Can Australia sustain economic growth whilst going beyond its Kyoto emissions targets?

Question

I was wondering if there any links to thses sort of debates online or notes concerning Australia.

Some argue that the current goals ratified to Kyoto doesnt go further enough how ever those arguing against suggest it will further impact and damage the economy.

Yes Australia can turn the economy' green' but is this viable and even possible to do whilst going beyond the Kyoto targets and without affecting small businesses who may not have access this green technology.

Answer 1

Probably.  But it has no choice, anyway.  Not slowing down global warming would mean economic disaster.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6096...

Answer 2

Very good question I think.

Kyoto is pretty easy for us to achieve. Because of the HUGE concessions we insisted on (I still can't believe we got that, our target was a 108% INCREASE over 1990!), even Howard's government were not going to be that far off it.

But yeah you question is can we do the beyond Kyoto target, 60% reduction by 2050...

I think it'll be hard, and I don't think we'll see the same kind of prosperity going into the future - but that'll be that case either way. As agriculture continues to dry out, and as the mining boom comes to an end once global factors like the US slowdown and then global carbon taxes eventually start coming into play - Australia will have a very hard time of trying to keep growning like we have been. And that's even without any weather-related disasters popping up either.

If it's handled right (which is a pretty tall ask), then a shift away from coal/etc doesn't need to ruin us. We can already switch a fair chunk of our power generation to natural gas without TOO much pain; and whether you believe it or not the coming MASSIVE increase of renewables really will make a difference.

Base load? Gas - and perhaps a re-structuring of industrial production timetables to line up more with peak power generation times.

Again, it won't be easy - but that goes both ways. I'm glad we're at least going to be working at filling the hole rather than digging it deeper...