Globally renowned economist Professor Jeffrey Sachs has said Australia’s reversal on climate change action will ultimately not hold up because the rest of the world will make clear that it is unacceptable.
Australia’s conservative Liberal-National government is seeking to repeal the carbon price laws put in place by the previous Labor government, and to close down a range of climate related authorities and organisations.
Speaking to Fairfax Media, Professor Sachs said the extreme shocks and pain of climate change were now being felt across the planet.
He warned that governments acting in an ”anti-scientific perspective or an extraordinarily short-term perspective” will be surprised by the response from other countries.
”This government was surprised this week with the reception to the budget,” Professor Sachs told Fairfax Media.
”And I think it is going to be surprised by the global reception of its climate policies as well unless it begins to understand the real situation in the world and what’s really expected of a country like Australia.”
Professor Sachs is perhaps best known for his work on poverty eradication, including his bestselling book The End of Poverty.
He is the director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
Fairfax Media reports he is in Australia to launch work on the Australian section of a global project for the UN to map paths for 13 countries to make deep cuts to greenhouse gas emissions that are consistent with keeping global warming at relatively safe levels of below two degrees Celsius.
The first stage of the project, led in Australia by think tank ClimateWorks and Australian National University economist Professor Frank Jotzo, will be fed into a September world leaders climate meeting in New York that has been convened by Mr Ban.
The meeting is an attempt to build momentum towards December 2015 climate negotiations in Paris, at which countries are due to finalise a new global climate treaty to take effect from 2020.
Fairfax Media reports Professor Sachs described the Paris meeting as the ”last chance” for the world to keep global warming below 2.0°C.
He said ultimately Australia was not a smaller player in stopping climate change.
Professor Sachs added Australia was among a handful of countries that mattered because of their fossil fuel use and production, including China, the US, the European Union, Canada, India and the Gulf states.
