Australia in recent years has failed to implement the reform needed to place the economy in a position to deal with the most significant issue of our time. Previous PM Rudd called climate change "the greatest moral challenge of our generation".
Why has there been no action in 2010 despite the groundswell moving since 2007? Well a number of reasons- firstly instead of leading the debate and explaining the importance of the issue Rudd decided to sit back and let the opposition party fight amongst itself. Whilst Turnbull was the leader the government had the numbers to pass the ETS (emission trading scheme) through Parliament. Once Abbott became the new leader the Liberals the window to pass the ETS was lost and soon after Rudd himself lost the faith of his party. For a more detailed look at how that happened take a look at 'For tough reforms, Rudd must crash through or crash'.
If you look at the 2010 election results the largest move was the increase by 4% of people voting for the Greens. It could be said that a large amount of people want climate change action and are frustrated with the lack of action till now.
So where is the evidence that action should take place. In 2008 the Rudd government received the Garnaut Review. The Review concluded 'There are times in the history of humanity when fateful decisions are made. On a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity until the end of time.'
When looking at the Garnaut Review there are a number of aspects to shorten your reading. The synopsis of key points (see the buttons on the left) is a reasonable summary. To view the stats I showed in class see Chapter 7 (Figures 7.1, 7.6,7.8) and Chapter 11 (Figures 11.4 and 11.6)
The overall conclusion by Garnaut is that Australia whose CO2 emissions are approximately 455 ppm now should take action regardless of international concensus to cap emissions at 550 ppm. If this does not happen the long term costs of not taking action are actually greater than if Australia does attempt to reduce emissions.
If you are interested in the impacts from a global perspective check out my previous blogs on the Stern report from September 2009.
