Ross Garnaut Update Paper 2: Progress Towards Effective Global Action on Climate Change

http://www.garnautreview.org.au/update-2011/update-papers/up2-progress-towards-effective-global-action-climate-change.pdf
Nicholas Stern mentioned Ross Garnaut as an important contribution.

Anything is possible when you commit to change.

PROGRESS TOWARDS EFFECTIVE GLOBAL ACTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE

Key points

• The 2008 Garnaut Climate Change Review said that strong mitigation, consistent with Australia’s national interest, requires effective global action, with Australia playing its proportionate part. Effective global action requires comprehensive agreement among countries.

• The Copenhagen meeting in December 2009 and the Cancun meeting in December 2010 moved the world towards several elements of such agreement, but away from one important element.

– The reality of considerable positive movement is obscured by the diplomatic fiasco at Copenhagen, which was rescued from comprehensive failure by the President of the United States reaching an understanding with leaders of China, India, Brazil and South Africa during the meeting itself.

• The Copenhagen and Cancun meetings have led us into a messy world in relation to the setting of each country’s ambitions on emissions reductions. But they have embodied strong progress on several crucial and difficult issues, and may have laid a basis eventually
for the comprehensive and binding international agreement that is still necessary to avoid high risks of dangerous climate change.

• Most developed countries—members of the European Union, Japan, New Zealand and now Korea—are reasonably well placed to make full contributions to achieving strong global mitigation goals.

• Major developing countries seemed to be sources of weakness at the time of the Review, but are now making large emissions reductions below business as usual. Chinese climate change policy is at the centre of the international effort to reach global agreement, because
it is the world’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, because it is by far the largest prospective source of emissions growth, and because economic and strategic competition between China and the United States is important in the policy dynamics of both countries.

• The three countries which have been the largest drags on the global mitigation effort are the three highest per capita emitters amongst the developed countries—Australia, Canada and the United States.

• The United States faces large domestic constraints on early action, but is still committed to a significant reduction in emissions. It is also benefiting from favourable developments, such as the ‘gas revolution’, in its efforts to reduce emissions.

– The United States commitment is supported by substantial government support for low-emissions technologies; by extension of regulatory oversight of energy efficiency and emissions standards by Federal agencies; and by many state-based initiatives to establish ETSs and emissions-reducing regulations.

• If Australia were to introduce a carbon price, one that was seen as commensurate with carbon prices in other countries, it would cease to be a drag on international mitigation. Australian success in introducing a carbon price is likely to assist the United States and Canada to maintain momentum in policies to reduce emissions.

– Australia could also exercise global leadership in the mitigation effort without making unrealistic demands on community support for action, by implementing efficient means of reducing emissions—through policy innovation to get the largest possible reduction of emissions from a given cost of mitigation.