Lead Story
Issue No. 33 - February/March 2007
The Climate Change Debate
Implications for business and government policies
by Professor Richard Blandy
The issue of global warming poses an immense problem for the people of the world, and especially the people of the advanced industrial countries like Australia.
There is widespread belief in the Western world that dangerous global warming is occurring because of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and that urgent and dramatic action should be taken to stop it by cutting GHG emissions.
But what action will be effective?
The truth is that unilateral action by South Australians, or even Australia as a whole - however well motivated, moral and sincere – simply cannot and will not cut global GHG emissions.
Total global GHG emission can only be cut by collective action on a global scale, involving the developing countries and especially the new economic powerhouses of China and India. But the developing countries will need incentives to participate in a global effort to cut GHG emissions, particularly if that effort puts their rates of growth at risk. What will these incentives cost the advanced industrial countries? And how will this burden be shared between countries and between people? This is the main political agenda for the world in dealing with a global reduction in GHG emissions.
If South Australia is to provide leadership in this matter, it is national and international leadership in addressing this political agenda that will be required from us.
What makes the issue more difficult is the widespread belief that dangerous global warming is occurring because of global GHG emissions, and that urgent and dramatic action is required to cut these emissions.
This may not be true.
A fair reading of the scientific and economic literature on global warming casts doubt on the speed and certainty with which catastrophic outcomes are likely to emerge – if they ever do emerge – and how urgent and dramatic any response needs to be.
These doubts over timeframe are extremely important to the billions of peopl...
