Garnaut’s defeatism

You could see it in his eyes and feel it in the air today – Professor Garnaut is convinced that humanity is incapable of actually solving the climate crisis. His report and statements are infused with despair and defeatism, summed up in the closing line of his press conference this afternoon: “the failure of our generation will haunt humanity until the end of time”.

In a sense, you can’t blame him for that. Many of us find ourselves at times paralysed by fear. To take a smaller scale example, if any of us found ourselves standing on a beach watching a child being taken by a rip, how many of us would actually jump in and try to save the child, and how many would be haunted for the rest of our lives by our failure to do so? None of us would blame the ones who stood and watched in despair, but we are all eternally grateful that there are some among us who take the plunge!

Garnaut is standing on the beach watching. The big question now is whether Kevin Rudd will stand beside him or whether he’ll jump in.

The fundamental core of the problem, it seems to me, is that Garnaut knows that his recommendation of targeting 550ppm as a ‘legitimate second best option’ is scientifically indefensible. He cannot not know, having had numerous meetings with scientists, Greens and other greens setting out the current state of the science.

And yet, his conclusions are based on the following premise, at p 595-6 of today’s report:

“The difference in environmental outcome between successful achievement of a 550 ppm objective and of a 450 ppm objective is substantial for Australia, as demonstrated in chapters 6 and 11 in particular. But it is small compared with the difference between 550 ppm and the complete failure of mitigation.”

This is simply not the case. The very great likelihood is that 550 ppm is effectively equivalent to complete failure, as it will trigger so many postive feedback loops that we will have very little chance of avoiding runaway climate change. Considering current Arctic ice melt, and recent reports suggesting that the Siberian methane time-bomb is already ticking loudly, the chances of those tipping points not having been triggered by 550 ppm seems remote. The reality is that 550 ppm should be off the table, the target should be 400 ppm or below, and 450 may possibly squeak in as ‘legitimate second best’.

The truly baffling thing is that Garnaut’s defeatist conclusions simply don’t match his arguments.

In arguing against those who oppose any action at all, Garnaut says (worth quoting at length from p 593):

“The mitigation process can be cut short, with due notice to those who have committed their capital to a new economy of low emissions, if at any time the international community comes to the view that new scientific knowledge establishes that the concerns of 2008 were erroneous to the extent that mitigation judgments based on them have become obsolete. Mitigation could come to a stop in 2020, for example, on the basis of new knowledge that it was unnecessary, after mitigation had been put in place to return to concentrations of 450 ppm.

“In this case, Australia would have paid 2 per cent of GNP as insurance against what would otherwise have been a high risk of immense damage. It would be a high price, but one that was reasonable on the basis of the evidence available at the time when decisions had to be made.

“The consequences of inaction now are not similarly reversible. The arithmetic of Chapter 3 about the new patterns of global growth takes away the time we may once have thought we had for experiment, talk, and leisurely decision making. It tells us that business as usual is taking us quickly towards what the science tells us are high risks of highly disruptive climate change.”

Set this powerful argument next to Garnaut’s economic modelling which clearly demonstrates that the ‘premium’ for heading towards 450 ppm instead of 550 ppm, for Australia, would be a tiny 0.7% of GNP shaved off the huge business-as-usual gains over the coming decades (table 11.3 on p 270). I would have thought that consistently applying the logic set out above would lead to the conclusion that heading for 450 ppm is the way to go.

If taking some action now is worth it as “insurance against … immense damage”, and if we could effectively reduce our excess massively by paying just a little bit more, isn’t that worth it, too? On the other hand, if it’s not worth reducing the excess, is it really worth buying the insurance at all?

Garnaut’s defeatism, it seems to me, is rooted (so to speak..) in his absolute conviction that the USA will block any efforts towards a global agreement that targets anything more stringent than 550 ppm, and that, therefore, such an agreement is impossible.

However, that completely ignores the equally powerful opposing view – that there are many in both the developed and developing world who will not accept a global agreement that targets anything less ambitious than 450 ppm! Look, for example, at the statement from Hu Jintao and Manmohan Singh, representing the G77 + China on the edges of July’s G8 meeting in Japan. Their ambit claim is for the G8 countries to reduce emissions by 45% on 1990 levels by 2012 and 95% by 2050!

It seems out of the question that China, India and others would sign up to an agreement which saw their futures jeopardised to protect the wealth of rich nations. To focus solely on US obstructionism ignores half the story.

To take us back to the beach, it might seem to Professor Garnaut that the child is lost to the ocean. On the other hand, it is possible that the tides will change, that the child is stronger than she appears, and that a group of lifesavers not far down the beach could get to her in time to save her life. Unless we try, unless we give ourselves the option now, we will never know.

Professor Garnaut has, rather offensively, called this hopeful view “delusional”. I’d simply suggest to him that he reads Henry David Thoreau, particularly this wonderful line from Walden:

“Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air. They are where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”