Australia’s total greenhouse emissions, assuming a 450ppm target and “backstop technology”. Source: Garnaut Review Final Report, Figure 23.6

The above chart shows the modelling for the Garnaut Review of one emissions scenario – that an international agreement for a 450ppm target is adopted using the model he proposes. It also assumes the existence of “backstop technology” that can take unlimited amounts of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere at $250/tonne (a reasonable assumption for the long term).

It’s stunning how much of “our” reduction is actually achieved overseas. We’re going to be buying a lot of permits on the open market…

By way of preview, a number of climate scientists have released an open letter to Kevin Rudd (text here):

The Garnaut Review concluded that an emission reduction target for Australia of 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 would be an equitable contribution to the international effort required to achieving this outcome. As a group of Australia’s leading climate change scientists, we urge you to adopt this target as the minimum requirement for Australia’s contribution to an effective global climate agreement.

In Crikey yesterday, Bernard Keane contrasted the apocalyptic prophesies of doom emanating from business with the rather lame reality of the government’s proposals to date.

Nightmare stuff. Imagine how bad it would be the Government had actually proposed a serious effort to reduce our carbon emissions?

As Keane notes in another article, the release of the Treasury modelling today:

should provide a welcome corrective to much of the hysteria generated by modelling commissioned by rentseeking industry groups.

Keane also observes that Garnaut will be talking about adaptation strategies and costs in this report as well.

Note: Related post from dk.au on public opinion, polls and climate change.

Update: The report has now been released and can be downloaded from here.

Update: From Crikey, Bernard Keane on Garnaut at a glance and Clive Hamilton on politics trumping science.

Elsewhere [dk.au]: Barry Brooks is also running an open thread at his blog Climate Dilemma [ht: Peter Wood in comments]

Joshua Gans comments on Chapter 14 (TEEIIs) which he argues is “dramatically superior” to the Green Paper solution of free permits. He also renews his call for border adjustment taxes:

In my opinion, it would be better to bite the bullet and, at least for imports, assess the carbon cost of those imports and tax them. This will get the price signals right and also put pressure on trading partners to put in their own emissions trading schemes so as to avoid that tax.

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.