'From the Gallery'

February 4th, 2011

• Professor Ross Garnaut, the Federal Government’s climate change adviser, has entered the debate on what to do about the threat at a vital time. He said yesterday floods and cyclones like those experienced this summer will get more extreme as global warming increases (see Global warming is about a catastrophe).

• Garnaut is updating his 2008 review of climate change over the next two months. This time, he says, politicians need “to remain independent and not bow to the pressure of special interests,” an obvious reference to the compensation the Rudd Government offered to a variety of business interests in the failed emission trading scheme. Garnaut will give no comfort to Gillard for her policy of slashing expenditure on climate related research.

• Garnaut warns that although climate change cannot be directly blamed for the recent flooding, or for Cyclone Yasi, scientific evidence shows such extreme events are associated with the warming of the environment.

• He has already made an impression on independent Rob Oakeshott, a member of the government’s multi-party committee on climate change who says he hopes Garnaut’s new reports will encourage a more reasoned debate.