Heeding Garnaut  

Tim Flannery has an opinion piece in today's SMH looking at some of the bleaker scenarios for the fate of the Murray Darling river system.

In the report's preamble Garnaut notes that the Australian economy has ridden the wave of development sweeping Asia - the very development that's accelerating climate change. Australians are therefore in a better economic position than ever to pay the costs of emissions abatement, and to assist those less well off to adjust to the changes. With the partial exception of a few exporters, he warns that exempting any industries from the scheme would be catastrophic, and of course all must pay for their pollution permits, rather than be given them.

Garnaut argues that quick, effective action is urgently required, and that delays will only magnify the risks we face, as well as making action far more expensive. In fact he thinks that we should have acted years ago, and in this respect the Opposition's attempts to delay the carbon trading scheme in order to perfect it harks back to failed policy: the truth is that the issue is so complex, yet so urgent, that we have no choice but to learn on the job.

In determining the level of risk we face from climate change, Garnaut relies on the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sadly, new data indicates that the Earth's climate system is changing faster than those projections allow. Indeed, for the rate of warming, rate of sea-level rise, and extent of CO2 accumulation, the real-world data lie outside the panel's envelope of projections on the high side. This indicates that we're heading towards a catastrophic scenario, which the panel rates as being less than a 10 per cent probability. One specific risk highlights what's at stake. Models developed by the CSIRO indicate that climate change will continue to reduce stream flow in the Murray-Darling basin, with a 10 per cent probability of the river system drying up almost entirely. Garnaut does not assess the economic impact of this 10 per cent risk, yet what we see in the real world seems to be more consistent with it rather than less catastrophic outcomes. For the second year in a row there's been zero water allocation to many irrigators in the basin, and the lower Murray is in crisis, with parts of the system on the verge of turning hypersaline or acid. ...

Garnaut recognises that we will need far more than just carbon trading. Political leadership which aspires to profound transformations in electricity and transport infrastructure, incentives to develop new technologies, mandated efficiency programs, technological transfer and a rationalisation of government powers will all be required if we are to reduce the pollution stream that's changing our world. I've just returned from a meeting in Denmark where I saw a model of how some of this might be achieved. A wind energy pioneer and an electric car company, have teamed up and are working with the Danish Government to accelerate the uptake of electric cars. Nationwide battery exchange stations and kerbside power supply will be in place by next year, as will the first new generation of fully electric vehicles.

A former Coalition MP has hit out over the Opposition Leader's declaration that Australia should not commit to an emissions trading scheme without support of the big emitting countries.

Susan Jeanes, who was a federal Liberal MP from 1996 to 1998 representing the South Australian seat of Kingston before she became an adviser to then-environment minister Robert Hill, says she believes the Opposition's decision is fool-hardy.

"I am afraid it is a rather unwise decision," she said. "I think it is time that the Coalition tackled the hard question, I think we have been ducking this for too long now. We have walked away from a lot of work that we had done on what an emissions trading scheme should look like earlier in the decade."