The Australian Government should avoid short-term emission targets and focus on a total emission amount for 2050, says Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's emissions target advisor Professor Ross Garnaut, but business and environmental sectors are crying foul.
Professor Garnaut – an economist who, as Australia's Ambassador to China in the '80s, was once Mr Rudd's boss – has been commissioned by the Rudd Government to produce a report on the economic implications of climate change in Australia.
Labor has set a target of 60 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, but Mr Rudd has refused to make any short-term commitments until he has seen the results of Professor Garnaut's report.
The Garnaut Review is not due till June this year, but in an interview with The Australian Financial Review Professor Garnaut said he believed that the cheapest way to achieve cuts in greenhouse gas emissions was for the Government to determine one total amount of carbon that would be acceptable for the next 40 years. Permits for greenhouse gas emissions would then be traded through an independent "carbon central bank".
"What actually matters to the environment is the total amount of emissions put into the atmosphere over time, not the amount that happens to go into the atmosphere in a particular year," Professor Garnaut said.
"If the goal is to achieve an environmental objective at a minimum cost, you would specify the total emissions budget and let the market determine when permits were used."
Professor Garnaut's emission reduction proposal is a significant step away from the previous government's plan, which included a binding 10-year agreement and significant government restraint through regular monitoring and refinement of the scheme.
While the Business Council of Australia (BCA) said it would prefer to discuss details of the proposal with Professor Garnaut before commenting publicly, the Electricity Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) has expressed concern about the lack of government regulation, saying that it raised too many uncertainties in the event of community pressure.
Climate Campaigner for the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF), Tony Mohr, said Professor Garnaut was right in his understanding that it was the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that was the biggest influence on global warming, but the science of climate change was continually changing and the ACF was concerned that without short-term targets, there would be little ability to adapt to ongoing developments in the area.
"As we learn more about the climate system, it does tend to get worse in terms of the amount of emission we need to achieve," he told The Epoch Times. "Setting those interim targets will mean that we have the ability to respond to the science.
"It also means if we get any aspects of the scheme wrong in the first instance, then we have more of an opportunity to correct those mistakes as we go along."
Australian Greens Senator Christine Milne described Professor Garnaut's 2050 proposal as "an excuse for further delays".
"Climate science demands strong action sooner rather than later," Senator Milne said. "If given too much leeway, there is a significant potential for participants in an emissions-trading system to cut emissions too slowly, shifting a huge burden to our children and theirs."
Professor Garnaut acknowledged that some participants in a longer-term emissions scheme may be too liberal in their approach and in that event his proposal may not be viable.
"If you did not have credible mechanisms in place – credible institutional arrangements that ensured that you were going to meet your overall targets over a long period of time – then there's no way you'd adopt that approach," he told the ABC.
"That's one of the issues that we're going to be putting out for discussion.
"Can you make a multi-target credible, or for credibility do you have to have Government enforcing targets year by year?
"Obviously, there are economic and environmental costs in the year by year approach, but if you can't develop credibility in a multi-year approach, that's the way you have to go."
Professor Garnaut's statements come on the eve of Environment Minister Penny Wong's trip to Honolulu for the United States–sponsored Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change.
The two-day meeting that will include delegates from 17 countries including the US, the European Union, India and China was promoted by President Bush during the APEC meeting in Sydney last year as a continuation of UN efforts to forge an international treaty on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2009.
The new treaty would replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012 and that the United States – the world's biggest per-capita greenhouse gas emitter – has never ratified.
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