Sydney - Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's top climate change adviser said Friday the nation's greenhouse gas emissions should be cut by 10 per cent of 2000 levels by 2020. Economist Ross Garnaut said even that modest cut should be conditional on a global agreement being thrashed out before 2013 when the Kyoto Protocol runs its course.
"The process of international co-operation is perhaps the most formidable of international relations challenges: more formidable than multilateral trade negotiations - that have recently collapsed," Garnaut said.
In the absence of a global agreement, Garnaut recommended a 5-per-cent cut.
He urged the government to stick with its 2010 target for bringing in a European-Union-style cap-and-trade system of carbon pollution permits.
Rudd's first act in government after the November general election was signing the Kyoto Protocol. He also pledged a 60-per-cent reduction in emissions by 2050. An intermediate target was not set, but Garnaut's recommendation is likely to be adopted.
Garnaut said higher electricity and fuel costs were inevitable, and that low-income households could get subsidies to help accommodate them. "That can be given back to households in ways that do not remove the incentive to use electricity more economically," he said.
