Minerals Council of Australia Chief Executive Officer Mitchell Hooke has advocated Professor Ross Garnut’s final Climate Change Review report.
In the report, Garnut identifies the three critical features of an effective national and global response to climate change: an efficient and effective Emissions Trading System; a credible global agreement that covers all major emitters; and “breakthrough” technologies that can lower the emissions of existing energy sources.
According to Hooke, the Minerals Council of Australia has consistently advocated the critical necessity for Australia’s policy approach to managing climate change to calibrate and align these three pillars to ensure emissions cuts without undermining the economy.
“We have consistently argued there a few, if any, prizes for acting in advance of a binding global agreement,” Hooke said.
“It is also a compelling case for a measured transition to an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). If there is no global agreement in place when the Australian ETS is projected to begin in 2010, then a full-scale start to emissions trading in the form of 100% auctioning of permits from day one, will cause economic uncertainty – and be environmentally ineffective and socially disruptive.”
No other ETS in the world has ever embraced full auctioning of permits. Measured transitional arrangements will be the key to ensuring the proposed ETS achieves its environmental objectives without compromising economic growth, community living standards and the competitiveness of Australian industry.
www.minerals.org.au