The Australian government has dismissed a British report warning of economic meltdown due to global warming, but a specialist in Australia's physical economy says ignoring the report will cost the country dearly.
Bernard Foran, a visiting fellow at the Australian National University's Centre for Resources and Environmental Studies, says the Howard government seemed to be adopting a "business as usual" approach to the report and is locking Australia into outdated methods of dealing with the energy crisis.
The report, compiled by former chief economist with the World Bank Sir Nicholas Stern, claims that without an immediate reduction in global gas emissions the world is heading for a period of economic and social instability, which will be akin to the two World Wars and the Great Depression.
Australia's Federal Treasurer Peter Costello, however, has reacted to the report saying the country is heading towards less than one percent of global gas emissions, a small amount compared to other countries.
"There's no point in Australia meeting its emissions target—if you're going to have major emitters such as China and India, which are increasing every year their emissions by more than the total of Australia," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Foran said the Treasurer had missed the point of the report, which was to encourage governments to think globally in dealing with the issue. The Costello response of only one percent, he says, shows that the Treasurer has not grasped the report's broader understandings and the implications of global warming.
"The whole world has to move towards dealing with this and rich countries have to move a whole lot more rapidly than poorer countries," Foran told The Epoch Times .
Using the results from formal economic models, the report estimates that without immediate action to reduce greenhouse emissions, the overall costs and risks of climate change could rise to five percent of global GDP with potential damage driving costs up to 20 percent.
"In contrast, the costs of action—reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change—can be limited to around one percent of global GDP each year," the report stated.
Foran said Australia should heed the report's recommendations and immediately begin spending money on infrastructure, or end up paying greater costs later.
"Ten years or twenty years down the line we'll be faced with a huge bulk of new, but antiquated infrastructure that we then have to change massively and retrofit everywhere," he said.
"What the stern report is saying is; make the change now and get the windfalls from the revitalization," he said.
Anthony Albanese, the environment spokesman from Australia's Labour Party, says the Government is ignoring the report. "The Howard government is frozen in time while the globe warms around it," he said.
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