[Update: {by Kim} Garnaut has recommended a low target - 10% by 2020. Details in the press release here, and the address can be downloaded here. Links to pdfs.]
Ross Garnaut will be at the National Press Club in Canberra today at 12.30pm to release his next report - on Targets and Trajectories.
There’s been a fair degree of speculation around that he will recommend a low target. Bernard Keane wrote in Crikey the other day:
Ross Garnaut’s Supplementary Draft Report to be released on Friday will propose a carbon reduction trajectory based on a 0-15% reduction on 2000 emission levels by 2020, according to sources close to the review. The Report is based on extensive modelling by Treasury and Garnaut’s review team, which has been delayed on several occasions.
Senator Christine Milne at GreensBlog makes the argument that the policy shouldn’t just be seen through the “economic reform” frame, which is squarely where the government has attempted to position it (for a range of reasons - including a previous round of responses to arguments that it lacks a “narrative”). It needs to be recalled that big business is not the only interlocutor in the policy debate, and it was surely significant that a research report from Crosby/Textor of all people released this week suggested that the public wanted to see business make sacrifices to address an urgent issue.
Milne:
What this means for Professor Garnaut, and the Rudd Government, is that any policy framework that seeks to address climate change must actually seek to prevent runaway climate change. We must seek to limit warming by as much and as fast as we still can or else the warming we have already locked in may swiftly overtake us. A policy which seeks to make incremental change, which seeks to cut emissions at the edges, without a plan to completely decarbonise our economy, is not a climate change policy. It may be an economic policy. It may be an election policy. But it is not a policy that seeks to address climate change.
I forgot who the second quote was from and assumed “Milne” meant Glenn Milne… I was very surprised to hear him putting forth that view.
Of course, I then realised I am living in the real world.
It’s going to hard to reconcile a 15% reduction target with the Bali negotitations…
It may be that Garnaut will argue that Australia’s increasing population will mean that we should take on a weaker 2020 target than otherwise. This will possibly be consistent with his contraction and convergence ‘per-capita approach’. There is one big fudge factor with contraction and convergence : the time period until allocations are equal on a per-capita basis. For a pure per-capita approach, where high per-capita emitters need to buy permits from low emitters, this time period is zero. It will be very interesting to see what this time period is for Garnaut’s proposal.
One problem with achieving any international agreement is that each country will propose a formula where that country doesn’t have to make many reductions. This is rent-seeking. I hope that this will not be the case for Australia.
If Australia chooses an absolute target based on population projections, then it will be basing a target on projections, rather than real data. This would undermine the credibility of the proposal.
Ok, so I missed the address because I couldn’t find a bloody TV + antenna at Uni (or any live feeds online). Lots of TVs sitting in rooms and offices, apparently an antenna on the top of the building recording free-to-air on VHS machines. But n’er the twain shall meet. Our ‘Technical Resource Centre’ couldn’t supply us with an coax cable, rabbit ears … or a coathanger.
I’m keen to see the full address (not just read the transcript), so if anyone knows where I could find it online, drop a link.
Transcript at any rate is on Garnaut’s website, dk.
http://www.garnautreview.org.au/domino/Web_Notes/Garnaut/garnautweb.nsf
[Update: {by Kim} Garnaut has recommended a low target - 10% by 2020. Details in the press release here, and the address can be downloaded here. Links to pdfs.]
10% by 2020? Excuse me everyone - I’m just going outside for a short walk. I may be some time…
Wombo - though that is 30% reductions per-capita. Or he suggests 5% by 2020 if there are no international agreements equivalent to 25% per capita.
The 10% be 2020 will be one half of what the Business Council of Australia want - the other half being a $10 -$15 per tonne CO2 ETS charge as BCA chief Heather Ridout said on ABC Radio this morning. But to be fair to Garnaut he was applying a bit of realpolitic with the inadequate 10% figure. He wants something better but as he put it if we don’t mind losing the Great Barrier Reef, Ningarloo and the Murray Darling…
Another tantalising and equally Faustian challenge for Rudd was in the Garnaut assertion that China is doing better than Australia and from the detail he gave as an ex-ambassador to China in answering a reporter’s question I believe him.
Kim: it’s even weaker when you consider that it’s from a 2000 baseline, rather than Kyoto’s 1990. This allows him to snatch a free 4.2% increase. It also makes his proposed 5% fallback target very unimpressive indeed.
To be fair to Garnaut and Australia - it’s easier for Europe (and Japan) to do high absolute targets when your demographics are doing a fair proportion of the job for you.
On another “let’s be grateful for small mercies”, it at least puts the pin through the nonsensical idea of “60% by 2050″.
Robert: And to be fair to Europe and Japan, they have the right idea. There’s nothing desirable about population growth, and Australians should learn self-control rather than trying to dump the costs of their breeding on rest of the world.
It’s not the breeding rate (it’s only just at replacement level), it’s the rate of skilled (note I’m not targeting humanitarian) migration.
Note that I’m not the slightest bit anti-migration, I love Australia’s multiculturalism and our migrant history, and future, and believe this over-arching policy should continue. But I do think we need a serious re-adjust to our migration policy in light of climate change, starting with an immediate re-positioning towards taking climate change refugees (we already know who many of them are), not increasing our skilled migration which is stripping neighboring countries of their best and brightest. With some clever policy we could have both - skilled migration that also helps nations facing massive climate change refugee crises.
Idiot/Savant: our fertility rate - while it’s gone up recently - is at about 1.93 children per woman. Replacement rate is around 2.1.
How is it that Australia, as the highest per-capita emitting Annex I country, only needs to reduce emissions in 2020 by 10% for a 550 ppm target, and 25% for a 450 ppm target? Australia’s increasing population only tells part of the story. The main factor, that totally undermines the integrity of these targets, is the time taken in the ‘contraction and convergence’ model until convergence, which is when all countries are allocated the same amount of per-capita emissions, which can be traded.
Garnaut proposes that this time period should be 42 years (until 2050). There is no detailed justification for this figure, or sensitivity analysis, but as usual Garnaut has some very good comments (Supplementary Draft Report, p14):
The situation in very similar to the permit allocation problem in a domestic ETS — do large polluters get free permits to pollute based on their previous emissions, or do they have to pay for the right to pollute, and buy the right to pollute off the public? The former situation is a form of rent-seeking, the latter situation is based on the polluter pays principle.
Garnaut also states (p7):
The reason that international trade negotiations continue to collapse is that developed countries refuse to accept a fair deal with developing countries. Unfortunately it seems likely that the same situation will happen with climate change negotiations.
Garnaut did not try to talk down the problem. I was left with the feeling that all is almost lost whatever Australia does. It was a much bleaker address than those he gave after the original draft report.
The so-called ‘fudge factor’ with Contraction & Convergence is not with the model or with the way that GCI has framed and argued it - see:-
http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/CPI_PWC_Betts_.pdf
There is a ‘fudge factor’ when some engage with C&C [a] as a ‘generic’ that has become divorced from the factors which gave rise to the model’s existence or [b] as a ’slogan’ pulled between the political Scylla of growth and the environmental Charybdis of collapse.
I don’t see that that Ross Garnaut has been caught by the first. His interim report was exemplary in that. However it may be that he has become caught in the turbulence of the second - who hasn’t?
Thanks for the link Aubrey.
I was probably a bit disingenuous using the phrase ‘fudge factor’ to describe the rate of convergence. Unfortunately Professor Garnaut’s choice of a slow rate of convergence undermines the integrity of the proposed trajectory because it seems to be somewhat arbitrary. A slow rate of convergence implies much higher rents that go to high per-capita emitters such as Australia. The rate of convergence has an overwhelming influence on what Australia’s target should be for a given stabilisation target.
Professor Garnaut states, very eloquently, that
Unfortunately Professor Garnaut has not made sound arguments for the low convergence rate that he has chosen.
There is another reason for a fast convergence rate: as Garnaut very much understands, successfully tackling climate change requires resolution of the international prisoner’s dilemma, preferably very quickly. One of the main barriers to international cooperation is the fact that some countries are very high per-capita emitters. A fast convergence rate removes this barrier much more quickly.
The prisoners dilemma isn’t the game that is related to climate change. International negotiations, like many bargaining problems, is very much a game of chicken.
Garnaut’s Supplementary Report seems to me to be a “policy ramp of policy ramps”. For each target there is a “policy ramp” with the carbon price slowly and steadily increasing; Garnaut’s proposal for approaching safer stabilisation targets is to start on a slow policy ramp and go onto a steeper one. So he starts at a 550 ppm policy ramp, then maybe a 450 ppm policy ramp, then perhaps 400 ppm.
The history of this stuff is based on Nordhaus’ work, basically mathematical models of climate change mitigation are very similar to those of resource depletion. Hotelling’s rule is the original policy ramp.
I have my doubts about whether this is the wisest or most efficient approach. I’ll probably have more comments later.
Peter
Your perceptions about the rate of convergence and ‘where the rent goes’ in the light of responsibilities are entirely apt. But Garnaut does at least address the issue of the variable rates of convergence as ‘the principal equity lever’.
However, the primary issue - if you will the ’survival’ issue - is the rate of contraction. It is within the answer to this questions that the rate of convergence - if you will the ‘equity’ issue - needs to be considered.
In other words, taking account of the rate of ghg in the atmosphere accumulation that we assume [rate of sink failure], how fast does contraction need to be in order to arrive a particular ’safe-and-stable’ concentration outcome?
In a nutshell, there’s no equity on a dying/dead planet, which seems to be what runaway rates of climate change portend.
The game of ‘chicken’ with climate negotiations, as you rather aptly put it, replaces Cold War Mutually Assured Destruction [MAD - with fingers over buttons] with Mutually Assisted Suicide [MAS- with feet flat on pedals]: - the blind leading the blind.
C&C the model was conceived as a proposal to the UN to break this with a rationale that might ’save face’ for all sides, within the limit that saves us all.
C&C is a bit ‘buddhist’ [no one is saved till everyone is saved] but perceptions of it have been so far a bit like the blind men touching different bits of the elephant.
I would like to uphold Ross Garnaut’s attempt to see C&C as the ‘whole elephant’ before he is dragged back into the arguments between the blind . . . . but you are not wrong to observe what is going on with disquiet . . .
I do.
Aubrey
Aubrey
You are absolutely right that the rate of contraction is even more important than the rate of convergence - the financial flows and equity considerations related to the choice of convergence rates are massive (equivalent to trillions of dollars at a rough guess) but the value of civilization and the earth as we know it is far greater.
You are also right that Garnaut has shone a lot of light on the issue of C&C — while his choice of convergence rate is problematic, he has described the issues related to C&C in an accurate and eloquent way. The Garnaut Review is doing a fantastic job educating the Australian public and policymakers on the issues that are important for climate change policy and climate change mitigation. He has shone much light on the climate change debate.
Using the assumption that convergence will happen in 2050, Garnaut came up with some figures for Australia’s reductions for 2020, for different concentration targets. It would be unfair of me to criticise Garnaut for not giving figures based on other convergence dates without having a crack at it myself. I also saw on your website a “Contraction and Convergence Options” model, but unfortunately when trying to open the 200 country model with OpenOffice, it spent about 15 minutes using up to 90% of memory (2Gb) trying to load the file, before I eventually killed the task. Hopefully I will be able to try it on another computer that has M$ office soon, but I am not sure what my chances are before submissions to the Australian Government ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper’ are due. If there is any way that you could estimate what targets (both absolute and per-capita) Australia should take for 2020 with convergence dates of 2040, 2030 and 2020, for stabilisation targets of 550 ppm, 450 ppm, and less, that would be absolutely fantastic.
Also, I am interested in what impact carbon cycle feedbacks have for countries trajectories for different stabilisation targets. Some recent papers incorporating carbon cycle feedbacks suggest that deeper emission cuts may need to be made (see Macintosh and Woldring for example).
Cheers
Peter
When I said in #18 that “The prisoners dilemma isn’t the game that is related to climate change. International negotiations, like many bargaining problems, is very much a game of chicken.” I meant to say “The prisoners dilemma isn’t the only game that is related to climate change. International negotiations, like many bargaining problems, is very much a game of chicken.”
The prisoners dilemma is of course very important.
Peter
I am glad that you spotlight the upside of Garnaut’s efforts. He is trying [in my view more competently than Stern] to engage.
Very good that you are responding to the Australian Government ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper’.
I am away for a week so for an easily retrieved and quick view of rates of C&C plus feedbacks [as trend rates/weights/dates of ’sink-failure’ rather than plain-vanilla ‘climate models’ plus feed-back approximations] try here: - http://www.gci.org.uk/Animations/BENN_C&C_Animation.exe
I’ll look into the download problem and also take a look at the specific questions you raise on C&C dates/rates/weights etc re Australia.
Regards
Aubrey
Hey all, there’s a another post where I’ve tried to explain how Garnaut’s targets were derived. Comments pointing out my mistakes much appreciated!
Thanks Aubrey
The problem I had wasn’t with downloading per se, but loading the excel file with openoffice an open source program (much like microsoft office) that includes a spreadsheet that is much like excel.
Best wishes
Peter
For Peter
In haste and it depends on the assumptions for:
[a] the carbon integral for 450 and 500 i.e. how much further sink failure
[b] population i.e. the fertility projected and/or frozen: -
To get an idea try: http://www.gci.org.uk/temp/AUSTRALIA_&_GLOBAL_C&C_at DIFF_RATES.pdf
Aubrey
For Peter
i.e.
http://www.gci.org.uk/temp/AUSTRALIA_&_GLOBAL_C&C_at DIFF_RATES.pdf
Aubrey
Try again: -
http://www.gci.org.uk/temp/AUSTRALIA_&_GLOBAL_C&C_at_DIFF_RATES.pdf
Thanks Aubrey!
How does the potential human population growth to 12 billion by 2050 http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43156 fit in with contraction and convergence?
That’s heading towards doubling our current population of 6.7 billion, and will mean a lot more “man-made” emissions. Will we have reached the final “tipping point” by then? Not to mention the impact this population increase will have on the environment generally, e.g. on forests, waters supplies, biodiversity etc, etc.
The focus on per capita emissions, means as global population numbers increase, per capita emission targets have to go lower and lower… So why isn’t there more focus on controlling population numbers?
We’re supposed to be concerned about “man-made” emissions, right?
So why isn’t the increasing human population being discussed in this regard?
Here’s a link to the draft agendas for the next UN climate change meeting in Poznań in Poland in December. http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_14/items/4481.php Maybe I’m missing something, but I can’t find any explicit reference to the impact of the increasing human population on emissions and the environment on the agendas. Why not?
For info, here’s a link to the Optimum Population Trust’s web page re “Towards sustainable and optimum populations”
Elizabeth: Garnaut does briefly mention population issues in the draft report (the earlier one, not this “draft supplementary report”).
The first thing to note is that if you educate women and give them access to family planning, birthrates drop dramatically. No more stringent intervention is necessary.
The second thing is that I very much doubt anything more dramatic has a hope in hell of sticking.
The third thing is that it’s not necessary. The barriers to achieving low emissions are lack of will, not lack of technology or ability.
Last night I submitted a detailed response to Robert (#31) re Garnaut / population / women’s education / family planning etc.
The response contained many references/links. As of yet, it hasn’t appeared.
Elizabeth, I just checked both the mod filter and the spam bucket (where I found two legitimate comments from other people) without finding it. Someone else may have missed it in amongst the spam with all those links and deleted it inadvertently with all the rest - the eyes do tend to glaze over when looking through the spam bucket.
Elizabeth, the spam filter has been particularly active lately, with about 3 times the usual volume overnight, for example. I can only suggest that you save a copy of your detailed responses in Word because once we hit the “delete” button in the spaminator they are gone forever.
Garnaut has written an open letter to scientists and environmental groups.
Thanks Peter.
Robert, re your comment:
Yes, Garnaut does “briefly mention population issues in the draft report”, i.e.
Which is confusing, because according to the Executive Summary of the UN report World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision:
So that’s 9.2 billion by 2050, not sure where “the end of the century” came from?
Both Tony Blair/Climate Group (p.3) and Nicholas Stern (p.9) refer to a population of around 9 billion by 2050 in their recent reports.
It is mind-boggling that population growth has received such little attention in our current climate change agreement. In fact, as I have already outlined here: http://larvatusprodeo.net/2008/06/09/penny-peter-marn-and-the-professor/ (see #41 plus #42, #52 and #56), it appears that population issues were deliberately left out of climate change agreement negotiations in Rio in 1992, apparently due to the influence of the Vatican. This was a diabolical exclusion (exclusion of forest protection was another diabolical exclusion) and the chickens are rapidly coming home to roost now…
At least the issue of population growth is now starting to be acknowledged overtly in relation to climate change. (See this article for some background: “Combating Global Warming Brings Population Back to the Agenda” http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/node/7637 ) It’s about time. Or is it too late?
In their reports, Garnaut, Blair and Stern all failed to mention this important comment in the UN population report:
Add this potential 10.6 billion population of the developing world to the developed world’s expected stable population of 1.2 billion, and this would mean a global population of nearly 12 billion by 2050.
The current population is 6.7 billion and we’re already experiencing serious environmental problems. How is the environment going to cope with a potential extra 5.3 billion?
Why isn’t the issue of population growth and reproductive responsibility on the climate change/environment agenda, particularly as “the growth of the world’s population will be a critical factor”? At the very least we should be trying to address the 3 billion difference between 9 billion and 12 billion.
As for your comment:
You make it sound so easy ! Well it’s not…
Women in developed countries (often known as “Western society”) have access to education and family planning. However, women in developing countries have varying degrees of access.
For some background on this, here’s a link to the United Nations Population Fund State of World Population 2005 report http://www.unfpa.org/
I’ve pulled out a few quotes:
Re the comment: “Meanwhile, funding for family planning has been declining in recent years”.
This is a very controversial issue…
Refer to these links for more background on this:
Rudd ‘picking fight with churches’ on abortion aid ban
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/06/04/2264270.htm
POPULATION: UN Predicts 12 Billion if Family Planning Falters
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43156
Foreign aid merely fosters poverty
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21866969-5007146,00.html
Letter from Brian Harradine to the British Medical Journal 1994 Jan 1;308(6920):64. http://www.popline.org/docs/1119/094866.html
tigtog and Brian, thanks for your response.
I do keep copies of my posts in Word, so I’ve reposted it if you wouldn’t mind fishing it out of the “spaminator”.
It’s “eye-glazingly” long with lots of links, but some people might be interested in following up the links.
Ta
Eliz
Elizabeth Gwynne Dyer has recently been in Australia launching his new book Climate Wars. In his first future scenario set in the year 2045 he simply lists the global population as 5.8 billion.
The reason is that he sees food production being adversely affected with the drying out of the grain bowls, for example in the USA and Asia. Some of this is caused by the movement of the dry zones towards the poles and some by the frying of the ice caps that serve some of the major river systems in the world.
Perhaps he’s right, who knows, but if he is we are in for grim times.
Re my post #37
Oooops, sorry… In my reference to the “9 billion population” figure mentioned in the Blair/Climate Group and Nicholas Stern reports, I carelessly mixed up the relevant page numbers.
The references should read:
Both Tony Blar/Climate Group (p.9) and Nicholas Stern (p.3) refer to a population of around 9 billion by 2050 in their recent reports.
On population,the latest ABS projections for Australia’s population are here. Getting to Professor Garnaut’s 10% reduction target from his 30% per capita target would require the population to be at the high end of those projections (the ABS projections suggest that a 30% per capita target would lead to a 10-16% reduction target).
On food production, if Australia was to be unable to produce enough food, it may be able to import food (at higher prices). However, if sea level rise is on the bad side of what is predicted, significant port and shipping infrastructure would be at risk, possibly making international trade more difficult.
Brian, thanks for the link re Gwynne Dyer.
Re your comment:
I think you’re right, although I’m not sure a lot of people have caught on yet to how dire things might get. Kevin Rudd seems to be thinking about it though… http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aanlj.Y9LlE4&refer=australia
In the reference you provided Dyer notes:
Apart from protecting forests (sorry, I always try to get a plug in for forests wherever I can…) we should do more to promote “reproductive responsibility” and family planning.
A very controversial area of course, with many complex agendas, which will take considerable “political will” to address… However, it’s way past time we faced this obvious environmental (and social) issue. If we’d tackled this years ago we might not be in the fix we’re in now.
Malthus and Ehrlich were right, just a bit out with the timing…
Actually, Paul Ehrlich and Anne Ehrlich have written another book, “The Dominant Animal” see here for details: http://www.dominantanimal.org/index.php?page_id=1
There’s only one world. The human world has to face the problems of over-consumption and over-population and cooperate to find solutions.
I’ve got some more queries about the Garnaut Draft Report which I will post later.
Peter, I think in the future there has to be a revival of the concept of ‘food security’. At present with WTO rules ruling supreme if you can buy Brussels sprouts from Brussels (subsidised) cheaper than you can grow them here it’s a case of tough titties for the local farmer. It doesn’t matter if the food production and processing infrastructure is destroyed. We had a bit of a foretaste of how things might be with shortages brought on in part by the biofuels fad. We’ll need to rethink some of our attitudes in this regard.
I’m not convinced about “food shortages”.
A very large fraction of the world’s grain gets fed to cattle. In an equitable world, people will get fed before cattle; if they aren’t, it’s a problem of priorities, not absolute shortage.
Andrew Macintosh, from the ANU Center for Climate Law and Policy, has written a detailed critique of Garnaut’s Targets and Trajectories.