Roll up, roll up, the Garnaut roadshow is coming to town

• Penelope Debelle, Adelaide
• The Age, July 9, 2008
• http://www.theage.com.au/national/roll-up-roll-up-the-garnaut-roadshow-is-coming-to-town-20080708-3bwh.html

Professor Ross Garnaut delivers his climate change message to a packed house at the Adelaide Town Hall. Photo: David Mariuz

AUSTRALIA has squandered the chance of responding slowly to climate change and cannot wait for other countries to act, according to Ross Garnaut.

Speaking in Adelaide yesterday on the second day of a week of nationwide public forums, the author of the draft report on climate change said Australia faced a compressed timetable for introducing an emissions trading scheme in 2010 because it had squandered its opportunity for a staged start-up by not acting six or 10 years ago.

Professor Garnaut said the welfare of the nation was at stake and without climate change mitigation, life as it was known now in large parts of Australia, including the Murray Basin, would change forever.

"I would be very pleased if we didn't have to hurry, I would much rather go slower," he said.

The economist and former Australian ambassador to China said the effects of global warming were already two decades ahead of those predicted in Britain's Stern report, which until this year was the benchmark for the speed of climate change.

Professor Garnaut said the models used by Nicholas Stern, which were based on International Energy Agency and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections, had failed to take account of the recent rapid economic growth of China, India and Indonesia.

"We analysed that work and we have come to the view that it greatly underestimates the 'business as usual' growth in emissions," he said. "The world has a short period in which to get its act together."

Professor Garnaut said that if nothing was done, the world would have the level of emissions in 2030 that the Stern report predicted by 2050.

"A realistic approach to what is happening in 'business as usual' brings forward the critical dates," he said.

He dismissed suggestions Australia should not be the first to respond to climate change, because 25 countries in Europe were already doing so.

"For those who say we mustn't be first, you've got your wish, because we are a long way from being first," he said. "The best we can hope for is that we are not a drag on the pack."

He said policy decisions on climate change were the hardest faced by any government in living memory and individuals should make their views heard.

"This is a fateful time," Professor Garnaut said. "Over the months and the year or so ahead, Australia and the international community will take decisions that will determine whether or not we deal effectively with global warming."

He said he would not lobby the Federal Government or other politicians to adopt his recommendations once his final report was released on September 30. "If we have done our work well, then the Australian community and the Government of Australia will know the implications of the decisions they are making," he said.