Treasury Report On The Economics of Climate Change Mitigation
The Australian Treasury's report on the economics of climate change mitigation was released on 30 October 2008. The report was a key input in determining the structure and targets for the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
The Treasury’s modeling demonstrated that early global action to reduce carbon emissions would be less expensive than later action and stated that a market-based approach allows robust economic growth into the future as emissions fall.
The report also stated that:
- many of Australia’s industries would maintain or improve their competitiveness under an international agreement to combat climate change
- even ambitious goals would have limited impact on national and global economic growth
- Australia and the world can continue to prosper while making the emission cuts required to reduce the risks of dangerous climate change.
- Households would face increased prices for emission-intensive products such as electricity and gas, however real household income would continue to grow.
- Strong coordinated global action would reduce the economic cost of achieving environmental objectives, reduce distortions in trade-exposed sectors, and provide insurance against climate change uncertainty.
- There are advantages to Australia acting early if emission pricing expands gradually across the world: economies that defer action face higher long-term costs, as global investment is redirected to early movers.
- Australia’s aggregate economic costs of mitigation are small, although the costs to sectors and regions vary. Growth in emission-intensive sectors slows and growth in low- and negative-emission sectors accelerates.
- Allocation of some free permits to emission-intensive trade-exposed sectors, as the Government proposes, eases their transition to a low-emission economy in the initial years.
- Broadly based market-oriented policies, such as emissions trading, allow the market to respond as new information becomes available.
Read more about this topic: Australian Carbon Trading Scheme
Famous quotes containing the words treasury, report, economics, climate, change and/or mitigation:
“The treasury of everlasting joy.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Sure, you can love your child when he or she has just brought home a report card with straight “A’s.” It’s a lot harder, though, to show the same love when teachers call you from school to tell you that your child hasn’t handed in any homework since the beginning of the term.”
—The Lions Clubs International and the Quest Nation. The Surprising Years, II, ch.3 (1985)
“The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.”
—James Thurber (1894–1961)
“The climate has been described as “ten months winter and two months mighty late in the fall.””
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“Law is a thing which is insensible, and inexorable, more beneficial and more profitious to the weak than to the strong; it admits of no mitigation nor pardon, once you have overstepped its limits.”
—Titus Livius (Livy)