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Friday 5 September 2008 (Updated at 4.50pm AEST)

RAPID ROUNDUP: Garnaut Supplementary Draft Report - Experts Respond

The Garnaut Review has today released its Supplementary Draft Report at the National Press Club in Canberra (read transcript). The Supplementary Draft Report provides the Review’s proposals for emissions reduction trajectories and targets for Australia within an international context. The report suggests Australia should aim to initially limit emissions to no more than 550 parts per million (ppm) CO2-equivalent. To reach the goal of 550ppm the report states Australia would need to reduces its greenhouse emissions by 10 per cent (or 30 per cent in per capita terms) by 2020 and by 80 per cent (90 per cent per capita) by 2050 over 2000 levels.

Read comments from:

Professor Matthew England is Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) at the University of New South Wales.

Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of economics at the University of Queensland.

Barney Foran is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society.

Dr Iain MacGill is the Joint Director (Engineering) of the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets at the University of New South Wales.

Dr Matthew Clarke is Director of International and Community Development 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.

Dr Mark Diesendorf is from the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of ‘Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy’.

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.

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.

Professor Matthew England is Joint Director of the Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC) at the University of New South Wales.

“I’m very concerned by the latest scenarios being put forward. A CO2-e stabilisation target of 550 ppm is very likely to commit the planet to dangerous levels of climate change. We are already seeing an alarming melting of glaciers, rapid warming over the west Antarctic ice sheet and unprecedented melting of Arctic sea-ice. These changes suggest we have under-estimated the climate sensitivity to elevated CO2. Jim Hansen calculates that 350 ppm is a key threshold to avoid dangerous climate change. Many climate scientists see 450 ppm as too high to avoid dangerous climate change, yet perhaps the best practical goal. Now the policy-makers are being told it’s OK to go for 550 ppm. All the high-emitting industries will be celebrating this news big time. While I acknowledge this is an extremely challenging policy problem the science is unambiguous: deal with the problem now or pay a massive price down the track.”

Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of economics at the University of Queensland.

“Garnaut has done an excellent job in framing the choices facing Australia and the world community. It's now up to us whether we do nothing and face the consequences, go for a compromise target of 550 ppm and accept a very modest short-term reduction in income, or give up a little more and have a serious chance of saving the Great Barrier Reef and other endangered ecosystems and species.”

Barney Foran is a Visiting Fellow at the ANU Fenner School of Environment and Society.

“Garnaut works to his strengths in his latest 'Targets and Trajectories' report with courageous and clear policy prescriptions, a well argued economic case and an astute but realistic assessment of global politics. But given the hope that global cooperation will and must come soon, an Australian on Mars must ponder the hand wringing from domestic flat-earth journalists and politicians of most persuasions. At a national cost of one tenth of one percentage point of GDP growth rate for the next 50 years, then what are we waiting for? A rich country like Australia must make quick and effective plans to make its contribution to a global 450 ppm trajectory, and by so doing, reap the 'middle power' benefits of leadership and the obvious technological skills that would be central to this greenhouse transition.

However the scientific critic of this 'part of the Garnaut whole' is challenged by four important issues hidden from view in the Treasury modelling. High rates of population growth are central to Garnaut's trajectories. In the ultimate of magic puddings, these extra people come without emissions, and serve just to dilute the national total down to a globally equitable figure by 2050. Secondly, one wonders why again, Garnaut promotes Australia's coal industry as the saviour of world electricity supply through CCS technologies. It is unlikely that CCS will ever be deployed at a rate sufficient to slow emissions so why maintain this delusion? Garnaut's team must re-examine maps of renewable energy resources and become equally enthused by the centrality of those options to an Australia and a world, past 2050 through to 2200. Now is the time to embrace this industrial opportunity. Thirdly, Garnaut promotes increasing consumption as almost the sole aim of why we run this economy. His view, narrowed to just carbon and dollars, ignores the water, waste and land impacts of each additional unit of consumption. But perhaps that is someone else's job. Fourthly, in spite of extensive 'breakthrough' modelling methods, the reader is none the wiser about infrastructure, technology and lifestyle changes that must accompany Australia's part in moving to 450 ppm. I suppose the ETS will do it all for us and we'll hardly even notice!”

Dr Iain MacGill is the Joint Director (Engineering) of the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets at the University of New South Wales.

“In his draft review, Professor Garnaut appears to be arguing that:

1. global stabilisation of greenhouse gases at a level that gives us a reasonable chance of avoiding dangerous climate change is not currently an option
2. Australia should have lower emission reduction targets than the EU even though their per-capita emissions are around half our levels
3. Australia’s carbon price should be fixed initially at around half the carbon price currently seen in Europe
4. Australians should be given a greater entitlement to pollute the atmosphere than anyone else on the planet for the next 42 years.

As such the report doesn’t seem to provide an appropriate basis for domestic or international progress and leadership on addressing climate change.”

Dr Matthew Clarke is Director of International and Community Development 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 draft report on emissions targets is wonderful news for Australians and for the environment. His recommended targets are firmly based on current scientific knowledge and will reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change. Prime Mister Rudd must immediately adopt the targets and trajectories recommended by Professor Garnaut.

Climate change requires significant shifts in how our economy operates. But Professor Garnaut has shown that the costs of reducing our emissions are easily affordable. This report is a significant departure from the Kyoto approach of allocating future emissions on past emissions. Using the per capita approach to allocate future emissions is ethical. It is also politically astute as it will mean that countries such as Australia can bring pressure to bare on large developing country emitters, such as China and India, to enter a post-Kyoto international protocol. Professor Garnaut has recognised that an Australian has no more right to emit carbon than some-one living in India or China.”

Dr Mark Diesendorf is from the Institute of Environmental Studies at the University of New South Wales. He is the author of ‘Greenhouse Solutions with Sustainable Energy’.

“Professor Garnaut uses Australia’s high rate of population growth to try to justify his very low greenhouse target for 2020. This suggests the need for Australia to review its population policy. Because Australia is the biggest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases of the industrialised world, every new birth and every new immigrant makes a disproportionate increase in emissions. There is a case that, on environmental grounds, the Australian government should terminate the baby bonus and reverse the current growth in immigration.

The latter would not necessarily mean reducing the number of refugee immigrants, which is only a small proportion of total immigration. Total immigration should be capped by reducing business and professional immigration, while refugee immigration should be increased.”

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.

“Garnaut’s Targets and Trajectories report describes a fateful choice – do we act now with every means at our disposal, or do we permit business-as-usual carbon emissions to so disrupt the global climate system that the very fabric of our civilisation is ripped to shreds within the lifetime of people alive today? Yet there is stark irony underlying the modelling which supports the emissions targets by 2020 and 2050. It is this: the Garnaut review team readily admits that even the 450ppm CO2 target – almost implausibly difficult given the current explosive growth of emissions in the developing world – will lead to a crisis situation with untenable levels of global warming.

So, given the gross inadequacy of even the best case scenario, why bother with this approach at all?

My personal view is that arguing about whether we should be aiming for a 10%, 20% or even 90% emissions reduction target by 2020 is pointless and circular. The target is irrelevant without knowing how we hit it. It’s a bit like setting up a shooting target on a firing range at 300m and being told by the marshal to hit the bullseye. You ask: ‘Okay, but what am I shooting with, a rifle or a bow and arrow?’ The marshal says: ‘That’s irrelevant, just focus on hitting the bullseye’. But of course the weapon is highly relevant - it is almost impossible to hit a target at 300m with a bow and arrow. So the key to unlock this ‘diabolical problem’ is to focus on the energy technologies, as urgently as humanly possible. Design a capital works programme, lead by a forward-looking government, to start laying out solar thermal, wave, wind, geothermal and microalgal biodiesel liquid fuels on a massive scale. Define a REAL 2020 goal, such as to have 80% of Australia’s power met by renewables by 2020, instead of some abstract target that is reliant on an unenforceable multilateral global agreement which will never eventuate.

Prove up the technologies here in Australia, with extreme urgency and dedication, and pass on that know-how and innovation to the world. Show that it can be done, and not only that, show that it is not difficult to do and that costs fall rapidly as learning-by-doing proceeds. Even with current tech developments, all of Australia’s power needs could be met by a solar thermal array carpeting a 50 x 50 km square of outback desert. This is possible, not hypothetical. Encourage the venture capital to invest in proven renewables, and they become quickly much cheaper. This also starts the wheels of innovation spinning madly.

A carbon price is clearly needed to trigger this transformation, but an emissions trading scheme is not the obvious route to do it. It is a blunt instrument for a simple problem. A carbon tax of around $50 a tonne of CO2 would be sufficient to make a whole raft of renewables cost competitive. A steadily increasing carbon price brings market certainty and makes investment in energy tech that is becoming cheaper a business ‘no brainer’. Hit imports with a carbon tariff equal to what companies are paying domestically, and give our exporters a carbon tax deduction at the trade gate, to equalise with world markets. Australia needs to lose no competitive advantage from this – only gain by being a great 21st century innovator.

Let’s simplify this problem down to what really counts, and actually lead the world in fixing the climate crisis before it’s too late.”