Monday, June 04, 2007

Science not scaremongering driving policy

The Howard government in Australia is scaremongering on Labour policies on climate change, pitting the future of the planet (which under global warming scenarios will no doubt impact the ecomony here and elsewhere) on the present economy. So much short term thinking. We need to count the cost. Money spent now is money saved latter.

Labour wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 60% on 2000 levels by 2050. Good luck, but sorry Liberal party, this is what the third working group summary for policy makers says will keep 2100-2150 temperatures at under 3C warmer than now. Given the impacts we've seen from 0.76C of warming over the last 150 years, this seems like a good idea to me. The summary is available at www.ipcc.ch. It is a good example of where science can and should drive policy.

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