There’s been a lot of criticism of the emissions targets suggested in the Garnaut Review’s supplementary modelling report. But there hasn’t been a great deal of explanation as to how he came up with them, which might be useful to make slightly more sophisticated critiques. In that light, here’s my attempt to explain where his targets comes from.
The starting point for Garnaut – at least, with the scenarios he hopes will happen – is what level of greenhouse gases we are aiming for in an international agreement. His conclusion, expressed at length in the report, is, essentially, the lower the better. That’s something that shouldn’t come as any shock to anyone that’s been reading LP (particularly some of Brian’s excellent posts on the matter), but it’s good to hear it from Garnaut. A world in which greenhouse gas levels are stabilized at 550ppm is likely to be a heck of a lot better than a world without mitigation, but the consequences are at best nasty and still potentially catastrophic. “450 world”, as Garnaut calls it, reduces both the certain damage and the risks of catastrophe some more. But, as he puts it, “A similar case can be made for the superiority of 400 ppm overshooting over 450 ppm overshooting, as for 450 ppm over 550 ppm.” But a global agreement on 400ppm is a long, long, way off in Garnaut’s view. He’s crunched the numbers on two “global agreement” scenarios, one for a 550ppm target and one for a 450ppm target. Given that, what’s Australia’s share?
This comes back to material discussed at length in the earlier Draft Report. Essentially, Garnaut’s view is that the only feasible approach is (in principle) give each country an emissions allocation that reduces over time; countries than then trade allocations with each other if they so choose. The allocations are awarded under a “contraction and convergence model” – countries start out with a per-capita allocation based on their current emissions. Gradually, the per-capita allocation converges such that at some future time – Garnaut picks 2050 – all countries are given allocations in direct proportion to their populations. There are some wrinkles, but that’s the basic idea. Given those assumptions and a pile of demographic data, out drops the 2020 and 2050 targets for either “550 world” or “450 world”.
The 10% reduction by 2020 suggestion that’s been characterised as “Garnaut’s recommendation” is what Australia would need to do, given an international agreement on “550 world”, using the per-capita contraction and convergence out to 2050.
So why did Garnaut recommend “550 world” targets, when he clearly thinks that “450 world”, or even lower, is the way to go? Simple. He doesn’t think “450 world” is politically achievable. In his own words,
“Achieving the emissions limits set by the 550 scenario over the next decade would be a major win, reflecting unprecedented levels of global cooperation. It might just be feasible. It is not realistic to expect that the international community would, in the few years immediately ahead, agree on the even tighter emissions containments and reductions consistent with a 450 world.”
The report goes on to explain that – essentially whatever the developed world does, “450 world” -is not achievable without cuts in the developing world well beyond what’s on the agenda at the moment. In his view, the way way to getting to 450ppm is…
The most important first step towards stabilisation at 450 ppm CO2-e is to quickly put in place an effective international agreement directed at 550 ppm, to put in place the national and international carbon pricing and support for research, development and commercialisation of low-emissions technologies that can lower the costs of mitigation, and to begin the process of reduction of emissions.
Australia should, in his view, continue to push as hard as it can for 450ppm (and lower targets) in future international negotiations on climate change.
There are a couple of other scenarios investigated in the report, for a world in which there is no international agreement on climate change. While there’s not time to discuss these fully in this post, the really short version is that even a bad global agreement is likely to be better for Australia than no agreement; the unilateral action scenarios suggest that it’ll cost us similar amounts and achieve a lot less without a global agreement. Why? Because (and it shouldn’t come as any surprise that an economist like Garnaut would take this view, modelling to back it up or not) global trade in allocations will achieve emissions reductions at the cheapest location, and much of the time that won’t be in Australia.
In any case, there’s Garnaut’s targets in a nutshell. What are some of the potential criticisms? One has already come up in comments on the previous thread: the rate of convergence. Giving Australia 40 years to bring its per capita emissions in line with, say, India, might well be viewed as a pretty big free kick to a disproportionate polluter.
Another argument is that the whole idea of contraction and convergence – and per-capita emissions allowances, isn’t a good one. I must admit that the idea that somebody immigrating to Australia from a low-emissions country essentially gets a bonus of free emissions permits – which will be quite valuable as time goes on – is a worry.
Finally, you might also quibble with Garnaut’s view of the global politics of how best to achieve the long-term goals of 450ppm or lower. Australia’s case for the world to adopt 450ppm or lower might be stronger if we voluntarily undertook additional emissions reduction commensurate with such a target – which, I think, is what environmental groups are arguing.
Anyway, as best I can understand, that’s where Garnaut is coming from.
I thought that was a good post. I’m glad that Garnaut is considering many different possibilities. It is often true that politicians are slow to act and often don’t do as much as they could. I’m glad he has considered that fact.
However, let’s hope that the Government does all it can to reduce Greenhouse gas emissions without having a major negative effect on our economy and on jobs. I would have thought that a reduction greater than 10% by 2020 is acheivable without drastic measures.
Queue Goatse links.
Good post Robert
If there is an incentive for a country such as Australia to accept someone from India that is not a problem with me. If C&C provides an incentive for high per capita emitters to accept climate change refugees then that is a good thing.
Even with a fast convergence rate, there is still the issue of high per-capita emitters’ previous emissions — Garnaut addresses this by suggesting that developed countries should fund RD&D for low emissions technologies, and adaptation for developing countries.
I’m going to disappear soon for a while and I don’t have time to read much at present. From what I’ve heard on the radio today and from reading and hearing Garnaut recently I suspect you are on the right track, Robert.
I understand Garnaut is constrained by his terms of reference to look at 450ppm and 550ppm in detail. He’s clearly assessed that 60% by 2050 is not enough and 450ppm is too high.
Nevertheless he came to the project with a fine reputation as an economist and as a strategic thinker. I heard him today using the analogy of building an innings in cricket. I’d say he’s using the strategy the Pakis used when the won the World cup (ca 1986?) when they’d be 2 for 100 after 30 overs and then belt 10 runs an over for the last 20.
It’s hard to see us leading the charge with such low targets, but it would take someone braver than Rudd to do that.
I thought Garnaut was primarily taking an economic view on targets, along with some advice from scientists. It appears the weak reduction targets he recommends have been sized with politics (both locally and internationally) as a primary consideration.
Unfortunately, this is ignoring the latest science which puts us in the midst of a climate crisis. Business as usual politics should not constrain our actions on addressing climate change. Garnaut’s targets will write off the Great Barrier Reef and most likely snow in Australia. And he is silent on the opportunity to reduce our emissions by 15% by immediately protecting forests from logging.
Economists and politicians between them are putting on us firmly on the eve of destruction. When the reality of the magnitude of the problems finally bite they may just get it, but will it be too late by then? We are already facing catastrophe in the entire Murray Darling basin.
PeterC: Garnaut’s view is, essentially, we can’t reach an international agreement that will save the Murray and the reef in the current round of negotiations.
The only hope is that we get an inadequate agreement now – but at least get the principle and the machinery of cutting emissions going – and down the track sign something that will do the job.
Much and all as I hate to concede the Tories anything, they’re quite right when they say that what Australia does on its own is largely irrelevant in terms of its direct effect on climate. It’s only relevant in the context of what effect is has on the chances of a global deal.
Garnat is right. The most important thing to do now is to get the framework and institutions in place for cutting emissions. That is the really difficult part. Once they are in place, they are there forever and the targets can be ramped up as needed. But if you go into international negotiations with high targets, nothing will be agreed on the framework and we’ll be stuck where we are now.
PeterC: I don’t think you’ve been entirely fair to Garnaut either. He’s taken a fairly conservative line on the science, but the review has made it abundantly clear that even on the basis on that conservative line the world is headed for disaster – even at 550ppm – and we’d better do something about it.
What can be said about current negotiations on targets, contraction/convergence and high emitters R & D in relation to 2009 in Copenhagen?
My impression was that Bali 2007 saw agreement on the need for 30% reduction by 2020 with some of the Europeans prepared to go for 40%. Do we have any way of knowing what positions will be adopted leading up to Copenhagen?
Garnaut said he had had a positive response from Stern for his targets. Does that mean the Europeans will be potentially accepting of Garnaut’s realpolitic (10%) figure?
In qualification, Stern agreed with Garnaut that the targets were appropriate for Australia. But it is still worth asking the question, what will Copenhagen regard as appropriate?
I don’t know. From a pragmatic point of view, the Chinese and Indians are going to like C&C. The USA probably will too, when considering the alternatives. The only significant ones that won’t are the EU, Japan and Russia (Russia’s population is declining rapidly), because it means that they can’t rely on demographics to do much of the job for them.
Getting the USA and the developing countries (also throw in Indonesia there) on board with a deal is probably going to be a bigger challenge than the EU.
Robert, I think you’re being too soft on Garnaut. To lead on this issue, Australia must take a courageous position into the 2009 Copenhagen talks, not a watered-down wait-and-see position that comes nowhere near the CO2 levels scientists such as James Hansen believe are necessary to avert the worst impacts (350ppm).
Garnaut himself has previously argued the benefits of early action, and his Friday media release states that ‘there would be no point in global action which was not geared at avoiding the substantial climate change impacts’. That’s exactly the kind of action he’s basically put forward as his pragmatic likely best case – ’550 world’.
What signal is this sending to the international community, and might not ’550 world’ become a self-fulfilling prophesy? This would be a pity given the opportunities we have with renewables, not to mention our particular vulnerability to climate change. Meanwhile, the Minerals Council is predicting economic demise even if even the 10 per cent cut by 2020 is adopted.
Darren: I honestly don’t know.
Certainly, Australia has SFA ability on its own to push for “450 world”.
It would take pretty much a united front from the developed world – and a preparedness to make some possibly unpalatable compromises with China and India – to have any hope of doing better. As a very small example, squeamishness about sending uranium to India would have to go out the window.
Frankly, even assuming an Obama win and solid Democratic majorities in both houses of the US congress, you can count on senators from Virginia (coal) and Michigan (cars, manufacturing) making the passage of any deal through the US Senate exceedingly difficult.
As you might gather, I think, given Australia’s strong interest in the best deal possible, that Australia should aim for “450 world” targets, even if “550 world” is the obligation, to demonstrate that we’re really serious about wanting the rest of the world to go the extra step.
Thanks for the summary Robert, it’s interesting to know especially as it’s useful for my work.
Cheers