Australia’s chief climate adviser yesterday urged a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 but conceded this may not save the country’s natural assets such as the Great Barrier Reef.
In an assessment of the targets required to manage the harmful effects of air pollution on climate, Ross Garnaut said Australia should cut its emissions by 10 percent of 2000 levels by 2020 and by 80 percent by 2050.
This would be Australia’s share of the burden if international agreement was reached to limit carbon emissions in the atmosphere to a concentration of no more than 550 parts per million molecules, Garnaut said.
He said while a global objective of 450 parts per million would suit Australia better, his review’s targets and trajectories “are the best available to us now” as emissions rise rapidly because of global economic growth.
Garnaut said natural assets at risk at the level he had recommended were the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral ecosystem, and the Murray-Darling River system, which irrigates Australia’s biggest farming zone.
POOR ODDS
“I have to say the odds are not great for the Great Barrier Reef ... if the world gets no further than 550 parts per million,” the economist and former diplomat told the National Press Club.
“There are lots of important environmental values in Australia that will be at risk at 550 parts per million. Where they will be without mitigation of climate change — they are not at risk, there’s certain death,” he said.
Garnaut said he accepted that the only progress on the issue would be global and that if the international goal was set at 450 parts per million “the odds are we might not get there.”
“So I say that 550 [ppm] is the realistic, immediate objective but that should not be the end of the game,” he said.
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected in November in part on the strength of his campaign to combat climate change on the world’s driest inhabited continent, has committed to a target of a 60 percent cut in emissions by 2050.
Rudd has maintained he would use Garnaut’s review, the final report of which is due this month, to guide his thinking on cuts to emissions in the short-term.
‘MAJOR TASK’
Garnaut’s emissions trajectories are based on the “per capita” allocation of emissions rights — which he said provided the only possible basis for an international agreement including developing countries.
He said the 10 percent cut by 2010 was a 30 percent cut per capita and amounted to a “major task of structural adjustment.”
He said modeling indicated that the cost to Australia of the 550ppm scenario would be 1.1 percent GDP by 2020.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television