Stern words for Australia - slash emissions now - New Zealand's source for World News on Stuff.co.nz

Stern words for Australia - slash emissions now -
The world's leading economist on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern, has challenged Australia to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by up to 30 per cent by 2020 - and 90 per cent by 2050.CARBON EMISSIONS FROM BRITISH GENERATORS GROW ONE IN 10 AT RISK FROM RISING SEAS, STORMS
He also urged Australia to ratify the Kyoto Protocol immediately as an important symbolic act, and to step up research into solar power and clean coal technology.
"We don't start from a good place, but it's not too late," Sir Nicholas said yesterday in an interview with the Herald in Sydney, where he outlined a far more aggressive program for action than either the Government or Opposition proposes.
As he prepared to meet the Prime Minister, John Howard, today and the Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, Sir Nicholas warned that Australia faced a bleak future of increasing droughts, storms, sea level rises and the collapse of the Great Barrier Reef if the planet kept warming.
His message will be: "The costs of acting worldwide to combat climate change are much less than the cost of inaction."
He proposed that Australia should follow Europe and California in setting mandatory targets, enforced by law, to cut its 1990 emission levels by 60 to 90 per cent by 2050, beginning with cuts of up to 30 per cent within the next 13 years.
The Government has resisted legislating a target of this magnitude but Sir Nicholas believes "targets are crucial". He put it bluntly: "You should be going, as a rich country, for 60 per cent to 90 per cent reductions by 2050."
He admitted, however, this was "a strong ask" as the economy would be two or three times as big and the demands for energy greatly increased.
Cuts this deep would mean Australia could not build any more coal-fired power stations for several decades or until it could put in place "clean coal technology" which is still in the experimental stage, according to Greg Bourne, the chief executive of WWF Australia.
It would also mean Australia would have to hugely increase its use of renewable energy and improve energy efficiency by 20 per cent.
Sir Nicholas earned a global reputation on climate change when he produced a report last year for the British Government, warning that the cost of failing to address climate change could be as great as the cost of two world wars and the Great Depression.
He is in Australia for the first time to meet its political leaders and he will address the National Press Club in Canberra.
Australia's ability to cut its emissions is so far heavily dependent on the promise of clean coal technology, which is designed to capture and store carbon emissions from coal-fired power stations. China and the US are also investing heavily in the technology.
"If it does work that would be a major step forward," said Sir Nicholas, but he cautioned, "If it doesn't work, we've got a far bigger problem." He said the world's demand for Australia's coal exports "will decline, should decline" if the technology does not prove feasible.
He said the first step all countries needed to take was to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution. "The big market failing we have at the moment is that people don't pay for the damage that they cause," he said.
The Federal Government is examining a carbon emissions trading scheme to put a price on greenhouse gas pollution, 10 years after it was originally proposed. A Government-appointed task force on the subject is due to report at the end of May.
The Government has flatly rejected ratifying the Kyoto protocol. While Sir Nicholas agreed the protocol had only a short time to run, expiring next year, he said it was symbolically important for Australia to commit to it.
"I think it would be a very good signal to everybody else that people are coming into the tent and looking to work together in a collaborative way." It was "the crucial glue that holds people together".
Already, he said, the climate was changing and governments needed to be prepared to adapt. "You've got to be prepared for change because it's coming because of what we've done in the past."
If the world took a "business-as-usual approach" the planet would face dramatic changes in the next century as temperatures rose by up to five degrees.
"That kind of change would be absolutely transformational," he said. Apart from droughts and floods, the world would see massive movements of populations as climate refugees began fleeing the hotter parts of the planet.
That was not the kind of risk that most normal people would want to make, he said.