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) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Professor John Quiggin is Professor of Economics at the University of Queensland and currently Hinkley Professor at John Hopkins University, Baltimore, US

“This is a big achievement, coming at an opportune time. With South Korea planning to follow suit, momentum towards carbon emission reductions in the Asia Pacific is starting to build. Even more significant, although it received little attention, is China’s introduction a few weeks ago of a nationwide feed-in tariff for solar PV. Although this is not the most efficient way to reduce emissions, the fact that it is being undertaken by the world’s largest emitter means that we still have a chance to reverse the growth in global emissions before it is too late.”

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Professor John Cole is Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development at the University of Southern Queensland

“The challenge for Australians now is to believe we can make a difference in the action we take, demonstrate that the direction we have set is worthy of adoption by other countries, and to be resolute, relentless and persuasive in making the case for global action on climate change.  To that end we will be more credible because of the legislation passed in the Senate today.”

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Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich is Founding Director at the Monash Science Centre at Monash University in Melbourne

“Wonderful news.  It is high time that a country with folks that have so much, and pollute so much, is finally willing to be responsible for their impost on the planet. Now who is up for trying to do us one better!!??”

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Professor Peter Newman is John Curtin Distinguished Professor of Sustainability and Director of Curtin University Sustainable Policy Institute

“The Clean Energy Bill passed through Parliament and the world did not collapse, the sun came up as usual – and we all look forward to putting it more to use.”

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Professor Snow Barlow is Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture at the Melbourne School of Land and Environment at the University of Melbourne

“This groundbreaking legislation is a significant achievement for the Gillard government with strong and courageous support of the independents and Greens. I am sure that Minister Combet will demonstrate the same determination and competence that he has demonstrated in playing a leading role in the development and carriage of this policy initiative.

The passage of this legislation will provide clear direction and certainty for business and the community to plan the future of the Australian Economy, contrary to much of the rhetoric that has accompanied the debate around these bills.

In the Land Sector this legislation will provide  the essential funding mechanisms to allow land managers to implement the carbon farming measures that generate carbon credits with value and in this way finally put a price on carbon in the critical area of eco-systems services now.”

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Emeritus Professor Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University, Qld and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation

“This is a very important step forward. Parliament has finally recognised what the science has been saying for decades. The other elements of the package must now be rapidly added.”

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Dr Roger Dargaville is Research Fellow from the School of Earth Sciences and the Melbourne Energy Institute at The University of Melbourne

“The passing of the Government’s carbon tax is a major step in the right direction. While the $23 a tonne initial price will have only a modest effect on both the energy generators and energy consumers, it puts the concept transition to low carbon generation and energy efficient technologies firmly in place.

The tax, combined with other levers such as feed-in tariffs and subsides, will see a shift towards wind and solar technologies, as well as towards gas from coal for traditional electricity production.”

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Dr Barrie Pittock is former leader of the CSIRO Climate Impacts Group and author of Climate Change: The Science, Impacts and Solutions

“Passage of the Clean Energy Bill means that Australia is at last taking action that recognises the scientific fact that human emissions of greenhouse gases are causing increased global warming and that this poses serious risks to civilisation and ecosystems. Warnings of the increasing risk of human-induced climate change date back to the 19^th century (Swedish chemist Svante Arrhenius, 1896), and in modern times since at least the statement of the Toronto conference in 1988 and the first IPCC reports in 1991. Some of my own work, published in 1992 and based on undeniable physics, warned of increased intensity rainfall in a warmer world, leading to more severe floods. Such warnings were ignored by investors in the Kakadu uranium mine and the huge open-cut coal mines in Queensland, many of which were flooded and closed down for months early this year due to record high rainfalls, at a cost of many millions of dollars.

Certainty is not necessary to take non-negligible risks into account. Risk management is a common place activity as instanced by insuring our houses against fire, and the engineering standards set for street drains, bridges and dams to cope with increasingly severe flood events. This is not a matter of arbitrary laws imposed by governments on people, but of taking the laws of Nature into account. So it is with climate change: investors should have and must now accept that public and private risk management is needed regarding climate change. Governments, in imposing rules, are not being arbitrary but doing their best to cope with Nature’s laws.

The Federal Government’s new laws, while not perfect, seek to do this, recognising that the market system probably provides the most economically efficient means of doing so. It is puzzling in the extreme that the Opposition seeks to “pick winners” rather than let the market decide what is most efficient. Moreover, it is inevitable that all countries will need to take measures to minimise the risks from climate change. It is advantageous for Australia to be an early adopter of low emissions technology, especially as we have huge potential resources of clean energy from the sun, wind, geothermal, waves and tides. We can help set an example and profit from experience by increasing energy efficiency and setting up large-scale renewable energy generators. Along with other early adopters such as Spain, Germany, Denmark, California and even India and China, we can encourage others to follow our example. It is a huge opportunity and will provide more jobs, not less.”

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Dr Peter Rayner is Australian Professorial Fellow at The University of Melbourne

“An equitable share of global emissions that will stabilise CO₂ concentrations is about 0.8 tonnes of carbon per person per year.

That is a cut of over 80% for Australians. Today is the start of a long journey but, if past experience is any guide, starting out is the hardest part.”

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

“Australia joins the league of carbon pricing nations. With the passage of the carbon tax legislation through the Senate, Australia has become the 33rd country to introduce a price on carbon. In addition to the 32 other fully operational schemes, Japan and Korea have an emissions trading scheme under development, as do major cities in China, and two groups of states and provinces in the United States and Canada.

With more and more countries prepared to put a price on carbon, it will enhance the general competitiveness of Australian industry to parallel our international competitors.

The tax is designed to encourage business to become more energy efficient and also look for profit potential in a clean energy world. By introducing the policy (which takes effect from July 2012), Australia can take control of its own policy agenda. Without the policy we would have been increasingly at the whim of other nations. An example of this is the planned levying of fees from Qantas from early 2012 under the EU emissions trading scheme. These are fees that Qantas could arguably avoid once the Australian scheme is operational.

It is a step forward for Australia to be able to have relatively independently its own approach to carbon pricing.

Under the Australian scheme, approximately 500 firms will face a tax of $23/t of CO₂ equivalent that they emit. Because some cost increases will be passed on to consumers, there will be tax cuts and pension increases to compensate individuals.”

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Dr Rob Roggema is Senior Research Fellow at Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures (SURF), Global Cities Research Institute, RMIT University. He is a Landscape Architect and was the inaugural international visiting fellow at the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research Centre (2010-2011)

“Glad it’s all over! With the passing of the bill through senate the carbon debate is no longer dominating the climate change debate. And this is a very important moment, but only if our minds start to focus on real, important parts of the climate debate: we need to prepare our societies for completely new environments, which will be impacted by the effects of global warming.

Rigorous carbon reductions, even if taken worldwide, will not stop global warming for the next decades and we will have to face the consequences of a warming Earth.

This warming will for Australia mean prolonged periods of drought – sometimes severe, rainfall and flooding, a rising sea level with storm surges along the coast, more severe cyclones and a higher bushfire risk. The main priority for the public and private sector needs to be to support people to be prepared for the future. Joint forces need to start making regional plans, metropolitan plans and urban designs that anticipate future change. We need robust designs that last, even if future change is not meeting current expectations.

Australia is signalling to the world that a carbon regulation is a step forward, which will stimulate innovation in the energy production sector, but we will need to start adapting to a new climate at the same time within our own boundaries.

The passing of the bill is not the end, but just the beginning.”

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Associate Professsor Caroline Sullivan is Associate Professor of Environmental Economics and Policy, Southern Cross University, NSW & Fellow at ANU Centre for Water Economics, Environment and Policy, ACT

A better future: Bringing it on, at last!

The Clean Energy Bills approved by Senate today mark a real milestone in Australia’s relationship with the environment. Not only will it make us more aware of the consequences of our actions, but also it will provide for a redistribution of funds to support better use of the nation’s resources.  There is no doubt that Australia is where it is today thanks to the mining sector, but also thanks to agriculture.  Both are part of our heritage, and part of our future. With the potential to transfer income from those exploiting natural resources (mining companies), to those protecting it by wise management (informed and enlightened farmers and land holders), these bills can contribute to the movement towards more sustainable development, particularly across regional Australia.

What is notable about this historic step is that it has been achieved in spite of powerful lobbying, fear mongering, and even public inertia.  Efforts which have been made to inform the public, while not having been perfect, have provided important information to the people and their representatives, so that common sense has prevailed. While the voting margin was once again small, we need to remember what these bills are about.  The name says it all: Clean Energy. Through the effective and efficient implementation of this new legislation, Australia can move forward in the 21^st century, supporting 21^st century technologies, and building a healthier world for our children.

A number of countries have gone down this path already, and what is remarkable about the Australian approach is that it has put in place efforts to compensate people for the impact of this new financial burden on their households. Few places have done this. It is complicated to develop a workable system, and what has emerged here is a model which may be followed elsewhere in years to come.

It is interesting to note that this week, as this historic legislation gets approved, is also the week that the new National Water Accounts for Australia have been released. Together, these two new approaches to the management of our core natural resources provide real steps towards embedding the environment and its ecosystem services, into our economy. This is the future, and we need to embrace it if we want our country to be a realistic part of it, as a leader, not as a follower.

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Professor Roger Jones is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Centre for Strategic Economic Studies at Victoria University in Melbourne

“It is good to see this legislation passed. Its main benefit will be in creating institutions and markets focussed on lower carbon technology, emissions production and in generating services for greater efficiency. It is clear from the number of industry comments so far, that this capacity is ready to go in many areas. The 2020 target is useful and can be amended but the critical target in the legislation is that of 80% reductions by 2050.

It’s also clear that the public wants to learn more about the legislation, what its benefits are and how both the costs and benefits affect them. A great deal of misinformation in the media and elsewhere has hindered this. The motives of those who cast doubt on the science in order to further their own agenda needs to be seriously questioned.

Some key points are:
• The legislation gives Australia credibility in ongoing negotiations for international climate policy, where it is currently with Norway involved in crafting a proposal to move forward.
• Australia is not going it alone. From a global business as usual case a few years ago that would have given a roughly 50% chance of exceeding 5°C warming by 2100, the current policy mix ends up at around 3.5°C but could go either way.
• Australia faces an estimated reduction of 160 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent to reach the 5% target by 2020. This is equivalent to a 0.0038°C reduction in global warming by 2100. A far more important figure is the 80% reduction by 2050 target. That would reduce global warming by about 0.02°C and sees 115 million tonnes CO2 equivalent emitted compared to 577 Mt in 2010.
• In comparison, Kejun Jiang from the Energy Research Institute in China was in Australia last month and showed that current Chinese policies would save an estimated 1,800 million tonnes CO2e by 2020 and 3,800 by 2050 from their baseline. A more stringent set of policy scenarios they are looking at would double that benefit by 2050. China is also investigating a carbon price and are looking closely at Australia.
• Similar plans are being developed in a number of US states, the EU, various Asian countries. Research in the US to reduce emissions is ongoing, even if it’s not influencing policy just yet. So Australia is not going it alone and stands to benefit from their own actions and those of other countries.
• For example, the benefits to Australia by 2050 of their own actions could see somewhere between 23-55 square kilometres of the Great Barrier Reef kept below critical bleaching. The benefits bestowed by other countries would be far greater. However these benefits will only be realised if global warming is kept below 3°C. Preventing the bulk of the GBR from being critically affected would require a much lower peak warming.”

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Dr Frank Jotzo is Director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at The Australian National University in Canberra

“The carbon pricing legislation gives businesses more certainty for their investments, after many years of policy uncertainty. Companies will adapt their operations to the carbon price, and investment decisions will be taken with more consideration of emissions savings and energy efficiency. Once the scheme is in place, most industries will not be too eager to get rid of it again, especially if it means that it would be replaced by a different set of policies. The detailed design will always be contentious, and no doubt the scheme will evolve over time, along with changes to the overall policy landscape affecting greenhouse gas emissions. But the fundamental point is that putting a price on carbon is the economically best way of reigning in emissions growth. What was voted in today could well be the first step on the journey to effective and economically sensible climate policy in Australia.”

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Professor John Cole is Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development at The University of Southern Queensland

“Political hype aside, today Australia took a once in a generation step forward as a progressive member of the international community. Climate change unchecked ranks as the greatest threat to the future of humanity and today Australia began to pull its weight consistent with its capacities. Admittedly, there is a long way to go in the transition to a low carbon world. Irrespective of what politicians may say and threaten to do with the carbon tax, the suite of measures is so complex, so embracing, and has been achieved with so much political capital spent – on all sides – that to talk about a future where we will go back to the past is simply to strain the bounds of credulity.”

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Professor Snow Barlow is Professor of Horticulture and Viticulture at the Melbourne School of Land and Environment at the University of Melbourne

“The passing of the carbon bills through the House of Representatives today is an historic moment for Australians because it is the most significant move the nation has yet made to address Anthropogenic Climate Change. It will restructure the economy to dramatically decrease its carbon intensity and position current and future generations for continued prosperity. The bills cover the major sources of fossil fuel emissions within our economy, energy generation and transport.

Perhaps more importantly, the well-conceived architecture of these carbon pricing bills gives government the capacity to meet current and future national and international emissions reduction targets while encouraging the development of less carbon intensive industries.

Contrary to much of the public debate we are not ‘going it alone’. We are in the very good company of many of our major trading partners such as China, Korea, the nation state of California and the EU, who are concurrently introducing measures to decrease the carbon intensity of their economies. This well-structured carbon pricing package, competently implemented, has an excellent chance of achieving its objectives of controlling emissions, promoting low carbon innovation and ensuring that disadvantaged sectors of the community and industry do not suffer unfairly.

Within my particular area of expertise in the land-based sector, the package provides a much needed research, development and demonstration program. This will equip land managers to generate carbon credits by decreasing the carbon intensity of their activities while maintaining productivity and improving sustainability. Although agriculture is not a covered sector in the first phase of pricing carbon, the income flows will allow the sector to reconfigure the landscape into a more sustainable design while preparing our food production industries to remain competitive internationally in a future carbon-constrained world.”

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Prof John Foster is Director of the UQ Energy Economics and Management Group at The University of Queensland

“It is NOT a ‘carbon tax’!! It is an emissions trading scheme with a temporary fixed price period (all such schemes have a temporary period where there is a fixed price as the system beds down).

I really despair when even science journalists are completely incapable of being clear on this and, in so doing just confuse the public, many of whom still think that they will see a carbon tax charge on their receipts, just like the GST.”

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Professor Steven Sherwood is co-Director of the Climate Change Research Centre at The University of New South Wales

“This policy is only the first step compared to what will be needed in the years ahead to avert severe global warming. That will ultimately require leaving a lot of economically viable coal, shale oil, and other resources in the ground forever, or else capturing the carbon as they are burned — not just burning through them all a bit more slowly. The policy passed today seems to be as large a step as can be justified now; people will have to adjust to it, other nations will have to take further steps, and the consequences will have to be assessed. Then in a few more years, as we begin to adjust to new realities and learn from this experiment, we and the rest of the world will have to decide what stronger steps should follow it. We are in for a very long haul on this issue.”

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Dr Richard Corkish is Head of the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering at The University of New South Wales

“The advent of the carbon pricing legislation and the associated support for clean energy developments in the coming years is very exciting. It will bring this issue of global warming back to its rightful place as the most important facing our generation and bring to prominence Australia’s special place in the world as an R&D leader in renewable energy technology. It will encourage us to discuss our special advantages that allow us to be one of the few developed countries that could very easily be 100% reliant on renewable energy. This is a very positive step!”

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www.treasury.gov.au/carbonpricemodelling/content/default.asp

www.cleanenergyfuture.gov.au/

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Professor Snow Barlow is a Convener of the Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network and is from the Melbourne School of Land and Environment at the University of Melbourne

“This is a well constructed government policy addressing climate change through an immediate price on carbon, transitioning into an emissions trading scheme, thereby enabling the government to cap emissions to a level that enables us to meet our agreed five per cent cut in emissions in 2020. The budget-neutral package redistributes the estimated $10 billion pa revenue between potentially disadvantaged communities, export exposed emissions-intensive industries and innovation to enable the transition to a low-carbon economy. This innovation package is comprehensive both in magnitude and coverage.

The specific Creating Opportunities for the Land package provides a welcome $1.9 billion over six years to support emissions reduction and carbon sequestration in the land-based sector. More than $200 million over six years is allocated for research and development to develop strategies, technologies and methodologies to achieve these emissions reductions. The implementation of these measures will be guided by natural resource management (NRM) plans for each of Australia’s 56 NRM regions to ensure that carbon emission reduction measures do not result in perverse outcomes for land use and Australia’s unique biodiversity. Most importantly there is a clear market for the carbon credits developed in these activities either directly into the Tax scheme or through a scheme regulator in the case of activities not currently covered by the Kyoto Protocol.”

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Professor John Quiggin is an Australian Research Council Federation Fellow in the School of Economics, University of Queensland

“The proposed carbon tax is a substantial improvement on the heavily compromised emissions trading scheme agreed between the Rudd government and the Opposition under Malcolm Turnbull. Although there is substantial compensation for emissions-intensive industry it is temporary and based on historic emissions level, so that the incentive to reduce emissions is not compromised. The design of the compensation package for households is also welcome. The government has avoided the temptation to pretend that everyone will be better off, and has taken the reasonable position that high income households do not need to be compensated for the introduction of necessary reforms. This has permitted the very welcome measure of raising the income tax threshold and thereby taking more than a million low-income workers out of the income tax system.

While the primary focus of the package is, correctly, on the imposition of a price on carbon emissions, there are a range of supporting measures designed to encourage energy efficiency and innovation. On the whole, these seem more carefully designed than the measures introduced under previous governments.”

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Professor Peter Newman is Director of Curtin University’s Sustainability Policy (CUSP) Institute

Prof Newman is presently in Korea at an IPCC meeting on Transport, one of only three Australians in the next phase of IPCC work.

“I think it’s fantastic that we have a climate change package which includes a carbon price for the front end of the economy and a range of end user initiatives to assist with the transition for households and businesses. It’s been a painful process but an historic day now that we have the package.

Well done to the Government, the Greens and the Independents! They have been real leaders for a change. I hope Australians will recognise that this is a necessary step for us, that the world needs us to be responsible and demonstrate hope like this and that the Opposition’s negativity is based on fear – which never makes good public policy.”

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Professor John Cole is Director of the Australian Centre for Sustainable Business and Development at the University of Southern Queensland

“It has more than a few rough edges and shows all the signs of the political trade-offs needed to secure a carbon price in one of the most carbon-intensive economies on the planet.

In creating a politically defensible platform from which to lead and steer change as well as resurrect its standing with the Australian people, the Government has traded away some economic and environmental efficiency to placate the coal interest, at least in the short to intermediate term.

That said, today’s carbon package is a welcome and significant first step by Australia on the road to decarbonising its economy as the international community slowly but surely comes to grips with the human dimensions of climate change.

There is no shortage of targeted assistance measures to help a range of industries do what they should already be doing, namely achieving savings through energy efficiency, capturing fugitive emissions for co-generation, and planning for competition in a world which will increasingly value low-carbon products and services.

The overall outcome is a politically practical no-frills deal which recognises that there is no silver bullet for dealing with the complexities of climate change, economic reform and decarbonisation.”

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Professor Peter Cook is Chief Executive of the Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Greenhouse Gas Technologies, Canberra

“I am glad to see that clean energy technologies will be supported through the carbon tax, but concerned that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not included in the remit of the new Clean Energy Finance Corporation. CCS is a clean energy technology that is highly relevant to decreasing emissions from biomass, gas and coal; there are also potential opportunities for combining CCS with geothermal power and algal sequestration. CCS is likely to be a key component of moving to electric cars and the hydrogen economy and the increased uptake of gas.

All the projections of bodies such as the International Energy Agency clearly show that we will need CCS for at least 20 per cent of the global mitigation effort in the coming decades. The proposed arrangements suggest a more polarised approach to lowering our carbon footprint. Without inclusion of CCS, there is no solution to the greenhouse issue.

The clean energy future for Australia has to be greater energy efficiency, increased use of renewable, switching to gas and carbon capture and storage. People have to be realistic about the clean energy mix and what the various technologies can achieve, and whilst they might like renewable energy to be the answer, the reality is that  for decades to come it will only be part of the answer. The steps proposed as part of the carbon tax measures should reflect this reality and include CCS as an important component of future energy mix.”

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Professor Ian Lowe is Emeritus Professor of Science, Technology and Society at Griffith University. He is also President of the Australian Conservation Foundation

“Today’s announcement is a very important step forward. There will at last be a price on greenhouse pollution. While it does not start high enough to drive a rapid transition to a clean energy future, it is a beginning and a clear signal to the business community. I particularly welcome the establishment of a new Climate Change Authority to advise on pollution caps after 2015, improving the chance they will be based on science rather than political expediency. We need to do much better than a five-per cent reduction by 2020 to meet the urgent challenge of climate change.

The Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency are important mechanisms for driving the transition to low-carbon energy. The National Energy Savings Initiative needs to be rapidly implemented, as energy efficiency is by far the most cost-effective way of reducing greenhouse pollution. We should also welcome the commitment to take account of the voluntary action by millions of Australians in setting future targets. The new Biodiversity Fund is a crucial investment in our capacity to protect Australia’s unique biota from the accelerating impacts of climate change.

There are some disappointments in the package, especially the continuing support of polluting industries like coal-fired power and LNG. While road transport fuels are excluded from the carbon price, rail is not, so the existing huge public subsidy of road freight will be increased further. An urgent priority should be the phasing out of subsidies for fossil fuel production and use.

Ratifying the Kyoto Protocol in 2007 was the first step to joining the international effort to slow climate change. Today’s announcement is the second step. The new package deserves support.”

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Professor Graham Farquhar is from Australian National University Climate Change Institute

“The aim of the carbon tax is to reduce Australian emissions by five per cent. In turn the aim of that reduction is to put political or economic pressure to encourage or shame other countries to reduce their emissions by five per cent. If we are successful and all the countries of the world reduce their emissions to five per cent below what they would have been, then the anthropogenic climate that we would otherwise have seen in 2031 will be postponed until 2032.”

Whether it’s carbon pricing, investing in renewable energy or putting tax on energy-poor homes, the issues raised by climate change are nothing if not controversial. Government policies around the world are simultaneously being accused of being too green, not green enough, ignoring the issues and using climate as an excuse to create new taxes. These policies are under the microscope as controversial political scientist Adjunct Professor Bjørn Lomborg, world famous author of ‘The Skeptical Environmentalist’, will be visiting Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney to discuss what policies will make a difference to climate change and how a green economy can work. His latest book, ‘Smart Solutions to Climate Change’ addresses issues such as carbon pricing and whether it fits into sustainable green economics.

Professor Lomborg will be joined by Michael Green, a multi-award winning Canadian architect best known for his innovative ideas on housing design with a low carbon footprint. They are both in Australia for the Green Cities 2011 conference in Melbourne.

The AusSMC has organised an online briefing to give journalists access to two influential speakers at a time when carbon pricing and other ways of dealing with climate change are high on the Australian political and media agendas. See also our rapid roundup on the announcement of a carbon price for Australia.

The briefing will discuss the following issues:

• Is a price on carbon the best way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions and what can we learn from other countries?
• What other options are there and how can we get innovation happening for a low carbon economy?
• Can green building practices really make a big enough difference? How radical do we need to be?
• Can science offer us ways of doing more whilst using less energy – or, to actually make a difference, must we give up our cars, TVs and gadgets?

Watch the full presentation here (Webex)

SPEAKERS:

• Bjørn Lomborg is Adjunct Professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and Director, Copenhagen Consensus Center. Read his bio | Slides (pdf) | Listen (mp3)
• Listen to Bjorn’s Q and A session here (mp3)
• Michael Green is an architect and founding principal of MGB Architecture and Design in Canada. His expertise is in sustainable building with a low carbon footprint. Read his bio | Slides (pdf) | Listen (mp3)
• Listen to Michael’s Q and A session here (mp3)

BRIEFING DETAILS:

DATE:  Tuesday 1 March
START TIME: 11.45am AEDT
DURATION: Approx 45 min
VENUE:  Online

Audio files will be posted here as soon as possible after the event.

For further information, please contact the AusSMC on 08 7120 8666 or email.

The first meeting of the committee will be in October. For Prime Minister Gillard’s announcement, see 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) 7120 8666 or by email.

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Peter Waterman is Associate Professor in Environmental Science at the University of the Sunshine Coast. He is a member of the management committee of the National Climate Change Adaptation Facility.

“I am a little concerned that Julia Gillard’s new climate change committee will be more focussed on mitigation than on adaptation. What is required is solid representation from the experts who work in the field of climate adaptation such as the CSIRO’s Climate Adaptation Flagship lead by Andrew Ash and the National Climate Change Adaptation Facility headed by Jean Palutikof. The issue here is that Australia contributes less than 2% of global greenhouse gas emissions but we are being impacted 100% from climatic variability. The mega investment Australia is going to have to make is in the area of adaptation to cope with the type of weather extremes and climatic variability that we’ve seen over the past decade – heatwaves, flooding, prolonged drought etc. We mustn’t confuse politics and science – that is, carbon trading and the economics of carbon with climatic variability and change, which are statistical measures.

I am also a little concerned about the low number of expert advisers on the committee and that it may be Canberra centric.”

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Adriana Downie is Chief Technology Officer of Pacific Pyrolysis Pty Ltd.

“Australia has world-leading expertise in biochar science and technology. At the International Biochar Conference in Brazil earlier this month, of the almost 90 presentations about a quarter of them were by Australian scientists and technologists. I hope the Climate Change Committee will seek out these experts to ensure that this important technology is included as a tool for Australian communities to combat climate change.”

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