The enviroment – balancing the costs of investing, and not investing

The five year drought, that Australia has just suffered, has given everyone a clear idea of the damage that global warming can do.

Cattle numbers are down. The national sheep flock is just a remnant of what it once was. And farmers have seen their once bountiful wheat fields dusty, dry and barren.

All of this makes a new report, by economist Ross Garnaut, very timely.

Essentially, he is urging the government to take a leading role in combating climate change, saying Australia might well become the most damaged country in the Western world, if it does’nt.

And, after such a severe drought, even city people know very well just what is at stake.

Professor Garnaut says Australia needs to go beyond its present aim of a 60 per cent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

He is advocating a 90 per cent cut.

At this stage, the new Rudd Labor government is not entirely convinced.

But Professor Garnaut’s report is compelling.

So, too, is Australia’s bitter experience with the drought.

The drought has devastated Australia’s once great rural industries.

The nation was once said to ride on the sheep’s back.

These days, the mines, alone underpin Australia’s prosperity.

The losses Australia has suffered, in its agricultural sector, have been huge.

These are the kind of costs Australian governments, both Federal and State, will have to balance in future against the undoubtedly substantial costs of making the adjustments necessary, to cut our greenhouse gas emissions even more sharply.
And there were some re-assuring words, from a totally unexpected source, on that subject this morning.

That is, from Professor Garnaut, himself.

He said those costs would be “reasonable.”

Oh, come on Ross. You are an economist. You are supposed to be miserable

You can make it nastier than that, can’t you?