ago. A target of 550 ppm CO2 is a recipe for disaster."

Dr Mark Diesendorf is Deputy Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales

"The lion, whose February report shook the walls with its roar, has turned into a mouse, whose September and October reports whimper that we must set weak targets that are politically expedient. Therefore, a political critique needs no apology.

Professor Garnaut admits that we are faced with one of the most serious and urgent global problems ever and that Australia will suffer more from climate change than many other industrialised countries. He confesses that we are locked in a prisoners’ dilemma: if we wait for all the others to act first, we all lose. By setting strong targets, Australia can join several European countries and States of the USA, thus contributing to the global pressures on the US Federal Government and the incoming president and hence on China and India to join global action to cut emissions. Although Garnaut knows all this, he still ignores the potential for Australia to influence other countries while helping itself.

The politics are now clear-cut. The Rudd Government was elected partly on its promises to take strong action, not just symbolic and token gestures, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and in particular to build renewable energy. In its first budget and subsequent actions, Rudd failed to honour his promises to renewable energy and instead poured money onto coal with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), a technological system that is unproven and unlikely to contribute significantly before the 2020s. Rudd’s only hope for regaining credibility is to set a much stronger 2020 greenhouse target than Garnaut’s and to match the CCS funding with actual funding for renewable energy.

If Rudd fails to do that, the Turnbull Opposition has the opportunity to seize the initiative, throw out the dead hand of climate denial from the Howard years, and follow the pathway of the British Conservative Opposition towards the winning of government on the climate change issue.

If both major parties fail to rise to the occasion, then the citizens’ movement for climate action will grow rapidly, opposing new conventional coal-fired power stations and naming and shaming the politicians and other decision-makers who are denying a decent climate future to our children and grandchildren."

Kevin Goss is CEO of the Future Farm Industries CRC

“The government needs to follow a conservative and cautious line when framing the policy for bio-sequestration until the role that Australian agriculture will play in the emission trading scheme (ETS) is clearly known.We won’t know this until 2013, but a lot of thought, research and discussion needs to be had before then, as in many cases there will be only one chance to sequester carbon through plantings and this will require a long-term commitment from rural landholders. Such deals will be difficult to reverse once they have been put in place. There could be serious social and economic ramifications if farmers are locked into contracts that aren’t best for them or Australia’s climate change goals.

“This may not be the first time that the potential for tree planting to combat environmental degradation has been wildly over-estimated. We also need accurate measures of the amount and stability of bio-sequestration in the landscape, measures that have been validated and are practical to apply. This is an important lesson from the European Union’s experience with an ETS – they have yet to include rural land use change.

“Ongoing research and innovation is critically important as Australian agriculture prepares for a Federal Government decision in 2013 on its inclusion in the proposed ETS. Then farmers can determine their strategy for offsetting their own emissions and participating in an economy-wide market.”

Professor Jim Falk is Director of the University of Melbourne’s Australian Centre for Science, Innovation and Society (ACSIS)

“Whilst Professor Ross Garnaut's proposals are very conservative, as he admits, in terms of what needs to be done to get us out of the climate hole humanity and Australians are currently so enthusiastically digging, this report represents a vitally important contribution to the policy agenda, and provides a minimum set of policy initiatives which must now be implemented in full.”

Professor Nathan Bindoff is a physical oceanographer and Director of the Tasmanian Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC). Partners include the University of Tasmania, CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research and the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC.

“Garnaut has made a comprehensive effort to bring science and economics together. Garnaut’s team have been heroic in scope and depth. Congratulations. The dialogue is rational, and emotive. The report is persuasive and canvasses plausible options. Even the 450 parts per million (ppm) equivalent emission scenario appears effective and feasible in this context with the higher options of 550 ppm equivalent emissions scenario having slight GNP advantages.

The biggest risks appear to be botched international negotiations which must be minimised. I was impressed that consideration was given to climate change in the 22nd century, and also the emphasis on the urgency for action. I can only applaud these sentiments, informed and based on well established science.”

Professor Barry Brook is Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide.

“The Garnaut Climate Change Review is a landmark achievement. The depth of thought and research that Garnaut and his team have given to the impacts and implications of climate change is profound, and there are many powerful insights given into how a cooperative global agreement might be reached – and what it could look like. Those convening the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference in 2009 should be grateful – much of the necessary intellectual groundwork for this key meeting has been laid out in the Final Report.

The impacts of unmitigated climate change, as modelled in the review’s ‘Platinum Age’ scenarios, are certainly frightening, both in terms of the staggering economic and environmental damage that will result. And that’s without ‘non-market costs’ being factored in. The abiding message from the review is clear – we cannot afford to go to the dark and unpleasant future that business-as-usual threatens to take us – so let’s instead work out how we best manage an alternative, low-carbon future, as soon as is physically and socially possible.

The recommendation that Australia should reduce its per capita emissions by 95% by 2050 is certainly one the government ought to openly address – do they agree with this assessment (and if not, why not?), and how are they going to meet such a target? This brings the issue back to the absolutely key question of how we achieve transformative change. That is, we could reach such ‘ambitious’ emissions reductions targets easily, because we’ve developed an entirely new and renewable energy infrastructure which delivers huge benefits to Australia and allows us to export this knowledge and huge amounts of clean energy to a worldwide market. Or we could continue to look backwards, to a Victorian Era style of coal-based energy investment, which leaves us far behind these lofty ambitions, and takes the planet to climate purgatory for bad measure.

Seems a clear enough choice to me.”

Dr Matthew Clarke is Senior Lecturer and Course Director of the International and Community Development program at the School of International and Political Studies, Deakin University in Victoria. He is also the author of a book on "Post-Kyoto: Designing the Next International Climate Change Protocol", which will be published later this year.

“Professor Garnaut’s final report should be celebrated (and accepted) for three reasons:

1. It recognizes that scientific analysis must form the basis of setting emission reduction targets (in striking contrast to the Kyoto Protocol)
2. It recognizes that only an inclusive international response to climate change at Copenhagen in 2009 - developed and developing countries - will deliver the deep emission reductions necessary (in striking contrast to the Kyoto Protocol)
3. It recognizes that scarce future global emissions must be allocated on a per capita basis, not be based on past emissions levels (in striking contrast to the Kyoto Protocol)

While the Kyoto Protocol was an important PR success, it was an abject failure in reducing emissions. Garnaut has rightly framed his report so that Australia’s response to climate change is outward looking and internationally focused.

If the Australia Government adopts the Garnaut approach, Australia can play a significant role in shaping the next international climate change protocol at Copenhagen, one that will include all nations and deliver the reductions in carbon emissions required to mitigate climate change.

While many will claim that Garnaut has not been tough enough, his report calls for a reduction in Australia’s per capita carbon emissions of 90% by 2050. This surely must be applauded. Garnaut also calls for deeper cuts as a second step.

The time for political sniping and environmental point scoring is over. Garnaut’s report must be accepted and all commercial and environmental organisations must work together to ensure that Australia influences the Copenhagen talks and that they deliver the global emission reduction outcomes required.”

David Pearce is Executive Director at The Centre for International Economics

“The compilation of Professor Garnaut’s work into a single final report reiterates several key features of the climate change policy problem. First, climate policy is a long term commitment. Both climate change and mitigation will be expensive for the economy. Under Garnaut’s scenarios, we won’t see net benefits from mitigation until the second half of this century, and we won’t recover from the costs in the first half of the century until after 2100. What we get for this cost is reduced likelihood of extreme climate outcomes and the potential to save key environmental assets. But hardly anyone alive today will get to see these benefits. Our grandchildren will.

Second, even under Garnaut’s mitigation scenario, there will still be substantive climate change (temperature increases of up to 2 degrees over the course of the century). Action today will not ‘fix’ the problem, as some politicians seem to imply. Adaptation and efforts to reduce our vulnerabilities to climate changes will be an essential component of broader climate policy. This should not be forgotten in the administrative rush to establish emissions trading.

Finally, Garnaut’s discussion of an emissions trading scheme shows that there are trade-offs in every aspect of the scheme’s design. Garnaut’s view of these trade-offs is, in many cases, very different to those set out in the Government’s Green Paper. Indeed, his scheme does not look much like the government’s at all. On the issues of initial allocation of permits and the treatment of trade exposed industries, Garnaut takes a starkly different approach to the Green Paper. His views are soundly based in economic principles, and will pose a major challenge for the government as it refines its ideas in the white paper due soon.”

Professor Kevin Parton is Strategic Research Professor at the Institute of Land, Water and Society, Charles Sturt University, NSW

Will the impact on the economy be severe? "The general consensus from economic analyses already completed is that most of us will probably not be able to notice the difference in our standard of life under a carbon trading scheme as long as it starts soon, and as long as there are appropriate taxation offsets that both compensate the less well off and support economic growth. Garnaut’s previous assessment was that there is a pathway for Australia to become a low-emissions economy and at the same time continuing with strong growth in material living standards. An example is provided by Morrison from CSU. Without an emissions trading scheme we would expect average incomes to rise from $47,600 today to $64,200 in 2020. With the scheme it would be $63,558 in 2020.

The Garnaut Report provides more details here. First he compares the cost and benefits of mitigation to stabilise the amount of carbon dioxide at 550ppm and 450ppm. Second he shows the time profile of the impact on GDP. The impacts after the initial shock are not as small as previously estimated, but are still small, at about 0.1 percent of GDP per year. So Garnaut still see the impacts as small in the long run and household incomes will continue to rise.

Also detailed are the sectoral impacts, with agriculture being a major beneficiary.

Environmental consequences? The big issue is the estimated differences in the environmental consequences of different levels of mitigation. Without any scheme, Garnaut suggests that the probability of a 6C temperature increase is about 50 percent, and this would lead to catastrophic consequences. We can only contemplate mitigation at either 550ppm or 450ppm (or less).

There are significant environmental difference between them. At 550 we could probably expect the destruction of the Great Barrier reef. At 450 there would be mass bleaching, but its disappearance would be much less likely.

While Garnaut doesn’t give his opinion directly in favour of one level of mitigation rather than another, he clearly prefers the 450ppm level.

Will this proposal assist in the development of a future international arrangement for the reduction of greenhouse gases? This is an important issue, and Garnaut has given some consideration to it. However, others, such as McKibbin and Wilcoxen, at ANU have offered alternatives that seem to offer more promise of easily moving to an internationally acceptable and globally efficient scheme. While a globally-traded free market in carbon would seem to offer the most efficient arrangement, there are serious institutional impediments to establishing it. A compromise that establishes a stronger international institutional arrangement has the following components: permits for sale from the government, they allow the owner to emit one tonne CO2 in a particular year, they are valid only within the particular country, there is no limit on the number that can be purchased, the price is fixed by international agreement and is the same price in all countries, and countries meet periodically to adjust the price depending on progress with greenhouse gas reductions.

Should big polluters be given free permits? This is a complex issue. The claim is that without compensation, some firms that are both exposed to trade and are significant polluters have a large incentive to move to offshore locations where they will not suffer the cost of having to purchase carbon permits. To counter this argument it would be possible to introduce a carbon levy on imports that come from countries that have no emission trading scheme, and to offer a permit exemption to exporters who export to such countries. Hence, except as a temporary transition arrangement, there should be no need to offer free permits in Australia.

Should we press on with this while there is a financial crisis in the US? This is a policy proposal to be implemented over a number of years, and by the time we get to its implementation, the current financial crisis will have resolved itself one way or another.”