Now we can start debating climate change

NICHOLAS Stern has redefined the climate change debate in Australia overnight. What was a simplistic, superficial and single-issue argument has developed a sudden and deep complexity.
Political divisions have been sharpened as economic prosperity and the future of Australian children become key election issues.
The Howard Government is scrambling to put a comprehensive climate change policy in place and the ALP is shrilly promoting its commitment to ratifying the Kyoto protocol.
Labor has grasped the images of doomsday floods to accuse John Howard of betraying Australia's future and our grandchildren while the Prime Minister says Labor is prepared to sell out our future prosperity and throw away our God-given natural gifts. But the nature of the debate has not changed because of the Stern review's dire predictions of economic calamity, which, according to Sir Nicholas, would be greater than the Great Depression. Certainly, while this worst-case scenario has grabbed the headlines, the real service Stern has done has been to cast the debate in economic terms and set out its complexity.
The climate change debate in Australia has for years been dominated by the simple issue of whether the nation should ratify the Kyoto protocol and join a global emissions trading system.
Labor's policy is to ratify the agreement; the Coalition disagrees. The ALP says ratification will create jobs; John Howard says it will costs jobs.
For all the huff and puff from Labor, the Stern review is not a clear endorsement of the Kyoto protocol as it is. Nor is ratifying it the simple fix Kim Beazley suggested it was yesterday.
Stern concludes that an effective carbon trading system has to be both global and involve "strong targets" - neither condition is now met by the Kyoto systems.
What's more, Stern points to other "key" issues to be met by global policy, such as deforestation, clean carbon technological advances and assistance for developing nations that will be hit first and worst.
There's much more to this debate than the Kyoto protocol.