Boffins warn Rudd climate plan falls short

16 Dec 2008, 8:06 am   -   Source: SBS staff and agencies
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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges the government to announce bigger emissions cuts.

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Australian scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change say they wish the Rudd government had announced bigger emissions cuts.

The federal government on Monday announced it had set a target of reducing emissions by five per cent by 2020, if the world could not strike a deal on climate change.

The target will be beefed up to a 15 per cent cut if the world does come to an agreement.

"I personally would have preferred somewhat bigger cuts," Monash University Professorial fellow Neville Nicholls told ABC radio.

"It'll protect it more than doing nothing, which is what the situation will be if we don't get some sort of agreement with Australia fairly quickly."

But co-director of the climate change research centre at the University of NSW, Andy Pittman, has criticised the cut.

"The science is uncertain, but it's uncertain in the 25 to 50 per cent, not five per cent or ten per cent or 15 per cent," Professor Pittman, also an IPCC lead author, told ABC radio.

"It needs to be much deeper than that if we want to avoid dangerous anthropogenic climate change."

The federal government had missed the opportunity to show leadership on climate change in the short term, but Mr Rudd had the opportunity to show leadership in Copenhagen next year, he said.
 

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