News | Climate Change

http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/New-approach-on-climate-change-urged-752Q5?opendocument&src=rss

With global efforts to combat climate change sagging after the Copenhagen conference, Australian experts have called for a completely different approach.

A report to be issued on Wednesday, co-authored by economist and Reserve Bank board member Warwick McKibbin, says the world is on the wrong track.
The current approach has the United Nations trying to coax 193 countries into accepting individual targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Countries would then decide on their own schemes to meet their target.
Last year at Copenhagen that approach led to an unholy row about targets, rules and verification. The UN is still trying to broker a deal, with little success.
Prof McKibbin's paper, published by the Lowy Institute think-tank, sets out a roadmap which does not rely on the UN or on targets.
Instead, heavy-polluting countries like Australia, the US and China would agree to set a similar carbon price, to rise over time.
It would be up to each country how they put that carbon price into practice - possibly through an ETS or carbon tax, or through government spending on green measures which would produce a shadow carbon price.
This "purely price-based system" would allow major economies to compare their efforts to tackle global warming, and it would be easier to see if countries were meeting their obligations.
"We think that that a price-based international framework is better suited to achieving rapid reductions in global emissions," concluded the report, co-authored by Dr Greg Picker and Fergus Green.
They wrote that the framework could be coordinated by the Major Economies Forum, made up of 17 countries including Australia. The report said the UN should continue with its efforts in the meantime; the next major climate summit it in Mexico in December.
The price-based approach would be incompatible with the push for countries to have interlinked carbon markets.
The report will be launched at the Lowy Institute in Sydney on Wednesday. Prof McKibbin has co-written the report in his capacity as an academic, not as an RBA board member.