‘The damage will become extreme’: Ross Garnaut issues dire climate warning

An Australian economist and authority on climate change says years of inaction, delay and denial have cost the nation, as he slams the “blind” Morrison government for making Australia a “laggard”.

Change of any real substance can take its time. Perhaps a long time. Perhaps a lifetime.

Dr Ross Garnaut knows something about that. The author of the landmark 2008 government-commissioned Garnaut Climate Change Review has watched as the years have ticked by. Now 15 years on and what has been achieved?

Plenty of inaction. A fair whack of disappointment. A faster-than-expected fall in prices for renewables. “Relief’’ at the polls. Now, in 2023, a legislated pathway forward to net zero emissions. But, still, a long way to go.

Garnaut, 76, a professor emeritus in economics at University of Melbourne and The Australian National University, has dedicated the “tail end’’ of his distinguished career – which has included roles as principal economic adviser to prime minister Bob Hawke and Australian Ambassador to China – to climate change. He has been front and centre in shaping the discourse on the topic.

Ross Garnaut. Picture: David Caird

He says he won’t be around to see Australia achieve its net zero 2050 emissions goal but hopes very much to at least see the country well down the road to achieving it.

Speaking from his home in Melbourne, Garnaut admits some disappointment at where Australia now stands.

“In some ways, it’s been disappointing because if we’d had consistent policies we’d be much further along the track,” Garnaut says.

“And we’d be getting more of the benefits earlier, as well as contributing to global momentum in reducing emissions.

“We’ve had a long period, since 2013, of incoherent policies which haven’t moved as far forward. So that’s disappointing.”

But, on the other hand, he says, elements of the equation have worked out better than expected with the cost of renewable energy coming down far faster than anticipated. Solar energy, for example, fell in cost by 85 per cent in 10 years; the price of electric cars became competitive earlier than expected and the cost of battery storage fell more quickly than originally estimated.

Overall, Garnaut says Australia’s position is close to where he expected the country to be. And now, with “some very big roadblocks” removed with the Albanese Labor government ousting the Coalition in May 2022, he says “a whole lot of new things became possible”. The election result, he admits, was a “relief”.

Of the Morrison government, Garnaut doesn’t pull punches. “It was blind to the climate change realities, blind to the international relations realities, and also blind to the very big, positive opportunity for economic development if we really used our advantages,” he says.

“Until now, among the developed countries, Australia was a laggard.

“I don’t undervalue what was already being done by state governments but the commonwealth is very important. Instead of being linked with Saudi Arabia and Russia and others that were trying to resist strong action on climate change, we joined the developed democracies. America and Europe are now very happy that they’ve got a full partner in co-operation on climate change in the Albanese government.

Ross Garnaut. Picture: David Caird

“So it (the election result) was a relief rather than a celebration. It is with relief that I see that we’re now making real progress.”

In September, Australian emission reduction targets of 43 per cent by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050 were enshrined in legislation with the Climate Change Bills, as a strengthening of the so-called Safeguard Mechanism that was established by the former Coalition government.

Garnaut says a 43 per cent reduction by 2030 brings Australia within the range of other developed countries.

“The temperature will keep getting warmer and the damage from climate change will keep increasing until we have zero net emissions. It’s only when we’ve got zero emissions that warming will stop,” Garnaut says.

“And unless we stop it quickly, then the substantial damage we’ve already had will become extreme.

“The damage from climate change is nowhere near what it will be if we don’t deal promptly with getting rid of emissions.”

The Garnaut Climate Change Review was initiated in April 2007 by the then federal opposition leader, Kevin Rudd, and by the state and territory governments. In January 2008, the federal government joined the review after Rudd became prime minister.

The report, released in September 2008, found climate change is real and urgent, and presented a key recommendation to implement an emissions trading scheme. It was labelled alarmist by some critics but some predictions, with time, have proven true.

In 2020, the deadly Black Summer bushfire season impacted all Australian states and territories, claiming 34 lives, more than 3500 homes and an estimated billion animals.

A statement from Garnaut’s review began circulating on social media. It said: “Fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense. This effect increases over time, but should be directly observable by 2020”.

At the time of the fires, Garnaut reflected that he had been “ineffective” in persuading Australians about the importance of efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change.

But, over the years, he has gradually witnessed more understanding and acceptance of the science and watched climate change sceptics and deniers “falling away”. The “phenomenon of denial”, he says, is not unexpected, and has also been seen with the effectiveness of vaccines and immunisation.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd receives the climate change review report from Professor Ross Garnaut in Canberra in 2008. Picture: AAP Image/Alan Porritt

Garnaut says climate change is “already substantial” with more very hot days, greater vulnerability to bushfires, more intense flood and cyclonic events and more frequent,
bigger storms.

NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies has found the average global temperature on Earth has risen by at least 1.1C since 1880, with the majority of that warming since 1975.

In May last year, the World Meteorological Organisation reported a 1.5C rise in the Earth’s temperature was “measurably closer” and, at this level, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas says climate change impacts will be “increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet”.

Per capita, The Australia Institute finds Australia’s emissions are the highest in the OECD, accounting for about 1.2 per cent of world emissions. But can Australia, with its small population of 26 million in comparison with the huge populations of China, India and Europe, really make a difference? Aren’t we but a drop in the (warming) ocean?

Garnaut has been talking up Australia’s potential as a global “superpower” in a low-carbon world economy for some time.

He has written two books (Superpower; and The Superpower Transformation) arguing Australia has an enviable position in a low-carbon world economy. As a “climate optimist”, he believes Australia cannot only meet emissions targets, but in fact be a “superpower” in a net-zero, decarbonised future world.

Far from being an insignificant player, Australia, he says, is actually critical for the world’s success.

Garnaut says coal is the past, that it has “done its job”. Australia’s future will instead draw on new sources of energy, namely solar, wind, hydro storage and biomass.

Australia has the advantages of vast renewable energy resources of wind and solar combined with the space needed for carbon storage. We have the world’s largest supply of energy intensive minerals that can be turned into zero emissions metals; and Australia is the richest place in the world for many of the minerals needed for batteries, electric cars and solar farms.

Additionally, Australia has the infrastructure and skill set from the old economy (mining, metallurgy, agriculture, forestry) that will be valuable in the new economy. Areas with traditions of industrial activity will welcome new industry, new investment, new jobs.

“In a zero carbon world, Australia has huge advantages,’’ Garnaut says.

Ross Garnaut. Picture: David Caird

“We greatly ease the task of going to zero emissions in northeast Asia and Europe.
In fact, I can’t see how Germany, France, Britain, Korea, Japan, or even China, can get
to zero without relying quite heavily on Australian products.

“This is a huge opportunity for rural and provincial Australia. I see this as the best chance the bush has had to find the sort of stable foundations for strong development that we’ve been looking for more than a century.”

Australia also has most to lose from climate change. Of all developed countries, Australia will be damaged more than any other because it is already “closer to the margins of human activity” with its hot, dry climate. Australia is also the only developed democracy that lives in a region of developing countries.

Garnaut has always had a “general interest” in the environment as part of his interest in economics because “if you make a mess of the environment, you make a mess of economic development”.

For the past 17 years, his main form of transport has been his bicycle. He also drives an electric car.

He is currently on the board of Zen Energy, a retailer of electricity and hydrogen, and will be part of a “still being put together” think tank called The Superpower Institute with businessman Simon Holmes a Court.

His first real interest in climate change came with his position as chairman and director of
the International Food Policy Research Institute based in Washington DC (2003-10). Here, he realised the “biggest challenge for food in the developing world was going to be climate change”.

Then, immersed in his Climate Change Review, “you realise that there’s nothing more important”.

But change has its own pace. And there have been big interests at play – namely coal and gas producers and employees who have not been so keen to see an end to their industries.

“We’re a conservative people so some things take time. And this one’s taken a lot of time,” Garnaut says.

“I’ve been around for a while and I’ve been involved in a lot of policy discussions and lots of debates have taken a long time too.

Professor Ross Garnaut holds a press conference before handing his final climate change report to PM Kevin Rudd at Parliament House in Canberra.

“I was Bob Hawke’s economic adviser when we reduced protection for Australian industry and a lot of people resisted it. Medicare is another one … it was introduced by Whitlam then repealed by the Fraser government then reintroduced by the Hawke government. Some things just take a long time.

“But the message (of climate change) is gradually spreading and today it’s not controversial. Sometimes good new ideas take quite a while to percolate right through the community.”

Garnaut says the issue of climate change has undoubtedly been a slog and even in 2008 he said it had been “a hard road”.

“When I gave my report in 2008, to all the Premiers and the Prime Minister, I had a covering letter with it,’’ Garnaut says.

“I began the letter by saying, ‘an old dog for a hard road’. I’d been on a hard road – that was 15 years ago. And I was already a fairly old dog.

“I won’t be around to see Australia or the world reach net zero emissions, of course. But I’ve got seven grandchildren who I hope will be. Their lives will be very difficult if the world hasn’t gotten to net zero by 2050.”

Garnaut’s final words of his 2008 report are still a sobering reminder of what is at stake.

“On a balance of probabilities,” he wrote, “the failure of our generation would lead to consequences that would haunt humanity until the end of time.”

Getting it right has never felt so critical.