Garnaut's interim report on climate emission reduction mechanisms

Wed Jul 2, 2008
By David Spratt
From ABC News Australia

Ross Garnaut, the Rudd government's climate advisor, will this week deliver his interim report on climate emission reduction mechanisms, but the bigger policy questions will remain unanswered.

The report will outline proposals for a carbon emissions trading scheme, perhaps better described as a cap-and-auction scheme, in which the government sets a declining cap on carbon emissions, with permits to pollute allocated by way of auction.

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Garnaut knows that climate science is demanding emissions reduction much faster than the government appears willing to contemplate, noting "the diabolical nature of the policy challenge", and the "widespread view, based on the science, that the risks of 'dangerous' climate change and the risk of abrupt climate change, are already at unacceptably high levels at this point".

In contrast to Garnaut's acute observations that the issue may be "too hard for rational policy-making in Australia" because "the vested interests surrounding it [are] too numerous and intense, the relevant time-frames too long", the government is caught in a policy fog, unable to find its way out of a bureaucratic framework that is now out of date. The Rudd government's current policy target of a 3-degree rise would destroy the Barrier Reef, the tropical rainforests, cause widespread desertification, a mass extinction, and a sea-level rise of perhaps 25 metres, amongst many impacts. Most worrying, the government seems unaware that this would be the consequence of a 3-degree target.

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