Australia should push for an international pact requiring deep cuts in global greenhouse gas emissions, even though such an agreement would be difficult to reach, the country's top climate change adviser said Tuesday.
Ross Garnaut, an economist commissioned by the government in 2007 to investigate how Australia should respond to climate change, presented his final 620-page report Tuesday.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was elected last year on a promise to aim for 60 percent cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 _ a more ambitious goal than the 50 percent reduction agreed on by leaders of the Group of Eight industrial countries in July.
Garnaut said the country's 1 trillion Australian dollar (US$802 billion) economy can withstand a global climate pact that would require emissions reduction of 90 percent by 2050.
"There's a chance _ just a chance _ that humanity will deal with this matter in a way that future generations judge to be satisfactory," Garnaut told reporters in Australia's capital, Canberra. "If we fail ... the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time."
An international climate change agreement is expected to be adopted at a U.N. conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December 2009.
Australia is one of the world's worst carbon dioxide polluters per capita because of its heavy reliance on its abundant coal reserves. As the driest continent after Antarctica, it is also considered one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change.
A Nobel prize-winning panel of U.N. scientists has said emissions must level off within the next 10-15 years, and then start to dramatically decline to avoid a rise in average temperatures that could have catastrophic consequences.
They warn an increase of more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) could lead to a rise in sea levels threatening coastal areas and the extinction of up to 30 percent of the planet's species.
Garnaut acknowledged the report's 90 percent emission reduction proposal _ which would bring the global carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere to 450 parts per million _ would be difficult to reach.
"It would place constraints on emissions from both developed and developing countries that go beyond what is being discussed and, more importantly, planned, for any but a few countries," Garnaut said in a statement accompanying his report, intended to serve as a guideline for Australia's government.
If such an agreement fails, Garnaut said Australia should advocate for a global atmospheric carbon concentration of 550 parts per million, which would require Australia to cut emissions 80 percent by 2050.
The government has vowed to introduce a so-called carbon trading scheme by 2010 designed to give companies a financial incentive to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide.
Tony Mohr, climate change program manager for the Australian Conservation Foundation, told reporters in Canberra the government should back the deepest emissions cuts if it hopes to protect national icons such as the Great Barrier Reef.
But the nation's top business group, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the issue needed to be approached with caution in the wake of international financial instability.
"Now is not a time to experiment with the Australian economy," the chamber's industry policy and economics director, Greg Evans, told reporters. "We are particularly concerned to see what the impact of emission reduction levels may be on jobs, on growth and the inflation outlook for the Australian economy."
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On the Net:
http://www.garnautreview.org.au/
