Carbon cuts are affordable
Photo ©2006 Dave Sag. Used with permission
Late last year the Sydney Morning Herald ran a story Carbon cuts ‘affordable’: report.
The Climate Institute today released findings which it says show there will be little economic impact if Australia establishes measures to reduce greenhouse gases.
The report, prepared by the institute, CSIRO and Monash University, found that if Australia committed to reversing its pollution by 2012, reducing emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, and becoming carbon neutral by 2050, economic growth would not be hampered.
The report doesn’t go into the impacts on economic growth if we do nothing about climate change at all however.
It said under the required changes, economic growth, using GDP as a measure, would be 2.8 per cent annually to 2050, compared with 2.9 per cent if no action was taken.
If no action is taken the economic hit will be in the order of 20% according the Stern Review so the numbers cited above make little real sense to me. Yes it’s great that committing to carbon neutrality won’t cost us much, but the report sabotages itself by failing to correctly account for the fact that business-as-usual comes at a terrible cost to both the economy and to humanity as a whole. — DS
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