Australia's harsh reality: adapt or perish

Sydney Morning Herald: Australians must pay more for petrol, food and energy or ultimately face a rising death toll, economic loss and the eventual destruction of the Great Barrier Reef, the snowfields, Kakadu and the nation's food bowl, the Murray-Darling Basin. That is the stark ultimatum presented yesterday by Professor Ross Garnaut in the first comprehensive assessment of the impact on the country of climate change.

Arguing that Australia must introduce an emissions trading scheme in 2010 to discourage the use of polluting forms of energy, Professor Garnaut said the more forms of energy encompassed by the scheme, the lower the price rises would be. This included petrol and other transport fuels. He said the impact on petrol prices would not be as large as that being caused by the present oil shock and argued against compensating motorists at the pump by reducing fuel excise.

…..His 537-page report, commissioned by the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and released yesterday, says: "Climate change is a diabolical policy problem. It is harder than any issue of high importance that has come before our polity in living memory." He warns that, as well as environmental degradation, taking no action would by the end of the century result in $425 billion being wiped each year from the economy and a reduction in wages of almost 8 per cent.

….Professor Garnaut said Australia alone could not have any significant impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions but, unless the developed countries moved first, the polluters in the developing world would not act. "Any effective remedies lie beyond any act of national will, requiring international co-operation of unprecedented dimension and complexity." It would be delusional to argue for a delay based on scientific uncertainty and only cost more in the long run….

The Great Sandy Scars, in a small corner of the vast Great Sandy Desert in Western Australia. These large sand dunes -the only sand in this desert of scrub and rock- appear as lines stretching from left to right. The light-colored fan shapes are scars from wildfires. Landsat 7, US Geological Survey, via Wikimedia Commons