Giving up on climate change?

The Rudd proposals on climate change will fail to achieve a meaningful reduction in carbon emissions.

Scientists warn that unless greenhouse gas emissions are significantly and rapidly reduced by 2020, by at least 25 per cent below 1990 levels, global warming and climate change will become irreversible and uncontrollable. As a consequence, large areas of the planet may be unable to sustain their present population or become uninhabitable. Massive population movements will be caused by an increasingly severe climate producing flooding, draughts and crop failures, compounded by hunger and disease on a massive scale.

We know from recent experience that failure of a single sector of the economy - US home loans - can lead to recession from which no country is immune. Recession gives rise to business failures, unemployment and falling demand which can rapidly wash away accumulated prosperity.

Imagine then the effects on businesses and the economy of repeated and prolonged failures in Australia of agriculture, fisheries and tourism and associated industries. These would include falling exports, contraction of the manufacturing sector, a shrinking economy and all that goes with it. Add to this climate change producing tidal surges and coastal flooding with property losses and our present economic woes will pale into insignificance.

Environment - Mike Pope - posted 14/1/2009