The business case for action on climate change

The first article in this collection reviews the findings and recommendations from a recent study commissioned by the Australian Business Roundtable on Climate Change.The study presents the business case for early action on climate change in Australia. Foremost among the recommendations is the need to design a ‘long, loud and legal’ framework to establish a price signal for emission abatement. Included in this framework would be a long-term aspirational goal and a shorter-term (2020) binding target for Australian emissions. These would link to a national market-based mechanism to deliver cost-effective emission reductions.Recommendations from the report include:setting a long-term aspirational goal for Australia to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions as our contribution to a global effort designed to avert dangerous climate impactssetting a short-term binding target for Australia in 2020 to facilitate a smooth transition to a low-carbon economy and as a milestone towards achieving the long-term goalintroducing a national market-based carbon pricing mechanism to deliver cost-effective emission reductionsmaking a public statement that government will not provide an indemnity against future carbon risk and investors will be required to fully manage their own exposureaccelerating efforts to manage energy and reduce GHG emissionsengaging with business and the community to expand fiscal incentives to encourage deployment of emerging and breakthrough technologies for power generation and transport to build scale and reduce costs, such as tax credits, accelerated depreciation and programs like the Low Emission Technology Demonstration Fundbuilding modelling capacity in Australia sufficient to estimate the full economic cost of climate change and provide a cost-benefit analysis for future mitigation and adaptation actionscreating a stronger science and technology culture through targeted school and university campaigns, and increased funding for centres of excellence to support the development and deployment of breakthrough technologies in Australiadeveloping, fund and implement a national strategy to build resilience and reduce vulnerability to climate impacts by fully integrating adaptation into development and planning processes to address, for example, building codes, water resources, health responses, biodiversity, heritage areas and climate-dependent industries