Fed: Good news on climate change: Garnaut surprised
By Cathy AlexanderMon Sep 14 22:36:03 EST 2009
Mon Sep 14 12:36:03 UTC 2009
CANBERRA, Sept 14 AAP - Australia's top climate expert is upbeat about the future, saying the world is fighting back well against climate change.
There's plenty of doom and gloom about stalled international negotiations, embattled emissions trading schemes, and the financial crisis derailing efforts to tackle global warming.
But Prof Ross Garnaut is bucking the trend.
One year on from his seminal review on climate change and Australia, Prof Garnaut has issued an updated view - and to his own surprise, it's positive.
He thinks the financial crisis has not really hampered climate efforts.
He thinks Australia is on track with its target to slash emissions, and with its proposed emissions trading scheme.
And he thinks the world can agree on key principles when it meets to ink a new climate pact in Copenhagen in December.
"Looking at it in a global scale, there's actually more commitment, more momentum now than there was a year ago," Prof Garnaut told reporters in Canberra.
"My judgment would be that things look a bit better now than they did ... before the (financial) crash.
"That's to me a slightly surprising judgment."
Strong community sentiment and new governments in the US and Japan partly account for Prof Garnaut's optimism.
He has previously criticised Australia's proposed ETS, which has not yet passed the Senate.
But he's largely reconciled to it now the government has beefed up its target to cut emissions by a maximum 25 per cent by 2020.
He says Australia needs to pass the ETS to fix its "credibility problem", caused by not ratifying the Kyoto protocol and having very high per capita emissions.
The political "argey bargey" over the ETS can give rise to fears overseas that Australia will not meet its 2020 target, Prof Garnaut warned.
His one-year update is not universally rosy.
He's worried that Australia's proposed ETS doles out free permits to industry, but not based on a set of principles.
And granting free permits to electricity generators, to compensate for loss of asset value, is "an abominable innovation".
Prof Garnaut fears that with many countries planning to grant free permits to industry on a mismatched basis, a major distortion of the world trading system will result. The cost of tackling climate change will also rise.
Instead, he wants countries to thrash out universal principles for doling out free permits.
Prof Garnaut thinks Australia is missing the boat on biosequestration - capturing carbon emissions in plants and the soil.
He thinks we should spend as much on this as on Carbon Capture and Storage, i.e. burying emissions from facilities like coal-fired power stations.
Prof Garnaut is still pushing for a long-term climate deal which would force Australia to slash its emissions by more than just about every other country.
He thinks the only fair solution is for a per capita approach, where emissions are doled out per head, not per country as they currently are.
Australia has the highest emissions per capita of any developed nation so would have the most to lose under this arrangement, which is favoured by large developing nations like India and China.
Prof Garnaut still backs the proposal, but now says aiming for equal per capita allowances by 2050 might be too late, and it might need to happen sooner.
