Australia should not expose itself by adopting an aggressive greenhouse reduction target, but it should make a "proportionate" adjustment as it waits to see how the rest of the developed world reacts, the Federal Government's top climate-change adviser will recommend today.
Professor Ross Garnaut will provide the Government with the results of econometric modelling. His report will draw on the modelling to estimate the cuts to carbon emissions needed to deal with climate change.
The Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, said at the international climate change conference in Bali in December that he would not set emissions targets until he had Professor Garnaut's work in hand.
"I share the premise of people who see this as a large and serious issue," Professor Garnaut, an eminent economist, told the Herald yesterday.
"The recommendations on the targets and trajectories are drawn logically from these premises.
"The costs of adjustment are proportionate to other countries, and they are manageable."
They should be based, he said, on "what's a reasonable distribution of the overall adjustment".
He said he and the British Government's economic adviser on climate change, Sir Nicholas Stern, had conferred yesterday and Sir Nicholas "agrees with the technical approach to the analysis of the climate change problem" that he was pursuing.
Professor Garnaut is expected to report on four possible targets for cutting greenhouse pollution according to a range of scenarios.
He would not comment on speculation he would recommend a 2020 reduction target in the range of 0-15pc of carbon emissions relative to 1990 levels.
Such a range would still require great effort, because it would mean the trend that Australia's emissions continued to grow, would need to be reversed.
Professor Garnaut's report will be based on much anticipated modelling done with the federal Treasury, the Queensland Treasury and Monash University.
It is to estimate the cost of acting to avert climate change as well as the cost of not acting.
Sources familiar with the Garnaut review process said Professor Garnaut would not approve scenarios based on a "business as usual" approach or taking no action at all.
The report has looked at the cost of keeping carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases at particular levels.
One level is 450 parts a million, which will take considerable effort to maintain, but which scientists say will give only a moderate chance of averting dangerous climate change. He is not believed to be in favour of acting on emissions to keep carbon dioxide at a higher level in the atmosphere - 550 parts a million.
Yesterday the body representing 60,000 Australian scientists and technologists urged the Government to stay focused on the scientific case for averting climate change.
"Global climate change is real and measurable," the president of the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, Ken Baldwin, said. "Rather than being a free rider, Australia must vigorously pursue opportunities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions including those additional to an emissions trading scheme, such as diversification of energy supply, improving energy efficiencies and changing consumption behaviours."
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