Courier Mail
By: Kerrie Sinclair
Australia must slash greenhouse gas emissions far more steeply and decades sooner than planned or there will be no chance of halting dangerous levels of warming, alarming new research shows.
The findings come on the eve of the much-anticipated Garnaut review of climate change and Australia's planned emissions trading scheme.
Australian National University Climate Law and Policy associate director Andrew Macintosh said new analysis showed there would be little chance of stabilising emissions at levels that would keep the rise in global average temperature below 2C.
That is the widely accepted threshold beyond which there were expected to be very damaging consequences for the environment and humanity.
Australia, which is among the highest per-capita emitters of greenhouse gases in the world because of coal-fired power stations, currently has a target of cutting emissions 60 per cent by 2050.
There is still no short-term target, although 2010 is firming as the start date to an emissions trading scheme.
However the ANU report said that was woefully inadequate and there needed to be ambitious targets set for as soon as 2020.
Mr Macintosh said a 60 per cent target of cuts for developed countries by 2050 was likely to fall "well short'' of what was required to keep the increase in global temperatures to below 3C.
"Sixty per cent is clearly inconsistent with trying to keep temperatures to 2C and is more consistent with trying to keep temperatures to 4C,'' Mr Macintosh said.
Former World Bank economist Nicholas Stern, who published a landmark 2006 report on global warming, last week called for developed nations, including Australia, to adopt far tougher emissions targets.
Stern recommended 20-40 per cent cuts in emissions by 2020 and a huge 80 per cent cut by 2050. He now recommended key developing nations such as China also abide by emissions reductions targets.
The ANU research also found that as the amount of greenhouses gases increased, the ability of Earth to absorb them became progressively lower in a damaging feedback phenomenon.
Mr Macintosh said those feedback effects were often overlooked by policymakers but if they continued to ignore the phenomenon any chance of avoiding dramatic temperature and sea levels rises risked becoming "closed off''. "A concerted effort from the international community is required to achieve even an atmospheric concentration target that equates to a best estimate warming of 3.6 degrees,'' Mr Macintosh said. "If there is a desire to keep the temperature increase below 3C, the results suggest the key abatement dates are likely to be 2020 to 2030, not 2050.''
A centrepiece of the Rudd Government's efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon trading scheme planned for 2010 that would give a financial incentive for major emitters to be more energy-efficient and favour lower-emitting power sources.
Some large industries have called for the trading scheme to be delayed while others say targets should be kept for investment certainty.