Monday, 20 October 2008 19:00 GFP Columnist - Helen Briton Wheeler
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ImageGobsmacked. That’s how I felt as I watched global financial chaos in the weeks just past. I don’t think I was the only one mesmerized.

Perhaps that’s the reason why the final presentation of The Garnaut Climate Change Review to the Australian Federal, State and Territory Governments on September 30, 2008 created so few headlines here.

The review is an important study of how Australia can achieve maximum results in mitigating climate change in a most cost-effective manner.


Professor Ross Garnaut is one of our country’s most distinguished economists. The review was commissioned last year to provide a broad guideline for action and financial investment in Australia’s – and our planet’s – future.

Last year, climate change was big news. Most Australians were keen for action to be taken. Especially if it didn’t hurt us too much personally.

The sub-prime mortgage crisis was a shadow on the fiscal horizon. The country was enjoying a resources boom and, if people were worrying about money, their concern was about rising food prices and interest rates. The Reserve Bank of Australia and the Federal Government were anxious to moderate inflation.

That was 2007 and how long ago it seems.

The first “ouch!” here in early 2008 was a bank interest rate rise – the last in a series over the boom years.

The second sting came a couple of months later when the price of oil shot up. Suddenly, Australian people were paying scary amounts of money to fill up their cars. Truckers, and country people who are obliged to drive long distances were hard hit; so were airlines, commercial fishermen, the list goes on. International news reports told us that we were not alone. Fear of the future took off like a global form of flu.

Then came the Wall Street crash and the financial tsunami that has reverberated around the world. As we know, it’s not over. There will be more pain to come and recovery will take an unknown amount of time.

What unfortunate timing, because Professor Garnaut’s review deserves our full attention.

Dealing effectively with climate change, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and developing new, sustainable technologies is where our future lies – nationally and internationally.

What kind of a world will we hand on to our children and grandchildren? This is a moral challenge such as we have never encountered before.

There’s no escaping the fact that this is the Big Question of our time.

Last year, when life was softer, we were all for taking action to mitigate climate change. Many Australians were prepared to pay a little more for electricity and/or water, if that’s what was needed to secure a better future.

This is not a soft year. Around the world, people are afraid of losing their jobs or their homes. Overall, things are not too bad Down Under, but certain jobs are on the line and everyone knows it will be a time of belt tightening.

So what of climate change?

It won’t go away because we are unprepared for another shock. It is still coming on like a freight train.

Farmers here are still suffering drought. South-eastern Australia’s most important river system, the Murray-Darling, is in crisis. We will be lucky to save it. Along the length of the Murray-Darling, rainfall has been low and we have over-allocated water to farmers and fruit growers. Near the mouth of the Murray, fisheries and tourist industries are contending with salinity in the water and mudflats instead of a pleasing riverscape.

Australians cannot put off action to save our rural industries and our country towns. In the coastal cities, where most of us live, we cannot afford inaction, either. We face water restrictions and must take steps to be energy efficient.

Our country must invest in sustainable energy; we must press on with carbon sequestration in our coal mining; we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions on the roads, at home and in our industries. Better infrastructure, more efficient public transport, hybrid cars: they are all part of the climate-change response.

Cattle and sheep emit greenhouse gases too, so our pastoralists may be called on to reduce their flocks and herds and produce more pigs and poultry - statistics show that pigs and fowls give off lower emissions.

We know that these measures will cost money.

There will be gains, of course, from jobs in new industries, from planting forests which will become carbon sinks. The main aim of all these measures, however, is to retain an environment that keeps Earth a people-friendly planet.

So, even though money is scarce now, we cannot put off climate change measures. Other countries cannot either. The Garnaut Climate Change Review makes the point that effective action must be global.

When the Copenhagen COP15 UN Climate Change Conference comes along in December 2009, governments must step up to the plate and face the challenge of taking coordinated action. Financial pain now, even though we are already hurting, will help to avoid greater troubles in the future.

It will be hard for our governments to budget for climate change measures while still keeping our economies afloat. And hard for governments to promote such measures to an anxious voting public. It will take political courage.

Both politicians and people are going to need courage. It’s a brave new world.

Image Courtesy of the Victoria Climate Change Summit Website
(AUS)



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