However, his controversial conclusion is this:
One key outcome of the Treasury modelling offers a particularly promising policy approach. This is the Treasury estimate of the costs of doing nothing to 2020 and then catching up with the 2050 target thereafter should the need and achievability of such action prove necessary. That cost is put at 0.3 per cent of GDP by 2050.
Even if this is not overstated, 0.3 per cent of GDP seems a reasonable insurance policy price to pay rather than imminently embarking on measures that will be in the White Paper's words, "the most significant structural reform of the economy since the 1980s". By 2020 we will be clearer on the need for emission reduction policies and will, presumably, have access to all the technological advances that Treasury claim will be forthcoming.
At one level, this makes sense, in that Australia's overall contribution to CO2 is so low anyway. But if the real global problem is turning around the carbon producing juggernauts of China and India, putting off a decision until 2020 is hardly going to encourage them to start taking faster action now.
Meanwhile, the global economic crisis should have the contradictory effects of reducing emissions for now, but also making it harder to fund the research and development needed to get really serious changes to energy production.
Life is complicated.
1 comment:
But developed countries have outsourced their emissions to developing countries, so turning around India and China, for example, entails turning around first world consumption, period.
At least one third of their emissions come from production for countries like the US, Australia and Britain.
There's not much that can't be off-shored, and that's before they create an artificial market to reduce, not increase, a 'product'.
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