Beyond the climate spin

At the third forum in the Beyond the Spin: federal election discussion series , experts called on both sides of politics to stop the rhetoric and take urgent action on climate change. Climate specialists from a range of disciplines including economics, law, science and policy urged the government to finalise a long term climate policy and put a price on carbon in order to avoid the consequences of global warming. Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute said that the real question policy makers need to ask is - what is the cost of inaction? 'By inaction we mean anything that would take us beyond two degrees Celsius and all the associated changes. The costs of that are very large and they're escalating - not just economic costs, but social costs and environmental costs,? he said. 'This is the thing that the policy makers need to keep coming back to ' how do we meet the two degree guardrail?? Professor Steffen said that in order to stay under a two degree rise in temperature we have to cut our emissions by three per cent every year until 2050. A four-year delay would mean annual cuts of five per cent. If the world waits until to 2020 for carbon reduction, cuts of 9.5 per cent are required.