DUCKPOND

Professor Garnaut’s Draft Report describes the prospect of climate change, faced by Planet Earth as much as Australia, although the effects are likely to be worse here than elsewhere, as “a diabolical policy problem”. The expert opinion of scientists should be accepted and that on balance supports climate change, but we are in unknown territory, and time has been squandered by inaction.

The Draft Report refers to the prisoner’s dilemma to cooperate or to defect, but to me the game situation is simpler. If you had the option to pay a large amount of money, and the loss of spending that would entail but save your life, would you take it knowing that you may save your life but you may not. The amount of money would depend on income and assets, and could be $10,000, $100,000 or $10 million as the case may be. The option to sacrifice financial resources in return for life is a very good choice to have, even with attendant uncertainty.

The Draft Reports observes:

Effective international action is necessary if the risks of dangerous climate change are to be held to acceptable levels, but deeply problematic. International cooperation is essential for a solution to a global problem. However, such a solution requires the resolution of a genuine prisoners’ dilemma. Each country benefits from a national point of view if it does less of the mitigation itself,
and others do more. If all countries act on this basis, without forethought and cooperation, there will be no resolution of the dilemma. We will all judge the outcome, in the fullness of time, to be insufficient and unsatisfactory.Resolution of the international prisoner’s dilemma takes time—possibly more
time than we have. The world has squandered the time that it did have in the 1990s to experiment with various approaches to mitigation.

To do nothing is to forgo the opportunity for decisive action, and waiting for China, India and the USA (under the present Administration and at the Federal Level) will be like waiting for the cows to come home.

Tim Flannery, in The Sydney Morning Herald makes the point that situation is worst than reported:

In determining the level of risk we face from climate change, Garnaut relies on the projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Sadly, new data indicates that the Earth’s climate system is changing faster than those projections allow. Indeed, for the rate of warming, rate of sea-level rise, and extent of CO2 accumulation, the real-world data lie outside the panel’s envelope of projections on the high side. This indicates that we’re heading towards a catastrophic scenario, which the panel rates as being less than a 10 per cent probability. One specific risk highlights what’s at stake. Models developed by the CSIRO indicate that climate change will continue to reduce stream flow in the Murray-Darling basin, with a 10 per cent probability of the river system drying up almost entirely. Garnaut does not assess the economic impact of this 10 per cent risk, yet what we see in the real world seems to be more consistent with it rather than less catastrophic outcomes. For the second year in a row there’s been zero water allocation to many irrigators in the basin, and the lower Murray is in crisis, with parts of the system on the verge of turning hypersaline or acid.

I anticipate that successful negotiation and implementation of the remedial measures related to climate change will issue in a significant cultural change, greater in its implications perhaps than the introduction of mechanical printing press to Europe in the Fifteenth Century. Cultural change on such a scale is very threatening to the established power holders everywhere. However, Tim Flannery does not engage such a wide canvas. He concludes:

With this report Ross Garnaut has shown himself to be that rarest of commodities – an highly competent economist capable of taking a broad view of complex issues. In his report he has mastered the science behind climate change, grappled with tortuous issues of social equity, and broad environmental significance. The high quality of his work may well find broad application, for he’s shaped the highly promising beginnings of a carbon trading scheme which is suited to a non-European context at a time when the US, Canada and perhaps even China are looking for leads. This international leadership, indeed, may be the most important aspect of Garnaut’s various reports. Kevin Rudd deserves congratulations for appointing him. Let’s hope he’s listened to.

I find it incredible that global capitalists and governments alike are demanding compensation for their own strategic short sightedness. How stupid do you have to be to be twenty years behind the game. It seems to be a profound failure of markets and governments, based on the assumption that power and profits could be sustained on the basis of mass propaganda, developed around the successful PR model of smoking.

UPDATE:

Kevin Rennie, as per comments, has his post including video of the event, just to make this difficult subject more digestible.